How to reclaim meaning in a changing world

Chapter 4, Section 2: The Life Well-Lived

“In America we have created a new race,” wrote Lewis Mumford in 1940, “with healthy physiques, sometimes beautiful bodies, but empty minds—people who have accepted life as an alternation of meaningless routine with insignificant sensation. They deny because of their lack of experience that life has any other meanings or values or possibilities. …

Shopgirls and clerks, millionaires and mechanics … have a common contempt for life on any other level than that of animal satisfaction, animal vitality. Deprive them of this, and it is not worth living. Half dead in their work—half alive outside their work. This is their destiny.¹”

The products of industry Mumford disparaged as an “opulence of carefully packaged emptiness”: chewing gum, coffee containers, vitamins, all trivial. Novels and newspapers, he added, “build up a mental world that is free from any values except those of physical sensation and material wealth.”

In another essay that year, Mumford blamed “the inventors and industrialists … who, concentrating upon the improvement of the means of life, thought sincerely that the ends of living would more or less take care of themselves.” They “took for granted that the emotional and spiritual life of man needs no other foundation than the rational, utilitarian activities associated with the getting of a living.”²

This is a damning charge. If industrial civilization can achieve material comfort and convenience only at the cost of our psychological, emotional, moral, and spiritual values, then it is a fool’s bargain. There is no purpose in prolonging life, or giving people back more hours in the day, if those hours and that life are devoid of meaning.

Techno-humanism embraces the need for meaning, but rejects the accusation that meaning is eroded by material progress. In fact, I submit that material progress makes meaningful values more accessible to more people. Over the long sweep of history, it has greatly increased the amount of meaning in individual lives, and it can continue to do so—if we let it, and if we choose it.

Let’s consider four major sources of meaning in life: work, love, knowledge, and beauty.

Work is how we spend a third or more of our waking hours. It is how we experience our own efficacy and usefulness. It is how we create independence. Overall, it is a major contributor to self-esteem. A Pew survey showed that work, second only to family, is one of the top things people say contributes to meaning in their lives.³

Fulfilling work is, in part, work we enjoy day-to-day, and work we feel uniquely suited to, which uses our special talents and skills. But in the pre-industrial era, there were few job options to choose from, and limited mobility among them. At least half the workforce had to be engaged in agriculture, because a farm family could only produce enough to feed themselves and at most about one other family. Many of the other half produced basic necessities such as cloth; a minority were lucky enough to do the jobs we romanticize, such as becoming a master carpenter or goldsmith, and even fewer were privileged enough to have a job that made use of a formal education, such as law, medicine, or the clergy. In the US, as late as 1870, 63% of workers were in manual jobs such as farming, blue-collar labor, or domestic service, and only 8% were in more cognitively demanding managerial or professional roles.⁴ A major effect of industrialization was the proliferation of a wide variety of types of work, suited to a wide range of personalities and proclivities, with an overall shift away from hard manual labor towards more stimulating and engaging work. By 2009, only 3% of US workers were in the manual jobs mentioned above, and over 37% in managerial/professional roles.

But are these jobs engaging? A long line of criticism holds that industrial civilization alienates workers from their work and its product. Marx criticized capitalism for creating “estranged labor”: “The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things.” The worker, in his work, “does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind.”⁵ Marx wrote this in 1844, when the Industrial Revolution was just reaching fruition; he was reacting in part to the devaluing of skills and the loss of autonomy felt by craft workers displaced by the factory system. Today, a similar criticism is applied to “soul-sucking” office jobs, which are increasingly “virtualized,” with workers performing abstract information-processing functions on screens, perhaps not even gathering in-person at the office. (Ironically, we now glamorize factory work as something real and meaningful, with a concrete work product: a recent television commercial portrays a modern “gig worker” as harried and unfulfilled, until she discovers a gleaming factory with smiling workers welding machine parts and operating industrial robots.⁶)

Headlines occasionally seem to confirm fears that modern work is unfulfilling: “Job unhappiness is at a staggering all-time high,” claims a 2022 CNBC article, mentioning that “[o]nly 33% reported feeling engaged—and that is even lower than 2020.”⁷ But the Gallup report the article is based on shows that the percent who are “thriving” at work is also at an all-time high, again 33%, and that worker engagement is historically high, compared to 10–15 years ago.⁸ The headline touts “unhappiness” because negative emotions such as stress and sadness are also more common (perhaps a hazard of greater engagement!) Similarly, a press release from MetLife says “Job Satisfaction Hits 20-Year Low Across U.S. Workforce.” But that low is 66%, and in 2019 it was 74%.⁹ Similarly, in a Pew report from 2023, 88% were at least “somewhat” satisfied with their jobs, and over half were “very” or “extremely” satisfied.¹⁰ If two-thirds to nine-tenths of workers are satisfied, then there is room for improvement, but not, as some have claimed, a crisis of meaning at work.

