For much of history, the grand narrative of civilization, such as it is, has been viewed in terms of capital-P Purpose. Life on earth supposedly has a Purpose. Until modernity, that Purpose was generally understood in religious terms, which meant it was understood in incomplete-by-design ways, with the most important bits of the Grand Design driving the universe to strive towards that Purpose being hidden from view beyond the veil of death. We could only guess at it through mythologies of afterlives, karmic cycling, Judgment Days, and so on. Your part of the Divine Design was to serve the Purpose by living out a small-p purpose driven life, with the two being connected by a shared positive-valence quality called Good/good. You served the Greater Good of the Grand Design by striving towards your small-p purposes doing small-g good, which fed the larger Purpose. Doing so generated Meaning and meaning.
This is all conveniently unfalsifiable, self-serving, and self-soothing. Which is one reason that when humanity discovered Science! it took care to retain that unfalsifiability in new Purpose narratives that rejoiced under a new label: Progress.
I find this whole scheme rather an insult to the intelligence. Is there a better way to understand whatever larger-scale coherence civilization has, and how it aligns with any small-scale coherence we may experience in our lives and actions? I think there is, and the key to it is the word function.
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