What is meaning?

[Breakingthewall]

If you broaden your perspective to the total, causality or meaning ceases to be a universal structure: not because it doesn't exist, but because it cannot encompass the totality. The cause-effect relationship occurs within reality, but reality does not occur within it because reality is not caused. Causality is a form, a relational expression that unfolds infinitely, but it cannot contain total reality, since it has no form or limit.

When you place yourself in the perspective of absolute openness, you step outside of all specific relationships, all cause-effect lines. From there, every relationship is simply a relationship, without origin, without necessity, without direction, just inevitable. And what this view reveals is that its nature is not causality itself, but rather limitlessness: the openness that allows any relationship, without being subject to any other.

[UnbornTao]

@Breakingthewall  Openness needs to be based on something real - on accurate distinctions. You seem to believe that the principle means "everything goes." Form, perception, meaning, perspective - every relative thing - is limited. It exists as some "thing." For example, our perceptive faculties operate within a certain range of stimulus. Your body is limited, as is your self. What you are, on the other hand, is what you are. Our job is to contemplate what that is.

You also seem to think that limitation excludes potential - or is the opposite of it. But they're the same dynamic. 

If you can recognize something in the first place, it's precisely because it is a particular form. How could form exist without limit? The answer is that it can't. A thing has to be distinct from what it is not. It would be like a drawing without boundaries. The moment something is drawn, limitation arises with it; and it is precisely this boundary that allows for the existence of the drawing. 

Edited July 9 by UnbornTao

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

My point is not merely that we “assume” language and reason as tools. My point is that what you call the amoeba emerges as a diagram of desire within a historically contingent field of discourse. There is no pure substrate that precedes this production. If you are “not worried” about that, are you asserting that there is a realm of “natural meaning” that fully pre-exists all discursive production? If so, on what grounds?

And to be clear, I am not denying that your references to biology, physiology, or evolutionary environments can be pragmatically effective and scientifically generative. But you have to acknowledge that when you anchor your argument in those frameworks - when you invoke our “ancestral environment,” tribal societies, or a more “natural” baseline of meaning before modern technologies and pathologies - you are already producing a particular fantasy. It is a contingent narrative that establishes its own symbolic order in advance, deciding what counts as “healthy,” “unnatural,” or “dysfunctional” according to a set of preselected coordinates. It has no more inherent authority than any other story we might tell about human life; it simply offers one diagram of sense-making among others, with its own normative commitments, advantages, and blind spots.

Post-modernism is good for invoking pluralism and awareness of assumptions, not for disproving any particular perspective. So it's tangential to the discussion. It forces you to be equally critical of frameworks that invoke concepts like "natural" and those who don't. You haven't disproven that certain structures have a certain naturalness to them, only pointed at the assumptions underlying them. 

But postmodernism also has a chicken and the egg problem. Does not critiquing meaning rely on meaning?

Edited July 8 by Carl-Richard

[Breakingthewall]

18 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

@Breakingthewall  Openness needs to be based on reality, grounded in accurate distinctions. You seem to believe that the principle means "everything goes." Form, perception, meaning, perspective - every relative thing - is limited. It exists as some "thing." For example, our perceptive faculties operate within a certain range of stimulus. Your body is limited, as is your self. What you are, on the other hand, is what you are. Our job is contemplating what that is.

Among the many things you assume, the main one is that limitation excludes potential - or is the opposite of it. But they're the same dynamic. 

If you can recognize something in the first place, it's precisely because it is a particular form. How could form exist without limit? The answer is that it can't. A thing has to be distinct from what it is not. It would be like a drawing without boundaries. The moment something is drawn, limitation arises with it; and it is precisely this boundary that allows for the existence of the drawing. 

It's exhausting to talk to you because you seem to respond reactively without having read what is being said, but I'll repeat it once more. Within an unlimited framework, form is inevitable; form is relative movement. As form, you exist by virtue of infinite cause-and-effect relationships, or relative movements that limit you in all possible dimensions by cause-and-effect relationships that you could follow infinitely. But this entire compendium of infinite relative movements is unlimited.

This implies that everything that appears is limited in its form and unlimited in its ultimate nature. What you are is the absence of limits, taking a concrete form that operates through the perception of forms and of itself. Therefore, you can, at a given moment, understand that all the relationships that limit you are simply relative relationships. You can stop focusing on them and see through them to what you are in essence, which is limitlessness. This is not an abstract phrase; it is perceiving your true nature, what you are regardless of the form you take. "limitlessness" is not a concept, it is the absolute potential, the cause of life, the bottomless where absolute power is

[Guest Nilsi]

12 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Post-modernism is good for invoking pluralism and awareness of assumptions, not for disproving any particular perspective. So it's tangential to the discussion. It forces you to be equally critical of frameworks that invoke concepts like "natural" and those who don't.

