Finding Meaning in the Meaninglessness

“Light” This is dead Rocky Mountain barley and a small cactus flower that is blooming. This is a 10” x 10” (25,4 x 25,4 cm) RA-4 color reversal direct print (made in the camera). This is about 1 second overexposed - I really like the diptych of these.

““Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.””

— Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

This coming Saturday, April 22, 2023, I’m going to read the sixth chapter of “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life” on my YouTube show. This chapter is about symbolic immortality. What is symbolic immortality? It’s the flip side of the coin of human desiring or striving for immorality. One side of the coin is literal immortality (last week’s read), and the other is symbolic immortality. It’s a big driving force in our lives. And it’s very interesting in terms of terror management theory. If you can, join me for the reading, I’m sure you’ll find something vaguely interesting if you’re reading this.

The book really starts to take off with this chapter. To this point, the authors have laid the groundwork for the reasons we lean on repression, denial, and the transcendence of death. They’ve addressed how we use our parents when we’re children for our self-esteem, and then we separate, or individuate, and lean on culture for the all-important tools to repress or deny the knowledge of our impending death and to build self-esteem (which acts as a buffer to death anxiety). They’ve given both historical references and modern empirical evidence about how we respond to death awareness. For me, this is where these theories really take off and we begin to connect the dots.

“Humans are incredibly intelligent. On consciousness: It takes a ridiculously sophisticated cognitive apparatus to render yourself the object of your own subjective inquiry. ”

— Soren Kierkegaard

Since human beings acquired consciousness or became aware that they existed, nonexistence has become a frightening reality. Mortality is on our minds and in our thoughts; it consumes us, and we need a way to buffer, repress, or transcend it. This is true, whether we know it or not, and most don’t (it’s an unconscious activity, like most psychological events). We are so embedded or ensconced in our cultural worldview that we’re blind to what motivates our activities, shapes our desires, and drives us on a daily basis. For me, this is the most revealing feature of these ideas. We’re so far down the rabbit hole (repressing the anxiety) that we can’t make sense of these theories; we don’t understand them. That’s what they’re designed to do: keep us from thinking about becoming worm food. And over tens of thousands of years, they have become so deeply embedded in our psychological landscape that we are shielded from the knowledge of death—at least for the most part.

One way we deal with the terror of death is to transcend it; we mainly use culture to do that. Technology, religion, art, ritual, myth, family, politics, relationships, money, etc.—these all provide some form of immortality for us or ways to repress or buffer existential dread. Why are we so afraid of dying? It’s not the actual event of death that gives us anxiety (some do have anxiety about how they will die), but the knowledge of it. We are living and existing in a meaningless world. We won’t be remembered. It’s the impermanence and insignificance that give us anxiety and dread. We want to be remembered; better yet, we don’t want to die!

“Ernest Becker called this desperation ‘the ache of cosmic specialness.’ Becker states what is patently obvious to most: as humans, we constantly put ourselves at the center of the universe.”

— The Denial of Death

“Life & Light” is a 20” x 20” (51 x 51 cm) these are RA-4 color reversal direct prints (made in the camera).

As Ernest Becker, the author of “The Denial of Death” (1973), pointed out, Freud was wrong. It’s not our sexual drive that motivates our behavior and psychological gymnastics; it’s our fear of death. Peter Zapffe, a Norwegian philosopher, also addressed these theories in his 1933 essay, “The Last Messiah.” Zapffe cites four coping mechanisms we use to repress death anxiety. For Zapffe, our becoming mentally over-equipped has resulted in us becoming “fearful of life itself" and of our “very being." The degree to which we are conscious of reality, which is unlike any other species, also means that we have become acutely aware of the suffering of billions of people and sentient life on the planet, as well as the planet itself.

“The Last Messiah” starts like this (bold for emphasis):

“One night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw himself.

He saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his own body. All things dissolved before his testing thought, wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his mind.

Then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay. And he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. But as the beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of habit, he felt no more the tiger’s bound in his blood, but a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive.

