The Myth of Meaning: 2 The Human Exception — Meaning as Privilege

The Problem

Human beings are often treated as uniquely “meaning-bearing” creatures. From the religious claim that we are endowed with souls to the secular thesis that consciousness confers a special status, the assumption persists: humans are not just part of the cosmos — we are its interpreters, its voice, its apex of significance.

The Distortion

This human exceptionalism turns meaning into a privilege. It presumes that all other beings are mute, inert, or merely functional, while humanity alone lives in a realm of significance. Even when stripped of explicit theology, this echoes the image of humans as imago Dei — the ones chosen to carry and reflect meaning in the universe. The result is an ontological hierarchy that elevates the human over the relational field that makes “human” possible at all.

The Relational Alternative

Meaning does not belong to humans as essence or property. Meaning is relational construal, emerging wherever systems differentiate potential from actual in patterned ways. Language, art, and thought are particular human forms of this construal, but they are not its source. A bird’s song, a cell’s signalling pathway, or a community’s ritual are all enactments of relational construal. Humans are participants, not exceptions.

Takeaway

The “human exception” is theology in disguise — the privilege of meaning smuggled back into secular form. To move beyond it, we must understand meaning not as what sets us apart, but as what binds us into the relational unfolding of reality itself.