Freedom for & Responsive Meaning: A Call to Action
Freedom is a call to action anchored in meaning – this formulation challenges the predominant paradigm and presents freedom as a responsive and generative force, a force deeply rooted in the realities of the world. Here, meaning emerges as an enduring foundation for life and freedom becomes a journey from meaning to action, from why to what.
Meaning Is to Be Found in Response-Ability – A Unique Call
We can only respond to the world, whether consciously or not. We may respond with fear, anxiety, judgment or even anger, or we may respond from a position of clarity, empathy, humility, and determination. We may strive to assert ourselves over others and even life, or we may seek to enter into a purposeful relationship and alignment with our current world reality. The challenge, then, is to respond well; it is to respond authentically in a way that resonates with one’s deeper self – it is to respond in a way that brings about meaning. In Freedom for, meaning is foundational and yet deeply subjective. It is not to be defined or constructed but to be allowed in and responded to. It is encountered when something within the individual awakens them to real and concrete needs beyond themselves which they feel intrinsically called to address or attend to.
While the calling is in the world, the response is within us. Response-ability – the ability to respond – bridges the gap and reconciles the inner and outer worlds. In doing so, it harmonizes the individual with the reality and evolution of the world, and purposefully re-engages them. This reframes responsibility not as a burden or impediment but as a vital and generative force in active relationship with life. Hence, meaning and responsibility become deeply intertwined so as to be, in fact, inseparable – an intrinsic relationship encapsulated in Responsive Meaning.
Crucially, there is no one true way to respond to the world’s call – this is based on each individual’s nature, talents, and deeper inclinations. The world calls, yet the response is unique to the individual. To answer one’s distinctive call for meaning is to assume one’s responsibility in upholding the world’s foundation and fostering the continuity of human civilization.
The Call Is a Call for Engagement & Action
While Frankl sees meaning in doing, experiencing and choosing one’s attitude toward life, Freedom for argues that meaning must ultimately lead to active engagement with the societal and ecological realities of the world – it is a call for constructive action, not mere contemplation. Experience can encourage an individual to indeed pursue meaning rather than pleasure or power, and in this, it can drive all that underlies genuine engagement with the world. Our attitude toward life, for its part, is crucial in coming to terms with the conditions of the world, compelling us to find meaning within them, even if only to transform them. Yet in Freedom for, experiences and attitudes are enablers – not the final answer. Action is the true culmination of meaning. Without it, experience eventually wanes, realization is crippled by doubt or confusion, and attitude lacks substance. Further, without action, meaning risks degenerating too easily into self-realization for its own sake. This would open the door to endless introspection or self-directed pursuits, gradually disconnecting people from the reality of the world where meaning resides. Hence, without authentic engagement, meaning withers because experience, realization and attitude are, in themselves, incomplete.
The reason for this is that meaning is meant to be relational, vital, and fluid, not crystalized into self-definition, an obsession with the self, or an ossified set of assumptions based on an outdated response. It inherently moves the individual outward into relationships, into engagement with the wider world – into responsibilities. In this dynamics, action is what actualizes the response and, in so doing, closes the loop: from the world to the individual, and back into the world. This is how experience is validated and becomes the self-perpetuating reward confirming that meaning is what truly stirs the human soul. It is how self-realization is embodied and becomes an integral part of us rather than a fleeting thought or elusive experience. It is how people become creative to answer the world’s call and needs. It is how meaning is taken to its fullest expression, within the context of our social and material realities.
Responsive Meaning is thus inherently embedded into engagement and action. Yet action does not necessarily entail producing something – meaning should certainly not be reduced to some utilitarian metrics – nor does it need to be grand, let alone ostentatious. But it does require to intentionally engage with the world around us. In fact, most actions may be modest and unassuming, though profoundly authentic. Truly listening to someone, upholding the well-being of one’s community, or answering another’s spiritual needs qualify as meaningful actions that resonate with Relationality and Responsibility – two core dimensions of Freedom for. Action is therefore best understood as a situational answer to life that honors an individual’s nature.
From Meaning to Contribution – From Why to What
Responsive Meaning, through the call of responsibility, offers the individual a why to live for – a gateway towards a life that feels significant and connected. This makes meaning an enduring foundation for life. When meaning is responded to, purpose arises: a direction to follow, step by step, which may gradually evolve into a long-term mission. Purpose guides one’s life, energy and resources, aligning them with a unique why. It ultimately translates into actions which together form one’s contribution to the world around us. Contribution, then, is the tangible what that one gives to the world and that stems from the deeper why anchored in meaning. It emerges as the natural outcome of response-ability and integrates the individual into meaningful relationship with the world.
Instead of being insatiable, agitated consumers of everything the world has to offer, people now become its contributors and architects. Instead of looking at the world to see what they don’t have, could have, or should have, people begin to look to determine where and how to engage with the world in order to bring about their unique, humble contribution to a world that is most certainly in need. They begin to look for their unique why so that their what gradually emerges and unfolds as they respond and engage. Since every person’s nature is unique, every contribution is unique. Hence, an individual may not easily be replaced as someone’s nature cannot be forced upon another. This squarely places responsibility in the hands of the individual as no one else can contribute for them what their own nature had to offer, no one else can respond for them – no one else can be response-able for them.
Aligning with Frankl’s claim, Freedom for argues that even in very constraining circumstances, meaning can be encountered – a why can be found – and small but real actions can be taken to actualize it. Yet Freedom for recognizes that when individuals have enough practical autonomy to act in response to the world’s call, their what can become all the more rich and meaningful – thereby stressing the importance of preserving sufficient leeway for individual contributions to flourish even under degrading environmental health and growing systemic instability. In Freedom for, the freedom–stability tension, arguably acute under degraded world conditions, is addressed through Integrated Autonomy: a form of personal autonomy that reconciles individual aspirations and the collective need for environmental vitality and systemic stability.