To paraphrase Nietzsche, the person who has the right "why" can put up with any "what", "why" or "how long." It is not suffering or poverty or setbacks that can destroy people most thoroughly, but the sense of meaninglessness that often accompanies such negative experiences. Psychologists, theologians and philosophers have repeatedly noted this to be true in circumstances as varied from positive peak performance environments to prisons and the
annihilation camps of the Third Reich.
A focus on meaning and meaninglessness can shed useful light on many policy and "political horse-race" issues, and can help progressive candidates win more elections. The following is not so much an essay but a collection of observations about how the fight for meaning can mean a win or a loss for a candidate or movement.
To be happy, most people need someone to love, something useful to do and something to look forward to. Translated into the language of "meaningfulness", these are meaningful relationships, meaningful work and a meaningful future.
The poverty of the rural or urban ghetto is often not a poverty of cash. Lack of money is often serious problem, but there are much poorer societies in terms of material goods than even the most impoverished parts of the United States, but where people are far less miserable than the meth- and crack-poisoned environs of West Baltimore and rural Iowa, Newark and Oregon, and many other places. What is often lacking in the country or city "'hood" is not fundamentally income, but meaninglessness. People who have meaningful work (whether it's at minimum wage or for millions) are more likely to have something daily to look forward to. A child-care worker who loves working with kids at minimum wage is likely to be happier than an attorney earning low-mid six figures doing work she finds to be a total waste.
World-wide studies have been done to show that above a certain point, maybe 60% of the U.S. per capita income, increased incomes do not make people much happier. Portugal, for example, has a less industrialized economy than does Switzerland and the U.S., but report equal or higher levels of happiness despite substantially lower incomes per capita. The marginal meaning of the 40,000th dollar or Euro per year may be lower than the 15,000th; this comports with common sense and probably accounts in part for why even most wealthy people support progressive taxation.
Policies that render people's work, relationships or future more meaningful are more likely to win at the polls and more likely to succeed in practice. What made welfare reform work more or less well, in my view, is that it made work more meaningful (i.e. necessary and useful to helping people move forward) and made the future more meaningful for the people who gained skills and independence from that work.
A big part of what makes the Christian Right so attractive is that its religious and social views impute great meaning to relationships (worshipper with God/Jesus, worshipper with spouse and children, worshipper with neighbor, etc.), to what worshippers do (follow the Bible per evangelical understanding, the Great Commission to make disciples of all the nations, worship and praise in church, etc.) and to a meaningful future (Heaven/the Messiah returns.) Conversely, the meaninglessness which many Christians impute (incorrectly) to the lives of atheists is a big part of why anti-atheist prejudice runs so deep in the U.S. I suspect that if every athiest/secular/skeptic organization were to make it clear (to non-atheists) that they are interested in people living meaningful lives, perhaps even changing their names (the "Topeka Society for Atheists Living Meaningful Lives" is a bit awkward, I guess), I suspect that we would see a dent in anti-atheist discrimination and hatred. (The fact that most atheists DO in fact find life very much worth living is an essay I will leave to someone else to take on.)
National Health Care is a favorite liberal topic and with good reason. It is arguably true that single payer health insurance is more GNP efficient than private insurance plans. But the question means nothing to most people. Why? Because GNP efficiency has nothing to do with meaningful work, meaningful relationships and meaningful futures. What DOES? If you have single payer health insurance, you and your spouse will not get stuck staying too long in a meaningless job to protect the health insurance of the meaningful people in your lives (the kids.) If you have single payer insurance, your life's savings (the symbol of meaningful work for many people) will not go into the hospital's bank if you get very sick and you will not be stuck at the mercy of some bureaucratic mess to figure out what nursing home Medicare will decide to cover (meaningful positive future and control over it.) But instead, we talk about graphs and charts and demand/supply curves like Zorba the Clerk, when we could talk about meaning.
Ask the folks who went to Connecticut to kick Joe Lieberman in the ass - include the fabulous Jane Hamsher who went to fight when others would have stayed home in grief. Meaningful work (some was exciting, some was dull but ALL meaningful to the activists who went to fight), meaningful relationships (the network of like-minded bloggers and others online and in person were phenomenal) and meaningful future (Joe in retirement, Ned in the Senate, netroots with a major, major win) achieved the dumping of a hyper-funded three-term Senator out of the Democratic nomination.
Even dull issues can be spiced up by this three point test. Why? Because feeling like life is meaningful and truly matters IS the spice. I may not give a shit about transit policy per se, but I can relate to the idea that two hours of my day spent meaninglessly in traffic when I could be hugging my boys, doing useful work or building a future are a crying outrage justifying a tax increase to get some rail built for my use or the use of the 200 soccer moms stuck gridlocked between me and my timecard at my job. Global warming or the fate of the penguins do not per se matter to me maybe, but a lousy climatic future for my kids and the ruination of my job, livelihood or country will matter. Zoning, trade policy - you name it.
I would suggest that every speech, mailpiece, TV or radio ad or talking points set be put through the three-part test of meaningful relationships, meaningful work and meaningful future. If it passes all three, it is likely a winner, even if it might mean some painful sacrifices. Many people will consider hard sacrifice, when the results are meaningful.