Meaning

What is the meaning of the term "meaning".
For some it may seem like an absurd question but in this age of postmodernism and the mental virus that has infected our consciousness, our minds, the term is infected by nihilism which inverts or negates the meaning of words.

How?
By altering the utility of language; its original utility.
Which was?
As mediating connectors - proxies - connecting mind with world, or noumenon with phenomena.
Originally mind exposed itself via oral vocalizations, transmitting a state of mind to the world; communicating a psychosomatic condition.

This evolved into semiotics, i.e., linguistics.
Mind externalized itself via signs/symbols which were longer lasting than vocalizations.
This is technology - technique.
Language is a technology - techniques given logos.

Meaning
If space is possibility and matter/energy are conscious evaluations of probabilities, then meaning refers to the relationship between interacting patterns and intent.
Subjective in relation to objective.
Map in relation to geography.

The conventional understanding of meaning, i.e., meaning of life, is as purpose, objective, motive.
The conventional mind is asking for an objective a motive, a purpose to its life when it asks "What is the meaning of life?"
In effect it assumes there's a motive, a purpose, independent form itself - a universal purpose, a cosmic motive.
The query is really an attempt to ascertain what the popular purpose, motive is - world, and god, being another way of saying humanity, i.e., the collective idealized - abstracted - into a singularity, and absolute.
So, meaning refers to an absolute purpose; a universal intent, i.e., will.
The individual is asking for god's intent, only it expresses it in secular terminology because it has "transcended" Abrahamic narratives, or was forced to seek alternative when the one-god was declared dead, ro missing in action.

Meaning is a reference to a pattern that unifies all perceived patterns - a search for the occult, hidden, order underlying all ordering.
In Abrahamism and recovering Abrahamics, this reference is to a divine mind, i.e., universal consciousness, will.
They cannot break free from over two-thuosand years of indoctrination, and moral training, especially when it is comforting and self-assuring.

The alternative is so devastating and terrifying that they refuse to even consider it as plausible.
Born into the cult of victimhood they refuse to exit and become exposed as another predator, i.e., victimizer.
A loss of innocence they cannot endure.

See Ecmandu and his "consent violation obsessions"....guilt seeking a reprieve.
The nature of existence as agon is devastating to his feeble spirit. He believed in love - being appreciated for what he is, and the reality was too brutal for his fragile spirit to endure.
Altruism was exposed as being a concealed form of selfishness, and this was unbearable, so he sought refuge in his mind, as all nihilists do.

Whether they admit it or not nihilists identify with victims. This si how they can endure failure and being abused.
The victim is always "innocent" - meaning not culpable,, not responsible, even if ignorant or impotent or incompetent.
It absolves itself of all agon, other than a recipient of violence, agression, injustice, against his consent.
A woman, after the fact, accuses the man who seduced her, tricked her, took advantage of her naïve romanticism of rape. She was not responsible for being taken advantage of.
The world is always responsible - world = god, universe, singularity.

This is something distinguished between Master-Dialectic and Slave-Dialectic.

Slaves have 'meaning' or 'purpose' placed upon them from above in social hierarchies. Their meaning, the meaning of their lives, exist only through the use ascribed to them by their masters. This is categorically opposite to the Master-Dialectic/Morality that ascribes purpose and meaning from "within". Something that is created or creative, Artistic in a way.

Most people cannot comprehend an "inner-meaning" or something self-ascribed. It is easier to Follow, the orders placed on them from above, than it is to Lead or Escape.


Thus Abrahamism presupposes and prescribes a Slave-Dialectic, that meaning is intrinsically from Above, from God, from an Absolute Authority. Never 'within'. Always External.

The answer will always be slightly different as there are two dynamic factors:
1- a fluctuating, interactive, i.e., dynamic, indifferent uncaring existence and...
2- a fluctuating interactive interactive caring organism, i.e. becoming.

Between the two the first takes precedence forcing the second to adapt/adjust, or die, i.e., suffer, endure, the consequences.
The second is constantly being forced to adjust to the first.

The first = objective.
The second = subjective.

There is no need to force, convince, coerce, the second to do anything since the first is dominant.
The second may find means of sheltering itself from the first but not for long.
Sheltering merely postpones or may even minimize the effects of the first upon the second, but it can never escape them.
Denial, rejection, refusal, ignorance may protect the second from the first by unburdening it from its culpability but it can never escape the first.

There are perspectives, lies, and then there's the truth.
Truth refers to events not to what these events mean because meaning requires an objective.
If mind is a mental map, a map is the externalization of a geography, i.e., art, and geography is about events and how they relate, i.e., interact, then accuracy, or objectivity, is how well the mental map can construct a representation of a geography all can relate to.
Meaning, in this context, is about how these relationships are established - distances, elevations etc..
So the subjective in relation to an objective evaluating distances, effort, between the two.
Ergo, morality is only meaningful in relation to an ideal, an objective.

