Growing up myself in a communist regime, I am curious about how much of the contribution of the clubs to "meaning and purpose" was their intended function, and how much was a subversion of it.
Some context for those who didn't have this experience -- imagine living in a country where, as a first approximation, all poweful people are paranoid, and everyone else is depressed. So there are many rules to make sure that no one is doing anything that could potentially be a threat to the people in power, but also most people only do a half-assed job in making sure the rules are followed. From the paranoid point of view, every activity is suspicious, unless planned and controlled by state. But most of the time, the control was super lazy; the supervisors usually didn't have faith, they merely wanted to stay out of trouble.
To imagine how it was, if you would try to make a LW meetup in a communist country, most people would discourage you, saying that it's either illegal, or you can get into big trouble even if it is technically legal. (It was perfectly normal for the regime to make something officially legal, but then punish everyone who participated.) On the other hand, you could subvert the system by saying that you want to invite a group of friends to discuss e.g. how Soviet Union is the best country of all... and after getting the official permission, you would in fact organize a LW meetup, and if everyone would keep their mouth shut, no one would care at all. (Actually, some bureaucrat would be happy that you helped them to fulfill some quota on bullshit activities; and even if the bureacrat would have a suspicion, they would probably let it be because they wouldn't deeply care. Worst case, they would require you to send them notes from the meetup, and you would make up some stuff.) The government would provide you a place to meet, and possibly even a little money for your activities.
For example, I was a member of a mathematical club, which officially was a part of the "pioneer movement", which officially was a youth organization preparing future Communist party members... but in reality, we mostly did math. And when we had debates that provided us some "meaning and purpose", they were often the kind that could get us (and especially our club leader) into big trouble if someone would find out. So, it was kinda supported by the regime, but only because we subverted the original purpose.
I hear you about the subversion! The case study I described - the student opera - had a lot of subversive elements in it. I describe them in more depth in this paper.
However, the subversion is orthogonal to the sense of meaning and purpose. The science on meaning and purpose shows that self-reflection, community and social bonds, and serving others are what contribute to meaning and purpose. Other activities might as well, but so far these three are the ones supported by the science. So whether it was a meeting of people who did not care much for official norms, as was the case in the mathematical club you were in, or "true believers" who studied Lenin's works, of which there were a number as well as I discuss in this paper, the communal nature of the activities would contribute to a sense of meaning and purpose. I imagine that at the math club, there would be tutoring of others, and since that is a way of serving others, it may contribute better to a sense of meaning and purpose than the study of Lenin's works, as it includes two of the three science-based aspects of gaining meaning and purpose.
Seems to me that what provides the "meaning and purpose" is group activities with voluntary participation and mutual interaction. (For example, having hundred people in a cinema doesn't provide meaning, despite being a voluntary group activity, but having a dozen of them meet afterwards and discuss the movie does.)
The practical question is: who will organize these activities? Because there are costs (paying for the place, time and energy spent organizing), and the success is far from guaranteed.
If someone organizes group activities with a profit motive, they will probably want people to spend as much money as possible, which is often better achieved by preventing mutual interaction, so that instead of talking, people keep buying stuff. (For example many pubs have loud music precisely to make people talk less and drink more.) Online social networks are an exception, because the time spent talking translates directly into time spent browsing the website with displayed advertisements; but they screw up the "meaning and purpose" by trying to make people waste too much time there.
So it's mostly non-profit organizations, and of course churches. If you make both illegal, the state can provide an alternative platform.
I imagine that in a non-religious and non-communist setting, it would be the non-profit organizations providing platforms for group activities. But it would depend on the local culture whether enough people would volunteer to organize that. The difference between "a club on every street" and "most people complaining about lack of clubs".
Seems to me that what provides the "meaning and purpose" is group activities with voluntary participation and mutual interaction.
Yup, this is one of three sources of meaning and purpose. Self-reflection and serving others are two other sources.
I imagine that in a non-religious and non-communist setting, it would be the non-profit organizations providing platforms for group activities.
That's true in many cases. In other cases, where there are powerful social democratic governments, research shows that governments provide such venues.
So it depends on how each each society is organized. The key is that every society that survives and thrives does so because it provides its members with means of experiencing meaning and purpose. The structure is less important than the three components that research shows go into meaning and purpose.
Firstly, I was really curious to know the content of this article because of the title until I read through this post, I like the way the writer expresses his idea on self-reflection on a sense of meaning and purpose, community bonds, and serving others. These combined do have a vital role in getting a purposeful life and by being rational following these I can achieve a lot of things hopefully..
There is a rather large pachyderm in the room: the communist ideology which provided non-religious meaning and purpose for a great number of people.
And if you want to talk about how rejection of this particular meaning and purpose pushed people into looking for alternatives at the small-community level, well, there are more interesting examples than student operas.
The science on meaning and purpose, which I cited in the article, talks about how people get meaning and purpose from three things overall: self-reflection on a sense of meaning and purpose, community bonds, and serving others.
Now, it doesn't mean that other things don't contribute to meaning and purpose, such as ideology, it's that the science has not yet confirmed or denied them.
So I made sure to keep my claims narrow and based on the science, otherwise it wouldn't be published in a peer-reviewed psychology journal. Psychology journal peer reviewers don't accept speculation based on things that are not based on the science: this is not a literature criticism journal, after all :-)
My peer-reviewed article in a psychology journal on the topic of meaning and purpose in a non-religious setting is now accessible without a paywall for a limited time, so get it while it's free if you're interested. I'd be interested in hearing your feedback on it. For those curious, the article is not directly related to my Intentional Insights project, but is a part of my aspiration to raise the sanity waterline regarding religion, the focus of Eliezer's original piece on the sanity waterline.