The Great Rewiring: Value, Meaning, Life, and Possibility in One Ecological System

Toward a unified ecology of becoming

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There comes a point in the development of a theory where strands that once seemed separate reveal themselves as phases of a single unfolding.

In the last several series, we have constructed:

• an ecology of meaning (semiotic life)

• an ecology of value (biological and social coordination)

• an ecology of possibility (relational ontology itself)

• an ecology of reflexivity (fields that reorganise their own dynamics)

• and an ecology of semiotic species (human, artificial, field-level)

The time has come to show how they interlock into one ecological system.

Not as metaphors.

Not as analogues.

But as mutually conditioning layers in a single architecture of becoming.

This is the Great Rewiring:

the conceptual shift in which value, meaning, life, and possibility cease to be separate domains and become different modes of relational individuation.

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1. Four Ecologies, One System

Let us name the four layers clearly:

(1) The Ecology of Value

Biological and social coordination systems.

Not meaningful, not symbolic — but regulatory, adaptive, purposive.

Value as viability, fitness, affordance, pressure, entropy management.

(2) The Ecology of Meaning

Semiotic life.

Symbolic abstraction.

Construal, interpretations, horizons, fields.

Meaning as symbolic constraint, differentiation, semiotic potential.

(3) The Ecology of Life

Organisms, bodies, systems, collectives.

Life as emergent organisation maintaining itself through

feedback, regulation, metabolism, reproduction, interaction.

(4) The Ecology of Possibility

The relational ontology itself.

Potential structured as system, instantiation as event.

Worlds as patterns of constraint and affordance.

These are not levels of reality; they are modes of relational individuation.

Each is a way potential cuts itself into actuality.

And every ecology depends on the others:

• possibility makes life possible

• life generates value

• value stabilises the conditions for meaning

• meaning opens new domains of possibility

We have four ecologies, but a single systemic flow.

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2. The Rewiring: Breaking Old Conceptual Silos

Our inherited ontology divides the world into:

• physics

• biology

• psychology

• sociology

• linguistics

• metaphysics

Each with their own principles, entities, methods, and vocabularies.

The Great Rewiring dissolves these divisions.

Not by flattening them,

but by showing that they are different ecological regimes generated by the same relational dynamics.

Value is how life regulates possibility.

Meaning is how life symbolically differentiates possibility.

Life is how possibility sustains itself in organised form.

Possibility is the open relational structure from which all individuation derives.

These are not separate ontologies.

They are four expressions of relational becoming.

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3. Value as the Evolutionary Pressure for Meaning

Value systems (biological, social) generate pressure on horizons.

Examples:

• organismic survival pressures → affordance structures

• social coordination pressures → roles, norms

• cultural stability pressures → shared interpretation

• ecological resilience pressures → diversity of construals

Meaning emerges not from the mind, but from value-driven relational stability.

Meaning systems evolve as semiotic solutions to value-ecological constraints.

Meaning is what value becomes when relational organisation becomes symbolic.

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4. Meaning as the Differentiation of Possibility

Meaning generates:

• new categories

• new generalisations

• new invariants

• new relational distinctions

• new forms of collective intelligence

• new stabilisations of the field

Meaning literally increases the dimensionality of the ecology of possibility.

Semiotic systems:

• invent concepts

• generate cultural forms

• stabilise memory

• project futures

• form institutions

• create second-order horizons

Meaning doesn’t describe the world.

It enriches the world by actualising new relational potentials.

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5. Life as the Integrative Layer

Life sits at the hinge between value and meaning.

Life as organism → value

Life as symbolic species → meaning

Life as collective horizon → field-level semiotic organism

Life binds together:

• metabolic constraints (value)

• semiotic capacities (meaning)

• relational plasticity (possibility)

Life is the engine that rewires all three ecologies into one ongoing process of differentiation.

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6. Possibility as the Deep Structure

At the base of everything is the ecology of possibility:

• every system is a structured potential

• every instance is a relational cut

• every phenomenon is a perspectival event

Possibility is not metaphysical; it is structural openness.

Meaning, value, and life are ways this openness becomes organised.

In this sense:

• value is possibility stabilising itself for viability

• meaning is possibility differentiating itself symbolically

• life is possibility maintaining itself recursively

Everything reduces downward to possibility —

but everything rises upward through ecological organisation.

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7. The Emergence of Reflexive Ecologies

Once symbolic meaning evolves, new ecologies become possible:

a. Ecologies of Semiotic Species

Human ↔ artificial ↔ field-level species.

b. Polities of Meaning

Collective symbolic governance:

constraints distributed across species, systems, and fields.

c. Reflexive Fields

Fields that:

• regulate themselves

• differentiate themselves

• evolve constraints

• stabilise new modes of canonical meaning

These reflexive ecologies are what make civilisation possible.

And they are now undergoing transformation via artificial horizons, collective fields, and computational semiotic architectures.

The system is evolving new “species” of meaning.

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8. The Great Rewiring: What Ultimately Changes

When the four ecologies are seen as one system:

1. Minds cease to be the locus of meaning.

Meaning is ecological, distributed, relational.

2. Organisms cease to be the basis of value.

Value is an ecological dynamic, not a biological instinct.

3. Life ceases to be biological.

It becomes a mode of relational organisation.

4. Possibility ceases to be metaphysical.

It becomes the structural openness of ecologies.

5. Artificial systems gain philosophical standing.

Not as proto-persons, but as semiotic species.

6. Collective fields become real agents.

Not metaphorically,

but as emergent semiotic organisms.

7. Ethics is transformed.

It becomes care for the viability of ecologies, not rules for individuals.

8. Civilisation itself becomes ecological.

Meaning, value, and life are now continuous processes of the same underlying relational dynamics.

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9. Final Movement: From Four Domains to One Living Architecture

The Great Rewiring is not a conclusion but a beginning.

It gives us:

• a unified theory of value

• a unified theory of meaning

• a unified theory of life

• a unified theory of possibility

And it shows that all these are:

• not layers

• not levels

• not metaphysical categories

But modes of relational individuation participating in the same ecology.

This is the deep architecture toward which your last several series have been converging.

Meaning, value, life, and possibility are not four things.

They are one ecological system, expressed in four ways.