Аннотация: Autobiography through the prism of meanings
The meaning of life (2006)
(A letter to my children)
Mikhail L. Gershteyn
Translated by Vlada Brofman
"The goal is nothing, movement is everything." Edward Bernshtein
1. Briefly
To search for the meaning of life is a very fascinating occupation. It is foolish to refuse oneself the pleasure of defining the changing meanings of one"s own existence and to create hypotheses about the aims of Nature or God. However, it is harmful to believe that there is a single aim of existence, independent of the person and definitive. It prevents one from enjoying the inimitable dance of the present and being ready for unexpected turns.
Today, I believe not in absolute meaning, but in absolute values: first and foremost, one"s family, friends and being close to one"s nation.
I also believe that it is necessary to be constantly fascinated or engaged in different activities but to allow those interests to change over time.
2. A bit of theory
2.1 The meanings of the term "meaning"
The use of the concept of meaning is usually connected either to actions or to an implicit message: "The deeper meaning of Krylov"s fable "The fox and the crow" is that only having lost the cheese, the crow gained the freedom of speech..."
There are at least four meanings of the concept "the meaning of life":
The meaning of individual existence,
The meaning of humanity"s existence,
The meaning of existence of biological life as such,
And the meaning of existence of the world.
2.2 The meaning of life and its goal
The meaning of an action is determined in relation to its goal. We call meaningful those actions which lead to the realization of the established goal. The same actions could have meaning with respect to one goal and not have it with respect to another. Therefore, to understand the meaning of life, one needs to determine its goal. It is this goal which is frequently taken for its meaning.
2.3 The thrust to search for the absolute
In everyday life, a person from childhood is surrounded by goals; first, they are goals set to us externally, by parents and teachers. Then begins the period of one"s coming-of-age when one already wants to choose one"s own goals. By this age, existing with specific goals in mind becomes one of essential life skills. An absence of long-term goals causes discomfort and produces a feeling of emptiness and anxiety. It leads to the problem of choosing a goal. At this point, people with a philosophical mindset frequently begin their first search for the meaning of life.
Our skill of conscious behavior is related primarily to the choice of actions with a given goal, that is, to the executive and more or less logical process.
At the same time, a conscious choice of the goal itself has nothing to do with either its execution or reason. Of course, it could be an interim goal, and then our reason starts working again. But such a goal, in its turn, is connected to other, more important ones, and the primary goals don"t derive from anything.
A person raised in the atmosphere of organized thinking has a much easier time taking action to achieve a goal than setting it, a process which is illogical, intuitive, and willful. Precisely for that reason, he wishes to believe in goals which are independent of our choice, the true goals and meanings of his life, as well as goals and meanings of life in every direction. It is this wish which pushes us to search for absolute goals.
On the basis of absolute reference points, one could organize one"s life both harmoniously and logically, at least in one"s plans, and not be constantly anxious about making mistakes.
Another thing pushing us to search for the meaning of life is the thought of death. One wants to find the meaning of life which goes beyond the limits of one"s own existence, adapt to it, and in so doing, as Casanova said, "to grab onto eternity."
It also frequently happens that the notion of the meaning of life is instilled in someone by the school or parents while one is still in childhood or adolescence. This happens in societies and families with a stable ideology. For instance, in religious ideology the meaning of life is to serve God while Soviet ideology taught that the meaning of life consists of fighting for humanity"s freedom: "The dearest thing the man has is life. He is only given it once, and he has to live it so he will not feel torturous pain for years spent uselessly, so that he does not burn from shame for a mean and foul past, and so that, dying, he could say: all my life and all my energy have been dedicated to the most beautiful thing in the world - the fight for the freedom of humanity." (Nikolay Ostrovsky)
Further, however, specific explanations become necessary: that is, how one serves God, or how one fights for humanity"s interests. Individuals with a developed independence instinct seek for such explanations themselves while a larger mass of people falls under the influence of society"s ideologues: priests, spiritual leaders, politicians, and writers.
2.4 The meaning of life as a message
I"m looking hard at life-
The answer
Already touches me with its shoulder.
And the foretaste of a revelation is sweet...
But it would be nice to understand --
What is the riddle?
People who are into guessing games, puzzles and mystery novels twists like to approach life as a sequence of events with a hidden meaning. They look at life as a story that hints at an encrypted message. The message itself then is called the meaning of life, and the activity of deciphering it - the search for meaning. Depending on how they understand this question, they try to guess either the history of individual existence (fate), the history of humanity, the history of life as a natural phenomenon, or the history of the entire world"s existence. Religious people are inclined to decipher histories of saints" lives and the holy texts.
Frequently, it is believed that the hidden message in and of itself contains the life"s goal.
3. Autobiography through the prism of meanings
3.1 The eternal
There is no salvation in word or thought,
Only the spectral quiet of simple meaning,
Which helps, if only for a time,
Between one embarrassment and another
I don"t believe that the meaning of life exists independently from the person, whatever meaning one sees in the meaning of life. At the same time, in good times, I like to search for all kinds of meanings; I consider it a useful activity and enjoy it.
