Questioned by Life
I always argue the we are products of our time and place in history. The meaning in our lives is made up from the story we continually strive to create among others out of the raw materials handed to us by our circumstance. This morning I revisited a little book that did much to shape my life’s journey.
In his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” , Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and survivor of the Holocaust, remembers that in order to survive the trials of the camps….
“We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual”.
W. E. Deming spoke of meaning in terms of creating “aims”.
Dan Pink Note:
This idea of the will to meaning is very simple when taken in the context of a theory of knowledge. For example, would you say that a young bird’s pre-flight fluttering is an intrinsic motivation or an genetically programmed drive? The young bird does not “want” to fly. It just does what its genetic programming calls it to do and as it matures, it flies.
In human beings, the “will” to construct meaning — to make sense out of the challenges presented to us by the world — is the same as the flight programming in the bird. Humans seek meaning and meaning is constructed in interaction with others, so we “flutter our minds” with others so that we may “fly”. If you bind our wings or clip them or cage us, you thwart the process by which we can create meaning. You kill the bird or make it a zombie-like imitation that is devoid of the quality of birdness. Many workplaces are designed to create zombies.
In other words, we are not “motivated” by a desire for (fill in the blank). We just are meaning creating creatures that act to make sense of the world — meet challenges, create, innovate, sing, dance, and in all other ways, contribute to the world of meaning we share with others. Any human enterprise will do better when it is designed to enable such flight.
As far as I can tell, Dan Pink doesn’t understand this at all.