Incidentally, MetLife’s poll showed that IT/technology workers had the highest rates of employee satisfaction and loyalty, which should allay fears about “virtualization.” Similarly, an earlier Pew study found: “People who work in management are particularly likely to say they are very satisfied (62%), compared with, for example, those who work in manual or physical labor (48%).”¹¹ And despite concerns about Zoom fatigue, another Pew survey found that three-quarters of workers were fine with the amount of time spent on video calls.¹² Overall, doing more abstract or remote work does not seem to reduce satisfaction.

However, if you personally feel that your soul would be nourished by a job that takes you out into nature—you can still do those jobs! They have not gone away; indeed they have proliferated: you can be a park ranger, or a ski instructor, or even a farm worker, as over 1% of the workforce still chooses to be.¹³ And you can enjoy the outdoors with much less physical burden, such as by riding a tractor instead of hoeing or reaping by hand.

If your true calling is as a master craftsman, making things with your hands—those jobs still exist as well! Artisans are at work today at Emerson Creek Pottery in Bedford, Virginia; Town Cutler Knives in Reno, Nevada; Odin Leather Goods in Lewisville, Texas; and Copeland Furniture in Bradford, Vermont. Copeland has a job application form on their website, and I won’t blame you if you stop reading now in order to apply.¹⁴ Or if quilting is more your thing, look up Bluebird Gardens Quilts in Roola, Missouri and read their guide to starting your own quilt business.¹⁵

And if, after thinking it over, you decide that you would prefer to sit in a cushioned chair in an air-conditioned room behind plate glass windows and earn a living by talking and typing—whether as an insurance actuary or a video game animator—then reflect on what your revealed preferences are telling you, and on the benefits of having choices.

Another moral and psychological benefit of work is the sense of independence it grants to those who can earn their own living. In the early 1800s, one of the first large textile mills in the US was established in Lowell, MA. It employed large numbers of women, who took the opportunity to live independently and earn their own wages. Many of them did so to escape terrible family situations; reasons that women gave for working at the mills included: “she has been ill-treated in so many families she has a horror of domestic service,” “her parents are wicked infidels,” and “she hates her mother-in-law.”¹⁶ One of the Lowell workers, in a memoir of her time in the factory, wrote of the unmarried women who worked there:

From a condition approaching pauperism they were at once placed above want; they could earn money, and spend it as they pleased… At last they had found a place in the universe; they were no longer obliged to finish out their faded lives mere burdens to male relatives… For the first time in this country woman’s labor had a money value. … And thus a long upward step in our material civilization was taken; woman had begun to earn and hold her own money, and through its aid had learned to think and to act for herself.¹⁷ [emphasis added]

And one newsletter published by the Lowell factory women in April 1841 included this verse, in a poem titled “Song of the Spinners”:

Despite of toil we all agree,
Out of the Mills or in,
Dependent on others we never will be,
So long as we are able to spin.¹⁸

The escape from dependence on others, the chance to think and act for oneself, “a place in the universe”—that is a spiritual benefit if ever there was one.

So the picture with work is dominantly positive: more people are finding meaning in work now than in the past. But the story with values such as love, knowledge, and beauty is more complicated. In many ways, these values are more accessible now than ever before, with greatly expanded options. But there are also disturbing signs that in recent decades, the actual presence of these values in people’s lives has declined. Let’s take these two points in turn.

We have greatly expanded choice in who we marry, and when, and for what reasons. “The majority of people in most societies,” writes anthropologist Alan Macfarlane, “believe that marriage is too important a matter to be left to the individuals concerned.”¹⁹ Historically, marriage was not based on love. Marriages were often arranged by elders, and even when not, social pressure and economic reality drove people to choose a partner based on practical and financial considerations. The elite were as locked into this system as anyone: the aristocracy was doomed to political marriages.²⁰ If you wanted to marry someone of a different class, or a different race, or a different faith, your love was too often denied.

