The Myth of Meaning: 9 Nihilism as Hell — The Fear of Meaninglessness

The Problem

Just as humans seek immortal significance, we fear its absence. Nihilism — the sense that life, culture, or consciousness lacks inherent purpose — is often treated as a moral or existential abyss. Meaninglessness is imagined as a void threatening both individuals and society.

The Distortion

This fear mirrors the theological concept of hell: the punishment for failing to align with divine order. Even in secular frameworks, meaninglessness is framed as an external threat, as if significance could be lost or revoked. The result is a psychological and cultural structure that inherits theology’s punitive logic without God.

The Relational Alternative

From a relational perspective, meaning is never absolute or guaranteed. It emerges contingently through interaction and perspectival construal. The “void” is not an external threat but a feature of relational openness: new possibilities, interpretations, and alignments constantly arise. Significance is produced in the flow of relation, not possessed, lost, or suspended.

Takeaway

Nihilism as hell is theology in disguise. Relational ontology dissolves the fear of meaninglessness: significance is not given or taken, but enacted continually in relational processes across contexts and perspectives.

The Myth of Meaning: 8 The Archive as Heaven — Eternal Storage as Secular Afterlife

The Problem

Modern culture and scholarship often imagine that preserving knowledge, culture, or data secures immortality. Digital archives, libraries, and recorded histories promise to safeguard meaning indefinitely, as if permanence itself guarantees significance.

The Distortion

This is a secularised afterlife: the archive functions like heaven, a repository where significance is stored beyond decay. Meaning is displaced from lived relational processes into static preservation, reproducing theology’s logic of eternal reward and salvation, but in material or informational form.

The Relational Alternative

Meaning does not reside in storage or record. Its significance arises through ongoing relational actualisation — interpretation, performance, and enactment. Archives and records only acquire meaning when they participate in active relational networks; without use, they are inert. Significance is processual, not permanent.

Takeaway

The drive to eternalise meaning is theology’s ghost in the machine. Relational ontology reframes the archive: preservation is meaningful only in the context of living interaction, not as a secularised heaven.

The Myth of Meaning: 7 Immortality of Meaning — Why We Fear Oblivion

The Problem

Humans instinctively seek permanence. Even secular accounts of significance often cling to notions of enduring meaning: legacy, culture, or memory as if they could outlast mortality. The fear of oblivion drives us to invest significance in symbols, achievements, and narratives.

The Distortion

This is theology’s afterimage: the drive for immortality mirrors the promise of eternal life or the soul. Even without God, the structure persists — meaning is imagined as something that must endure, as if reality itself had a stake in human significance. Significance is thus projected onto permanence rather than understood as process.

The Relational Alternative

Meaning is not immortal; it is relational and contingent. Significance exists in the interplay of potential and actual, in ongoing interpretations and alignments. What persists does so only insofar as relational networks sustain it. Cultural memory, symbolic systems, and human achievements are meaningful because they are enacted and re-enacted, not because they exist eternally.

Takeaway

The longing for immortal meaning is theology in secular disguise. Relational ontology embraces the fragility and impermanence of significance: meaning exists in action and interaction, not in eternal preservation.

The Myth of Meaning: 6 The Eternal Signifier — Structuralism’s Ghosts

The Problem

Structuralist and post-structuralist thought often treats signs, symbols, and systems as carrying significance independently of human interaction. Meaning seems to preexist us, waiting to be decoded, as if language itself were a vault of eternal truths.

The Distortion

This is a subtle return of theology: the “eternal signifier” functions like a secularised deity. By treating structures as pre-given and self-sufficient, we imagine meaning as already embedded in the world — a fixed order to be revealed rather than a relational process to be enacted. Humans become interpreters of eternal significance, not co-creators of it.

The Relational Alternative

From a relational perspective, signs and symbols only carry meaning through interaction. The patterning of potential into actual, the perspectival cuts through which we interpret, is what generates significance. Symbols are tools of relational alignment, not repositories of preordained meaning. Meaning is performed, not inherited.

Takeaway

The “eternal signifier” is theology repackaged in semiotic form. Relational ontology dissolves this ghost: meaning arises dynamically, contingent on perspective and interaction, never residing in structures beyond relation itself.

The Myth of Meaning: 5 The End of Ends — Teleology Without a Telos

The Problem

Even in secular accounts, meaning often implies ends: goals, purposes, or ultimate destinations. From evolutionary narratives to ethical frameworks, we act “toward” something, as if the cosmos itself were oriented to deliver significance.

