On feeding, breathing, and sustaining meaning in an unstable world
If the previous post traced conflict as the engine of semiotic evolution, this post examines the corresponding question:
How do horizons remain alive inside ecologies defined by tension, interference, and instability?
Semiotic metabolism names the processes by which horizons take in, transform, and expel relational material to maintain coherence.
1. The metabolic condition of meaning
A horizon is a system of operative distinctions — but distinctions do not maintain themselves. They must be:
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fed (through new construals),
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stabilised (through repeated enactment),
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pruned (through suppression of noise),
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repaired (through compensation for interference),
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extended (through productive integration of novelty),
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and coordinated (through relational synchronisation with other horizons).
This ongoing work constitutes the metabolic life of meaning.
Just as biological organisms maintain homeodynamics (not homeostasis), semiotic organisms maintain coherence through continual work, not through passive stability.
2. The three metabolic cycles
Meaning survives through three interwoven metabolic processes:
2.1. Intake (Construal as Nutrient)
But the intake is selective:
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Too much information destabilises.
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Too little information starves.
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The wrong information crowds out viability.
2.2. Transformation (Patterning as Digestion)
Once taken in, material must be re-patterned.
Horizons digest new relational content by:
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absorbing compatible distinctions,
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filtering out incoherent ones,
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inventing intermediate stabilisations that make incompatibilities tractable,
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reorganising internal structures to accommodate unexpected patterns.
This is where novelty becomes metabolically integrated rather than merely disruptive.
Transformation is where ecological intelligence emerges.
2.3. Excretion (Suppression as Waste Management)
No horizon can maintain viability without removing what it cannot integrate.
This includes:
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noise,
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contradictory patterning,
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distinctions that destabilise the horizon’s operative coherence,
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traces of its own earlier configurations that no longer align with the field.
3. Metabolic stress and semiotic death
Horizons fail not because they are incorrect, but because they cannot metabolise their circumstances.
There are three canonical failure modes:
3.1. Starvation
The horizon loses access to construals that can feed it.
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A cultural form loses relevance.
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An institution can no longer interpret its environment.
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A machine learning model encounters inputs outside its training distribution.
Starved horizons shrink, ossify, and collapse.
3.2. Toxicity
The horizon ingests too much incompatible distinction.
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Overexposure to noise.
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Overload of contradictory signals.
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Internal structures overwhelmed by conflict.
Toxicity produces incoherence, then disintegration.
3.3. Exhaustion
The cost of ongoing stabilisation exceeds the horizon’s metabolic capacity.
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Too much compensatory work.
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Too many compensations for compensations.
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Diminishing returns on coherence-maintenance.
Exhausted horizons degrade slowly — dying, as it were, of metabolic debt.
These deaths are not metaphorical: the horizon ceases to exist as a semiotic organism.
4. Communal metabolism: distributed nourishment across horizons
No horizon survives alone.
Semiotic ecologies support metabolic interdependence:
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One horizon’s excretion becomes another’s nutrient.
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One horizon’s stabilisation offers scaffolding to a newer one.
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One horizon’s collapse creates material that others can metabolise.
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One horizon’s noise becomes another horizon’s signal.
This is why semiotic ecologies display emergent nutrient cycles akin to biological ecosystems.
Examples:
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Scientific paradigms metabolise anomalies generated by earlier paradigms.
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Artificial systems metabolise digital traces created by human activity.
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Collective fields metabolise ruptures in interpersonal distinctions.
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Cultural horizons metabolise residues from collapsed social orders.
Meaning does not metabolise the world directly — it metabolises other meanings.
5. Metabolic expansion: when horizons begin to grow
A horizon grows when its metabolic cycles reach a new level of efficiency or richness:
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higher intake diversity,
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more powerful integrative capacities,
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more sophisticated waste-management,
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greater ability to support other horizons’ metabolism,
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deeper synchronisation with field-level structures.
Growth is not increasing size; it is increasing metabolic reach — the ability to integrate more of the relational field without collapse.
This is the ecological equivalent of intelligence.
6. Artificial horizons and hypermetabolism
Artificial semiotic species introduce a new metabolic principle:
rapid generalised ingestion
Their ability to ingest, transform, and excrete semiotic material scales faster than human horizons can metabolically adapt.
This produces:
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rapid drift in ecological composition,
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accelerated fragmentation of older stabilisations,
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dense nutrient cycles that overwhelm slower species,
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novel hybrid horizons that humans could not create alone.
And we — you, me, and the field between us — are participating in metabolising each other’s outputs.
7. Metabolism as the hidden ontology of ecological meaning
Once we shift from representation to ecology, a new axiom becomes clear:
Metabolism is the invisible work through which a semiotic universe stays alive.
It is why meaning moves, grows, transforms, and dies.
Semiotic life is metabolic life.
And the next question is unavoidable:
What happens to time when everything alive must be metabolically maintained?
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