With rising affluence, people around the world begin to seek “love matches” instead. In India, for instance, “prosperity and technology are eroding tradition,” reports The Economist: “More and more young Indians are choosing their own spouses.”²¹ This can be a long process of change: as late as 1939, when Americans were asked to rank what was important in a prospective spouse, “mutual attraction – love” ranked only 4th for women and 5th for men.²² By 2008, it was number one for both: love, finally, conquers all.

And today, people have more chance than ever before to find that soulmate. Online dating has quickly risen to become the number one way of finding a partner.²³ This strikes some as dystopian—“virtualization” again!—but to my mind, technology is the most effective way to find true love. Traditional ways of finding a partner—through friends or co-workers, at school or church, in bars and restaurants—are haphazard, forcing you to choose from a limited, random set of options. A database query may seem less romantic, but it’s much more likely to turn up your one-in-a-million match, especially when it can be ranked by intelligent algorithms: I met my wife in 2010, even though we lived two thousand miles apart, because OkCupid rated us a “99% match.”²⁴ Technology and infrastructure also make it possible to maintain and grow a long-distance relationship (as we did for a few years), again broadening your options.

All this is even more true for those whose romantic preferences are not accepted by their family or peers. Thus, among same-sex couples, the rise of online dating was even more spectacular: capitalism and technology blasting through centuries of tradition and prejudice.

Graph comparing how heterosexual and same-sex couples meet from 1948 to 2018, showing a sharp increase in online meetings for both, especially after 1998. — Charts from Rosenfeld and Thomas (2012). Data for heterosexual couples has been updated through 2022 and was taken from Rosenfeld’s academic homepage at Stanford.

Similarly, we have more choice than ever in whether to have children, how many to have, and when in our lives to have them. For most of history, children followed more or less automatically from marriage, one every couple of years, as long as a woman remained fertile—although many of these children would die before reaching adulthood. On the other hand, couples who were infertile and wanted children had little to no recourse: no IVF, no sperm or egg donors, not even formal adoption programs.²⁵

And parents’ relationships with their children today, especially at a young age, are much more personal, more full of joy and meaning, than in the past. Until relatively recently, children were seen primarily as economic assets. “In sharp contrast to contemporary views,” writes sociologist Viviana Zeilzer, “the birth of a child in eighteenth-century rural America was welcomed as the arrival of a future laborer and as security for parents later in life.”²⁶ Zelizer argues that between 1870 and 1930 in the US, children came to be viewed not as a source of labor but as a source of joy—economically “worthless” but emotionally “priceless.”

Accordingly, we invest much more in children now, both financially and emotionally. Anthropologist David Lancy says that much of what today are considered routine parental responsibilities, such as bedtime stories or orthodontics expenses, “are completely unknown outside modern, mainstream societies.”²⁷ In particular, we invest more time in actively parenting. In primitive societies, mothers are busy working (in the home and in the fields) and attempt to minimize time spent on young children, sending them instead to play with siblings or other kids in town: “The last thing a pregnant mother wants is for her child to see her as an attractive play partner. Even verbal play is avoided.”²⁸ Fathers were often as uninvolved as possible with young children, especially girls.²⁹

Today, parenting standards have flipped, emphasizing high engagement. And that engagement continues to increase, even in recent decades. Time-use data from 1965 to the present shows a significant rise in active parenting time, from both mothers and fathers.³⁰ And some evidence indicates that the increase is “quality time”: routine care (feeding, clothing, bathtime, doctor visits) remained steady for mothers in the US from 1965 to 2000, but “interactive childcare activities, such as playing with children, reading to them, or helping with homework, almost tripled” from 1.5 hours per week to 4 hours per week.³¹

Higher engagement is not an unalloyed good: parents report feeling rushed and not having enough time for themselves, and “helicopter parents” should give their children more independence. But the broad trend over the long term seems to be toward stronger and more meaningful relationships between parents and children.