The Distortion

This is teleology reborn: a secular echo of divine providence. By framing meaning as inherently goal-directed, we treat relational processes as if they were designed for outcomes. Human projects, cultural evolution, or scientific progress are imagined as fulfilling pre-existing plans, masking the contingency and perspectival nature of actualisation.

The Relational Alternative

In a relational ontology, ends are not pre-inscribed; they emerge through perspectival construal. Goals are patterns we detect and enact, not cosmic mandates. Significance arises from interaction, negotiation, and alignment — it is the relational actualisation of potential, contingent on context and perspective. There is no telos external to the process.

Takeaway

Teleology without a telos exposes secular thinking’s hidden inheritance: purpose imagined as property of reality. Relational meaning dissolves this illusion, showing that what we call ends are emergent patterns within ongoing processes, not preordained destinations.

The Myth of Meaning: 4 Logos Without God — Rational Order as Secular Theology

The Problem

Western thought often frames meaning as participation in a logos — a rational order structuring reality. Even when stripped of overt divinity, this order persists: the universe is intelligible because it is inherently rational, and meaning flows from alignment with this hidden logic.

The Distortion

This secularised logos is theology in rationalist clothing. It assumes that intelligibility is not relationally produced but already inscribed into reality, waiting for discovery. Meaning becomes obedience to order: to understand is to conform to a pre-ordained structure. Rationalism inherits theology’s metaphysical guarantee, promising that reason has a cosmic foundation.

The Relational Alternative

From a relational ontology, there is no eternal logos underwriting meaning. Intelligibility emerges through patterned construals of relation. Rational systems — languages, mathematics, logic — are not mirrors of a cosmic blueprint but evolving practices of coordination. Meaning is not fidelity to an underlying order, but perspectival alignment of potential and actual through symbolic mediation.

Takeaway

“Logos without God” still carries God’s shadow. By reframing reason as relational coordination rather than cosmic decree, we see that meaning does not descend from order but arises from the ongoing play of relation itself.

The Myth of Meaning: 3 Meaning as Gift — Secular Grace in Disguise

The Problem

Even in secular frameworks, meaning is often treated as something given — a resource, a horizon, a framework awaiting human discovery. From existentialism’s “search for authenticity” to structuralist theories of semiotics, significance is imagined as pre-existing, almost like a secularised grace.

The Distortion

This framing smuggles theology back under the guise of secularism. Meaning is cast as a “gift” we receive from the world, history, or culture — echoing divine benevolence — rather than something that emerges through interaction. By treating significance as given, these accounts reproduce the hierarchical logic of providence: humans as recipients, reality as benefactor.

The Relational Alternative

From a relational perspective, meaning is never handed down. It arises through the actualisation of potential in relational networks. Symbols, rituals, and practices generate significance only by their interactions and interpretations. There is no “source” of meaning apart from the processes that enact it. What we call a gift is really an emergent pattern of alignment between potential and actual across systems.

Takeaway

Meaning as gift is theology in disguise. By understanding significance as relational actualisation, we free it from the pretence of inheritance or endowment, and reveal the contingent, perspectival, and emergent nature of all meaningful phenomena.

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.

The Myth of Meaning: 1 Teleology Reborn — Purpose as Destiny

The Problem

Philosophy and science often imagine that “purpose” can be stripped of theology and carried forward as a neutral category. From Aristotle’s final causes to evolutionary biology’s “functions,” the narrative of purpose seems unavoidable. But whenever “teleology” appears, it carries the shadow of destiny — the notion that the universe, life, or humanity is oriented toward some ultimate end.

The Distortion

In this framing, process is treated as if it were always moving toward a predetermined outcome. Beings are imagined as designed for ends, or as naturally fulfilling destinies inscribed in their essence. Even secularised, this logic reproduces theology’s eschatological arc: the world ordered by a higher telos, with each entity playing its part in the unfolding of an ordained story.

The Relational Alternative

From a relational ontology, purpose is not destiny but construal. Ends emerge only as perspectival interpretations within systems of relation — not as intrinsic commands. The flight of a bird has no “purpose” in itself; we construe its dynamics as flight-for-survival, or as beauty, or as aerodynamics, depending on our frame. “Purpose” is a projection onto unfolding relation, not a force that steers it.

Takeaway

Teleology reborn is theology disguised. To unbind meaning from destiny, we must see purpose as relational construal, not as a built-in drive of reality. Ends are interpretive cuts across possibility, not prewritten conclusions.

