Information and Meaning

Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Information and Meaning

Information and Meaning
Hermeneutics and Global Culture
RevDarrellG


The mechanism of our mind is described in my small book, “Turn the World on Its Head” (GFW books – lulu.com)

We begin early to learn about the world around us. As we interact with objects within reach, we explore them with our vision, our touch, taste and smell, until we form a sense of repeated recognition and the ability to ‘predict’ the nature of the things we perceive.

While we are doing these things, we also begin to attach ‘meanings’ to things which go beyond the things themselves. Some shapes and touches we will associate with Mother’s love, some smells are linked with Father’s strong arms. These emotion-linked associations will stay with us for life.

The result is to make food more than food in our eyes, fabric more than fabric. To us they may mean Love, Safety, and Caring; or perhaps, sadly, Cruelty and unpleasantness. Linkages work both ways, engendering attraction or aversion based on an emotion-linked, unconscious memory.

Over time, we build up a finely detailed mental picture of our world and our place in it. Each item added to our ‘model’ is anchored there by a dab of emotional glue, happy, sad, relieved, or afraid.


Each item or event is anchored in our mental model by a feeling, with which it is forever associated. The feeling constitutes the caring which led us to remember that individual item. Without caring, there would be nothing to make that item stand out from the background of a thousand things around us. We simply fail to notice the things we do not care about.

As we mature, we increasingly interact with our mental model of the world, and not with the world itself. We still look at, touch or taste things in our environment, but in the act of perceiving them, we substitute the mental image we have, along with the meaning we carry, for the thing we are seeing. We taste the apple pie; but in our mind, we are thinking of the pie Mom used to make, and today’s pie is contrasted, compared and judged. Whenever we judge (as we usually do), we are replacing the external observation with an internal perception. This substitution is so commonplace, so normal to us, that we seldom realize it is happening.


Our mental model includes every single item we have encountered from birth to the present. Some…. suggest that impressions from before birth are stored as well. Much of this model is, by now, unconscious to us - our conscious mind cannot retain any but the most recent or the most emotionally impactful experiences. This model is very large, for most people, and for most, it suffices for nearly all our decision-making, so that we ‘sample’ the actual world less and less. In effect, it is like deciding on purchases without going to the store; and is that not what we often do?

Our model is there to help us interpret our observations - but more and more it substitutes for them. Not only that, but it begins to govern our process of observation, so that ultimately we see only what we are ‘programmed’ to see. Anything which does not fit with our model will either be ignored or explained away. If a truly new thing is observed in such a way that it is ‘in our face’, so to speak, so that we cannot ignore or explain it, then we are forced into one of two ways; outright denial, or a paradigm shift in our thinking. Studies have shown that up to 70% of people may use outright denial of what they saw or heard. A paradigm shift, on the other hand, results in the creation of a new pattern or element in our model - and along with it goes all the emotion that is required to anchor that into our mentality.

Our mental model serves as the basis of a double filtering process. First we filter our observations of events, screening out the ‘obviously’ impossible or the irrelevant; then we take the remaining ‘permitted’ observations, and we interpret them based on the model, shaving the square pegs to fit round holes.

This gives us comfort and stability, in that our world is made more predictable. We feel safer. We sense a continuity of behaviour in our surroundings. Our mental system is geared to creating this sense of stability; superimposing order on a world that might otherwise seem chaotic. We seem to need that comfort.

That it bears only a passing relationship to actual occurrences does not bother us one bit. We stick to the rule and ignore the exceptions. Thus we enhance our feeling of ‘safety’ while tuning out on a great deal of life.


From the world all around us, our senses are flooded with impressions. In the parlance of information theory or cybernetics these impressions represent potential data. We fail to notice most of these, because our mental programming provides a filtering action. We notice only what we have been taught or have ourselves judged to have meaning for us. What comes through our filters is the data upon which we operate.

This data represents the first layer of our ‘reality’. Those data which have been filtered out may still be out there – but they do not represent reality for us.

We now apply a second layer of judgment to this data, perhaps using the same sets of filters, perhaps others. These judgments are made by comparing the data to our internal mental models –comparing against expectations, against memories of the past, such as our fear-based ideas of what represents safety, or memories of past pleasures. This judgment process is mainly unconscious, and occurs in a split second. The process is automatic.

Finally we come to apply to the data a sense of meaning. Only now does it cease to be data and become information. Information is data placed into a context.

When we speak or write so much as a coherent sentence, we are attempting to convey what we believe is information.

