06 - The big question

To know is to know you know nothing. That is the true meaning of knowledge.

- Socrates

What is the meaning of life? Hmmm? Anyone? I’m pretty sure it’s not forty two. But really when it comes down to it, it might as well be. Does meaning, a human intellectual construct, having any applicability to something like life itself - which is far from a human construct? We tend to imagine a monolithic meaning descending from on high when we ask that question. But it is a nonsensical notion. The meaning of life is necessarily a totally pointless question? What is the meaning of life to living things? The meaning of life is not knowable by living things since they are the thing itself. To know it they would need context – and to know context they would need to know what not-life is. And life cannot know not-life. We can engage with imaginative engagements with what not-life is. We can be intimately familiar with its knowable properties. But while we are expressions of life itself, our imaginative games remain just that. Then, what is the meaning of life to things that are not alive? An even more pointless question since meaning is a thing knowable only to some living things. Meaning is an intellectual construct for historically aware creatures that have the capacity for imaginative interpretation. It is doubtful that rock or helium or tin or bone, possess this property.

The correct framing and phrasing of a question might often be more important than any answer that can be arrived at, because without effective framing, the answer cannot be meaningfully interpreted, since the framing sets the terms of the interaction between the questioner and the information. “What is the meaning of life”, is a trope and an easy point of reference for meaningless noodling. Asking “what is the meaning of meaning?”, would serve to get you a lot closer to some kind of correct framing. Or more properly, what do we mean when we use the word meaning?

Meaning is not some simple emergent property naturally arising out of the interaction between consciousness and event. Meaning depends entirely on a number of factors to have any authenticity, relevance and utility. We can land on some glib answer to a partly posed question and call that meaning if we like but it has no value if it does not add to our understanding in some way. So how can some usable and illuminating meaning be reliably arrived at? It requires three things – Namely: Context, content and impact. With these three tools, skilfully applied, you can arrive at some degree of useful meaning depending of course on the quality of inputs. But even with weak inputs, this triangulation permits some degree of systemic application that can allow us to arrive at a powerful best guess situation which can serve as an adequate place marker until we can improve the situation.

By context I mean the circumstances out of which the subject arose. For example, was the inception point of the event human? Was purpose involved in the creation of the subject? What was the purpose? What cultural circumstances framed its arising? The quality and depth of the contextual information serves to give a sense of understanding about the circumstances that gave birth to the event. But context is also crucial to understanding impact. Since the event might fundamentally change the landscape for the observer. Framing the context for inception, the content itself and the impact are all necessary to illumination.

By content, I mean the event itself, the subject out of which we are attempting to extrapolate meaning. Ideally the content aspect should transcend mere appearance where any such transcendence is possible or meaningful. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was not just a confluence of bullet and target. But the quality of our relationship to the content depends on our proximity to it. Too close and we have no context for it. To distant and the quality of the content itself can become questionable.

The impact is the consequence of the event. The quality of this has a profound impact on the meaning that can be derived out of the subject since the meaning derived depends on the agent of interpretation. If I am unaware of a meteor destroying a house in Vladivostok, owing to my residing in Munster, then its impact on me is greatly decreased. Its meaning is negligible until something makes me aware of it. If a close relative of mine was living on the same street as the house that was destroyed, for example. When she is on the line relaying the drama of the event, then its meaning is heightened to me. If I was busy making a cup of tea for myself in that house in Vladivostok, then the event becomes even more meaningful. So impact depends on who is asking the question and why they are asking the question. The quality of the impact further depends on what is at stake for the asker.

Time is also a factor in comprehending impact. And time would be a factor in interpretive context. One hundred years later, the content is nothing more than dry facts – which may serve the extrapolation of meaning better than immediate proximity. If I am Mrs Ferdinand sitting in that carriage in Sarajevo, then the quality of the content might well be quite high, but the quality of the meaning I can extrapolate from it might well be fatally compromised, since my subjectivity would tend to strip all context from the equation. The impact would be too immediate, personal and powerful for any serviceable utility.

These three elements are fundamental to meaning and the more they interact with each other in the creation and interpretation of meaning, again depending on the skill of the interpreter, the more powerful the meaning that can be extrapolated. They intertwine with each other and are also contained within each other. The context has its own context, content and impact within it – and so forth. The depth of the rabbit hole depends entirely on the complexity of the subject at hand and the profundity of the meaning required.

However, as with all such tools, the important caveat is to avoid mistaking our constructions and implements for the events themselves. We represent them so that we may derive meaning from them or at least move to a closer approximation of it. We divide so that we may understand them in a certain way. It is also important to understand that this division is not reality, because this understanding also impacts on the meaning we can derive from our activities. To forget that we are merely representing forces internally so that we can internally align our understanding, is to fundamentally undermine our capacity to understand things accurately – which exists not just in relationship to us or our schema but independently and inextricably a part of the whole in which we participate. This holistic understanding necessarily participates in the evolution of meaning and our relationship to it.