CONCEPT TO SEE:

UNITS OF MEANING: MEANING MOLECULES

Watching a film clip reminds us of the demanding challenges of everyday events — most notably and most frequently, those of conversational events. A film clip permits a reexamination of a conversation, its contents and emotions, and the decisions made. For example, review of a conversational event in a film clip, beginning with the full conversation, demonstrates that it is possible to divide the conversation, roughly, according to major topic segments. In this example film clip there are three general topic segments embedded in the overall conversational event:

*** The general topic of the full conversational event: his work and its effects on their relationship and his dream

** the demands of his traveling will continue

** supporting himself in the band has become his career

** has his career destroyed his dream?  .   .   .   trailing off into emotional, anger-laden comments reflecting frustration about apparent disagreements

This division depicts the presence of many meanings to be understood, all appearing rapidly in the total conversation, even when considering meanings only at the broadest level. If the effort required by the demand is reduced by restricting our attention only to the third topic segment, what do we observe? The number of meanings attracting our efforts to be understood is smaller, but a greater number of the smaller units of meaning become noticeable. The demand of meanings to be understood continues to be more than our attention can easily focus on simultaneously, and the focus of our understanding  can drift.

An analogy from high school chemistry is helpful to our efforts to understand this — the concept of a molecule, which can be as simple as a hydrogen molecule, formed by two hydrogen atoms. From this basic simplicity increasingly, even astonishingly, complex molecules are built in response to conditions providing adaptive pressures. Similarly, meanings can be simple, such as “I”, or “no” or “three”, from which building blocks of remarkably complex meanings can be constructed. Units of meaning do not exist in our common vocabulary, but the term “meaning molecule” can fill this void to some degree, at the least providing the distinction between “simple meaning molecules” and “complex meaning molecules”. A meaning molecule might be a single word, or could consist of a paragraph. Ultimately, the basic constituents of a meaning molecule would be information in all its forms, just as atoms are the basic constituents of a chemical molecule.

In our commonplace example of a conversation the two conversationalists fall prey to a destructive drift in the meaning sequence, in which the currently dominant meaning shifts, with a heavy contribution from emotional influences. Destructive drift can be considered to reflect, most commonly, competition between impulsive emotional vs. cognitive elements for understanding the meanings of the conversation. In this example we can trace the subtle topic shifts — travel demands, career demands, the tension of career vs. dream, followed by the usurpation of their focus by emotion as the aggressive content dominates. This is a destructive process because the drift occurs outside of awareness. A cognitive approach is not always a superior response, but it is too often given up not due to the greater utility of a strong emotional response, but because a thoughtful response demands continuing effort, and because emotions push for release and quick relief — all outside of awareness.

The pivotal concepts about meaning molecules are that (a) they are so often unrecognized, even as (b) they are in continuous competition with one another for our attention, understanding, and discussion. The practical utility of recognizing meaning molecules and their competitive interactions is that this enables identification of the path of meanings selected to guide decision-making across a series of events. Decades of research have demonstrated how subliminal stimuli influence the behavior of individuals. Similarly, in real life situations certain stimuli provided by another person in a conversation might or might not influence the behavior of a listener. The skill of being aware of this possibility, and identifying the stimuli, is crucial to advantageous decision-making. We can observe this in a film clip — who selects what is responded to? — person 1 or person 2 (in reality, of course, the film director).

When examining the topic segment of the conversation in more detail, increasingly subtle meaning molecules come into focus, such as the facial expressions or vocal intonations of gifted actors that identify the meaning sequence of the destructive drift in this topic segment.

Their inability to resolve their apparent disagreement persists, as they add additional perspectives.

A TASTE OF LIFE

Emotions lead them to exchange verbal jabs as they unintentionally begin to give up the attempt to find agreement through thoughtful reflection and planning.

A TASTE OF LIFE

The final aggressive comment completes the destructive drift, as the meaning sequence has been shifted so frequently that its original intentions have been lost and angry emotions now dominate. More detail — smaller meaning molecules become the focus — is visible in a shorter film clip. Vocal intonation and facial expression carry as much meaning as their words.

A TASTE OF LIFE

Tracing the meaning sequence, therefore, requires meticulous attention to meaning molecules of varying complexity and subtlety. Here we pursue this examination of the path of meaning as part of our attempt to identify cultural hazards clustering around meanings and altered meanings. In daily interactions our motivations are different, guiding how we respond to the various meaning molecules.

These concepts are quite abstract — is any of this concern about meaning molecules of practical interest in our lives? An answer begins with a question:

What are the means through which this competitive complexity among meanings is resolved in daily life? Various solutions are possible, but one is the most popular, and involves a culturally condoned bit of “cheating” outside of awareness.

VOICES

By adopting smaller and smaller units of motion we only approach the solution of the problem but never reach it. It is only by admitting infinitesimal quantities and their progression up to a tenth, and taking the sum of that geometrical progression, that we can arrive at the solution of the problem. A new branch of mathematics, having attained the art of reckoning with infinitesimals, can now yield solutions in other more complex problems of motion which before seemed insoluble.

This new branch of mathematics, which was unknown to the ancients, by admitting the conception, when dealing with problems of motion, of the infinitely small and thus conforming to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity), corrects the inevitable error which the human intellect cannot but make if it considers separate units of motion instead of continuous motion.

In the investigation of the laws of historical movement precisely the same principle operates.

The march of humanity, springing as it dos from an infinite multitude of individual wills, is continuous.

The discovery of the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of history. But to arrive at these laws of continuous motion resulting from the sum of all those human volitions human reason postulates arbitrary, separated units. The first proceeding of the historian is to select at random a series of successive events and examine them apart from others, though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event flows without any break in continuity from another. The second method is to study the actions of some one man — a king or a commander — as though their actions represented the sum of many individual wills; whereas the sum of individual wills never finds expression in the activity of a single historical personage.

Historical science in its endeavor to approximate the truth is constantly isolating smaller and smaller units for examination. But, however small the units it takes, we feel that to postulate any disconnected unit, or to assume a beginning to any phenomenon, or to say that the volitions of all men are expressed in the actions of any one historical character, is false per se.

The critic has only to select some larger or smaller unit as the subject of observation — as criticism has every right to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must always be arbitrarily selected — for any deduction drawn from history to disintegrate into small particles like dust, without the slightest exertion on his part.

Only by assuming an infinitesimally small unit for observation — a differential of history (that is, the common tendencies of men) — and arriving at the art of integration (finding the sum of the infinitesimals) can we hope to discover the laws of history.     .     .     .

To elicit the laws of history we must leave aside kings, ministers and generals, and select for study the homogeneous, infinitesimal elements which influence the masses. No one can say how far it is possible for man to advance in this way towards an understanding of the laws of history; but it is obvious that this is the only path to that end, and that the human intellect has not, so far, applied in this direction one-millionth of the energy which historians have devoted to describing the deeds of various kings, generals and ministers, and propounding reflections of their own concerning those deeds.

Leo Tolstoy (1869/1971). War and Peace, Volume Two. R. Edmonds (trans.). London: The Folio Society, pp. 271-273.