The Myth of Meaning: How Theology Haunts Our Theories of Significance

In our previous series, Physics Without Divinity, we traced how modern science remains haunted by theological residues: laws as commandments, conservation as providence, origins as creation myths. Stripped of their theological aura, these concepts dissolve into relational processes: actuality emerging from perspectival constraints, possibility flowing into patterned relation.

But physics is only half the story. If physics inherited theology’s dream of divine order, our theories of meaning inherited theology’s dream of divine purpose.

The promise of an ultimate “why,” the idea of a transcendent guarantee of significance, still echoes through philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and even secular humanism. Meaning is cast as something given, grounded, or guaranteed — by God, by truth, by reason, by human essence. These are the myths we must now excavate.

This new series, The Myth of Meaning, undertakes that excavation. It asks:

• Where do our theories of meaning still carry theological afterimages?

• How do ideas of destiny, transcendence, or eternal significance sneak back into secular frameworks?

• What happens to “meaning” once we strip away its hidden gods?

Just as Physics Without Divinity showed that matter does not obey divine law but actualises relation, this series will show that meaning does not rest on divine purpose but emerges through relational construal. Significance is perspectival, fragile, and collective — no less real for being contingent.

The aim is not to banish theology, but to see clearly: to distinguish where meaning is projected as eternal ground, and where meaning arises as relational construal. Only then can we move beyond both the promise of transcendence and the abyss of nihilism, toward a frame where significance belongs to relation itself.

Physics Without Divinity: Series Conclusion — Physics as Relational Mapping

From Secular Theology to Processual Actualisation

If Series 1 exposed the hidden gods embedded in physics, Series 2 shows what emerges when those gods are removed. Laws are not commandments, matter does not obey, and constants are not eternal decrees. Cosmology is not creation; infinity is not sacred; the universe has no eschatology.

What remains is relation in process. Patterns, regularities, and “laws” are the visible contours of actualisations arising from potential. Observations are perspectival; constants are contextual; particles are nodes of interaction. Unity and plurality, beginnings and endings, eternity and infinity — all are shapes of relational unfolding, not metaphysical absolutes.

Physics, when stripped of theological residue, becomes a map of possibility actualising in relation. It charts the contours of potential without assuming command, design, or divine oversight. The cosmos is not decreed; it is coordinated, emergent, and open-ended.

Relational ontology does not reject physics; it reframes it. It replaces hidden authority with processual freedom, divine decree with relational constraint, and sacred perfection with contingent actualisation. In doing so, it allows us to see the universe not as a church of hidden gods, but as the ongoing unfolding of possibility.

Physics Without Divinity: 12 Plurality in Relation — Unity and Multiplicity Reframed

From The One and the Many to Configurations of Possibility

Theology projects metaphysics onto physics: unity and plurality, one and many, ultimate order and diversity. Physics inherits this, treating systems as fundamentally singular or fundamental entities as ultimate.

Relationally, unity and plurality are outcomes of relational alignment. “The One” is a local convergence of actualisations; “the Many” are the divergent possibilities that persist alongside it. Neither is primary. Both emerge from the interplay of potential and actual.

Multiplicity is not chaos; unity is not transcendence. Both are patterns of relation, contingent and perspectival, actualised in context.

Physics Without Divinity: 11 Contextual Invariance — Constants without Divinity

From Immutable Attributes to Emergent Regularities

Universal constants often read like secularised divine attributes: fixed, eternal, perfectly tuned. Their stability suggests a metaphysical safeguard, a cosmos guaranteed against variation.

Relationally, constants are invariances within context. They describe the consistent outcome of patterns in relational actualisation, not metaphysical absolutes. Gravity, the speed of light, and Planck’s constant are measures of relational stability, contingent on the framework of interaction, not cosmic decree.

Constants persist because processes maintain alignment, not because they are inscribed by divine will. Physics liberated from theology sees invariance as emergent, not decreed.

Physics Without Divinity: 10 Pattern without Substance — Particles as Relational Nodes

From Scholastic Substance to Relational Configuration

Particle metaphysics often repeats scholastic habits: matter as discrete, inert substance, endowed with inherent properties. Physics inherits this vocabulary, treating particles as things that “exist” independently.

Relationally, particles are nodes of process, not isolated substances. Their properties emerge only in interaction, as relational potentials actualise. What we detect as a particle is a pattern of stability, a configuration that persists across relational cuts.

