The Origin of Meaning and Purpose

As far as I can tell, the same way we woke up from verbal oblivion as children into an ongoing story, we also did so as a species. We drape our abstract symbols in the form of words and stories over an already ongoing story expressed through nature. Nature is meaningful communication. As natural objects, we are also expressions of this meaning and we also express meaning. In other words; we are made in the image of nature.

The common thread running through all coherent structures in nature is built on the necessary operating principle; behaviors must effectively nourish and defend the integrity of the structure in the context of a variable environment. In other words; there is a necessity of purposeful behaviors that must serve to proportionally nourish and defend coherence for a coherent object to exist in nature. This theme is what defines our nature by necessity. We are built on a “nourish and defend in the context of the environment” theme, otherwise, we would not exist. This is true of all objects in nature whether active or passive.

We had to negotiate to remain coherent in the context of a variable environment which contained intermittent nourishment and various antagonists. This is our history and the story of every coherent entity in nature. This “nourishing and defending” behavioral trait is the essence on which we build our meaning architecture. It is what our verbal language is built on. We build low-resolution abstract maps that stand-in for what is expressed through nature the same way we use the arbitrary word “stone” as an abstract stand-in for a class of objects that could have any name. Various languages have different symbols, but our common object source – nature – is the same. This is where the transcendent theme of meaning infuses all linguistic forms. Even though we use different superficial symbols, we have a common source from which we build our abstract meaning architecture.

Loosely speaking, we translate what is communicated through the object “nature” into subject form. We see a mapping process expressed in the form of the various words, stories, and rituals we act out that become cyclic parts of our individual and cultural identity. Like the spherical cells that build our organs, our ideas form the abstract monuments to this necessary nourish and defend theme that is communicated through nature. Verbal language is the way we frame nature in a symbolic map form. Our maps of meaning represent the territory we must negotiate to nourish and defend ourselves over time. This map – this story representing nature – was formed on the object “nature”. The “story” was already encoded as an ongoing story long before we began decoding it into verbal abstract maps.

Nature communicates meaning (subjects) by way of objects in relationship with each other. We are in a discovery process of this undercurrent of meaning expressed through nature, even if we are unaware of it because we’re lost in our maps – lost in our own little words. We are a reflected image of the inherent value propositions expressed by nature – the proposition of nourish and defend coherency that exists by necessity and defines every coherent collection of relationships – This proposition is; relationships that exist over time are those that contribute some nourishment and-or defensive value to serve the coherency of the whole object in the context of the larger variable environment. Atoms, planets, stars, and galaxies are expressions of this nourish and-or defend necessity, as are organisms.

One of the expressions of this necessary devotion to coherency we see in ourselves is that we must now cultivate the garden that feeds us, otherwise, we starve. We have long since passed nature’s uncultivated carrying capacity. Uncultivated, it cannot support our current population levels. As a result, we must increasingly become active participants in cultivating this the mutualistic relationships that sustain us. Our values and behaviors must support “fruitful” activities. The necessity of behavior and organizational structure varies by context but must follow this common root theme. “Nourish and defend coherency”. This is the grammar on which all language is built.

Our human sociality and various other biological drives, along with language and other forms of memorizing the map of the territory we must negotiate all exist in service of coherence. Breathing, hunger, digestion, our innate reactions to things and all other biologically expressed drives are aligned around this central theme. What we call meaning is an intuitive capacity to capture the ongoing story already expressed by nature in the form of an abstract map. We then nourish and defend our map as part of the same natural inclination to nourish and defend.

The things we are attracted to and repulsed by, and all behavioral expressions we act out are either directly or indirectly are variations on this nourish and defend theme – we are players in the story as long as we effectively attend to this nourish and defend theme in the context of the environment. If we lose our way – if we lose our capacity to nourish and defend coherency in the context of the environment, we are swallowed by something else that does it better. Nature is on a relentless path toward greater coherency. Whether our biological form is transitory or whether it will continue to develop over time as part of the ongoing story depends on whether we are organized around the necessity to proportionally nourish and defend our coherency in the context of the variables of the environment.

Nature’s range of propositions about how to contend with the realities of remaining coherent exists on a spectrum between bloody and bloodier. It is not a proposition between perfect and imperfect. All acts in service of coherence have a sacrificial component to them. We must sacrifice ourselves to the next generation as the next generation must sacrifice itself to the community and so on.

As individuals, finding some nourishing and or protective value to contribute to the larger relationship economy that we live in and depend on is what our biological drives are all about at their core. To align ourselves with this is a recipe for a meaningful life. If we do not, we will live dissatisfied no matter how many trinkets we acquire. This is why we have never met anyone who is both malignantly selfish and satisfied. We’re not wired that way for a reason. It destroys the relationship economy we depend on.

