This seems like an excessively personal and aggressive way of making a point that almost everyone would agree with: On one hand, many people ascribe "meaning" t

This seems like an excessively personal and aggressive way of making a point that almost everyone would agree with: On one hand, many people ascribe "meaning" to too many things. In that sense, a limited form of nihilism is appropriate. But, on the other hand, that doesn't entail that it is appropriate to purge any commitment to meaning from every aspect of life, under any of the many diverse meanings of "meaning." (Ha.) People who go too far in either direction tend to be annoying. You should for example, derive "meaning" from your relationships with family and friends, accept that your actions have "meaning" insofar as they express values, etc. Meanwhile, it says almost nothing about what strikes me as the real problem: for those who share the authors' (dubious) concern with finding meaning in exactly the right things and nothing else, how do we choose? Why is it appropriate to reject (e.g.) patriotism and religion while honoring the meanings we find in friendships? Maybe we shouldn't work too hard to invent meaning, or to insist that others find it in the same places we do, but why not accept and honor meaning wherever in life we find it? Another conspicuous omission: any attempt to grapple with the different meanings of "meaning" across which the author seems to be freely equivocating here. Maybe he gets into these more interest topics in other chapters, but the style and tone of this one has turned me off enough that I'm not too interested in looking.