Maximizing Making Meaning

Making Meaning is the first book to develop the idea of making meaning, defined as "having positive impact with one's actions." This is the greatest idea since everything has a meaning (an effect or relationship). It asks the life-or-death question does my life have enough meaning to continue to live it? This book answers this question by developing the following main sources (or avenues) of making meaning: 1) loving relationships, 2) a sense of community, 3) genuine dialogues, 4) ful- filling work, 5) possessions, 6) appreciating artworks, 7) search for God and 8) intangibles or non- physical realities consisting of our highest values such as goodness, beauty, free will, justice and big truths. I explain and argue at length for this source of intangibles, potentially the biggest. Making Meaning maintains that it ought to be thought of as objective or external standards to judge everything and to live by instead of the current highly subjective or wishy-washy relative ones. This book then attacks three major challenges to making meaning: 1) widespread meaninglessness, 2) nihilism and 3) extreme relativism. I propose three absolute absolutes to resolve these challenges. Finally, I define "the meaning of life" mostly in terms of the sources. A brief summary of the meaning of life from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle concludes the book.