The Power of Meaning

by Emily Esfahani Smith

  risen dramatically: Martin E. P. Seligman, The Optimistic Child: A Proven Program to Safeguard Children Against Depression and Build Lifelong Resilience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

  antidepressants rose 400 percent: Laura A. Pratt, Debra J. Brody, and Qiuping Gu, “Antidepressant Use in Persons Aged 12 and Over: United States, 2005–2008,” National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief No. 76, October 2011.

  According to the World Health Organization: Cited in T. M. Luhrmann, “Is the World More Depressed?” New York Times, March 24, 2014.

  the incidence of suicide among: David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, and Karen E. Norberg, “Explaining the Rise in Youth Suicide,” in Jonathan Gruber (editor), Risky Behavior Among Youths: An Economic Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 219–70.

  nearly thirty years…40 percent: Sabrina Tavernise, “U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High,” New York Times, April 22, 2016. Today, the suicide rate is 13 per 100,000. As context, the suicide rate reached its highest point in the United States in 1932 during the Great Depression (22.1 per 100,000) and its lowest point in 2000 (10.4 per 100,000). See also “CDC: US Suicide Rate Hits 25-Year High,” Associated Press, October 8, 2014; Feijun Luo, Curtis S. Florence, Myriam Quispe-Agnoli, Lijing Ouyang, and Alexander E. Crosby, “Impact of Business Cycles on US Suicide Rates, 1928–2007,” American Journal of Public Health 101, no. 6 (2011): 1139–46; and Tony Dokoupil, “Why Suicide Has Become an Epidemic—And What We Can Do to Help,” Newsweek, May 23, 2013.

  forty thousand Americans: “Suicide: Facts at a Glance,” Centers for Disease Control, cdc.gov/​violenceprevention/​pdf/​suicide_factsheet-a.pdf.

  closer to a million: The World Health Organization estimates that over 800,000 take their lives each year. See “Suicide Data,” who.int/​mental_health/​prevention/​suicide/​suicideprevent/​en/.

  Shigehiro Oishi…and Ed Diener: Shigehiro Oishi and Ed Diener, “Residents of Poor Nations Have a Greater Sense of Meaning in Life than Residents of Wealthy Nations,” Psychological Science 25, no. 2 (2014): 422–30.

  suicide rate of Japan: The suicide rates are from WHO, “Suicide Rates Data by Country,” http://apps.who.int/​gho/​data/​node.main.MHSUICIDE?lang=en.

  strange relationship between: Maia Szalavitz, “Why the Happiest States Have the Highest Suicide Rates,” Time, April 25, 2011.

  a satisfying life purpose: These findings are from a study the CDC supported of a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. The researchers found that a quarter of Americans strongly disagreed, moderately disagreed, or were neutral about the statement “I have a good sense of what makes my life meaningful.” And 40 percent strongly disagreed, moderately disagreed, or were neutral about the statement “I have discovered a satisfying life purpose.” See Rosemarie Kobau, Joseph Sniezek, Matthew M. Zack, Richard E. Lucas, and Adam Burns, “Well-Being Assessment: An Evaluation of Well-Being Scales for Public Health and Population Estimates of Well-Being among US Adults,” Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being 2, no. 3 (2010): 272–97.

  “Everyone at times”: Huston Smith, The World’s Religions (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 276.

  Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy: I drew on the following sources for information about Tolstoy’s life: Leo Tolstoy, Confession, as translated by David Patterson (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983); Rosamund Bartlett, Tolstoy: A Russian Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011); A. N. Wilson, Tolstoy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988); and Gary Saul Morson, “Leo Tolstoy,” Britannica.com.

  perhaps with some exaggeration: In his biography of Tolstoy, Wilson cautions that we should take Tolstoy’s reflective assessment of his life in A Confession with a grain of salt. Clearly, Tolstoy wrestled with questions of meaning and morality prior to his breakdown—yet, equally clearly, he really did have some sort of crisis of meaning around this point in his life.

  intellectual Albert Camus: For Camus’s story and ideas, I relied primarily upon Robert Zaretsky, A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2013); Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000); and Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Vintage International, 1991).

  search for it particularly urgent: As pointed out by Terry Eagleton, cited in Zaretsky, A Life Worth Living.