Honestly, I’m pointing out that you are bullshitting, and you simply can’t accept it. You keep performing this elevated posture where you reduce any argument I make to a trivial talking point - “Oh yes, postmodern pluralism, language games, heard it all before, doesn’t concern me” - as if this were some tired cultural critique that has no bearing on your claims. But what I’m describing is not a generic skepticism. It’s a direct observation that the entire field of meaning you presuppose - your evolutionary baselines, your assumptions about naturalness, health, and dysfunction - is nothing but a contingent fantasy you are committed to without being able to justify it as necessary.

You can keep pretending that this is just some aesthetic preference for “pluralism” or “chaos,” but it isn’t. You are constructing a story about what is natural and meaningful with no ontological guarantee behind it, and yet you want to treat it as self-evident. That is the definition of bullshit: asserting authority without the capacity or willingness to ground it. So if you’re going to keep doing that, at least be honest enough to admit that you’re the one who is committed to an unexamined narrative, not me.

Edited July 8 by Nilsi

[Carl-Richard]

@Nilsi I didn't come here to give an ontological guarantee, only to describe meaning. So when you started talking about discipling yourself, I thought we were talking from within the framework, from within the assumptions, not critiquing all frameworks or assumptions. But sure, if you want to call all frameworks or assumptions "discipline", you can do that.

[Guest Nilsi]

20 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

@Nilsi I didn't come here to give an ontological guarantee, only to describe meaning. So when you started talking about discipling yourself, I thought we were talking from within the framework, from within the assumptions, not critiquing all frameworks or assumptions. But sure, if you want to call all frameworks or assumptions "discipline", you can do that.

The whole point is that the question “what is meaning?” is an open variable - a placeholder for something we don’t yet know. You’re the one who is filling that variable with a highly specific construct - biological coherence, energy, form, logos - while presenting it as if it were just the obvious, neutral baseline. I’m not the one distracting from the topic. I’m the one taking the question seriously.

If you want to assert that your model simply is meaning, you need to justify why this particular set of assumptions should be accepted. Otherwise, this entire discussion collapses into a kind of personal notebook exercise where everyone just writes down their favorite metaphors. And that is precisely why I’m questioning your frame: because you treat it as self-evident when it is anything but.

[Breakingthewall]

19 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

The whole point is that the question “what is meaning?” is an open variable

Tell me any meaning that cannot be reduced to a cause-effect relationship

[Guest Nilsi]

10 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Tell me any meaning that cannot be reduced to a cause-effect relationship

wdym?

[Sugarcoat]

The important question is: will the answer to this question truly enrich my life somehow?

Edited July 8 by Sugarcoat

[Breakingthewall]

14 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

wdym?

I mean that any meaning is ultimately a cause-effect relationship, and a cause-effect relationship is a relationship between two opposites or different "things" os states. Meanings are made up of countless overlapping cause-effect relationships. There is no meaning without relation same that there is no form without relation. 

It seems that meaning is something subjective that the mind assigns randomly, but it is not at all arbitrary but has a real basis on which the mind builds meaning in order to operate on a broader plane than pure instinct.

[Breakingthewall]

9 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

The important question is: will the answer to this question truly enrich my life somehow?

Yes, if you understand what meaning is, you can turn it off at will and place yourself in a broader perspective. If you don't understand it, you will think that you are operating in a let say mystic or infinite perspective when you are still in the meaning, but amplifying it to the "divine" dimension or whatever

Edited July 8 by Breakingthewall

[UnbornTao]

On 7/7/2025 at 6:32 PM, Kuba Powiertowski said:

Meaning vs Nature
„Meaning is something that is ascribed. 
Nature is an objective reality.”

That what IS vs what you want to see.

That what IS vs our subjective stories about it.

 

Sounds reasonable, albeit a bit simplistic. By this, I'm mainly referring to the comparison between what is versus what you want to see - calling this latter one meaning. "Subjective stories" might be more aligned with what meaning is, but it still doesn't quite capture it, in my view. A story sounds detached and fantastical, and we can easily recognize it as wishful thinking, while meaning is more primal, as if. Is meaning an interpretation? Does interpretation provide us with the meaning of something, or is meaning-making a separate activity built upon interpretation? What adds "charge" to an interpretation - what makes it good, useless, unworthy, worthwhile, significant? Are these good questions? We're moving in a good direction, though!

Edited July 9 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

The important question is: will the answer to this question truly enrich my life somehow?

The important (hey, meaning) question to you, you mean!

What meaning do we have to meaning?

It'd be a shame if we were meaningless in the eyes of meaning. How rude.

The outcome or "answer" would be an insight. So, you'd become conscious of what it is and this would probably change how you relate to it. The realization wouldn't detract from it or negate it either. It'd just be a recognition of what's true about meaning. 

[theleelajoker]

9 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

The important (hey, meaning) question to you, you mean!

What meaning do we have to meaning?

It'd be a shame if we were meaningless in the eyes of meaning. How rude.