We are expressions of biological and social systems oriented around nourishment and defense, but we also see this expressed in many various forms throughout nature, including microorganisms, which contend with the same propositions on a micro-scale that we do on a macro scale. It is a nested architecture built on a common theme with an infinite variety of possible variations – just like every language is a finite set of symbols that can form an infinite variety of meanings – that can call order from chaos. We appear to be expressions of this common theme.

I could be missing something(s)

To Save Others, Bacteria Can Self-Destruct When Infected by a Virus

https://www.labroots.com/trending/cell-and-molecular-biology/16561/save-others-bacteria-self-destruct-infected-virus

Lost in our own Little Words

As a species we differ widely in our the use of abstract tools in our framing of reality. There are many different narratives, but as far as I can tell, the common property is an attempt to pull the message (the subject) from reality (the object). The localized “subjects” we derive from objective reality varies considerably from culture to culture and person to person, but the “objective frame” we all derive that variable abstract framing from does has global properties that apply to all of us. These common ground messages are what the variation comes from, the same way all written words, that also can vary infinitely, come from a narrow set of symbols.

To illustrate this foundational communication: Reality demands a certain level of commitment on our part to specific activities in order to sustain us as coherent entities. Things like; stay away from cliffs unless we want to suffer the gravity of the situation, breathe appropriately to the situation – make sure to produce and distribute a sufficient amount of food to stay nourished as an individual or community and or gather enough to stay nourished – care for the young and teach them to identify and cultivate the nourishing opportunities as well as navigate and or contend with the hazards reality presents. Do these and many more things, or die out. In other words; we are governed by a common reality that requires we either negotiate the context of nourishing and antagonistic elements it presents to remain coherent, or suffer the consequence. From another point of view it could be said; we must pay homage to reality if we want to derive a satisfying experience from it. Also, our nature is reflective of the broader nature that both generates and sustains our being as well as governs it. Our state of being is composed of interdependent relationship systems that both serve, and require service to and from each other, and we are satisfied when we operate in service to establishing and maintaining equilibrium with this complex set of hungers for specific relationships on many levels.

We are also a voice in the choir so to speak. We can have a measure of influence in shaping what we experience as being. The more clearly we can tell the difference between opportunity and danger, the difference between constructive and destructive, and the more faithfully we are disciplined to contend with that mixed environment, the stronger our voice in this common choir. Nature clearly states that if we sacrifice appropriately, and cultivate sufficiently while contending effectively with antagonists, we can produce fruitful results that pay far more dividends when compared to the sacrifices they cost to cultivate.

Reality conveys that we can count the seeds in an apple, but counting the apples in a seed is not as clear or easy when those seeds are cultivated properly. With this in mind, I do think there are abstract realities within our shared field of vision that are closer to our common source – that common source being what is conveyed through objective reality. We can embrace these realities, and leverage the opportunities available to us, or we can reject or ignore them, but the result in that case is we twist in the capricious winds of circumstance without a rudder or sail.

To illustrate how we convert our perception of what is communicated through reality to words, often encapsulated in texts considered sacred, we can look at this passage in the Bible in Psalm 19:1-4, which says;

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. (NIV)

If we translate the common message communicated through reality into words more pragmatically: We live in an “almighty” reality that both created and conditionally nurtures us – that sets forth requirements (commandments) that must be met for us to minimally survive and or flourish depending on how obedient and committed we are to the proposed relationship between us and that greater power – a greater power that acts consistently and faithfully in context – from which we are born and to which we are recalled. These grander narratives we all share are commingled with the more localized aspects of stories from our environment are often caught in word form and recorded in texts as well. “don’t eat pigs in a desert because they compete for the same food you do.” or “Don’t kill the cows because of how much they give and because you will have nothing to plow the fields next year”. The grander narratives globally shared are mingled with the more localized aspects of stories, and we then see things like this woven into the fabric of stories in the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, Quran and the Tao Te Ching and so on. These various abstract nets in which we capture our perception of reality captured what we need (or once needed) to know in order to understand and navigate reality. We put reality in a story matrix, along with many other things of greater or lessor use, as a translation into words of the guide already being communicated through the structure of reality. The same way DNA encodes the information to reconstruct the proteins we need to continually nourish our cells and organs, sacred stories, which eventually became scriptures, act as cultural DNA.

As far as I can tell, there is variation in the way we tell the story, but there is also a common theme on which all stories are based. There is our local abstract lens through which we frame reality, but there is also a common theme spoken through that reality as well. It is our relationship with reality that defines our experience of life. This common womb we share is our common ground as far as I can tell.

My guess is the morals thing we obsess over is the supposition that these things are necessary navigation aids that assisted us in remaining coherent at least at some point in time. They are like the froth on the surface of a deeper need to connect abstractly with the concrete, which is paradoxically fluid.

I could be missing something(s)