If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
The Federalist Paper No. 51, James Madison
INTRODUCTION
Meaningantics is a dynamic concept rooted in meaningful purpose psychology. It examines how humans inadvertently hinder their own meaning, performance, and success, and identifies strategies to overcome these obstacles for greater advantage. Pitfalls represent the challenges, obstacles, or negative aspects of low-quality meaning that prevent individuals from reaching their potential. However, meaningantics also holds the potential to inspire creative thinking, innovation, and human thriving. Whether one remains stuck in the pitfalls or is liberated by the potential for good is a matter of choice, each with its own causes and effects. This paper explores the dynamics of these pitfalls and potentials, providing examples from daily life.
Viktor Frankl defined meaning as “What is meant…” In other words, meaning is an intention or goal supported by reasons, motives, and justifications (a cause). At the Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose, we believe that everything happens for a reason and is driven by causes. Sometimes, we may not understand why things happen, but they still have a cause or a “because.”
Usually, we know and can explain why we do things or their causes. Try this experiment: each time you do something, answer the “because” like “I got out of bed because I needed to get to work on time.” You’ll be surprised how easily you can identify your causes.
The principle is that all outcomes have a cause. In our daily lives, we adjust when we don’t achieve the intended results by changing the causes. For example, workers adapt their skills, tools, processes, and materials in manufacturing to meet quality standards. Or when you add more spice to improve the flavor of your dish. We constantly create and adjust causes to achieve our goals. That’s why humans are naturally goal- or purpose-oriented (i.e., logoteleological).
Both positive and negative outcomes have causes. You would agree that it’s better to be in a situation where things work well than when they don’t. Learning ways to prevent and correct errors is to our advantage. We often highlight and use what works well to make the right adjustments and follow a better path. It’s simple and hopeful, but unfortunately, it’s not common in essential areas of our lives. Sadly, we are not entirely using our potential for human thriving, and some problems persist despite the availability of solutions. How can that be?
To answer such a paradox, this paper will expand on my previous paper on a logoteleological dynamic process as meaningantics.
Meaningantics
Meaningful Purpose Psychology (MP or logoteleology) examines how meanings influence and impact outcomes and, more importantly, how this understanding can be leveraged to promote human thriving. Our studies include exploring what we call ‘blocks to meaning,’ which are the mental dynamics that explain why the correct solution is not chosen despite the readily available means to find and act on it. We refer to this mental dynamic as meaningantics.
Meaningantics explores the natural laws that govern the behavior of meanings. This science explains when, how, and why meanings fail or operate in failure mode. In other words, meaningantics examines how what people mean can include antics or anti-content, revealing ways humans self-handicap their meaning, performance, and success.
Meaningantics is one of three components that explain the blocks-to-meaning phenomenon, the other two being meaning calcification and meaning-sclerosis. However, I will only address the meaningantic component for our purposes here. Let’s start with the paradoxical quality of meaningantics.
Meaningantics’ Pitfalls
Meaningful purpose psychology contributes to and helps reveal
what gives life meaning
what is the meaning of life
how to thrive
what prevents humans from thriving despite the answers being available
how to overcome the blocks-to-meaning and propel the meaningful potential of all humans
I will focus on the fourth bullet: why the acrasia (Gr) or the tendency to act against one’s better judgment. This is a vast subject, so I am writing my third book dedicated to this topic. For now, since I only have a small space to cover the subject, let’s review some of the general principles of meaningantics:
Meanings can and do display antics [anti: against, opposed to] or contain counterforces (e.g., dilemmas, dissonance, resistors).
A meaning is no better than its sensory organ or willingness and ability to perceive objective reality.
Meaningantics can function outside of conscious awareness. This lack of awareness perpetuates and sustains the dynamics and their outcomes.
Solutions can and do create new problems.
Meaningantics triggers the counterforce dynamics of protestors without them noticing the irony—they do not realize their response's sardonic, contradictory, or ironic nature.
Stubborn problems persist due to meaningantics dynamics. They persist because too many are unaware of the forces that sabotage their perceptions and best and honest intentions.
It is sobering to think that you and I can know about a social process that distorts our thinking and still be susceptible to it.
~ David G. Myers, Ph.D. ~
Why would someone hold on to pain if a possible solution were available?
~ Dr. Robert L. Leahy ~
Many well-intentioned solutions fail to stick or achieve the desired effect; when they do, their impact is often temporary and superficial. Consequently, they fall short of delivering on their promises, such as contributing to human thriving or enhancing an organization’s performance. In fact, these proposed solutions can introduce additional counterforces into the stakeholder’s meaning and the operating environment or system, ultimately exacerbating the situation.
Evidence of Meaningantics
At the Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose, we have studied this phenomenon for decades, tracking trends and empirical facts to test our hypothesis. While the evidence is overwhelming, and I will cover it more thoroughly in my future book, here is one example of this dynamic in action.
On September 22, 2020, McKinsey and Company cited a 2018 Harvard Business Review study by Mary Abbajay, stating that “75 percent of survey participants said that the most stressful aspect of their jobs was their immediate boss.”
A 2020 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey claimed that “84 percent of U.S. workers say poorly trained managers create unnecessary work and stress.”
A fact-checked research reported by Zippia on February 11, 2023, found that “83% of US workers suffer from work-related stress, with 25% saying their job is the number one stressor in their lives. About one million Americans miss work each day because of stress.”
