Meaning-less.

Why we need to re-claim meaning in a world meaning less.

GIF by Jay Sprogell

About 130,000 years ago we began burying our dead.

Before that, we just let them rot.

We didn’t care. They meant nothing.

But by burying them, we began to reflect.

On something more than ourselves. On meaning.

We placed tools and ornaments with them. Painted the bodies. Believed it equipped them for an afterlife. It was the start of religious practice. The start of symbolism and symbolic thought, and our ability to transcend the present, remember the past, and visualize the future.

Symbols are abstractions. A shorthand to communicate ideas and beliefs. Storytelling tools. The word, from the Greek sum ballein, means to unite that which was apart. So symbols, in a sense, bring ideas together. They stand for, or re-present, something else. The Ukraine flag, brings together a wheat field and an azure blue sky. It symbolises, or re-presents, the country’s agricultural core. Dragons symbolise greed and desire.

Thinking and communicating through abstract symbols is the foundation of creativity, art, language, maths, science and the written word. Social construction theory suggests we form our identity through interactions with others. Social interactionism suggests we understand others and the world, through symbols. Good brands, are good symbols. They re-present ideas about our identity, and our own implicit goals.

We construct ourselves through symbols. We are symbolism.

The American philosopher Arthur Danto believed human beings are essentially “ens representans”: beings that constantly re-present the world. We fill our homes with pictures of ourselves and our own realities. Art, literature, poetry, movies and music, reflect our obsession for re-presenting our realities, to ourselves.

Culture is re-presentation. We are re-presentation.

Symbolism and representation are who and what we are. And how we make meaning from the world. It’s how we determine the value and importance of things (see semiotics and semantics). Being culturally relevant, valuable and important, therefore, is greatly helped with relevant, and meaningful, symbolism and representation. Same for living a good meaningful life. And same for building a great meaningful valuable brand.

But here’s the thing. It’s gone to shit, hasn’t it?

Our world is meaning-less.

• Institutions mean less.
• Trust means less.
• Truth means less.
• Work means less.
• Stories mean less.
• Sustainability means less.
• Even buildings mean less.

We have disposable economies full of disposable thinking. We have sacrificed meaning, for attention. Craft, for pace. Quality, for convenience. Deep, for shallow. Our symbols mean less. We re-present less meaning. And now, we’re bracing ourselves for a tsunami of meaning-less AI sludge.

There’s been lots of signals, like:

• the “bland-ification” of everything.
• the Lemon left brain reductionism thing.
• and the average-ness of everything.

But it’s more than that.

Anthony Bourdain spoke about pleasureless tomatoes and the curse of convenience. How seasons have become meaningless in an on demand economy. We’re forgetting the truth. Forgetting meaning. Removing it. And we’re leaving ourselves with a vast ever expanding vacuum of nothingness.

But what if it was different?

• What if the symbols we use, and the stories we re-present, inspire and encourage a world of real community, connection and collaboration, instead of rampant meaning-less individualism?
• What if we re-present values that matter to a company, because they matter to how we behave and survive as human beings and citizens? Not how we’re perceived by shareholders, investors or consumers.
• What if, instead of meaning-less sustainability stories, we re-presented stories that help to understand what it means to be human in a world dizzy from change and how we can save ourselves?
• And what if, as Brian Collins said, we “make the future so irresistible, it becomes inevitable”?

Our survival depends on a world of less. Of owning, using and buying less. A world where every thing has real value. Real meaning. Our survival depends on it. And we can all help to create it. A meaning-full world.

You mightn’t be into. Fair enough. Your choice.

But, absolutely fuck that, I am.

And for the first time in my life, I’m going to fight like hell for it.