Matter is thus a dynamic pattern, not a building block of reality. Relational ontology replaces substance with structured potential actualised through interaction.

Physics Without Divinity: 9 Potential, Not Sacred Infinity — Reframing the Infinite

From Divine Aura to Relational Horizon

Infinity has always carried a divine aura: mathematics’ infinities, cosmology’s unbounded space, and eternal series all echo the sacred. Infinity promises completeness, perfection, and ultimate understanding.

Relationally, infinity is not sacred; it is the horizon of potential. Infinite possibilities exist not as entities, but as unactualised relational configurations. Actuality samples from potential, creating bounded instantiations within unbounded context.

Infinity is thus descriptive, not prescriptive. It is the openness of relational space, not a celestial ideal. Physics without divinity embraces infinity as the ever-present horizon of possibility, never as a placeholder for God.

Physics Without Divinity: 8 Process, Not Timelessness — Physics beyond Eternity

From Timeless Truths to Temporal Actualisation

Timelessness is seductive. Equations run symmetrically, constants never change, and models imagine a universe eternal and unaltered. Theological residue lingers: eternity as ultimate perfection.

Relational ontology reframes this. Time is not an illusion to escape, but the medium in which actuality emerges from potential. Reversibility in equations is a property of formalism, not a truth about being. Actualisation is always temporally bound, contingent, and emergent.

Eternity is a model, not reality. Processes unfold, potentials actualise, and relational patterns persist — but only through time, not beyond it. Physics liberated from timeless fetishism sees process as fundamental, not its abstraction.

Physics Without Divinity: 7 Situated Observation — Beyond the Absolute Observer

From God’s Eye to Perspectival View

Physics often imagines an “absolute observer,” a God-like vantage from which the universe can be surveyed without bias. Measurements and equations are framed as if they capture reality from nowhere, free of context.

Relationally, there is no view from nowhere. Observation is always situated: it arises from a perspective embedded within process. What we record, measure, and describe is the actualisation of relational patterns from a particular cut in the flow of possibility.

The absolute observer dissolves into the network of relations. Knowledge is not universal and unmediated; it is the mapping of relational structure as it manifests from specific positions. Physics need not aspire to divinity — it only needs to acknowledge perspectival actualisation.

Physics Without Divinity: 6 Fine-Tuning Without Design

Alignment as Relational Pattern, Not Cosmic Purpose

The anthropic principle casts the universe as improbably tailored for life. Constants must fall within narrow ranges; particles must behave precisely. In theology’s shadow, this reads like evidence of a Designer: fine-tuning as cosmic intention.

But there is no designer. Fine-tuning is not purpose; it is relational alignment. Certain patterns of interaction permit the emergence of complex structures. Life emerges where conditions resonate, not because the universe “intended” it.

Probabilities and constants are not evidence of providence; they are the contour lines of possibility actualising across relational space. The universe is not shaped to accommodate us; we emerge where relation permits stability and coordination.

Where physics once saw improbable perfection, relational ontology sees pattern contingent on context. Fine-tuning becomes descriptive, not prescriptive. Possibility unfolds within bounds set by relational actualisations, not by cosmic decree.

Design is a projection. Reality is process. Life arises not from intent, but from the actualisation of relational potential.

Physics Without Divinity: 5 Eschatology Without End

Why the Cosmos Has No Final Chapter

Physics, like theology, is haunted by endings. Heat death, cosmic crunch, vacuum decay — these are framed as eschatologies, narratives of the ultimate fate of the universe. They echo theology’s obsession with consummation: the final judgment, the last day, the ultimate closure.

But closure is a projection. It mistakes perspectival extrapolation for ontology. A model, stretched into infinity, is taken to describe the destiny of all being. This is not physics so much as secularised eschatology.

In relational ontology, there is no final chapter. Actualisations are always perspectival, always contingent, always emergent from relation. Possibility is inexhaustible; it cannot be consumed or extinguished. What appears to be “heat death” is simply one horizon of construal, one cut in the unfolding of potential.

The cosmos does not move toward an end. It phases, it transforms, it configures and reconfigures. Endings are local stabilisations of process, never the termination of process itself.

Theology needs an end to frame salvation. Physics needs an end to frame prediction. Relation needs neither.

Eschatology dissolves into endless unfolding. There is no omega point — only possibility without limit.

Physics Without Divinity: 4 No Creation, Only Emergence

From Ex Nihilo to Relational Actualisation

Cosmology often carries the shadow of Genesis. The Big Bang is described as a “creation from nothing,” a moment when the cosmos burst into being. This is ex nihilo in scientific clothing: a secularised origin story that still presumes the logic of creation.

