'We start to demand that our work has a larger meaning. This almost always ends badly, meaning is a bit like happiness - the more you go out looking for it the less you find '.
Ignore this ersatz philosophy - the real question is sociological. Why do we now crave meaning in our work when previous generations sought only livelihood? As modernisation in its mania for progress proceeds apace, we are uprooted from bonds of nature, family, class and, yes - race. The vast majority of us are denied the satisfaction of mastering a craft from start to finish; the purpose of our employers robs us of a feeling of organic unity in our cog-like function within the capitalist-modernist machine. Even our neighbours are strangers. Delightfully, these bonds can still be found in remote rural communities in Europe.
Meaning isn't about wish-fulfilment, but is the process in which one constantly finds and re-finds one's identity and purpose within a greater narrative or Weltbild.
‘Earlier physicists are said to have found suddenly that they had too little mathematical understanding to cope with physics; and in almost the same way young people today can be said to be in a situation where ordinary common sense no longer suffices to meet the strange demands life makes. Everything has become so intricate that mastering it would require an exceptional intellect. Because skill at playing the game is no longer enough; the question that keeps coming up is: can this game be played at all now and what would be the right game to play?’
– Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, note of 1937