  As Sartre wrote: John-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions (New York: Citadel, 1987), 49.

  The Little Prince: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, translated by Richard Hough (Boston: Mariner Books, 2000). The quotes are presented out of order. First the prince and fox meet, and the prince tames the fox as the fox teaches the prince why taming something is valuable. Then he tells the prince that if he returns to the roses, he’ll see why the prince’s original rose was special. When the prince comes back, the fox tells him that you are responsible forever for what you have tamed. But the prince had, in effect, already learned that lesson by the time he saw the roses.

  the “IKEA effect”: Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely, “The ‘IKEA Effect’: When Labor Leads to Love,” Journal of Consumer Psychology 22, no. 3 (2012): 453–60.

  skyrocketed during the Great Depression: Gene Smiley, “Great Depression,” from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, econlib.org/​library/​Enc/​GreatDepression.html.

  suicide rates tend to rise: Luo et al., “Impact of Business Cycles on US Suicide Rates, 1928–2007.”

  it’s easy to understand why: The link between unemployment and suicide has been well established. For some examples of research studies on this topic, see Glyn Lewis and Andy Sloggett, “Suicide, Deprivation, and Unemployment: Record Linkage Study,” British Medical Journal 317, no. 7168 (1998): 1283–86; Stephen Platt, “Unemployment and Suicidal Behaviour: A Review of the Literature,” Social Science & Medicine 19, no. 2 (1984): 93–115; and A. Milner, A. Page, and A. D. Lamontagne, “Cause and Effect in Studies on Unemployment, Mental Health and Suicide: A Meta-analytic and Conceptual Review,” Psychological Medicine 44, no. 5 (2014): 909–17.

  Life magazine undertook: David Friend and the Editors of Life, The Meaning of Life: Reflections in Words and Pictures on Why We Are Here (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991).

  2: Belonging

  Tangier Island, Virginia: I visited Tangier twice: May 27, 2013, and November 15–16, 2014. This write-up collapses both of those experiences into a single narrative. I interviewed Edward Pruitt on September 8, 2015. I also drew on these sources for my write-up of Tangier: Kirk Mariner, God’s Island: The History of Tangier (New Church, Virginia: Miona Publications, 1999); Kate Kilpatrick, “Treasured Island,” Aljazeera America, May 11, 2014; “As Bones of Tangier Island’s Past Resurface, Chesapeake Bay Islanders Fret about Their Future,” Associated Press, April 23, 2013; and Harold G. Wheatley, “This Is My Island, Tangier,” National Geographic, November 1973.

  most important driver of meaning: Nathaniel M. Lambert, Tyler F. Stillman, Joshua A. Hicks, Shanmukh Kamble, Roy F. Baumeister, and Frank D. Fincham, “To Belong Is to Matter: Sense of Belonging Enhances Meaning in Life,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 39, no. 11 (2013): 1418–27.

  two conditions have been satisfied: Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R. Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 117, no. 3 (1995): 497–529.

  many influential psychologists and physicians: The material from this section comes from Deborah Blum, Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 31–60; Robert Karen, Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 13–25; and René Spitz, Grief: A Peril in Infancy, a 1947 video, canal-u.tv/​video/​cerimes/​absence_maternelle_et_traumatisme_de_l_enfance.10347. For more on John Watson’s Psychological Care of Infant and Child, see Ann Hulbert, “He Was an Author Only a Mother Could Love,”
Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2003.

  What was going on?: A handful of doctors and psychologists did recognize children’s need for emotional care. One of them was pediatrician Harry Bakwin, who headed the pediatric unit at Bellevue Hospital in New York in the 1930s, where he instituted some changes that would have dramatic consequences on the health of the infants in his charge. He put up signs encouraging affection—“Do not enter this nursery without picking up a baby,” read one (see Karen, Becoming Attached, 20)—and under his leadership of the unit, “nurses were encouraged to mother and cuddle the children, to pick them up and play with them, and parents were invited to visit. The results of this change in policy were dramatic: despite the increased possibility of infection, the mortality rate for infants under 1 year of age fell sharply from 30–35 per cent to less than 10 per cent,” quoted in Frank C. P. van der Horst and René van der Veer, “Loneliness in Infancy: Harry Harlow, John Bowlby and Issues of Separation,” Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 42, no. 4 (2008): 325–35. It would be many years before the ideas Bakwin championed became mainstream. That they did is in large part thanks to René Spitz.

