The 'Verse Has No Intrinsic Meaning

Yesterday evening I rescued from the roadway a bird, a cedar waxwing.  It had been hit by a car and was stunned.  Cars passing it would cause it to flop around and it was only a matter of time before it would be pancake-ified.  I didn't expect it to live, but I removed it from the road, placed it in my spare bird cage, gave it some water and covered it for the night.  This morning I was happy to discover it had recovered.  It was hopping around the cage and clinging to the bars: no broken legs and no broken wings.  I opened the cage and it flew off.

Saving the life of this bird I thought, "Today has meaning."  It came to mind spontaneously but the thought has remained with me all day.  Today has meaning.  This would imply that other days do not have meaning.  It also suggests the follow-on questions: why does today have meaning?  And what do we actually mean when we say that something has meaning?  Now these are interesting questions.

When we talk about something having meaning, this is an expression of value.  In this case value is our measure of comparison on a continuum between attraction and aversion.  This is the value of ethics and aesthetics.  (The other use of "value" which is numeric and objective, such as the color value or integer value, is not implied in this case.)  So when we say something has meaning the implication is that it is good rather than bad, beautiful rather than ugly.

But is value intrinsic to the object or the action?  Is something good in and of itself?  I've know believers in a divine being or beings to proclaim that a universe without God would be meaningless.  I think to some extent they are accurate: if there is no divine being then there is no substance in the 'verse which objectively establishes the value scale, which imbues objects and actions with intrinsic value.  This place without the divine simply exists and things just happen.

But this 'verse which simply is and happens doesn't necessarily imply meaninglessness, a pointless and valueless existence.  Meaning is what we must impart upon our existence.  We cannot be passive experiencers of meaning; we must be active imparters of meaning.  Meaning is our interpretive lens and our imperative to moral action.

So, you might ask, how can you define moral action without an absolute standard, without God imparting the meaning into the universe?  THAT... requires another blog entry, which must wait for another day.

Today I managed to make my corner the 'verse meaningful.  I hope I can do as well tomorrow.