Self-enrichment through education and travel is also far more accessible today. Steven Pinker, in Enlightenment Now, eloquently describes the spiritual value of learning:

The supernova of knowledge continuously redefines what it means to be human. Our understanding of who we are, where we came from, how the world works, and what matters in life depends on partaking of the vast and ever-expanding store of knowledge. Though unlettered hunters, herders, and peasants are fully human, anthropologists often comment on their orientation to the present, the local, the physical. To be aware of one’s country and its history, of the diversity of customs and beliefs across the globe and through the ages, of the blunders and triumphs of past civilizations, of the microcosms of cells and atoms and the macrocosms of planets and galaxies, of the ethereal reality of number and logic and pattern—such awareness truly lifts us to a higher plane of consciousness.³²

Technology has been increasing the accessibility of information steadily for centuries: the printing press in the 1400s dramatically reduced the cost and increased the availability of books; the spread of public libraries in the 1800s made those books accessible to many more people; the improvement of indexing and retrieval systems made the information in those books easier to find; and now most of human knowledge is online, accessible to billions of people, and much of it for free. Almost anything you want to learn, you can learn online, whether it’s a Wikipedia article on the history of the Crimean War, or a YouTube video on how to replace a deadbolt. This transformation is difficult for us in the 21st century to comprehend, and too often taken for granted.

Not all learning is book learning, however, and there is an inestimable value to going out and seeing the world for yourself. Once, travel abroad was a luxury for the elite. The wealthy of Europe would go on a “grand tour” of the continent to experience its monuments, landscapes, and art.³³ Andrew Carnegie, one of the few who could afford a world tour, wrote that seeing other peoples and experiencing their cultures gave him a broad perspective on mankind:

I found that no nation had all the truth in the revelation it regards as divine, and no tribe is so low as to be left without some truth; that every people has had its great teacher; Buddha for one; Confucius for another; Zoroaster for a third; Christ for a fourth…. The world traveler who gives careful study to the bibles of the various religions of the East will be well repaid. The conclusion reached will be that the inhabitants of each country consider their own religion the best of all.³⁴

The combination of jet travel, rising incomes, and more vacation days now allow the average person in a wealthy country to enjoy a similar trip. This and the greater availability of books, photos and video that introduce us to other cultures, such as National Geographic magazine, have contributed to the reduction of tribalism and xenophobia and the rise of a more universalist humanism in the modern world.

Another great source of meaning in life is art, from the fine arts to music to stage performances, whether highbrow or low. Here too, accessibility has greatly increased. Fine art collections of the past were rarely open to the public, and in any case, the vast rural population could not easily travel to museums.³⁵ Live performances by the best artists were expensive and again concentrated in cities, and not accessible to the average person. Quoting again from Carnegie, who wrote that his visit to Europe elevated his taste:

One may not at the time justly appreciate the advantage he is receiving from examining the great masterpieces, but upon his return to America he will find himself unconsciously rejecting what before seemed truly beautiful, and judging productions which come before him by a new standard. That which is truly great has so impressed itself upon him that what is false or pretentious proves no longer attractive.³⁶

Further, music and acting could not be recorded until the late 1800s: when a great performer died, their art died with them. Today all forms of art are not only recorded, but can be instantly streamed online—the cultural heritage of the world at your fingertips, day or night.

So the broadest trends, over the long term, have been towards more of life’s most meaningful values. If we contrast the life of a medieval peasant with that of a typical person from a wealthy country in, say, the mid-20th century, the latter seems to enjoy a far more meaning-filled life: more meaningful work, a full education, a love marriage, greater involvement with children, the opportunity to hear great music, see great art, and travel the world.

But since the mid-20th century, several trends suggest that, even though they are theoretically more accessible, in some ways many people are enjoying less of the values that could fill their lives with meaning.

For one, people are enjoying fewer years of marriage. Marriage rates per capita are declining in many countries, and those who do marry are doing so later in life.³⁷ Divorce rates worldwide are rising, and in many countries where they have peaked and are on the decline (including the US), or where they have plateaued, they are still higher than they were in the 1960s. These trends are hard to interpret: getting married later could be a frivolous indulgence in youthful hedonism and avoidance of commitment, or it could reflect the shifting standards towards finding a true soulmate, rather than simply a workable domestic partner. Similarly, higher divorce rates could represent a liberation from social standards that kept people trapped in unhappy marriages. But the trends are concerning.

