Archives for posts with tag: meaning

Meaning

August 24, 2025 //
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Do your own thinking!

How many times did you came across this message? ‘Do your own thinking!’. ‘Do your own research!’. ‘Don’t believe everything you are told!’

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? What’s wrong in googling up a subject before making up your mind? What’s wrong in storming your brain before calling something one way or another?

Let’s examine something else first.
There are ways in which we relate to ‘reality’. ‘Conservatively’ or ‘open-mindedly’.
And no, this has very little to do with our intelligence or with our level of education.

It depends on how important the subject at hand is to our well being and whether we have already made up our mind about it!

How open minded are you when it comes to spending the last money you have in your pocket? With no prospect of getting any in the near future?
How open minded do you remain after you have already declared, publicly, one way or another?

Most of those lavishly spraying their audience with ‘use your own heads’ – in my FB feed – also told their followers to avoid vaccines, at all cost. The one against Covid in particular – ‘it will eventually kill you’, but also those against measles. ‘It might cause autism’.

How this thing works?

Survival bias.
We not only want to survive, physically, but also to ‘feel good’. To preserve the good opinion we have constructed about ourselves.

This being the reason for which those of us who struggle to find their next meal will not take time to consider any philosophical subject. Will gladly accept the more ‘convincingly’ stated opinion and get back to the more important task of ‘foraging’.
And this being the reason for which those of us already entertaining a strong opinion about a subject see the world ‘differently’. Effectively associate different meaning to the same words!

“Do your own thinking” actually means different things to different people.
For those who have already made up their minds it means “feel free to stick to your own opinion”.
While for those who, for whatever reason, are open-minded about the subject at hand it means “please hear me out”.

Take your pick.

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Categories awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust

My story

January 21, 2025 //
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We use words to build narratives.
Which, supposedly, help us in our quest for meaning.
Yet everything does nothing more than alleviate our fear.

At some point in my life, some 6 years after Ceausescu had been chased from his presidential palace, I discovered the Stock Exchange. I had read about it, was under the impression that I knew how it worked but never had the opportunity to trade on in. Living in a communist country prevents you from trading on the free market, you know.
To cut a long story short, I had a lot of beginner’s luck.
And I wanted more. So I started to learn about it. Fundamental analysis, technical analysis, accounting… investor’s psychology, decision making theory…

But it wasn’t enough.
So I went back to school. Sociology this time.
I was no longer trying to beat the market, I only wanted to understand what was going on.
Not only in the market but in our minds. By that time, I had already learned that investors were – and still are – torn apart by greed and fear.

So, what’s going on?
What are we doing here?

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Categories 1989, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Step by step

January 15, 2025 //
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“I see this as expression of a mother’s love for her child
and not a statement that women are for breeding only.“

Of course, you are completely correct,
but today people are amped up to find
something offensive everywhere.
Ridiculous.

In fact, this is way more than a mere expression of love.

There’s no other meaning of life but life itself.
Whatever meanings each of us might find do nothing but contribute to ‘life’.

And what else is life but a perpetual tomorrow?

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

The Long and the Short of ‘IT’

August 25, 2024 //
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‘Universe’ has no meaning. Other than what we assign to be its meaning…

‘Universe’ is a word we use to encompass everything around us. Whether we know of it or not. Whether we understand (of) it or not.

From ‘where’/’when’ we are in/attempt to perceive this huge environment, things look like ‘this’.
Depending of the wavelength of the light we use to ‘reinterpret’ the picture…
Nota bene, the colours were assigned by a computer app, starting from a series of ‘black&white’ images shot using filters which select short intervals of light-wavelength.

By sheer change, life appeared on Earth. And on who knows, if ever, how many other planets.
Evolution, an impersonal process, playing the odds in the current setting, had engendered the set of circumstances into which we happened to ‘burst’ into existence.

We, for better or for worse, have shaped the planet into what it has become.

Regardless of what each of us believes, religiously speaking, it doesn’t actually matter whether a god did or didn’t do anything. Since each and every religion currently biasing human thinking on Earth speaks about individual responsibility – hence freedom, for you can’t have individual responsibility without freedom – it actually doesn’t matter whether any of the teachings we refer speak about have been induced by an outside agent or have been produced ‘in house’.
Since each of us is individually responsible for our thoughts/actions – hence ‘free’ – then the meaning we assign to the object of our judgement, the ‘Universe’, belongs to us. To each and to all of us.

