The University of Meaning

Products, services, business verticals and even whole civilizations collapse where there is a crisis of meaning. Human beings, having higher intelligence than animals ‘weave’ meaning into everything. Mathematics deal with meanings about situation never encountered in our experience with gross sense organs (think about tensor analysis or space time inside a black-hole).

Crisis and Catastrophes – in individual and collective level suddenly shake us and we ask for meaning. ‘What it means’ is only what we have ‘programmed ourselves about it’.

Let us examine few simple issues about which we have more or less experience :

1. Death : Death of a dear one or someone who has influenced us shake us and we ask : What does it mean ? We are most-inexperienced about death although we talk glibly talk and ‘philosophize’ about it. None knows what Death is. Death is extra-terrestrial in a sense that we find it not manufactured here. What we know as death – medically, philosophically, scientifically is symptoms and immediate causes. Death causes a singularity of meaning in our individual matrix of meaning and we either accept it or avoid it. Little sober thinking tells us that our birth is also same : we only see immediate causes (parents and their union) but nothing else.

2. Aging : Aging is the symptom of time working on us. We not only create new meanings but the whole ‘meaning matrix’ gets processed through aging. There are so many ‘symptom’ studies of age but no case or evidence where one has overcome aging for all time. Matter + Time = the stuff this whole cosmic manifestation is made up of. Then, what does age when we say we are 10,20, 30,40,50… years old ? Is it the body ? Is it the mind ? Is it our intelligence ? What does age ?

3. Disease We have made machines that can live hundreds and thousands years perhaps ( Voyager / Mariner space probes) but the maker of the machine is so ephemeral. Even a simple RCC house outlives the maker / owner by hundred years at least. Our machines are getting better and better. But we fall ill – be it the CEO of Apple Corporation or that of a real apple-bug in an orchard – there is no escape from disease. No one can claim one is completely immune to disease. Even if someone can claim so, none can escape the final disease called Death.

4. Birth : A logical question of meaning : Is there birth after death ? Someone can say : I dont believe. The question is not of belief. Laws of Nature will act irrespective of my belief in it. I will fall down from a height even though I may not have faith on gravitation. For the sake of argument, let us think that our ‘I’ gets rebirth. Re-birth means another body with my ‘I’ inside it. You believe or dont believe, you have no control on what is going to be your next birth just like you did not have any control on this birth. The process was decided in your absence and without you being consulted. This is a fact and is self-evident.

Any Civilization that does not become aware of the ‘crisis of meaning’ around these four aspects of our existence will collapse sooner or later.

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