That day he did not return with prey, and when they found him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the waterhole.”

Sublimation, which Zapffe calls “a matter of transformation rather than repression,” It involves turning “the very pain of living” into “valuable experiences.” He continues: “Positive impulses engage the evil and put it to their own ends, fastening onto its pictorial, dramatic, heroic, lyric, or even comic aspects.” He also notes that the essay "The Last Messiah" itself is an attempt at such sublimation. For Zapffe, sublimation is “the rarest of protective mechanisms." Most people can limit the contents of their consciousness using the previous three mechanisms (isolation, anchoring, and distraction), staving off existential angst and world-weariness. But when these forms of repression fail and the tragic cannot be ignored, sublimation offers a remedy, a way of turning the unignorable “pain of living” into creative, positive, aesthetically valuable works. (Partially Examined Life) This is where I find myself—deep into sublimation.

Meaning and Meaninglessness
Everyone has the responsibility to create meaning in their lives. There is nothing inherently meaningful in life. Life is primarily a biological process; it goes on whether we believe in something or not; it simply doesn’t matter; the world goes on. When people ask, “What is the meaning of life?” They are missing the point; there is no meaning; you have to create it, find it, search it out, apply it, and live it. The question should be, “What is the meaning in life?” Your life. Whatever that might be, I believe whatever you do to create meaning is a good thing as long as it doesn’t hurt or infringe on other people's ways of creating meaning.

If you’re religious or have a certain faith or belief in an afterlife and believe in a deity, no problem. If you belong to a sports club or a political group and find meaning and significance there, no problem. If you have a hobby—gardening, cooking, sewing, writing, painting, or photography—that’s great! If it bolsters your self-esteem, makes you feel significant, and gives you meaning, you’re on the right track.

The problem is that, a lot of times, unconscious beliefs infringe on other people's cultural worldviews; it creates hurt, discrimination, oppression, and even death (this usually happens to members of marginalized groups). Everyone needs to find something that provides them with meaning and significance. This isn’t about being right or wrong; it’s about being human and feeding self-esteem to buffer death anxiety. We all suffer from this condition (the human condition). No one gets to say, "That doesn’t apply to me." It applies to everyone.

I’m not a nihilist, but there is some truth in the “nothingness” that nihilists ascribe to, especially existential nihilism. Nietzsche said, "To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." I do ascribe to that idea.

William Shakespeare wrote:
"Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

I titled this essay “Finding Meaning in the Meaninglessness.” It’s a difficult thing to admit, but everything is meaningless. Everything. For context, when I say meaningless, I mean it in the cosmic sense, not the personal sense. For me, all of my pictures, all of my writings and books, all of my thoughts, my degrees, my life experiences, all of my accomplishments, even my existence, are all meaningless. It’s true, and I’m fine with that truth. What I’ve found is that, while I understand this fact in the cosmic sense, it doesn’t preclude me from finding meaning and significance for myself. All of the aforementioned things are very meaningful, significant, and important to me, including my wife and daughter, who are at the top of my meaningful list, and my friendships and relationships outside of my family.

I’ve created, experienced, and lived all of it for my mental health and well-being, not for some bigger purpose or to change the world. It’s wonderful to be alive most of the time. I’m in awe of the beauty where I live. I’m amazed at the progress human beings have made over the millennia. It’s truly amazing. I’m grateful to wake up every morning.

On the surface, it may seem that I’m trying to change the world through my work, but I’m not. If no one ever read a word I’ve written, looked at a picture I’ve made, or listened to my philosophies about life, it wouldn’t matter—because it doesn’t. They’re not meaningful or important to the bigger scheme of things (cosmic); I get that, and I’m okay with that. I’ve come to terms with it. It doesn’t depress or demotivate me either. In fact, in a lot of ways, it’s freeing and maybe even emancipating in ways. It encourages me even more to express and create.