  Spitz published the results: See René A. Spitz, “Hospitalism: An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood,” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 1 (1944): 53–74; and René A. Spitz, “Hospitalism: A Follow-up Report,” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 2 (1946), 113–17. As Karen explains in Becoming Attached, Spitz’s methodology was flawed in this study, as was the methodology of most psychological research in those days—but later research by people like John Bowlby and Harry Harlow confirmed the negative effects of a lack of care and affection on the young.

  Spitz showed his colleagues video: You can watch this heartbreaking video online: canal-u.tv/​video/​cerimes/​absence_maternelle_et_traumatisme_de_l_enfance.10347.

  chronic loneliness, scientists have found: John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008).

  20 percent of people consider loneliness: Cacioppo and Patrick, Loneliness, 5.

  Americans 45 and older: “Loneliness among Older Adults: A National Survey of Adults 45+,” a report prepared by Knowledge Networks and Insight Policy Research for AARP: The Magazine, September 2010.

  common response was three: Specifically, they asked how many people the respondents discussed important matters with over the last six months. Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Matthew E. Brashears, “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades,” American Sociological Review 71, no. 3 (2006): 353–75. The researchers believe that the data may be overestimating the rise in social isolation, but, even still, they later found a “70 percent increase in social isolation from 1985 to 2004,” quoted in McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Brashears, “Models and Marginals: Using Survey Evidence to Study Social Networks,” American Sociological Review 74, no. 4 (2009): 670–81. Some researchers have questioned the degree of isolation found by McPherson and his colleagues, but sources largely agree that sociality is in decline. See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

  close relationships as our most important: See Nathaniel M. Lambert, Tyler F. Stillman, Roy F. Baumeister, Frank D. Fincham, Joshua A. Hicks, and Steven M. Graham, “Family as a Salient Source of Meaning in Young Adulthood,” The Journal of Positive Psychology 5, no. 5 (2010): 367–76; Peter Ebersole, “Types and Depth of Written Life Meanings,” in Paul T. P. Wong and Prem S. Fry (editors), The Human Quest for Meaning: A Handbook of Psychological Research and Clinical Applications (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1998); and Dominique Louis Debats, “Sources of Meaning: An Investigation of Significant Commitments in Life,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 39, no. 4 (1999): 30–57.

  their lives are less meaningful: See Tyler F. Stillman, Roy F. Baumeister, Nathaniel M. Lambert, A. Will Crescioni, C. Nathan DeWall, and Frank D. Fincham, “Alone and Without Purpose: Life Loses Meaning Following Social Exclusion,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45, no. 4 (2009): 686–94.

  Durkheim explored the question: Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (New York: Free Press, 1971).

  Shigehiro Oishi and Ed Diener: Oishi and Diener, “Residents of Poor Nations Have a Greater Sense of Meaning in Life than Residents of Wealthy Nations.”

  with religiosity leading the pack: The effect of religion on meaning was so strong that, in the case of a few countries, the general trend of the study—that wealthier countries have lower meaning rates—was reversed. Some rich countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, rated relatively high on meaning and some poor countries, such as Haiti, rated relatively low on meaning based on how religious their inhabitants reported being. That said, if you look at two equally religious people living in two different countries, the one in a poorer country will still likely report higher levels of meaning in life than the one in a richer country, and vice versa, because of the other social factors mentioned.

  driving the increase in mental illness: Jean M. Twenge, Brittany Gentile, C. Nathan DeWall, Debbie Ma, Katharine Lacefield, and David R. Schurtz, “Birth Cohort Increases in Psychopathology among Young Americans, 1938–2007: A Cross-Temporal Meta-analysis of the MMPI,” Clinical Psychology Review 30, no. 2 (2010): 145–54.

  several measures of individualism: Richard Eckersley and Keith Dear, “Cultural Correlates of Youth Suicide,” Social Science & Medicine 55, no. 11 (2002): 1891–1904. The association between individualism and youth suicide was especially strong among males and weaker among females.