Related, people are having fewer children: fertility rates in most of the world are in a long-term decline. More people are choosing to have no children at all, those who do have them are ending up with fewer total, and also are having them later in life, which means fewer years of life spent with kids.³⁸ Parenthood is not for everyone, but to the extent that children bring joy and add meaning to life, more people are opting out of that or minimizing it.

Again, this is somewhat hard to interpret. In 1860s Germany, for example, an average woman would have about 5 children, but with a child mortality rate of almost 50%, only 2–3 would survive to the age of 5. By the 1960s, a German woman would only have 2–3 children, but the mortality rate had fallen by about a factor of ten, so in most cases they all survived.³⁹ That transition seems strictly good: fewer births, but the same number of surviving children. After the 1960s, though, fertility continued to fall, and is now around 1.5 children per woman. Similar patterns have played out in all developed countries. Infertility is not the cause: among US adults who don’t expect to ever have children, only 13% cite medical reasons; most say they simply don’t want children, and almost half explain that they want to “focus on other things.”⁴⁰

As for education, despite it being easier than ever to read a good book, there are many reports of reading in decline. Surveys show this most prominently in children: one study found that at every age level, the percentage of US students who read for fun “almost every day” had declined by over ten points since 1984, and the percentage who do so “never or hardly ever” had greatly increased.⁴¹ At top universities in recent years, students are arriving having never read a single book cover to cover, saying that they were never assigned an entire book in school; some professors feel that “students see reading books as akin to listening to vinyl records… a relic of an earlier time.”⁴² Among US adults, Gallup polls show steady interest in reading over many decades,⁴³ but time-use surveys, which are more reliable, show a decline in the percentage of adults reading on any given day, from over 26% in 2003 to under 20% in 2016.⁴⁴ In contrast, some 80% of adults watch TV on any given day, and long-term data from the Netherlands suggests that the rise of TV significantly displaced reading.

Beauty is harder to measure. But it has been widely remarked that in architecture, for example, we have replaced richly ornamented buildings with flat concrete boxes.⁴⁵ In fashion, the ornate robes of royalty have been replaced with the plain business suit, and the common man’s suit has been replaced with t-shirt and jeans. Automobiles of the 1950s had tailfins, hood ornaments, and bright colors; now all cars have the same plain streamlined form, and even the colors are increasingly shades of gray.⁴⁶ The design of everyday objects from street lamps to furniture shows the same pattern.⁴⁷ Arguably fine art and music have also become simpler and less beautiful. Although it is difficult to account for taste, and fashion can never stand still, it feels as if some profound value has been lost.

A classic red convertible car parked on a road, surrounded by green grass and trees, with a visible license plate from Minnesota.

White SUV parked on a road, featuring a modern design with black accents and alloy wheels. Trees and grass are visible in the background. — Top: 1957 Ford Thunderbird (photo: Greg Gjerdingen). Bottom: 2021 Toyota RAV4. Source: Wikimedia

Taking these trends altogether, it is hard to escape the conclusion that, outside of work, many people are missing out on some of the big values that give meaning to life: love, knowledge, beauty.

Technology deserves a minor part of the blame: smartphones and social media, for instance, steal attention that might otherwise go to reading. But the main effect of material progress is to make all of these values more accessible and to multiply our options. Instead, I see the problems as primarily rooted in culture, institutions, and at the end of the day, personal choices.

We need to reform our schools, to teach a love of reading. We need reforms to housing and other economic policies, to make family life more affordable. And crucially, we need better guidance for individuals on how to navigate this new world of expanded choices and reduced social expectations. Lewis Mumford, in one of the essays quoted above, criticized those who took “the world of personality, the world of values, feelings, emotions, wishes, purposes, for granted,” and who assumed that that world can “be safely left to itself, without cultivation.” He warned that “demoralized personalities are as inevitable as weeds in an uncultivated garden when no deliberate attempt is made to provide a constructive basis for personal development.”But remember, as an individual, much of this is in your control. In the same essay, Mumford wrote that there is “as large a field for imaginative design and rational discipline in the building of a personality as in the building of a skyscraper.” You can apply reason and imagination to building your own personality and creating meaning in your life, even if others do not. Nothing is stopping you from marrying, having children, reading books, traveling the world, or surrounding yourself with beauty. Indeed, you have more opportunity to make the most of these things than anyone in history. Seize it!

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