Meaning-Making

I just read about a man who, deeply well meaning, has been extremely proactive in feeding the local deer. He brings apples, bags of pet food, and places bowls out so that during the winter months, the deer have food available to them. Now the deer have almost become ‘pets’ to him. They have been given names, and sadly, one recently was struck and killed by a local car, possibly coming to or from his bountiful home full of deer-loving goodies. They are now battling amongst themselves for his food: broken antlers testifying to the competition for the apples.

Then someone wondered aloud about his actions, about how his well-meaning acts probably led to the deer’s comfort around humans and hence the proximity to the car with which it met its death. They raised the question: is this the role, being fed by men with apples and being hit by cars, a role that deer were meant to have?

This got me thinking about ‘meaning’... as in: what role deer were truly meant to be cast in. I wonder where this meaning comes from. I suppose, if there were some hidden resource to this, perhaps known by some ancient civilization that knew the meaning of things, this could be an important thing to discover. Or maybe what we need to discover is that the universe was built on some grand meaningful scheme about which humans just find it very hard to see. But I am increasingly dubious about either of these as I get the sense that humans are actually the ones doing this 'meaning-making' and have very likely been doing it for a very long time

Perhaps the ‘meaning’ to things derives from a kind of self-reflective ability, a sort of secondary effect of an increasingly complex neural latticework such as humans have. I don't think the ability to assign 'meaning' was the original aim of complex brain development, but rather the ability to devise more cunning ways to secure sustenance and habitation.

But regardless, here we now are, with this increasingly complex mental apparatus, running around assigning meaning to things which seems to be an epiphenomena of our self-reflective ability. We think about things, we think about ourselves, and we think about how we think about things. We can envision that deer existing without human involvement in their affairs would be finding their own population numbers and behaviors constrained and dictated by the usual predators, food availability and such.

Now, we might begin by extracting humans from the equation, and imagining a life for deer without humans being around. There is a kind of rosy hue about this; noble and soft-spoken creatures of the forest cohabiting with each other in peace, raising their fawns, nibbling at wild leaves. Then, enter the humans: reducing habitable areas through roads and development, hunting, providing apples, driving cars… the ecology now includes the appearance of the human animal (and its products), which from the deer’s point of view might be seen as an invasive species. The deer eating the apples might be happy with this matter. The crumpled deer on the road might have another idea, though it might have been the same deer, I don’t know.

OK. Let’s take humans out of the picture. What if another force, such as cougars, began migrating or growing in numbers in a deer-rich area, which would seem a nice thing to do if one were a cougar, they also would be making a dent in the deer population. If deer were self-reflective to the degree that they could assign meaning to the appearance of the cougar, they might consider each loss an ‘act of God’. Or, perhaps some might consider it an act of karmic justice following their carnal (and reproductive) base and heathen urges. I don’t know what manner deer might produce deer ethics, metaphysics or theology. Perhaps some of the deer might choose to become celibate, realizing that there were just too many deer, or perhaps driven by a deep spiritual urge to focus on the Divine.

Given enough time and mental development, eventually deer might conspire among themselves to resist what could alternatively be considered an unjust cougar invasion, and wage war against the cougars with death assured and thus also thin a swelled population, which would be a relief to most everyone. More apples, less cougars. Truly a laudable goal.

Yet, I wonder, where does this meaning that we assign, such as the proper role of a deer, come from? Moreover, from what perspective? Since we find it so hard to understand what deer might fathom as their own goals, priorities and meaning, we assign these from a human perspective. However, if we are going to assign meaning to human involvement with an environment that affects the deer, we need to also take into account what conceivably could be the deer’s meaning. I mean, what do the deer want? But, like kids, I guess we have determined it is our position to decide for them what is right and just.

But, is that truly just? By what authority do we abrogate decision-making for the deer, and that matter, for rest of our Earth? Are we assuming an authority that is not ours? If not ours, whose? If we have the authority, what is its basis? In an unavoidable confrontation with our ecological crisis, we are brought face to face with the matter of meaning-making itself.

In the midst of this, we will be facing questions about which we had hitherto simply made assumptions. I don’t have answers to these questions, just more questions.