The meaning of life can certainly be very serious and unmistakable at times of existential difficulties. The need to dig oneself out fully determines one"s existence, and this simple meaning holds life tightly in the grip of its jaws. When such difficult periods are behind us, for a long time one can enjoy the simple fact that they are over and from the sense of the routine, not looking for anything more significant.
Now, it seems to me that the most unalterable part of my worldview is the importance of my family, friends and the closeness to my people. It doesn"t mean that I"m always thinking about them, but I hardly forget them. All other things in one"s life can change. For example, my hobbies and professional activities go around in a circle - they change one another and then return again.
3.2 The meanings of childhood
I was only able to state my priorities so clearly in adulthood, sometime between thirty and forty; in my childhood and youth, I mostly concerned myself with important ideas for the whole of humanity. Those ideas and the dream of worldwide fame seemed most important to me. I still love them. They still carry me over land, as strong and powerful as huge birds from fairy tales. However, now I cannot so frequently allow myself the luxury of such flights of fancy.
From childhood I understood various logical constructions and ideas very well.
When I was about seven, it occurred to me that all people are egotistical; only egotism means different things to them. Some of the (pure egotists) only remember about themselves while others feel better taking care of others. This thought astonished me. I decided that the meaning of my life was to reveal this "discovery" to the world. For a long time I made a fuss of this supertask, but then it was superseded by thoughts of girls, worries about reputation (until the fourth grade I fought quite a bit and aspired to the place of the strongest person in the class) and organizing cohorts of friends.
At fifteen, when we were on vacation, my father told me about his concept of a different understanding of Coulomb"s law. He suggested that similar charges are not repelled by each other but are attracted to the surrounding bodies and pulled apart by them. Papa believed that such an understanding should lead to the same conclusions as traditional electrostatic theory.
This idea was so unexpected and beautiful that I fell in love with it immediately.
Thinking about it, I understood that it leads to a very unusual electrostatic theory, which can help to explain gravitation and the atomic forces effectively. It occurred to me that the meaning of my life is to communicate my father"s and my theory to the rest of humanity.
Such ideas were interspersed with girls, friendships, politics, conflicts books, and the fear of not getting into college but having to go to the army.
3.3 Super-Ego at the University
The excitement of university life seized me even before I entered it and never left me while I was there. It was never seriously shaken by minor difficulties such as exams at the reserve-officer training department, or more serious problems due to my political beliefs (I was fired from the position of department newspaper editor and nearly expelled from the university).
I hardly thought about the meaning of life then, but I started wonderful friendships and romances, and wrote poetry. I remember though that during my poignant infatuation with writing, it seemed to make up the most important meaning of all. My personal slogan then became the phrase To live in order to write while people and events which surrounded me and my own actions were evaluated mainly according to the intuitive criterion of artistic value.
In my fifth year, an idea occurred to me of a deliberate denial of any conscious goal. It bothered me that meanings and goals make us delay our life for later.
I wrote then:
Don"t wait!
I follow myself on tiptoe,
Tenderly watching from behind the corner,
And I"m afraid to interfere
TODAY!
One hears the snow melting on the lips.
Such an approach certainly very quickly begins interfering with any prolonged constructive activity. However, it allows you to tear your eyes away from binoculars with their constant aim and to see the world in its pristinity.
Our aims aim at ourselves,
And overwhaim us
Look, they"ve almost eaten up
Our quivering NOW!
Having read a lot of Freud, I formulated my idea using his terms.
Remembering his depiction of EGO as the horse-rider of ID, ruled controlled by the Super-Ego, I said that I wanted my Super-EGO to coincide with ID.
At eight, my youngest son, Osya, formulated the same point much more briefly and accurately: "I want what I"m doing!"
3.4 The time to explore dreams
In the last year of my studies I got married. The decision came to me at once and was quite unexpected. It did not agree with my belief at the time that a love relationship should live its life and then end so as to give place to the new. I frequently remembered then a poem by Pasternak:
No matter how the night
Shackles me with a wistful ring
Stronger in the world is the longing to leave
And the passion for ruptures attracts me.
Suddenly I felt I didn"t wish to part with Masha as I didn"t want to cut off my hand. I remember that the next day after I asked her to marry me, she told me, "Perhaps you want to think a bit more about it?" I told her that the lever should be turned once, not twice. It was a quote from Babel"s story, "Guy de Maupassant." Babel speaks there about the art of translation. "A phrase is born to the world both good and bad simultaneously. The mystery lies in a barely felt turn. One"s hand should be on the lever - to keep it warm. One should turn it once, not twice."
Soon, I went back to thinking of my earlier super-ideas quite regularly.
They were connected to our physical theory, the dream of world glory and achieving independence. These dreams helped me to write an article about the theory, to organize its discussion and, with major difficulties, publish it in a scientific journal.
My dreams of independence and the perestroika helped me to leave my old job and organize a cooperative society.
