Post 16. A Plausible Description of Meaning.
Seek meaning in your life. I think in some ways this Jefferson County Open School directive could be more like, seek ways to seek meaning in your life. Growing up in a school that was dedicated to discovering new and individually distinctive ways to cultivate personal growth and learning, I do tend to wonder later in life about the structure of those strategies and how I applied the theory.
I was at TEDxMileHigh this weekend. I was a part of the new TED Adventure program and someone asked me on camera, what are values and instincts about? I began by discussing the influences that our values and our instincts have in terms of decision making processes. This is a new idea, that what people consider intuitive or irrational, might be the most efficient and tenable mental process for decision making entirely. I reasoned with some academic background, that as people value accomplishments according to the feelings and intuitions that mitigate those values, those instinctive processes are helping to discriminate potential choices and their available outcomes in distinctive and personally relevant ways. People find meaning in our culture, and it is partly by internalizing the different characteristics related to stereotypes and prototypes that are available in the culture. In many ways, our values are helping to stratify the amount of energy that we each commit to the characteristics that we display and that define us in social space. The definition we're creating is how I intend to describe meaning.
Genuflecting, is the process of a person becoming aware of the interpersonal reflections and feedback given to her or him, and deciding that it is congruent with his or her personal sense of self. This sense of self is optimally distinctive, it maintains salience in social space while being committed to being a part of it. The image that is created by social identity is another interpersonal dynamic. The thoughts about meaning that I decided on, are that whenever one is discovering his or her social identity is growing in a way that is congruent with her or his sense of self, genuflection occurs and helps an individual to honor his or her past accomplishments and value her or his future achievements.
I have solved a few problems so far by understanding the process of creating meaning in my life and applying that process for others. I believe that this concept of allowing people the space to seek meaning and create a social identity that allows genuflection as a part of education and work, can solve far more social problems than I have been exposed to.
At TEDxMileHigh I discovered an entire community of people who were tired of being sick and tired, and who refuse to be told anymore the role that this futuristic world expects of them. These are the innovators and the changers, and the people who through the act of self-transcending genuflection, are creating a more benevolent collective identity for their group presence in the world. I discovered that people who are antisocial are not the only ones who get angry and strive to repair the dissonance between sense of self and social identity, and that by far people who are angry and choose to apply this genuflection as a force of benevolent will, are stronger and more cohesive interdependent beings.
Overall I am encouraged and strengthened by this experience, and whatever hope I lost in the process of examining those who do not believe that their intentions matter, was restored by every one of the people at and who were presenting this event who do know that meaning matters.
Here are three articles related to this post.
Bjornebekk, G. (2008). Positive affect
and negative affect as moderators of cognition and
motivation: The rediscovery of affect in achievement goal theory. Scandinavian Journal of
Educational Research, 52(2), 153-170.
Holleran, L., & Jung, S. (2005).
Acculturative stress, violence, and resilience in the lives of
Mexican-American youth. Stress, Trauma and Crisis, 8(2-3), 107-130.
Weiner,
B. (2010). The development of an attribution-based theory of motivation: A
history of
ideas. Educational
Psychologist, 45(1), 28-36. Doi: 10.1080/00461520903433596
