Generating Meaning
May 7, 2009
Religions are prolific generators of meaning. Because of religion individual and group acts are felt to have significance and resonance that they would not otherwise have. One simple way to think about this production of meaning is by considering those old WWJD bracelets (standing for What Would Jesus Do?). The wearer is prodded to ask himself or herself how Jesus would act in a parallel situation. Would Jesus get mad at that guy? Would Jesus make out with that girl? These questions can be thought of as a process of mapping a script from one domain onto the developing story of an individual's current life. The individual gains a deeper view of the importance of his or her acts because of this parallel.
Social groups produce shared meanings by way of a similar process of mapping. A student of mine is working on a project about the Mormon use of the story of the migration to Salt Lake City. Quickly this migration was understood as a latter day version of the biblical Exodus. The utility of such a view is easy to see. A scary venture of nation founding is given deeper significance and at the same time a happy end becomes more assured as the end of the Exodus gets mapped onto the new situation. Since we as human beings want our actions to be meaningful, we expend much mental energy in locating parallels.. thereby generating meaning.
The best way to visualize this creation of meaning is to follow the idea of blending as developed in cognitive science. The following is a diagram provided in an essay by Gilles Fauconnier:
The above diagram illustrates the mental mapping that takes place as a boat journey from Boston to San Francisco in 1853 and 1993 are compared in a newspaper article. Our minds easily and automatically blend these two domains. Fauconnier goes further than just finding the process of "mapping", and argues for the actual creation of a third "blended" space:
In this blended space the important points of comparison are made to coexist in one mental space. This blended space can be understood as a central way that human beings create meaning. By an act of the imagination one domain is made to exist with another very different domain. The speed of boats going from Boston to San Francisco in different eras is not important to many people, but when we come to a cultural touchstone such as the Exodus the blended space creates a powerful sense of significance through its alignment with a modern event.
This modern event now equals that event from the past. Without any coaxing or conscious effort our minds locate the parallels: someone has to be Moses? Where is the Promised Land? Who are the Egyptians? What is the Red Sea? And we are living in a myth or sacred history.. sort of. It's all in our minds.
