Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?
We have qualified writers to help you.
We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.
You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)
NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.
NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.
Introduction
People are expecting a lot from young people in the current world. Young people are often challenged to take up responsibilities and be critical influencers of political, social, and economic causes in the contemporary society.
It is apparent that young people are faced with a lot of challenges because the contemporary society poses innumerable challenges to an extent that they cannot take up responsibilities and shape the society as expected of them. Young people are increasingly worried about the contemporary society and the projected future society they will inherit and become critical decision makers in the society.
This reignites the memories of the early years of the 20th century, especially the 1920s when critical developments in the world, like the post World War I, brought a lot of challenges.
At that time, most countries were confronted with the task of meeting economic needs, as well as ensuring the safety of their citizens who remained vulnerable due to the effects of the war and immense competition among states. This paper presents critical views about creation of meaning in life.
Critical questions to ponder
As a lot of young people strive to make meaning in their lives today, it is important to explore a number of questions to gain the true sense of the term meaning. Is meaning a subjective or an objective term? What constitutes meaning in the lives of people in the contemporary society? The other question that needs to be answered concerns the state of the society today.
This entails social, political, economic, and environmental orders and how they shape peoples mental orientations. What leakages exist in the current political, economic, environmental, and social realms? How do they affect peoples orientation and preparedness to take up responsibility now and in the near future? Are there certain needs and expectations that must be met for people to make meaning out of their lives?
What is meaning in life?
In simple terms, meaning implies making sense or significance. Martos, Thege and Steger (2010) observed that meaning can be derived from two critical aspects of believe; whether people actually believe and how people believe. Also, the pattern of relations between an individual and other people in the society is critical when carrying out an implicit measurement of meaning.
This brings in the religiosity aspect of life. George and Park (2013) noted that meaning goes hand in hand with purpose. Significance in life is attributed to the ability of a person to meet his goals and aims in life. Social support is critical in the development and fulfillment of goals in life.
Schnell (2009) and Steger, Frazier, Oishi and Kaler (2006) observed that one critical aspect of the well-being of people in the society, which comes out in the humanistic theories that are utilized in counselling psychology, is peoples perception of meaning in life. The perceived meaning in life is a complex issue that can only be comprehended through assessment of different factors that contribute to distress in people.
Kinnier, Kernes and Tribbensee (2003) observed that people must aim at making critical contributions in the society. The three authors observed that making a contribution in the society is one of the most important ingredients of making meaning in life. On the other hand, Kray et al. (2010) observed that creation of meaning by an individual is a process. Meaning is created from important life events that a person engages in.
Events emanate from a counterfactual reflection of past happenings where the constructs of reality are developed. This motivates a person to take part in an event. The meaning of life results from synthesis of past successful events and projection of the probability of succeeding in future. This is referred to as nostalgia (Routledge et al., 2012).
Needs and meaning in life
As noted earlier, the most critical question in the contemporary society concerns how meaning can be reinvigorated and reconstituted in the lives of people. According to Stillman and Baumeister (2009), meaning in life can only be attained through fulfillment of four main needs.
These are: Sense of purpose in life, feelings of efficacy, value, and a sense of positive self worth. A look at these needs implies that meaning in life is a psychologically oriented process.
A sense of purpose in life comes from synthesis of past events and the subsequent projection of future happenings. The modern world is confronted with a lot of challenges that range from degradation of the environment to vices like corruption, mismanagement, and the quest for personal gain. These vices have been inherited from former generations by the contemporary generation.
This depicts a scenario where there is a blurred vision about the future due to the threats that are likened to the prevalence of a lot of vices in the contemporary society.
Most of these vices keep evolving throughout generations. This justifies the high levels of frustration among the youth and adults. This group of people has a diminished level of optimism about the future due to the unethical happenings in the society (Stillman & Baumeister, 2009).
Whether people can control their destinies is also an issue of concern in the modern world. The feeling of efficacy is attained when people feel that they can impose controls on what takes place in their lives. However, the conditions that prevail in the world have made people wander as they seek to confront one challenge after the other.
The challenges range from relation factors to physical threats like environmental degradation and climate change, the fear of terrorism and war, and the increasing inflation rates that makes it hard for people to fulfill their needs.
Therefore, people only focus on securing their needs. People increasingly seek for psychological support because of increase in distress over the inability to meet their needs, or respond to different forces in the society (Maddux, 2000).
According to Stillman et al. (2009), there is an increase in social exclusion in the contemporary world. This makes it hard for people to realize the need for positive self worth. Stillman and Baumeister (2009) noted that people often search for ways of ensuring that they are admirable, good, and worthy. However, these virtues cannot be justified by individuals themselves. On the contrary, the virtues have to be justified by other people.
Unfortunately, most people are swayed by life events to an extent that they lack time to assess fellow individuals. According to Twenge (2003), the increase in levels of distress and pressure to meet needs and control events results in a state of meaninglessness in the society.
This, in turn, makes it hard for people to focus on certain worthy courses. People still remain lonely in their minds and souls, irrespective of the perceived higher level of interaction that has been facilitated by technology and globalization (Baumeister et al., 2005). This implies that social exclusion cannot be merely looked at from the physical sense, but it should also be viewed from mental and emotional perspectives (Stillman et al., 2009).
