I think maybe “Meaningmaking” is fiddling around with your goals and high level strategies until you feel like you have a firm grasp on how to interact with them
The ontology reinforces what values seem important to you.
Together, this all creates a feedback loop between your metagoals and subgoals, where the process of using this cluster of value/strategy/ontology makes each link in the chain stronger.
In humans (who have messy, entangled brains), this cashes out into feelings, felt senses. The original goal and the metagoals blur together. I think “this helps me achieve my [generic] goals” might reinforce “these particular subgoals I have are good goals to help with my overall flourishing.”
Where, as implemented in humans, a “meaning” (a particular way of relating to life) seems fairly similar to an aesthetic in that “it’s compressed into a mishmash that includes values, strategies and ontologies that reinforce each other.”
This meta-answer is actually sufficient for my meta-question, so not looking for additional answers at this time (unless you think you have any insight that hasn’t been pointed to yet).
But if useful to expand on it:
4 years ago, you engaged in “fiddling around with your goals and high level strategies until you feel like you have a firm grasp on how to interact with them” / “compressing into a mishmash that includes values, strategies, and ontologies that reinforce each other” / “relating to life”
today, do you still use the same fiddling / mishmash / process for discovering affordances of relating?
if the process is invariant on reflection, do you still have the same meaning(s) / aesthetic(s) as 4-6 years ago or is the process a source of constant renewal for you?
if you changed your process of relating (not having “a firm grasp” after all), what changed?
did you have to throw away any aesthetic that looked good enough 4⁄6 years ago, but turned out insufficient with hindsight today?
if yes, have you added any tricks to your toolbox for finding aesthetics that would improve upon the process?
(since you don’t relate to the metaphor of slipping fingers, that suggests you don’t see any obvious mistakes in your previous approach, that you still endorse it on reflection without major “bug fixes”)
There are some things I worked out a few years ago that feel like I basically got a good handle on them and still relate the same way. There are some things I didn’t actually fully work out, such that I’m still sometimes fiddling with them. There are some things that worked then, but then an exogenous shock to my life made them no longer feel sufficient/complete.
I was sent here from off-site discussions about https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gi7MDF8xceBP8YkFD/meaning-in-life-should-i-have-it-how-did-you-find-yours … any tips how you kept a firm grasp on this over the years? in this analogy, I feel my fingers slipping.
I’m not sure I know how to answer this question in it’s current form, could you try asking a somewhat different one?
Also, I’ve more recently realized this post is pretty related to some stuff in Propagating Facts into Aesthetics:
Where, as implemented in humans, a “meaning” (a particular way of relating to life) seems fairly similar to an aesthetic in that “it’s compressed into a mishmash that includes values, strategies and ontologies that reinforce each other.”
This meta-answer is actually sufficient for my meta-question, so not looking for additional answers at this time (unless you think you have any insight that hasn’t been pointed to yet).
But if useful to expand on it:
4 years ago, you engaged in “fiddling around with your goals and high level strategies until you feel like you have a firm grasp on how to interact with them” / “compressing into a mishmash that includes values, strategies, and ontologies that reinforce each other” / “relating to life”
today, do you still use the same fiddling / mishmash / process for discovering affordances of relating?
if the process is invariant on reflection, do you still have the same meaning(s) / aesthetic(s) as 4-6 years ago or is the process a source of constant renewal for you?
if you changed your process of relating (not having “a firm grasp” after all), what changed?
did you have to throw away any aesthetic that looked good enough 4⁄6 years ago, but turned out insufficient with hindsight today?
if yes, have you added any tricks to your toolbox for finding aesthetics that would improve upon the process?
(since you don’t relate to the metaphor of slipping fingers, that suggests you don’t see any obvious mistakes in your previous approach, that you still endorse it on reflection without major “bug fixes”)
There are some things I worked out a few years ago that feel like I basically got a good handle on them and still relate the same way. There are some things I didn’t actually fully work out, such that I’m still sometimes fiddling with them. There are some things that worked then, but then an exogenous shock to my life made them no longer feel sufficient/complete.