The only thing I’ve tried to do (intentionally) in my life is encourage people to consider people who are different from them as fully human and try not to do harm to “the other.” And now, with my new work, I’m trying to help people understand what these important ideas have to offer. It would be a much better world, at least for the time we’re here, if we could come to terms with our mortality. As Albert Camus said, “There is only one liberty, to come to terms with death, thereafter anything is possible.”

Why Photographic Prints (and Books) Are Important

“We have in fact only two certainties in this world - that we are not everything and that we will die.”

— Georges Bataille

You hear advice for digital photographers to “print their images.” It’s good advice. Storage cards and drives crash all the time. I suspect very few actually follow that advice. However, this essay is not about that type of printing, and the ideas that I’m going to address live in a completely different space. This is about the photographic fine art print as an object of value: something tangible and handmade. As well as the importance of books and the meaning of value,

In this essay, I want to address the idea of value as it relates to prints and books in the photographic fine art world. What is value, and how do you define it?

Have you ever thought about the importance of the photographic print? What I mean is that when we talk about photography today, it’s usually about posting digital snaps on social media. I read a scary statistic the other day about “Generation Z” (Zoomer students): very few have ever been to an art gallery (to see work in person), even fewer own any photography books, or books in general, and almost none of them have ever been in a photographic darkroom. Their photographic and art world lives online in zeros and ones. That really shocked me. The last few wet collodion demonstrations I did (pre-COVID) at the local university, I felt that something was “off.” I couldn’t put my finger on it; it just felt like the students were distant and not really interested in my presentation. I’d been doing these for years and never had a response, or lack thereof, like this before. It made me start to wonder about the changing perception of art, literature, and education in general. I taught higher education for a few years; in fact, the initial reason for getting an M.F.A. was to continue to teach in higher education. I had a change of heart when I finished graduate school. I feel that I can contribute more to the world doing what I’m doing now. I’m very grateful that I didn’t continue teaching. I think I would have been disappointed and discouraged by it.

WORK, SKILL, & MATERIALS

The Value of Work
When we talk about value, we have to address some key elements that separate the different approaches to making art using photography. One of the big ones for me is work. The 19th-century French novelist George Sand said, "Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward, his strength, and his pleasure." I agree. I define work as a system of mostly failing and continuing to pursue your goal until you’ve achieved it—be willing to not only accept failure but embrace it. I work the hardest on the ideas behind my work. The other component of my photography is the work in the darkroom and printing. I can spend an hour developing and processing one negative. And I can spend an entire day trying to make a print from the negative that I like. While today’s technology allows a person to fire off thousands of images onto a digital card, my work is in the single digits (maybe three on a good day). I have to physically work for those, and some days are complete failures. Whatever the reason(s), nothing works.

The Value of Skill
This is a topic that can be controversial in the sense of how you determine or define skill. For me, skill includes all of the technical knowledge of any given process plus the wisdom of how to apply the process to achieve a certain aesthetic—not an easy thing to do. Knowledge, gained through the study of new information, consists of a rich storage of information. Wisdom, on the other hand, has to do more with insight, understanding, and accepting the fundamental “nature” of things. Let me back up a little and say that the wisdom of applying an aesthetic to an image comes from the knowledge of what you’re trying to say with the image. In other words, there needs to be a story or narrative in place in order to even do this. Without this, you can’t really do anything.

The Value of Material
One of the most important ideas to me is materials. One of the many reasons I enjoy working with historic processes is the variety of materials available for use in any given process. Everything from the papers to the silver can be used as a metaphor in the work. I used to talk about the glass used in collodion when making photographs of synagogues destroyed in Germany on Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass). Or the cyanide I use to remove the unexposed silver from the plate; the same substance was used in Europe's gas chambers during WWII. With my current project, I’m using a variety of materials that address, directly or indirectly, the thesis of the work. The tangible quality of the materials lies beyond the metaphors. It's an experience to hold a handmade photograph physically in your hands. I believe we've lost touch with the material (physical) aspect of photography. That has changed the medium a lot in my mind. This is where books can be vital. In this digital age, we rely on internet connections, computers (phones), and power to be able to see or read anything. If any one of those isn’t available, the work is no longer available to you. With a book, you only need light.