‘God save us!’

But since we’re ‘free’, we must save ourselves.

And since nobody can be free on their own – freedom has been defined by ‘us’ and put in practice collectively – saving ourselves will be a collective effort.
Or else.

Nota bene!
We are a ‘collection’/community of individual human beings.
We either ‘save’ ourselves maintaining what makes us human – our distinct individual individualities – or we become a hive. Of something else but ‘human’.
Of what we currently understand as being ‘human’…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, Trust

Making sense

November 23, 2023 //
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The Universe has no other meaning
than that we attach to it.

How do we find that meaning? How do we make sense of things?

“The subjective and the objective,” writes the philosopher, (Schoppenhauer) “constitute no continuum, that which is immediately known is limited by the skin, or rather by the external end of the nerves which lead out from the cerebral system. Within lies a world of which we have no other knowledge than through pictures in our head.” Stephen S. Colvin, 1902

According to Schoppenhauer’s take on the matter, we make sense of the world by carefully (?) ruminating the “pictures in our head”. The information which has already reached our ‘inner forum’.
Which means that we should be very careful when letting something ‘in’!
When reading a text, for example…

‘You should follow science, not scientists. Because scientists can be sold.’

Logically speaking, the phrase makes a lot of sense. Right?

Practically… not so much.

Do we learn everything about medicine before taking the pill prescribed by the doctor? Simply because the doctor might have been sold to the big pharma?
Do we learn everything about microwaves before using a microwave oven? Simply because the physicist who had invented the thing might have been sold to the makers of household appliances?
Do we stop using planes because they are used to spray our skies?

Literary speaking, what do you make of “scientists can be sold to the highest bidder”?!?
Sold by whom? How can anybody sell a scientist?
I might understand the notion of a scientist being bought… of a scientist selling his soul, his scientific soul, to the highest bidder… but selling one… Is there a market for scientists?

only because it happens to resonate with something you are already inclined to believe.

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, Frames of mind, In English, manipulation, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology

Stages

October 31, 2023 //
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“Denn selbst muss der Freie sich schaffen”
Hence the free must define their own nature
Richard Wagner, Die Walkuere

In my previous post, I related to ‘life’ as a living creature. I described life from the inside. The perception of a living organism.
But what if ‘life’, as a phenomenon, is how meaning is created by the environment where the process takes place?

For an outside observer, there are three stages.
Pre-biotic, self-driven and meaning-driven life.

Life, as we know it, cannot exist on the surface of the Sun. Or on the surface of any other star.
But neither can life exist without the processes taking place inside the stars. Without the energy being radiated by the stars and without the atoms being ‘cooked’ inside them and spewed out during the last stages of their ‘lives’.

Having said that, the rest is simple.
Where ever conditions are ‘right’, atoms get together in such a manner that ‘structures’ become ‘alive’. Those structures become organisms and display the characteristics we’ve come to associate with life.
In this stage, the only ‘force’ which drives the process is what we call ‘evolution’. Species cease to exist as they are no longer able to weather changes in their environment and new species arise along with the advent of new opportunities.
And, at this stage, a second ‘disturbing agent’ starts to influence the environment.
Living organisms, in order to live, need to ingest portions of where they live. To excrete the by-products of their metabolism. And they leave behind ’empty carcasses’ at the moment of their death.
For example, the oxygen we breathe in is the by product offered to us by the plants which live at our side.
And the fertile soil those plants ‘eat’ in order to provide us – the oxygen breathing organisms – with what we need to survive, is the consequence of previously living creatures.

In the third stage, that where ‘meaning’ becomes a force to be reckoned with, the changes perpetrated to the environment cease to remain ‘natural’. As they used to be during the second, self-driven, stage.
In the third stage, an increasing number of changes to the environment are driven by purpose. Are purposefully staged by agents acting according to the meaning they have found.

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

Means to an end

February 13, 2023 //
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‘After a trip abroad, the Thinker from Cernavoda and the Sitting Woman will be available for the locals.’