  “privatizing our leisure time”: Putnam, Bowling Alone, 283.

  moves eleven times in his life: Mona Chalabi, “How Many Times Does the Average Person Move?” FiveThirtyEight, January 29, 2015.

  many will change jobs: Carl Bialik, “Seven Careers in a Lifetime? Think Twice, Researchers Say,” Wall Street Journal, September 4, 2010.

  I traveled to Cleveland, Ohio: September, 26, 2015.

  Society for Creative Anachronism: The information from this section derives from a number of interviews I conducted while at the event in Cleveland, including with Howard Fein and a man whom I call James (who asked that I not reveal his name or identifying information about him). I also conducted several interviews in the fall of 2015 with SCA members in Ann Arbor, including Kay Jarrell on September 11, 2015, and Carol and Matt Lagemann on September 21, 2015. I interviewed SCA member Kat Dyer, who lives in the Chicago area, by phone on September 16, 2015, and Diana Paxson, one of the founders of the SCA, on September 23, 2015.

  people naturally grow to like others: See Roy F. Baumeister and Brad J. Bushman, Social Psychology and Human Nature: Brief Version (Belmont, California: Thomson Wadsworth, 2008), chapter 10.

  share common experiences and values: See Baumeister and Bushman, Psychology and Human Nature, in particular chapter 10; and Angela J. Bahns, Kate M. Pickett, and Christian S. Crandall, “Social Ecology of Similarity: Big Schools, Small Schools and Social Relationships,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 15, no. 1 (2012): 119–31. There are also other determinants of friendship formation, such as opening up to another person. See Karen Karbo, “Friendship: The Laws of Attraction,” Psychology Today, November 1, 2006.

  with dignity and respect: Most of their peers, anyway. One SCA member told me a story of one member who was consistently rude to other people within the SCA. That member was eventually expelled from the organization.

  “High quality connections”: Information on high quality connections from Jane E. Dutton, Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High-Quality Connections at Work (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003); Jane E. Dutton and Emily D. Heaphy, “The Power of High-Quality Connections,” in Kim S. Cameron, Jane E. Dutton, and Robert E. Quinn (editors), Positive Organizational Scholarship: Foundations of a New Discipline (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2003), 2
63–78; and author interview with Jane Dutton on April 2, 2014. Dutton’s work focuses on high quality connections at work, but such connections can occur outside of work, too.

  Jonathan Shapiro, an entrepreneur: Jonathan, a friend and classmate of mine in the positive psychology program at Penn, told this story in class one day in 2013. I subsequently interviewed him about it on October 18, 2015.

  social exclusion…is a threat: See Stillman et al., “Alone and Without Purpose”; and Jean M. Twenge, Kathleen R. Catanese, and Roy F. Baumeister, “Social Exclusion and the Deconstructed State: Time Perception, Meaninglessness, Lethargy, Lack of Emotion, and Self-Awareness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85, no. 3 (2003): 409–423; and Kristin L. Sommer, Kipling D. Williams, Natalie J. Ciarocco, and Roy F. Baumeister, “When Silence Speaks Louder than Words: Explorations into the Intrapsychic and Interpersonal Consequences of Social Ostracism,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 23, no. 4 (2001): 225–43.

  undergraduates were brought into the lab: Twenge et al., “Social Exclusion and the Deconstructed State.”

  rate their own lives: Stillman et al., “Alone and Without Purpose.”

  rejected and the rejecter feel alienated: Kipling D. Williams, Ostracism: The Power of Silence (New York, The Guilford Press, 2001). Though, as Williams pointed out to me in an email on April 1, 2016, when people feel motivated and justified in ostracizing another person, being the rejecter might actually be empowering.

  the cleaning and janitorial staff: Jane E. Dutton, Gelaye Debebe, and Amy Wrzesniewski, “Being Valued and Devalued at Work: A Social Valuing Perspective,” in Beth A. Bechky and Kimberly D. Elsbach (editors), Qualitative Organizational Research: Best Papers from the Davis Conference on Qualitative Research, volume 3 (Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing, 2016).