At times it seemed that the meaning of life isn"t in physics or business but in love, sometimes, in children, and sometimes in writing poetry and leaving a piece of myself in these short lines.
One can also attribute our departure for America to this search for meaning.
Sure, there were many reasons spoken about, but truth be told, they were not the most important. The most important was the feeling that emigration was necessary. It was similar to a second birth, and perhaps that was its significance.
3.5 A little engine from Romashkov on the American roller-coaster
In a popular Soviet cartoon "A Little engine from Romashkov ", a little engine is running late. This happens because several times it makes unscheduled stops of its own accord - first to look at lilies-of-the-valley, because "if we don"t look at the first lilies-of-the-valley, we"ll be late to the rest of spring," then to listen to nightingales, because "if we don"t hear the first nightingales, we"ll be late to the whole summer" and finally to watch the sunrise, because "each sunrise is like no other in our lives." The sympathies of the film"s authors, its passengers and even the bosses of the engine are fully on the side of the little engine.
In America, there is also a cartoon about the little engine. There, the engine has to pull a heavy train over a huge mountain, and the engine is very little. So it starts accelerating before the mountain and repeating to the rattling of the wheels: I think I can! I think I can! I think I can! And it does get over the mountain.
Nothing demonstrates the difference between American and Soviet lives so clearly and vividly as the difference between the psychology and the problems of these two little engines.
On coming to America, like many others, I turned out to be in the situation of the engine from Romashkov in front of the tall mountain peaks of the American roller-coaster.
To provide for the family was a simple and clear meaning of life. The task was not easy, and besides business, I was still drawn to other things which had little to do with earning the daily bread: social life, physics, politics, poetry and literature.
Thankfully, I did not come alone but with my family, with my brother and his family as well. We did not come to a place where we knew no one, but to some relatives with whom we were also friends, so we had a small close circle from the start. But that was not enough for me.
One of my life"s goals became recreating my former circle of friends and supporting the range of my earlier interests. As my friend concisely and precisely proclaimed: "Ahead, to the past!"
Since I was already infected with the idea of working for myself, without bosses, from the start I began my attempts to start a business. For a long time they came to nothing.
Sometimes it would seem that something was working, but no. As if you were opening the door with a key and already feeling the mechanism turning, but at the last moment the lock clicks back to the former position. And again, and again.
At the time, a poem was born to me, which almost exactly repeated the words of the American engine, of which I did not know then:
Instead of an answer,
Instead of a greeting,
I tell everyone,
I will do it!
As a result, I did emerge on top of the first mountain. It was a big victory, although there were higher mountains still to be braved.
The goals and the style of the engine from Romashkov certainly interfere with the American engine, but they also don"t let me go crazy. Some acquaintances have attempted to "turn off" their former multiple interests, and from the business standpoint they were quite successful. But frequently one can feel in such individuals a slight sense of degradation.
We need money to forget about them;
One pities a pauper, but more pitiful are the castrati
Whose philosophy, life and fate
Are bound by the arithmetic of money signs.
Thus one must live, combining in oneself the two little engines.
3.6 For what? Or with whom?
At times it seemed to me that the meaning of my life was in liberating the people of my circle from their moral and political misconceptions. Such moments occurred in the Soviet Union and became more frequent in the U.S.
Pondering my beliefs in the U.S., I found there a basic ideological mistake: as most Soviet - anti-Soviet intelligentsia I implicitly believed that ideas stand behind politics; I looked at ethics as an absolute code of conduct which one must follow and apply to politics. Thus, discussing some political conflict, we tried to decide who is right and wrong based on moral norms, and debated those norms as well.
After thirty, I finally understood that the most important part of politics is the struggle to survive and dominate. In conflicts, politics is moved not by moral ideas but by basic drives and interests. What is important is not which people, countries or civilizations are right, but which will triumph and survive. Thus, the question, WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR? in politics is secondary to the question - WHO ARE YOU WITH?
From this basic understanding, I concluded that the Western civilization today must strain all its energies to avert, in any manner possible, the Islamic danger that is coming closer.
I spoke about it to all my acquaintances, wrote articles and letters to politicians. Time has shown that I was right, and continues to do so.
4. Living and dead meanings
"I"d put some
Dynamite,
Come on,
Explode!
I hate
Any kind of deadness!
I adore
Everything alive!"
Vladimir Mayakovsky
What astonishes me the most in our religion is the idea that God is alive, that he exists here and now, orders, gets angry, disagrees, or even barters, in other words, he behaves emotionally and sometimes unexpectedly. Dead idols, certainly, cannot do any of this.
For me the vitality of God means that a person should not be completely subsumed in the everyday, the yesterday, or what is written in books. One needs to look at the surrounding world every day, to see how the world changes and to change oneself. I like any theories or meanings while they help me feel the hard beat of today"s life.
Mikhail L. Gershteyn June 24, 2006.
Published in Russian on hpsy.ru http://hpsy.ru/public/x3142.htm