(I)
Perhaps more than anything else, philosophy and religion have been locked in a seemingly impossible struggle with the conundrum of meaning. What is the meaning behind us being here? Or is that a mute question because, in the natural world that encases the ideal existence of our minds, there is no meaning? The nihilist will affirm the negative result, and many may applaud this conclusion because it allows them to wash their hands of the dilemma, but, for most of us (and the extent and persistence of world religion reinforces this assumption that we are the majority), the idea of an absurd, purposeless fabric of reality is disturbing and fundamentally impractical.
Purposefulness is an essential ingredient in all pragmatism, in order to do what needs to be done we need to know what needs to be done, but this fact does not assuage the reality that despite our gut instinct that a cosmological purpose must exist, we have not the slightest idea what that underlying meaning of everything could possibly be. Hence, the widespread acceptance of, for the most part, naïve explanations of the meaning of life, which are propagated by religious narratives, centring meaning within the idea of God, or the gods. For those, on the other hand, who find religion too innocent, too manipulative, or even too political, there are plenty of philosophical indagations to turn to, but, no matter where we look, for the question of meaning it seems there is always an underlying current of uncertainty that will undoubtedly persist until we have scientific proof and a clear demonstration of what the cosmological reason for existence has to be, if even it has to be at all. And because the former, it seems, is, at least primarily, impossible to prove, the latter becomes more palatable, and this explains the powerful gravity wielded by nihilism.
The truth, as such, can only really be truly affirmed by the normalisation given by science, but science, at the moment, ignores this task, regarding it as too metaphysical or too esoteric. Really, it seems perfectly happy pushing the problem straight back to philosophy – and hardly anyone listens to, let alone understands philosophy. Nevertheless, a deep, philosophical reflection on Meaning is necessary not only for the psychological well-being of individuals but for the whole of society, if not for the proper working of civilisation itself. Given the current state of human individuals being little more than machines of unbridled consumerism projected into the world to devour and contaminate it by producing growing mountains of consumption and waste, a deeper reason for being needs to be propagated in order to save humanity from ourselves. It is only by wrestling with this problem that humanity as a whole will be able to push forward in a meaningful way. Subsequently, we are now faced with the obvious imperative to resurrect the age-old philosophical interrogative and once more attempt to tackle the question of why we, and the universe, exist. To do this, there is a tautological knot that needs to be unravelled. We need to ask ourselves: What is the meaning of Meaning?
(II)
This meaning of Meaning may simply be to discover what Meaning is, or in other words, the meaning of Meaning lies in the act of attempting to answer the question “What is the meaning of Meaning?” As soon as the question is asked, Meaning becomes a transcendentally significant concept and could be considered an alternative to the very idea of God. This is because the secret of existence lies in the unravelling of this mystery and precisely defines what really happens when one goes looking for God – the search for God is a search for Meaning, and the idea of God is therefore nothing more than a mask, usually an andromorphic creation, of an otherwise abstractly conceptual fabric of existence. But any definition of the concept of meaning depends on a transcendentally ideal formulation of the interrogative itself. Or, in other words, there needs to be a mind that is complicated enough to be able to formulate questions like this one. And that means that the meaning of Meaning can only exist once someone or something exists that is capable of formulating the question regarding the meaning of Meaning itself.
By bestowing Meaning on existence we animate it. In the same way, nihilism, which denies meaningfulness, is a depressing force on existence. With nihilism one has to find reasons to go forward with, despite the fact that there are no fundamental reasons, and such an existence is absurd. Nihilism renders everything absurd through the relativity that is generated by meaninglessness, while purpose and reasons are transformed into Quixotic fantasies. However, by establishing that the meaning of Meaning is to ask what is the meaning of Meaning, we are already stepping beyond nihilism because part of the answer to the question is embedded in the mere fact that we are able to formulate the question. Our Meaning for being here is to be capable of formulating the biggest of all questions, and whether or not we can answer the mystery we know that the Meaning is wrapped up in our own existence. Or, in other words, the reason for our existence resides in the fact that we are capable of asking what is the reason for our being here. And from here, we have a starting point for going forward in a truly meaningful way because we find that the grounding point of meaning resides in our own common human condition, because, as far as we know, it is only in human consciousness, with the complex tools of human languages, that reality can be engaged. This is carried out, not as a static presentation of what simply exists but as a dynamic process in which each human subject is involved in a creative, subjective experience, both felt and imagined, of the universe we are a part of.
(III)
Individuals and societies mature by overcoming their own infantile beliefs, and faith in a mythical being like God is just as infantile as a belief in the idea of Santa Claus. However, the price of our loss of innocence cannot come at the forfeiture of all absolute and good reasons for doing things, because individuals and societies need to know that they are operating purposefully in order to develop in a healthy way, both materially and psychologically.
By analysing the meaning of Meaning in the absolute sense we leap beyond the figure of God and go straight into what would be God’s mind itself. The form of God, therefore, is now the form of the Universe, and the Mind is found in the reason why this Universe has evolved the way it has. That the meaning of Meaning lies primarily in the ability to ask and attempt to answer what Meaning is, elevates us, as ones endowed with such a capacity, unto the field of cosmological meaning itself. In our essence we are very much a real part of the Meaning of Everything.
pauladkin 
Could it be that the reason why ‘Meaning’ is so hard to find is that we not only equate Meaning with Purpose, but then assume that Purpose is something we can (if we but knew it) choose: to fulfil or not. And that latter implies it has a finite quality: that it can be ‘completed’ in a finite period of time. We are perhaps lured to that thought by our experience – in finite time – and by a model of physics that asserts a definite ‘start’ to time and space. But what if our minds were like quarks: ephemeral ‘functions’, rather than ‘particles’? What if Mind – even as an aggregate – were also merely a function? What if Purpose were fulfilled continuously, rather than as some discrete event? Could one not then say that Meaning is “what is”: the relations between the ephemeral functions of the universe, evolving continuously over time and space? Or does that merely give free rein to nihilism?