I'll be the one to bring up Jordan Peterson, I guess. To attempt to synthesize his views:
1. Even if you start from a position of complete nihilism, you can recognize that pain (both physical and psychological) is real and that you don't like it.
2. You can observe that people who perceive their life as meaningful are more likely to be capable of persevering in the face of extreme pain and suffering. So in a sense meaning is "more real" (stronger) than pain. (I don't get much out of the "more real" aspect, but I think it's part of Peterson's attempt to find harmony between rationality and religion.)
3. Even if/though meaning is completely subjective, you can derive meaning from taking steps toward a goal, specifically a positive vision for your own life that you've imagined in great detail (and ideally written down), including how you want to affect the people around you and the wider community. Having a vision of the life you want to avoid (Hell) is good, too.
4. Your goal (life vision) will change as you move toward it, but that's a good thing because it means you're learning and expanding your horizon.
Peterson and some colleagues created a kind of self-help course based on this sort of thing called Self Authoring and he often cites the positive outcomes it had when they researched it using college students (higher grades and lower dropout rates).
I think he would say that the societal malaise you're talking about is essentially Nietzsche's death of God and that you can draw a line from that loss of a foundation to the horrors of the 20th century (Peterson would probably just say "the gulags"; he sees more of a danger from "radical leftism" in contemporary society than fascism). The above could perhaps be described as his alternative to attempting to address the lack of a social firmament through some totalistic ideology, which has in the past led to pathological totalitarian states like Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR.
Are you being downvoted only because you mentioned Peterson? What you are writing here, and attributing to Peterson, was first described in depth by Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning[0]. In that book he describes how prisoners in Nazi concentration camps who didn't find meaning to their suffering would quickly die by illness or suicide while those that ascribed meaning to their suffering (such as staying alive to take care of someone or to reunite with their wives in another camp) would survive. He synthesized these lessons into Logotherapy. I highly recommend that book.
It's quite possible that one of the times I listened to Peterson talking about this subject he cited Viktor Frankl but I didn't recognize the name. I looked around and Peterson evidently incorporated Frankl into his course on personality at the University of Toronto (I don't usually watch these lectures because I'm somewhat allergic to college):
It's really too bad the alt-right has adopted him. I'm not sure the affinity is mutual but it's tarred everything he's said with a toxic association with fascism.
Asking why the fascists like Peterson yields a great deal of insight into fascism.
Among other things fascism represents a fanatical reaction to post-modernity's undermining of foundations. The fascist sees the same problems that Peterson is talking about (hence the affinity) but the fascist's reaction is less intellectual and more emotionally driven. Fascism just says "I will myself to have this meaning, and to defend that meaning I will assert that anyone not holding it is wrong." The fascist actually accepts the premise of nihilism but then rebels against it by substituting "violence" (verbal or physical) for objectivity.
In other words instead of "it is true because God said so" or "it is true because facts demonstrate it" you get "it is true because if you disagree I will hit you."
Other types of totalitarianism are similar, though I think fascism may be alone in the degree to which it is conscious of this. Others such as theocracy and totalitarian forms of leftism seem unaware of their nature as violent cults of will against nihilism but they behave similarly.
1. Even if you start from a position of complete nihilism, you can recognize that pain (both physical and psychological) is real and that you don't like it.
2. You can observe that people who perceive their life as meaningful are more likely to be capable of persevering in the face of extreme pain and suffering. So in a sense meaning is "more real" (stronger) than pain. (I don't get much out of the "more real" aspect, but I think it's part of Peterson's attempt to find harmony between rationality and religion.)
3. Even if/though meaning is completely subjective, you can derive meaning from taking steps toward a goal, specifically a positive vision for your own life that you've imagined in great detail (and ideally written down), including how you want to affect the people around you and the wider community. Having a vision of the life you want to avoid (Hell) is good, too.
4. Your goal (life vision) will change as you move toward it, but that's a good thing because it means you're learning and expanding your horizon.
Peterson and some colleagues created a kind of self-help course based on this sort of thing called Self Authoring and he often cites the positive outcomes it had when they researched it using college students (higher grades and lower dropout rates).
I think he would say that the societal malaise you're talking about is essentially Nietzsche's death of God and that you can draw a line from that loss of a foundation to the horrors of the 20th century (Peterson would probably just say "the gulags"; he sees more of a danger from "radical leftism" in contemporary society than fascism). The above could perhaps be described as his alternative to attempting to address the lack of a social firmament through some totalistic ideology, which has in the past led to pathological totalitarian states like Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR.