Rebuilding Our Meaning Infrastructure

Moving beyond individual meaning

The Collapsing Bridges We Don’t See

In the US, our physical infrastructure – our roads, bridges and even our drinking water delivery systems, are neglected and crumbling. Bridges across the country are being closed due to safety concerns, residents of Jackson, Mississippi were recently forced to boil their tap water before drinking and were told to take showers with their mouths closed. Even in California, the water at my own son’s public school recently had levels of lead too high for safe consumption.

But as sorry as the state of our nation’s physical systems may be, the long-term underinvestment in this infrastructure is actually just one symptom of the neglect of an even more fundamental system: our meaning infrastructure. 

Meaning infrastructure is the complex web of meanings that gives shape to cultures and societies. It includes our meanings which are retained and spread through religious institutions such churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, our legal and political institutions such as courts, parliaments, militaries, our journalistic institutions including news publications, broadcasts and internet sources, our educational institutions including schools, universities, libraries, our arts and entertainment institutions like film, theater, music and our business institutions such as industry associations, corporations, chambers of commerce and, of course, marketing and advertising. Meaning infrastructure also includes community-based organizations such as clubs, sports leagues, civic groups, etc. and a great deal of meaning is transmitted through the structure of families. 

The networks of concepts, beliefs and deep emotional experiences that pulse through these institutions are the lifeblood of our meaning infrastructure. Each society’s meaning systems attempt to address perennial human questions such as, What is a good life? What are my freedoms and responsibilities? What is justice? What and who is worth caring about? A society’s answers to these questions shape everything from our individual identities to worldviews and practices which enable or thwart the cooperation of millions of human beings for shared purposes, like building our physical infrastructure.

Importantly, the retention and transmission of meaning is not just an intellectual activity. Cultures don’t make meaning just by reading books, but through all sorts of rituals and practices, including holidays with traditional food, songs and stories, rites of passages such as baptisms, bar mitzvahs, weddings, the singing of hymns or national anthems together, parades, sporting events, dances – the list is almost endless.

When meaning infrastructure is well-made, well-maintained and inclusive, it nourishes the psychological well-being of the great majority of the members of a society. However, when meaning infrastructure is poorly-maintained, or when its meaning content is oppressive, violent and exclusive, the psychological and physical well-being of citizens suffers. 

Poorly maintained meaning infrastructure leads to a lack of shared purpose, pronounced social divisiveness, epidemics of loneliness, high levels of addiction and deaths of despair. These are the metaphoric roads and buildings crumbling around us, the bridges of meaningful connection that are collapsing.

In my experience, most writing on meaning, even the esteemed work of Viktor Frankl, focuses on discovering and improving individual meaning. But this is like spending all our time fixing our own car and then heading out on roads full of massive cracks and potholes, negotiating intersections with failing traffic lights and driving over shaky bridges that might plunge us into the waters below at any moment. If we want to address many of the vexing problems facing us, we desperately need to work on our shared meaning infrastructure. This involves saving and revitalizing solid and constructive meaning from the past as well as developing new meaning infrastructure where it is needed.

Key Impediments to Fixing Our Meaning Infrastructure

When physical infrastructure is well-maintained, we don’t think about it much, and like the Romans who made roads that have lasted for thousands of years, our ancestors made some pretty damn good meaning which has served us for many generations. When we hit the metaphoric potholes and wrecked intersections of our meaning infrastructure, we’re more likely to assume the problem is our own (“I need more purpose in my life”) rather than attributing the issue to an infrastructure we can’t see. So our lack of awareness about meaning infrastructure is one impediment to improving it.

Unfortunately, good meaning infrastructure isn’t something everyone wants. Some business and political models depend on misinformation, divisiveness and on people feeling lonely and angry. Bad actors, especially powerful ones like large corporations, can prevent us from fixing our meaning infrastructure.

Another key problem is that we don’t have much practice in conscious meaning making. As someone who has been struggling with meaning for my entire adult life, I’ve found it very difficult to figure out what meaning is, how it gets made and what skills and knowledge are required. We don’t yet have a good shared language for meaning making and we don’t know how to go about practicing conscious meaning making. 

Finally, there is a strong temptation to retreat to past meaning. Revitalizing healthy meaning from the past is a great idea, but when we simply retreat to old, often rigid, often exclusionary meaning, we are probably going to deepen divisions and reinforce meanings which have created our current problems. 

Shared Meaning-Making: A Vision

During the Great Depression, when great swaths of the American public were unable to find jobs, the US government created and implemented public job creation under the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Unemployed people were put to work building roads, libraries and other physical infrastructure, and tens of thousands of unemployed artists were put to work under the Federal Art, Music, Theater and Writers projects.

We are currently in a meaning depression in which great swaths of the American public are unable to find fulfilling meaning (many of whom have also given up on finding work or are under-employed – and therefore don’t get counted in our supposed record employment numbers). Following the model of the WPA, we could financially support citizens to engage in productive rebuilding of our meaning infrastructure. While this would hopefully be deeply meaningful to each participant, the goal would be to create higher quality shared meaning for our country, using some of the practices below, or something better.

Study Meaning Making: Participants would undergo a relatively short educational program (perhaps 1-3 months) in which they would learn, in a cross-disciplinary manner, the core psychological needs of all humans, how we inherit meaning from our families and cultures, how we can make new meaning, how new meaning can be shared and strengthened, etc. 

Join a Team: Participants would create teams based on shared interests and geographic location. These teams would carry out two primary activities: 1) creating shared meaning as a team and, 2) engaging local communities in meaning making workshops.

Process Ideas: 

1. Identifying Core Values & Needs: Teams would continually work to identify specific shared values and meaning needs in the communities where they operate. Meaning making would be anchored in these shared values and needs. 

2. Creating Compelling Narratives: The narratives created by teams could be captured in video, as stage performances, in song or writing. These stories should evoke strong emotions, such as hope, pride, empathy and even an appropriate anger (at injustices). These shared narratives should incorporate personal stories and anecdotes that can humanize the narrative and make abstract concepts more relatable and impactful.

3. Developing New Rituals: Narratives need to be supported by ritual practices that enliven and reinforce the meaning within the narratives. Teams and communities would develop simple rituals, including music, singing, chanting, dancing, shared meals, etc.

4. Testing Narratives & Rituals: The most successful narratives and rituals emerging from local communities could then be taken to other communities and regions to see if they have broader appeal.