Mad as Hell

C: Why are you so angry?
D: My life is meaningless.
C: You know that's not true. You have many family members who love you and need you. You're healthy and active and you have many worthy accomplishments you can point to.
D: I'll concede all that. It doesn't change the main fact: with commuting, I spend almost ten hours a day doing something that is not important to me.
C: It's important to others.
D: So what? Let someone else do it. Meaningful work is a dual transaction. It has to matter to the beneficiary and to the giver.
C: Why?
D: Let's say I take a wheelbarrow full of $100 bills down to the soup kitchen or homeless shelter and just dump it in the middle of the floor. I have plenty more wheelbarrows full at home. The recipients start fighting over who gets how much. They really need the money. I walk away and let them shove and elbow and argue over how to divide it up. How meaningful is that?
C: Not so.
D: It didn't mean much to the giver - hard to say what it means to the recipients.
C: You're saying giving and receiving a benefit is a social transaction. Without the social element, it doesn't mean that much.
D: Look at this example. A woman goes down to the soup kitchen to serve warm food to lonely people who don't have a home or a family. She smiles at them, calls them by name asks how they're doing. They smile back and tell her their problems. She goes there every day because bringing some cheer and nourishment to people who need it makes the whole rest of her life worthwhile. Now tell me, which person did more meaningful work: the guy with a million dollars in a wheelbarrow, or the woman who serves soup? Which person can say, “I'm doing meaningful work, and here's why”?
C: Alright, the millionaire's spirit isn't so generous, and the woman's is. A generous spirit and real human connection makes a gift more meaningful, but I'm not sure you can translate all that to an argument about the meaning of life.
D: Why not?
C: Remember what Leslie said: no individual is in a position to judge the meaning of any life, least of all one's own. Only God is in that position.
D: Didn't she say that was a Zen way of understanding the meaning or mystery of life?
C: Okay, you got me on that one. You don't have to have an all-seeing God, outside of time, to understand the significance of one's life that way.
D: What do you need?
C: A non-egoistic way of seeing life. You aren't the measure of your own life, or anyone else's.
D: There has to be some measure. You can't just say, “That's the mystery of life,” and leave it at that.
C: Why not?
D: Look where that would leave you. You couldn't distinguish good, worthwhile actions from bad, destructive ones.
C: Now you're trying to tie life's meaning to goodness?
D: Well why shouldn't I?
C: Plenty of evil people lived lives of huge significance. They had a big impact on history and on other people. You wouldn't say their lives had no meaning just because the effect was destructive, would you?
D: Why should we be able to make judgments about good and eveil, bgut not about the significance of one's own life?
C: It's not going to help much if I say, “It's a mystery.”
D: No, it's not.
C: Look how solipsistic it is to say, “My life has no meaning,” and then explain why that's true. You can't make the case without focusing only on yourself, and that's it.
D: Whereas if you say, “My life has a lot of meaning,” you don't run into that problem.
C: No, you don't.
D: That just means the optimists have a logical advantage.
C: I'd say it means the Zen view has some validity. You just can't measure your own life's worth.
D: I'd still like to say, “Why not?,” but you've done your best to explain why egoism doesn't take you so far eith this problem.
C: So are you still angry?
D: Mad as hell - and I'm not going to take it anymore!