The words that fall onto another’s ear or greet the eye are no longer randomly generated data; they are organized data with intent. However, the recipient will need to apply the same process of filtering, judgment or comparison, and application of meaning, if the words are to be understood as intended.

This requires the existence of a common set of meanings before any communication can be successful. If my words mean something else to you than they do to me, communication will not likely satisfy the intent.

Commonly held meanings are the glue that holds together a social or societal grouping, whether it is a tribe, a community, or a nation. What we understand as culture is a large group agreement as to meanings of symbols, behavior, and other factors. This includes not only words, but flags, uniforms, badges, street signs, traffic lights, and political borders.

The nations and societies which are culturally uniform, such as some in Scandinavia or Asia, may also have the greatest social cohesion, with all that holds; such as lower crime rates, political stability, and socially programmed customs and manners. Those countries which have had more recent immigration will find that their diversity of personal meaning-making may cause occasional friction.

The activity of globalization has led to this kind of friction in whole segments of several cultures, as the products of corporate culture, especially those of the information and entertainment industries, are spread in a world wide dissemination of Disney and McDonalds.

Such recent actions as the eviction of Starbucks from Beijing’s Forbidden City are signs that the outward pressures of globalized brands are being resisted at the local level.

The mental model which each of us carries is our template against which we weigh all input. It is loaded with the prejudices of our family, community, and culture. This associative database is more than the basis upon which we evaluate all input – it is also intelligent enough to define our personality. It is not only a model (a working model) of the world (even the universe) as we know it, but it includes our ego, which is our model of our self, and all the relationships we have to the world.

Our decisions are made by playing out the scenario within our model. We picture the drive downtown, the landmarks along the way, and the task at the destination. In a split second the entire errand is planned. Then as we undertake the drive, our reticular activating system, a component of the brain, causes us to ignore that which is the same, and to notice significant differences. These differences represent potential danger, and so the mechanism is by nature fear-based.

This is the ego at work.

To suppose that our internal chatter will tell us about ourselves is to suppose that the ego-construct, and larger model within which it operates, represents our place in the world with accuracy. In fact this model is not the self, but it is the limit to the self, the prison compound we have made for ourselves. It defines what we consider safe or dangerous, it circumscribes our sense of capability.

The self is much more vast than the ego-model would have us believe. We cannot map our world by measuring our bedroom, and we cannot map the self by analyzing the chatter of the ego. This is what the masters of meditation have taught us; by silencing the ego-chatter we allow new insights to come forth.

Being fear-based, the ego reacts strongly, and unconsciously, to any efforts to change the personal or cultural paradigm. This is why globalization has led to the rise of global terrorism. Cultures that felt threatened before, that felt isolation and rigidity was the only was to preserve their way of life, these are lashing out today. We feel unable to communicate rationally with them, and rightly so. Meanings are at odds, as are the words with which we try to convey them.

These cultures include not only the Arabic ones which we have been focused on for so long. They include Orthodox Judaism, Latin-American native cultures, and to a milder extent, our own aboriginal cultures. All of these feel threatened, not just by modernism – that is the least of the threatening factors, but by a culture that includes electronic entertainment, large corporate franchise business models, imposition of the language of international trade (English) and likely many other factors.

Hence, whether in Montreal, New York, or Israel, orthodox Jewry is digging in its heels. Pan-Arabic Islamic extremism is finding converts daily, while across Latin America, native Mayan leaders are uniting in a new wave of socialism.

These behaviors are linked to the international pressure to change the societal paradigms. They are an unconscious, egoic reaction which surfaces in the form of mass movements here and there.


We construct our reality by forming meaning from the information we receive. The result becomes our filtered view of events. Most of what occurs is ignored; therefore our reality is a selective view.

Since each person will have their own filters and their own mental model of self and world, then each event, though it generates the same data, will produce in each person somewhat different information, and a different set of meanings. This will form the limits of communication to begin with. Much discussion will be required before it is understood that two realities are being examined. Once this is realized, it will be the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom is the ability to develop a meta-view in which one realizes that all reality models are unique. This requires letting go of the expectation that those to which you communicate are processing your information in the same way. Wisdom is to information and meaning what the football team manager is to the players and coach. While they are focusing on the plays, he may be thinking of player trades! Getting above and beyond the game at hand provides a wider perspective.

The hierarchy of the scope of our mentality, then, may range from data to information, to meaning, and then the wisdom to know that meaning is arbitrary. We each decide what things mean to us. We may accept a shared meaning from our culture, or we may adopt one of our choosing.

As for the next step, from wisdom to enlightenment, that is a subject for another day.


Darrell Gudmundson