The quest to find meaning: why builders and thinkers matter
An intentional approach to the world
I’ve always found entrepreneurial founders (“builders”) and philosophers (“thinkers”) fascinating.
Ultimately, the clear thinking and epistemic humility of builders and thinkers signals a respect for the world and our existence.
Here’s a brief exploration of that idea.
In my time at the GSB, I've noticed that I tend to index on a certain type of person. I like people who think and reflect a lot, people who actively do things (the builders, the writers, the artists, the entrepreneurs, etc.), or better yet, people who combine both skillsets. These people tend to be quite talented and accomplished in their field (but also simultaneously display epistemic humility), but it's not the talent or accomplishment per se that I really care about.
What I care about is their intentionality. It's those who have realized that our lives are something worthwhile, and then decide to act upon that.
For the thinkers: they are those who have determined that life is a serious gift, and we should ponder the depths of how things are — the creed “The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life” rings true for them.
For the builders, they are those who have decided that they want to create new things, to explore and play in the adjacent possible and breathe new life back into the world. Each of these groups demonstrates an immense respect for the gift of life.
Let's take a quick existential detour.1 The universe that we call home is a 13.7 billion year old rapidly expanding wasteland of space. The planet Earth is around 4.5 billion years old and will be scorched beyond recognition by the Sun's expansion into a red giant — but not before the Milky Way Galaxy collides with the Andromeda Galaxy. From a purely reductionist sense, we humans are mere carbon-based lifeforms that have an expiration date of a century. Each one of us — our hopes, our dreams, our goals — is a mere blip in the grand cosmic narrative.
Most people are familiar with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, but his quote “God is dead” is both his most famous and misunderstood idea. Nietzsche's famous statement was not a triumphant declaration, but rather an existential lament of despair.
In saying this, he was declaring the victory of scientific rationalism over the Judeo-Christian values underlying thousands of years of western civilization. More specifically, the foundational idea of an omnipotent god had been irreparably damaged, with potentially innumerable consequences for society.
There's a spectrum of valid reactions to this reality. Many people pursue success, advancement, and busyness as a way to avoid gazing into existential fear and dread. Some seek adventure and adrenaline surges as a way to feel something. Others continue to return to religion and faith, designing an imagined realities that transcends the human lifespan.2 Some people pursue immortality projects as a way to craft a legacy to create a body of work that lives longer than the physical body. As Hemingway said, "Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name.
Regardless, the question remains: What is the meaning of all of this?
This is where builders and thinkers differ from the rest of us. They look back into the God-sized void, and confront it — they embark on their own quests to impart meaning to the world.3
Call it courage, overoptimism, naivete, stupidity, whatever. They might not have a fully consistent cosmology of values (and Godel's incompleteness theorem would seem to indicate that this would be impossible), but their process is correct.
Ultimately, the unifying dynamic between these two groups is that they are creating meaning — meaning doesn't exist ex ante as something to be found, but instead something to be crafted.4
Perhaps they haven't explicitly articulated it, but their actions and thoughts demonstrate some semblance of understanding of the Answer: the meaning of life is the quest to find meaning.
What distinguishes us (humanity) is our ability to choose: as Viktor Frankl pointed out, everything can be taken away except for our freedom to choose. This intentionality matters deeply to me. Intentionality signals a deep respect for the world — the people around you, the institutions, society writ large — is important enough to deign your attention and thought.
These builders and thinkers, embarking in their own quests are intentional. They have a love and respect for the world, for the hopes and dreams of those around them.
In a world where it would be easy enough to fall into nihilistic despair, they choose to move forward — exploring the world, asking deeper and difficult questions, and building their own visions into reality.
Depending on your theological leanings, you might have a different perspective.
"Imagined reality" isn't used as a pejorative here, but rather as Yuval Noah Harari coined it: something real because we collectively hold them to be true. This includes things like money, progress, gods, corporations, democracy, etc.
For those of you more familiar with Nietzsche's work, this approach may sound similar to his proposal of the Ubermensche: the superman who could produce his or her own system of values. I won't argue for this for two reasons: 1) it's not clear to me that humans have the ability to produce our own values, and 2) Nietzsche's ideas in this realm have been used to justify horrendous things and I'm not sufficiently expert enough to attempt the hyper-nuanced discussion required there. For the time being, let's just note that there are some similarities here, and proceed.
There are echoes here of the Steven Pressfield idea that the amateur allows their value and identity to be defined by others, whereas the professional creates their own world. Builders and thinkers are professionals.