As the following figure shows, upon reading and codifying these statistics in my database, I went back to compare and reveal if there was a relevant trend or comparison. Here are some findings:
Hertzberg (1966, 1968) published the results of large-scale studies indicating that “60 and 75 percent of workers identify their immediate supervisor as the worst or most stressful aspect of their jobs.” [i]
A six-year study by Hogan, Raskin, and Fazzini (1990) claims that “between six and seven out of every ten managers in corporate America are not very good managers.”[ii]
A study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the 1990’s found that approximately 40 percent of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful.
The same NIOSH study indicated that 25 percent of workers viewed their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives.
Specifically related to the United Kingdom, there is research from the 1990s highlighting an increase in work-related psychological distress, with significant numbers of employees experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression due to job stress.
The data from this over fifty-year-long longevity study reveal a disturbing pattern: the $30 to 40 billion invested annually in leadership development has yet to improve leader performance significantly. This outcome betrays meaningantics in action.
Figure 1 > 50-Year Study on Work Stress Due to Boss
But can anything good come out from meaningantics?
Meaningantics’ Potential
I was recently asked if there was a positive side to meaningantics. My answer was, “Absolutely!” Meaningful Purpose Psychology is an optimistic, affirmative, and uplifting science designed to free people from the harmful pitfalls of meaningantics and build their capacity for excellence. Meaningantics can also be a source of inspiration and ingenuity!
Meaningantics is also a bedrock of creative and innovative thinking. By embracing the clash of conflicting meanings and the potential of what can be, meaningantics can cultivate a vibrant environment for fresh ideas and solutions. This potential can be a force for good, propelling progress and positive change. Remarkably, this potential is within our control and can be self-determined.
Innovations and inventions share a common element: they face obstacles and opposing information that can diminish over time. For instance, after years of trial and error, Thomas Edison patented his first lightbulb in 1879. Subsequently, Edison commercially produced electricity in 1882 in New York City. This journey began long ago, with the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus first revealing the phenomenon of static electricity in 600 BC.
However, like all new developments, innovations come with potential counterforces and the creation of new problems. The Law of Unintended Consequences highlights how new actions or innovations can create new problems alongside their intended benefits. With electricity came fires, electrocutions, and pollution.
At its core, under capable hands, meaningantics can be a powerful tool for success. The first step to tackling its dark grasp is to seek and recognize the contradictory forces within a meaning. Traditional answers are insufficient for addressing psychological and social challenges, having proven deficient over decades and even millennia. Understanding how to conduct this search and what to look for using new, reliable logoteleological methods is crucial. Improving outcomes requires improving their causes. This recognition is not merely a step but a potent tool that provides clarity, confidence, control, and the ability to leverage contrarian information.
Will we continue to succumb to self-sabotage, or will we embrace the promise of human thriving? The potential for the latter is what makes meaningantics genuinely enlightening and edifying.
Improving outcomes requires improving their causes.
The Permanence of Meaningantics
Meaningantics, a concept that has been part of the human experience since the dawn of humanity, is not a new phenomenon. It is very omnipresent in our psychological and sociological nature and structures. Understanding meaningantic dynamics helps us understand why problems persist despite readily available solutions. This understanding includes acknowledging that there are meaningantic forces present in our psyche whose task is to either sabotage or inspire us to thrive. Aware or not, we constantly confront the choice of the dark or bright force of meaningantics.
Meaningantics and Causes
As I indicated earlier, all psychological and social states and outcomes are the product of underlying causes. Therefore, it is vital to understand how meaningantics influences these causes and the resulting behavioral choices. This includes how we coexist and interact harmoniously. Throughout history, the question of how to govern ourselves or self-regulate has been crucial, particularly in preventing the dark side of meaningantics from oppressing ourselves and others.
One of the founding fathers of the United States, James Madison, recognized the underlying human meaningantic problem: “Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.”
Like other founding members, Madison had a sober opinion about people’s potential for malice: men are fallible, prone to mistakes, and corruptible.
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for the pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for the common good.
James Madison, Federalist Paper No. X
As described by Madison, this “nature of man” displays meaningantic dynamics. However, as explained, Meaningful Purpose Psychology’s (MP) meaningantics also presents an opportunity to liberate us from these opposing forces, become more prosocial, and strive for the common good.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
Choosing: Meaningantics Pitfalls and Potential
A foundation stone of MP is promoting “our bonds of affection” to solve meaningless divisions. When faced with the choice between being enemies or following bonds of affection, it's vital to be well-versed in the general principles of meaningantics, avoid its pitfalls, and benefit from its potential for good.
We have a choice. We do not have the option not to choose. Hence, the reason for the logoteleological axiom, “Choose wisely.”
To Learn More
Please get in touch with us with your comments and questions. We would love to hear from you and see you learn more.
Below is a link to our upcoming free Introduction to Meaningful Purpose Psychology for Practitioners planned for Wednesday, October 30, 2024, from 10:00 to 11:30 AM EST. I look forward to meeting you!
For a short video on this article, please click here: https://lumen5.com/user/luis-o9t/navigating-meaningan-dbow2/
____________________________________________________________________
[i] Wagner, Richard K., “Smart People Doing Dumb Things.” Sternberg, Robert J., Ed. Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Hertzberg, F. (1966). Working and the nature of man. New York: Crowell. ----. (1968). One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review, 46, 53-62
[ii] Hogan, R., R. Raskin, & D. Fazzini (1990). The dark side of charisma. In K. E. Clark & M. B. Clark (Eds.) Measures of leadership (pp. 343-354). Greensboro, N.C.: Center for Creative Leadership
Bình luận