The Eternal Quest

Since the dawn of consciousness, humanity has grappled with fundamental questions that define our existence: Why are we here? What gives life purpose? How do we find fulfilment in our brief time on Earth? This search for meaning has created gods, driven civilisations, inspired great works of art, sparked revolutions, and continues to shape our digital age in ways both profound and troubling.  This article tries to give a perspective on our perpetual search for meaning and, against my nature, tries to offer some grounds for optimism. The Moral Universe as a refuge of hope.

The Ancient Foundations

Our earliest ancestors looked to the heavens or the natural world and found gods as their primary source of meaning. From the animistic beliefs of hunter-gatherer societies to the complex pantheons of ancient civilisations, divinity provided both explanation and purpose. Religious traditions offered comprehensive frameworks for meaning: Judaism's covenant with the divine, Christianity's promise of salvation (or threat of eternal damnation!), Islam's submission to Allah's will, Buddhism's path to enlightenment, and Hinduism's cycle of dharma and karma. These systems didn't merely try to explain existence; they provided roadmaps for how to live meaningfully within a cosmic order. And an opium, salve or higher power for people who might otherwise sink into despair given the state of their day to day existence.  Humans felt a need for explanation, especially for random tragedies or successes, and a higher force to appeal to for help, understanding and eternal salvation.  Often multiple gods or saints were created to cover the main aspects of life and to give a close link to the various issues faced by humanity. Humanity could worship the soil, pray for the harvest, sacrifice to the sun.

Alongside this spiritual search there has also always been the pursuit of material security and status. Ancient Mesopotamian merchants accumulated wealth not just for survival, but as markers of social standing and divine favour. The Roman pursuit of Gloria, lasting fame through great deeds, demonstrated early humanity's desire to transcend mortality through action, reputation and legacy. It was the new Testament which upended this with the camel and eye of the needle perspective and a focus on the meek and the poor.

Love and Family: The Intimate Search

Humanity has also sought meaning through other people and a certain solidarity and perhaps no source of meaning has remained as constant as love and family and community bonds. The medieval tradition of courtly love elevated romantic passion to near-spiritual significance, while across cultures, the raising of children provided both biological imperative and profound purpose. The family unit became humanity's most enduring institution for creating meaning through connection, continuity, and care.  Further, many societies could reply on the support of their tribe or village.

Parenthood, in particular, offered a unique form of meaning, the opportunity to nurture new life, pass on wisdom, and achieve a form of immortality through one's offspring. Children became both the recipients of meaning and its creators, carrying forward family legacies and genes while forging their own paths to significance.   And we should not forget the bonds of friendship, having a fellow human with whom to share the highs and lows, the trials and tribulations of life.

The Arts: Beauty as Meaning

Alongside gods and other people, humans have equally sought meaning through creative expression. The cave paintings of Lascaux represent our earliest attempts to reflect and make sense of existence through art. Ancient Greek tragedies explored the human condition, while medieval cathedrals reached toward heaven through stone and glass, inspiring awe in the worshippers.

Music became a universal language of meaning, from Gregorian chants that connected worshippers to the divine, to folk songs that preserved cultural identity, to the symphonies of Beethoven that expressed the inexpressible depths of human emotion. Stories passed on wisdom and knowledge and with the printing press, literature gave us frameworks for understanding ourselves, from Homer's epics that defined heroic meaning to Shakespeare's explorations of love, ambition, and mortality.

The Renaissance elevated the artist to near-divine status, with figures like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci finding meaning through the creation of beauty and the pursuit of knowledge. Art became not just decoration or entertainment, but a pathway to transcendence and understanding. 

Standing in a cathedral today, amidst soaring arches and pillars, gazing at the stained-glass windows, listening to ethereal music one can experience a sense of meaning beyond the grasp of logic, just as a work of art or a film can engage and move us beyond the present into a different state of being.