The outcome or "answer" would be an insight. So, you'd become conscious of what it is and this would probably change how you relate to it. The realization wouldn't detract from it or negate it either. It'd just be a recognition of what's true about meaning. 

"Becoming conscious of what is = insight= change how you relate to it".

I like that. Did you create meaning by creating sth I like? 🧐

[Sugarcoat]

10 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

The important (hey, meaning) question to you, you mean!

What meaning do we have to meaning?

It'd be a shame if we were meaningless in the eyes of meaning. How rude.

The outcome or "answer" would be an insight. So, you'd become conscious of what it is and this would probably change how you relate to it. The realization wouldn't detract from it or negate it either. It'd just be a recognition of what's true about meaning. 

I was gonna edit my post and say how the thing I said kinda goes against this idea about pursuing truth for truths sake. But I’m a bit different there. I don’t really care much about truth, I just care about wellbeing! 

[PurpleTree]

25 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

I was gonna edit my post and say how the thing I said kinda goes against this idea about pursuing truth for truths sake. But I’m a bit different there. I don’t really care much about truth, I just care about wellbeing! 

Either way it’s hopeless.

[UnbornTao]

@Breakingthewall I understand you see it as me reacting, but that's not the case here. Don't confuse bluntness with reactivity. It seems you have your fair share of experience taking things personally, so to stay in that vein, I think I paid far more attention to what you wrote than you did while writing it. Did you read what I wrote?

Quote

The only way a perspective can come to exist is as a limitation. That's what a perspective is. 

Perception and form are also limited. They aren't everything that exists. 

Okay, no more extrapolation for me.

22 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

unlimited perspective is the perception of your unlimited nature from this concrete form. Without form, there is no perception; if there is perception, it's because there is form. Form perceives forms, but it can also perceive itself as its essential nature. This is what mystics talk about, but they usually do so in a confusing way, mixing unlimited perspective with limited perspective. Unlimited perspective is perceiving what you are, and what you are is limitlessness, which is absolute potential. If you locate yourself in the unlimited perspective, you are out of time and form, in part. That's , you are still a form that operates in time, breathing and that, but same time you open your perception to the unlimited, you understand what you are absolutely, despite the form, you totally forget the form for a while, as it doesn't exist, no time, no meaning, just unlimited. Then you recognize yourself as unlimited reality that is absolute potential, that's the step 1 in true spirituality 

This screams BS.

What do you take perspective and perception to be? And what about meaning?

4 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

Within an unlimited framework, form is inevitable; form is relative movement. As form, you exist by virtue of infinite cause-and-effect relationships, or relative movements that limit you in all possible dimensions by cause-and-effect relationships that you could follow infinitely. But this entire compendium of infinite relative movements is unlimited.

This implies that everything that appears is limited in its form and unlimited in its ultimate nature. What you are is the absence of limits, taking a concrete form that operates through the perception of forms and of itself. Therefore, you can, at a given moment, understand that all the relationships that limit you are simply relative relationships. You can stop focusing on them and see through them to what you are in essence, which is limitlessness. This is not an abstract phrase; it is perceiving your true nature, what you are regardless of the form you take. "limitlessness" is not a concept, it is the absolute potential, the cause of life, the bottomless where absolute power is

Again, what is an 'unlimited framework'? What exactly are you trying to convey with all that rhetoric?

Just admit you really don't know what you're talking about and engage in the questioning - the sky won't fall. Being a charlatan is not consistent with the spirit of this work. At the very least, try to be honest and clear - and actually open, for that matter. You say meaning is objective on the one hand, and on the other, you say it is given, as well as a result of infinite cause-and-effect relationships, whatever that means. Could it be that it isn't clear at all - hence the existence of this thread? Be open to this possibility.

Edited July 8 by UnbornTao

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, Nilsi said:

The whole point is that the question “what is meaning?” is an open variable - a placeholder for something we don’t yet know. You’re the one who is filling that variable with a highly specific construct - biological coherence, energy, form, logos - while presenting it as if it were just the obvious, neutral baseline. I’m not the one distracting from the topic. I’m the one taking the question seriously.

If you want to assert that your model simply is meaning, you need to justify why this particular set of assumptions should be accepted. Otherwise, this entire discussion collapses into a kind of personal notebook exercise where everyone just writes down their favorite metaphors. And that is precisely why I’m questioning your frame: because you treat it as self-evident when it is anything but.

Nothing is more boring than when relative discussions get derailed into the absolute. We were just giving examples of meaning, but now you want me to ground my a priori assumptions? Nowhere did I say what I'm saying is absolute.

Edited July 8 by Carl-Richard

[UnbornTao]

38 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

I was gonna edit my post and say how the thing I said kinda goes against this idea about pursuing truth for truths sake. But I’m a bit different there. I don’t really care much about truth, I just care about wellbeing! 

Not so different at all. Humanity as a whole is about wellbeing. It was a lame joke, anyway. 

Edited July 8 by UnbornTao