The first thing to establish is how well the map corresponds to the geography, and if some elements of the map are fictitious, unrealistic, do not exist in the world but are mental constructs with no external referents.
Nihilism is a map which contradicts the geography, to one degree or another, or, to be more precise, is motivated by an objective that does not exist on any geography but is only in the mind - subjective.
So, nihilism is a subjective agency, an objective goal which is itself subjective - or inter-subjective, i.e., shared - trying to evaluate the effort, distance between the subjective and the subjective, which may be "objectified" by being converted to art, or text, or semiotics.

To say something is meaningless is to admit there is no objective, but only a subjective referring to a subjective, with no effort, no distances other than a change of attitude.
It's solipsism, or a looping, or a looking inward, a meditative state disconnecting, turning away from the tangible world of experience.
Ideas referring to ideas, using world. Words referring to more words.
People of the book, by the book, for the book.
In pure nihilism there is no book required since the subject refers to the subjective with no mediation, as does the "positive nihilist".
Positive nihilists externalize, objectify, their subjectivity as art, as semiotics in text; they collectivize their shared subjectivity , intersubjectivity.
They always require an icon and an idol mediating between the individual's subjectivity and the shared collective's intersubjectivity.

Morality is essential to both because morality appeals to a collective demanding to begging to be protected from a rejected objective reality so as to continue denying its existence. This requires coercion, seduction or bribery, so it always takes the form of power relationships between individuals and collectives.

Meaning is about connecting phenomena.
Triangulation being the simplest.
I, other, objective.
The world is full of meaning.
What is missing is purpose - an objective.
This is what many want others to give them.
Without a purpose man loses value.
He can't evaluate, and so he cannot judge.
The objective gives purpose and value to the movement towards it.

Is meaning arbitrary?
No.
Not if you correctly define 'meaning' itself - and by 'correctly' I do not mean arbitrarily or in line with your subjective interests.

To illustrate:
How do we define the word 'dog'? How do we give it meaning?
Do we arbitrarily do so? Do we collectively decide?
Many words can be sued to define and refer to the same phenomenon, the same activity.
The word doesn't matter because the act remains common, independent, objective.
Whether we say 'dog,' 'canine,' 'σκυλος,' 'chien,' is irrelevant, since all these different words/symbols refer to the same phenomenon, the same patterns of behaviour, the same appearance - a common, shared, experienced, interactivity, which in this case is an organism with particular traits, range of fluctuating potentials, behaviours.
The symbol/word adapts to the activity - interactivity - displaying certain repeating, predictable, consistent, range of consistent patterns.  
The word/symbol is limited by these patterns of behaviour - its meaning is based on them.
A French man knows what I mean by "dog" just as I know what he means by "chien".

And so 'meaning' refers to such experienced patterns and how they interrelate and interconnect.
Therefore, the meaning of all words must begin from this principle of connecting the experienced, perceived - empirical - pattern - behaviour, action - with other patterns, and evaluating the degree of their interactivity.

The symbol/word always begins with the act, the experienced, perceived, action - this is primary.
As we advance into the abstract, or what cannot be perceived as readily, as easily, our evaluations are still limited by the primary - this is secondary.
Ergo - meta-physics.
Therefore, meta-physis, must discipline itself to physis - our words must connect us with physis (nature, world), even if it is via metaphysics.
Physis is the foundation upon which metaphysis must be built.

But postmodern hypocrites - cowards, liars, pretender - don't like this empirical restriction to their fantasies.
Their goal is to manipulate and seduce others - just as duplicitous and cowardly as they are - into a cooperative fantasy, having convinced themselves that there is no objective world, and all is subjective - meaning, the mind, using words, can change reality.
They know this is absurd, so their only compensation is collectivizing their insanity.
Their conviction is fanatical, just as it is irrational. they think that if enough insanity is shared, then insanity becomes the norm, and reality becomes a madhouse that redefines insanity into an 'occult' form of 'higher sanity'.
If only all could close their Hellenic rational eyes to reality they can then cooperate to fabricate a mental, inter-subjective, esoteric alternate world of collective Hebraic, superstitious insanity - a world of magic where nothing is of any meaning, nothing matters, nothing hurts, nothing is objective and it is all up to the individual to decide what is 'more true' and what is not.
There is no absolute - no god = no objective world.  
There is no mistake.
No immorality.
No hierarchy.
No other.

Nil is God....overturning and replacing the one-god that failed them.

'Meaning', among other things.