Exploration and Discovery

But if these previously cited sources of meaning are psychological or metaphysical, humanity has also sought meaning in experience. The human drive to explore, whether new lands, ideas, or experiences, has long provided meaning through the expansion of possibility. Marco Polo's journeys, Columbus's voyages, and the Age of Exploration offered meaning through discovery and the pushing of boundaries. Travel became a form of self-discovery, a way to find meaning through encounter with the Other.

The Grand Tour of the 18th century institutionalized travel as a source of education and meaning for the wealthy, while the Romantic movement found profound significance in communion with nature and exotic locales. The very act of movement, of seeing beyond one's immediate circumstances, became a pathway to meaning.

Perhaps the race to space, now reinvigorated by Musk and Bezos, is our modern version of this search.

The Modern Transformation

The Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment fundamentally altered humanity's search for meaning. Traditional religious certainties crumbled under scientific scrutiny, while urbanisation disrupted ancient community bonds and our links to nature. Nietzsche's declaration that "God is dead" wasn't a celebration but a diagnosis, a recognition that traditional sources of meaning were failing and humanity was looking at the world post God’s funeral wake.

Into this void stepped new ideologies: nationalism, which found meaning in the glory of the state and is enjoying a resurgence today; socialism, which sought meaning through collective struggle; and capitalism, which promised fulfilment through material success and individual achievement. The Protestant work ethic transformed labour itself into a source of meaning and divine approval.

The 20th century brought both unprecedented prosperity and existential crisis. Two world wars shattered faith in progress and human goodness, leading to movements like existentialism that insisted individuals must create their own meaning in an absurd universe. Sartre proclaimed that hell was other people instead of our collective salvation through solidarity. Simultaneously, consumer culture promised happiness through acquisition and convenience, while Hollywood created new forms of meaning through shared narratives and celebrity worship.  And now we have seen even this superseded by approval and “likes” for our social media posts where the curated life appears as an end in itself, so long as enough strangers notice and approve.

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Power, Prestige, and the Celebrity Machine

The pursuit of power has always attracted those seeking meaning through control and influence. But the modern era has democratised fame in unprecedented ways. The printing press made possible mass recognition, while photography and film created visual celebrity. Radio and television brought personalities into homes worldwide.

Andy Warhol's prediction of "15 minutes of fame" for everyone proved prophetic, as the barriers between performer and audience began to dissolve.   Now people are famous or infamous if a post goes viral, whether they like it or not.  Look at the recent Coldplay “kiss cam” incident if you need any proof.

Politics too has become increasingly theatrical, with politicians selling not just policies but personalities. The meaning once found in civic virtue has become entangled with personal branding and media manipulation: “I do a lot of work for ‘charidee’ but don’t like to talk about it”.  The unseen act does unfortunately not win you more votes.

The Digital Revolution: Meaning in the Age of Algorithms

The internet and social media have fundamentally transformed humanity's search for meaning, creating both unprecedented opportunities and new forms of alienation. Platforms like Instagram, and TikTok have gamified meaning-making through likes, shares, and follower counts. The ancient human desire for recognition and validation now plays out through digital metrics that can be quantified, compared, and optimized.

The "like" button has become a modern form of social validation and endorphins, providing instant feedback, positive or negative, on one's thoughts, appearance, and life choices. This has created new pathways to meaning and despair, influencer culture, viral fame, and online communities, while potentially undermining deeper sources of fulfilment or human connection. Young people increasingly report finding meaning through online personas that may bear little resemblance to their offline lives. Social media can be a source of validation here, but also an outlet for cyberbullying and a creator of feelings of inadequacy for the FOMO generation.  

As my fellow writer Vilma explored, dating apps have transformed romantic love into a supermarket of swipes and profiles, while social media creates curated versions of lives that often hide struggle and authentic emotion. The search for love becomes entangled with personal branding, as individuals package themselves for algorithmic consumption or catfish with a fake online profile.

In the age of the keyboard warrior and ghosting, the search for meaning and connection has become increasingly anonymous, remote and alienating.

So Which Meaning Will You Choose?

