The Myth of Meaning: 7 Immortality of Meaning — Why We Fear Oblivion

The Problem

Humans instinctively seek permanence. Even secular accounts of significance often cling to notions of enduring meaning: legacy, culture, or memory as if they could outlast mortality. The fear of oblivion drives us to invest significance in symbols, achievements, and narratives.

The Distortion

This is theology’s afterimage: the drive for immortality mirrors the promise of eternal life or the soul. Even without God, the structure persists — meaning is imagined as something that must endure, as if reality itself had a stake in human significance. Significance is thus projected onto permanence rather than understood as process.

The Relational Alternative

Meaning is not immortal; it is relational and contingent. Significance exists in the interplay of potential and actual, in ongoing interpretations and alignments. What persists does so only insofar as relational networks sustain it. Cultural memory, symbolic systems, and human achievements are meaningful because they are enacted and re-enacted, not because they exist eternally.

Takeaway

The longing for immortal meaning is theology in secular disguise. Relational ontology embraces the fragility and impermanence of significance: meaning exists in action and interaction, not in eternal preservation.