Once upon a time, meaning and purpose didn’t need to be found—they found us. The task was survival: keeping warm, finding food, keeping the wolves and the raiders at bay. Purpose was immediate, physical, undeniable. Today, for many of us in rich, secure societies, the wolves are gone, replaced by hums and screens. The fridge is full, the house is warm, the algorithm knows our taste in movies. Comfort has triumphed over scarcity, security over danger, yet somehow many of us remain restless, anxious, and lost.
When purpose fades, the mind improvises. We are built to struggle, so we shrink our battles until they fit our circumstances. In the absence of famine, Wi-Fi outages become crises. Without invading armies, we wage moral wars on social media. Office politics turn into trench warfare. The human animal needs adversity to feel real, so when the old dragons die, we invent new ones—tiny, ridiculous, imaginary.
But the dragons never really died—they are just less immediately present in most of our lives. They hide in the industrial sheds where billions of animals endure torment, in the slums where poverty deprives, in the forests and oceans where wild creatures starve, are eaten alive, or fade slowly from disease.
Too often, the moral emergencies of our time are not screaming before us; they whisper, or stay hidden. Yet this doesn’t make them any less real. This is in many ways tragic. The silver lining, though, is that it offers us meaning and purpose. If we want meaning, we don’t, contra the existentialists, have to create it ourselves. If we want challenge, we don’t have to invent new dragons. We can find them in our efforts to reduce suffering.
What can we do? We don’t have to save the whole world. As we strive to do the most good that we can, we should remember that small actions matter. Every act of kindness, generosity, and compassion makes life a little better for someone. Like Dr. Rieux in Albert Camus’ The Plague, we can embody a quiet steadfastness in our actions, working to reduce suffering where we can. This would be deeply heroic.
Some chase grandiose projects—colonizing Mars, merging with AI—as if aggrandizement or escape were the only cures for our boredom and restlessness. But there is no need to look so far afield. Meaning is available right in front of us, in helping spare other sentient beings from harm. Arguably, this is among the most meaningful projects we can take on.
All this, of course, is easier said than done. But it is possible. If you’re interested in how to find meaning in reducing suffering, you might benefit from reading Compassionate Purpose. It is available for free here.