Photogenic Drawing of Rocky Mountain Barley.

THE HANDMADE PRINT
In the context of a handmade print, value can be defined in several ways, including:

1. Unique craftsmanship: One of the primary sources of value in a handmade print is the uniqueness and individuality of each print produced. Handmade processes often involve a high level of skill, attention to detail, and creativity, which can result in prints that are distinct from one another-each one an original. Viewers may place a premium on handmade items because of their uniqueness and the sense of artistry and personality that they convey.

2. High-quality materials: Handmade processes often involve the use of high-quality materials that are carefully selected and sourced. This can add to the value of the final product, as the materials used may be of a higher quality than those used in mass-produced items.

3. Personal connection: Handmade processes often involve a personal connection between the creator and the product. The maker may have a strong emotional connection to the item they are creating, and this can be conveyed to the viewer in the finished print. Viewers may value this personal connection and feel more attached to handmade items than they would to mass-produced items.

Overall, the value of something made by hand can come from a number of things, such as its uniqueness, quality, and personal connection.

Meaning in a Meaningless World

Peter Zapffe said, "Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world."

Like others, Zapffe was convinced that our consciousness was an evolutionary misstep. A mistake. To have a "surplus" of consciousness is too much for us to bear. We shrink from living and are afraid to die because of it. We don't necessarily fear death or dying, but rather the prospect of being forgotten—the consequences of dying. We fear impermanence and insignificance. That’s what’s unbearable to us; that’s what drives us to distractions, illusions, and denial.

Moreover, we find ourselves in a world that has no meaning. The only meaning is what we create for ourselves, and in the cosmic picture, it’s all meaningless. This idea is central to my work. This conflict creates anxiety that we need to buffer, and if we can’t buffer it, a lot of times it will manifest as anger or violence, and we will take it out on the person or people who are challenging our buffering mechanism (othering). In other words, if you challenge my worldview (my coping mechanism for death anxiety), I may lash out and want to convert you to my worldview or destroy you.

I’ve come to understand why I gravitate toward making art and having a creative life. Reading the works of the great thinkers and philosophers, it's clear to me what my attraction is to pursuing creativity versus other ways I could buffer my existential anxiety. Nietzsche said, "The truly serious task of art is to save the eye from gazing into the horrors of night and to deliver the subject by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitations of the will." That resonates deeply with me. My life has consisted of trying to unravel the problem of "othering" through art. Over the years, I’ve pulled on the threads of artists, thinkers, and philosophers before me (and those who are contemporary to me) and have used art to explore human behavior as well as buffer my own existential terror. I’m very aware of how I’ve intellectualized my impending death. Socrates claimed that the practice of philosophy in life is really a dress rehearsal for what comes in death: “… those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying, and they fear death least of all men.”

When Nietzsche talks about the "truly serious task of art" being to save the eye from gazing into the horrors of night and deliver the subject from the spasms of the agitations of the will, he is speaking about the power of art to provide a form of psychological relief from existential terror.

Nietzsche believed that human existence was marked by suffering and that our awareness of this suffering could be overwhelming. In his view, the role of art was to provide a kind of escape from existential terror by creating a "healing balm of illusion" that would allow us to momentarily forget about our problems and experience a sense of peace and tranquility. I would add to that; I would argue that it allows the artist to transfer the anxiety to the work—to exercise it out of the mind, if you will. Peter Zapffe called this “sublimation”; he said it was rare but the best way to buffer anxiety. It’s rare because the majority of people choose not to have a creative life.

At the same time, Nietzsche recognized that the experience of art was not just about escaping from reality. He believed that great art had the power to transform our understanding of the world and to challenge our assumptions about what is real and what is possible.

In short, Nietzsche's comment about art's "serious task" shows how art has the power to both temporarily calm our existential terror and give our lives meaning—or at least an illusion of meaning and value.