Today's search for meaning unfolds across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Traditional sources persist: religious communities continue to provide meaning for billions, while family bonds remain central to most people's sense of purpose. Love still motivates poetry and sacrifice, while the arts continue to offer transcendence and understanding.

But these timeless sources now compete with digital alternatives that promise faster, more measurable forms of validation. The influencer who gains millions of followers may experience a modern form of meaning through mass recognition, yet studies suggest that fame often correlates with higher rates of depression and anxiety.

Money remains a powerful source of meaning, not just for survival but as a scorecard for success and a path to freedom. He who dies with the most toys wins?  The rise of cryptocurrency and get-rich-quick schemes on social media reflects both timeless greed and new forms of meaning-making through financial speculation and community belonging.

Travel has been democratised through budget airlines and Airbnb, but also commoditised through Instagram tourism, where experiences are often valued more for their share-ability than their intrinsic worth. The search for authentic experience competes with the desire to document and broadcast that authenticity: the raised phone recording the concert and blocking my view of the band.  If the tree falls in the forest but nobody gets a selfie, did it actually happen, never mind make a noise.

The Challenge of Authentic Meaning

As we navigate this complex landscape, the challenge becomes distinguishing between authentic sources of meaning and their shallow digital simulacra. The approval of strangers online may provide temporary validation, but research suggests it rarely delivers the deep fulfilment found in close relationships and personally meaningful work.

The ancient questions remain unchanged: How do we live well? What makes life worth living? How do we find purpose in the face of mortality? But the context for answering these questions has been radically transformed by technology that connects us globally while sometimes isolating us individually.

Perhaps the path forward lies not in choosing between traditional and modern sources of meaning, but in thoughtful integration. Using technology to deepen rather than replace human connection, for example engaging with the Moral Universe! Finding in global connectivity new opportunities for love, connection, service, and creative expression. Recognising that while the tools for meaning-making have evolved, the fundamental human needs they serve remain constant.

Conclusion: The Eternal Return or the Eternal Present?

Humanity's search for meaning may be eternal, but perhaps it need not be futile. Each generation faces unique challenges and opportunities in their quest for purpose, yet the very nature of questing may be what keeps fulfilment at bay. Our digital age offers both unprecedented possibilities for connection and creation, and new forms of alienation and superficiality, but it also provides new opportunities to recognize the futility of seeking and the possibility of simply being.

The sources of meaning that have sustained humans for millennia, love, family, community, creative expression, spiritual connection, service to others, remain as vital today as ever.  But they now exist alongside both new possibilities and new illusions: global communities that may substitute for local presence, creative platforms that may prioritise metrics over authentic expression, and technologies that can amplify human potential while diminishing human attention.

Yet perhaps Camus and the Buddha point toward the same truth: the meaning we seek has been here all along, not hidden in achievement or recognition or even love itself, but present in the very capacity to seek, to experience, to be aware. Sisyphus achieves his transcendence not when he finally gets the boulder to stay at the top of the mountain, but when he stops needing it to and takes a moment to gaze across the landscape beneath him.  And the doomed friendship of Rieux and Tarrou in The Plague points to a kind of salvation open to us all, and across the divide of belief and politics.

The challenge for our time is learning to navigate this abundance mindfully, choosing depth over metrics, authenticity over performance, connection over consumption and presence over the endless pursuit of meaning. In doing so, we might discover that we've been asking the wrong question all along.

The search for meaning is perhaps not a problem to be solved but a journey to be lived, or even more radically, a search to be abandoned in favour of living itself. In embracing both the profound questions and their ultimate unanswerable nature, we join the long procession of humans who have looked up at the stars, into the eyes of those they love and into their own hearts, not necessarily finding answers, but finding something perhaps more precious: the willingness to keep looking, keep experiencing, keep being present to this strange and wonderful fact of existence.  

In the Moral Universe we must surely keep asking the questions that make us most fully human: Who are we? Why are we here? And how shall we live? 

But above all, we must imagine ourselves happy.