Enhancing the experience of meaning in life
It is quite difficult to enhance the level at which people experience meaning in their lives due to the amount of iterative forces that play out in the minds of people. The future is quite uncertain as people keep struggling to make ends meet. However, creation of meaning can still be attained amidst the countless challenges that people face.
A study that was conducted by Stillman (2010) denoted that social inclusion is critical in as far as attainment of feelings of efficacy and a sense of meaning in peoples lives are concerned. Development of effective social interactive platforms was found to be a critical path to the creation of meaning in life. Meaning in life is attained when a person seeks to engage others in matters that are affecting him or her.
In this way, it is easy to get diverse views on how to attend to the issue at hand. Social capital can be attained through embracing relationships at personal, family, communal, and national levels. This encourages exploration of socio-economic, cultural, and political factors that cause strains in the society (Lin et al., 2013).
Challenges that exist in the environment, like creation of social classes that depict social boundaries, depletion of resources that are critical for pursuing goals and meeting needs, and deterioration of the state of economic and political security, are causes of disintegration and exclusion.
These bar people from embracing social inclusion. Consequently, this makes it hard for people to experience meaning in life. However, these challenges can also pull people together (Lin et al., 2013).
Practical steps to enhancing experience of meaning in life
Enhancement of meaning in life is in itself an active process. It requires the active participation of an individual for the individual to enhance his or her meaning in life. Therefore, enhancement of meaning in life begins with comprehension of the environment in which an individual dwells in.
Environment here means the social, economic, cultural, and political attributes of the society and the forces that emanate from within the society. Environment also means how the above attributes influence human abilities to meet their needs and shape the society.
This is one way of attaining self-inclusion. Self-inclusion is one of the denominators of understanding the society and setting and attaining goals. This, in turn, helps in control destiny.
The second critical step in enhancing the experience of meaning in life is the embrace of social integration. According to Stillman et al. (2010), it is important for people to create meaningful interactions. It is easy to enhance a deeper reflection of the society in such interactions.
Reflection is critical in driving away the fear and anxieties that infest the minds of people. Consequently, people result in the development of seemingly practical mechanisms of driving away the anxiety and fear. This means that people are able to control their destinies.
The other thing that can enhance meaning in life is deciding to live courageously. Courage in this sense means that an individual should not focus on embracing personal security at the expense of setting goals and developing plans to guide in the achievement of the goals. Courage is the best solution for confronting fear and anxiety since fear limits a person, but courage keeps one going (Hicks & Routledge, 2013).
References
Baumeister, R. F., Dewall, C., Ciarocco, N. J., & Twenge, J. M. (2005). Social exclusion impairs self-regulation. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 88(4), 589-604.
George, L. S., & Park, C. L. (2013). Are meaning and purpose distinct? An examination of correlates and predictors. Journal of Positive Psychology, 8(5), 365-375.
Hicks, J. A., & Routledge, C. (2013). The experience of meaning in life: Classical perspectives, emerging themes, and controversies. Dordrecht: Springer.
Kinnier, R. T., Kernes, J. L., & Tribbensee, N. E. (2003). What eminent people have said about the meaning of life? Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 43(1), 105-118
Kray, L. J., George, L. G., Liljenquist, K. A., Galinsky, A. D., Tetlock, P. E., & Roese, N. J. (2010). From what might have been to what must have been: counterfactual thinking creates meaning. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 98(1), 106-118.
Lin, K., Xu, Y., Huang, T., & Zhang, J. (2013). Social exclusion and its causes in east Asian societies: Evidences from SQSQ survey data. Social Indicators Research, 112(3), 641-660.
Maddux, J. E. (2000). Self-efficacy: The power of believing you can. (in press). In, Snyder, C. R., & Lopez, S. J. (Eds). Handbook of positive psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Martos, T., Thege, B., & Steger, M. F. (2010). Its not only what you hold, its how you hold it: Dimensions of religiosity and meaning in life. Personality & Individual Differences, 49(8), 863-868.
Routledge, C., Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Juhl, J., & Arndt, J. (2012). The power of the past: Nostalgia as a meaning-making resource. Memory, 20(5), 452-460.
Schnell, T. (2009). The sources of meaning and meaning in life questionnaire (SoMe): Relations to demographics and well-being. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(6), 483-499.
Steger, M. F., Frazier, P., Oishi, S., & Kaler, M. (2006). The meaning in life questionnaire: Assessing the presence of and search for meaning in life. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(1), 80-93.
Stillman, T. F., & Baumeister, R. F. (2009). Uncertainty, belongingness, and four needs for meaning. Psychological Inquiry, 20(4), 249-251.
Stillman, T. F., Baumeister, R. F., Lambert, N. M., Crescioni, A. W., Dewall, C. N., & Fincham, F. D. (2009). Alone and without purpose: life loses meaning following social exclusion. J Exp Soc Psychol., 45(4), 686-694.
Stillman, T. F., Lambert, N. M., Fincham, F. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2010). Meaning as magnetic force: evidence that meaning in life promotes interpersonal appeal. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 000(00), 1-8. doi: 10.1177/1948550610378382
Twenge, J. M. (2003). Social exclusion and the deconstructed state: time perception, meaninglessness, lethargy, lack of emotion, and self-awareness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(5), 409-423.
Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?
We have qualified writers to help you.
We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.
You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)
NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.
NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.