What makes us think that the Thinker is thinking while the Woman is just sitting?!?

Is there any meaning in this?

Newton had only described gravity, he didn’t invent anything. Noticed it – like many others before him, thought about it – more (better?) than all those before him, and came up with a deeper meaning for the whole ‘falling thing’.
Nobody cared to contradict him. Because everything, once exposed, was so obvious!

I’ll make a break here and wonder… what does the Flat Earth Society think about gravity?

Had your laugh?
OK, let’s move on.

Darwin had also noticed things. Thought about them. Really hard. And put together a theory.
Which continues to be considered a theory because not everybody is yet convinced…
OK, things are a little harder to swallow. Specially the part with us being relatives, no matter how distanced, with Judy…

Furthermore, the evolution thing is not as obvious as the gravity thing… most of us would have to take Darwin’s word for it… something we don’t do that easily, specially if/when we dislike – for what ever reason, the outcome.

Then why do we ‘swallow’ – line, hook and sinker, however implicitly, the names affixed on those two prehistoric figurines?!?
Because they are obvious?
Just as obvious as gravity?

The guy must be thinking and it’s obvious that the woman is just sitting?!?

Or is it that we believe what we want to believe?
We attribute meaning according to our own standards. Then stick to our opinion. Almost no matter what…

How about He nursing a hangover and She guarding him against predators?

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Psychology, skin in the game, Trust

Meaningless

April 11, 2020 //
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“Yes you can! No people to feel/live/see it, no spring.”

Remember Protagoras? “Man is the measure of all things”?

Without man, there’s no meaning?

Yes, our world becomes meaningless.
The moment we no longer care enough about it.
The moment we stop paying attention.

The other day I had a riveting conversation with my son.
With my 21 years old son.

I asked him to comment on my previous post.
The one about too many people allowing sentiment to cloud their judgement.
The one about even reputable news agencies using click-bait titles to entice readers. Hence reinforcing the habit of sentiment being allowed to cloud reason.

‘Life was never better for so many of us’, explained my son. ‘Since WWII most of us had enjoyed peace. Since the Spanish Flu, we hadn’t experienced a pandemic. Since Salk, we’ve led ourselves to believe we were safe from disease. Since the fall of communism, even the ideological divides have paled down. And now we have enough technology to feed the entire planet, comfortably. The point being that we have no idea how to deal in this situation. What to do. How to behave.
Simply because we have no relevant prior experience.
Until recently, historically speaking, we have successfully dealt with wars, famines and pestilence.
But it’s the first time that we experience such abundance.
We need to adapt to the new reality.
To transform it into an opportunity. Into an opportunity to go forward.
We have to avoid, at all costs, the pitfall of allowing this abundance to bog us down.’

Heartening, isn’t it?
That a person so young can find such deep meaning.
If I may say such things about my own son…

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children

Purveyors of meaning.

March 8, 2020 //
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The only real difference between us and the rest of the living world is our ability to make informed decisions.

Since this is a rather vast subject, I shall divide it into chapters.

  1. From feeling to sentiment.

Something prompts us into action. Always. No matter whether we are aware of it or not, there is an underlying cause for each of our actions.
And when we speak about actions which imply our awareness, those causes penetrate our conscience as feelings.

We, more or less automatically, pull back our hands when they touch a hot stove. That is a reaction. Caused by a feeling.

Most of us – the able bodied, of course, would consider going into fire to save a loved one. Or a stranger. Even if pursuing that line of action might get us burned.
‘Going into fire’ – compared to ‘pulling back our hands’, implies making a decision. Which action – ‘making a decision’, is caused by a sentiment.

Sentiment being a feeling which has penetrated not only our conscience but our self-awareness as well.
We not only feel a sentiment, we relate to it. We’re not only aware of it, we elaborate on it.

Hence the difference between a reaction and a decision.
For as long as we allow ourselves to be driven by feelings, we only react to what’s going on around us.
If, and only when, we successfully transform feelings into sentiments we are able to actually decide. To control, to a degree, what’s happening in/to our lives.

To add some meaning to our, otherwise ‘mere’, existence.

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Categories awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, In English, Intent, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Psychology, skin in the game