But nothing is ever created. What we call “emergence” is not production from void but the actualisation of potential. The cosmos is not a thing that began; it is the ongoing unfolding of relation. What appears as a beginning is the perspectival mark of a cut — a horizon where our capacity to trace relation falters, and possibility resolves into actual patterns.

Ex nihilo is a myth of command: first there was nothing, then decree, then existence. Emergence reframes this entirely. Potential is never absent; it saturates relation. Actualisation is not the arrival of being from nothing, but the phase shift where one configuration gives way to another.

There is no cosmic moment of fiat. No singular event of creation. The universe has never been “nothing” — it has always been relation in process, possibility pressing toward actualisation.

To speak of “origin” is already to misplace the question. There is no beginning to being, only the unfolding of possibility.

Physics Without Divinity: 3 Conservation as Relational Persistence

From Eternal Guarantees to Processual Continuity

Conservation laws are often treated as eternal decrees: energy, momentum, charge can never be created or destroyed. Physics presents them as providential guarantees — invisible guardians that secure the cosmos against loss or rupture.

But conservation is not divine providence. It is the trace of how processes hold together across perspectives. Persistence is relational, not absolute. Energy is not a substance that is “kept safe”; it is a relational measure, a way of tracking transformations without remainder. Momentum is not an untouchable essence; it is the consistency of interaction when potentials actualise in symmetry.

What appears as conservation is the resonance of relational alignment. Symmetries constrain how processes can unfold, and within those constraints, potentials persist as patterned possibilities. There is no external guarantor, no metaphysical safeguard. Only relation, maintaining itself through unfolding actualisation.

Seen this way, conservation shifts from being an eternal guarantee to being the continuity of relation. It is not law imposed from outside but persistence enacted from within — a weaving that holds as long as processes continue to coordinate.

The cosmos does not need providence. It only needs relation.

Physics Without Divinity: 2 Coordination of Matter — Beyond Obedience

From Following Rules to Relational Alignment

Physics often imagines matter as passive: a mute substance that “follows” instructions. Equations dictate, particles comply. The picture is one of obedience — nature as a vast congregation of things disciplined into perfect submission.

But nothing in relation obeys. Processes do not “follow orders”; they coordinate. What looks like compliance is in fact mutual alignment, potentials actualising in concert. When we see a pendulum swing, or a photon bend, we are not watching inert matter submit to law. We are witnessing processes interlock: forces, masses, energies, potentials entwined in relational movement.

To speak of obedience is to miss the vitality of relation. Coordination is never absolute; it depends on conditions, scales, and perspectives. At times alignment persists, giving the appearance of universal order. At other times, it shifts or breaks down, revealing contingency where obedience had been assumed.

Matter is not a servant of law. It is the ongoing choreography of relation, actualising in ways that are patterned, but never decreed. Physics need not invoke obedience; it need only see that regularity is the form coordination takes when viewed across the weave of possibility.

Physics Without Divinity: 1 Constraint without Commandment

Law as Relational Regularity

Physics still speaks the language of command. To call something a “law” is to borrow from the old imagination of decree — a world ordered by commandment, sustained by obedience. Gravity “demands,” particles “must” behave, systems “obey” equations. Even stripped of theological clothing, the metaphor persists: nature is a governed realm, order a matter of command.

But relation has no sovereign. Regularities are not decrees imposed from above, but stabilities that emerge within the ongoing dance of processes. To name a “law of nature” is to describe a pattern of coordination, a constraint visible when potentials actualise together. The regularity is not absolute; it is perspectival, holding only within the conditions where that relational configuration persists.

Constraint, then, is not commandment but possibility’s contour. It is the edge that channels how potential may actualise, the boundary that gives shape to process. What physics calls “law” is nothing more — and nothing less — than the regularity of relation: not a statute written into the cosmos, but a rhythm that emerges wherever processes intertwine.

Physics Without Divinity: A Relational Ontology of Constraint and Possibility

If the first series traced the hidden gods of physics, this second series asks: what remains when we clear them away?

Physics need not be theology in disguise. But to free it from divine residue, we must reconstrue its concepts not as decrees, commandments, or eternal truths, but as perspectival cuts within a relational process.

This series reframes the same terrains explored in Theology in Physics, but from a different angle:

• Law without Commandment — not cosmic decrees, but relational constraints that emerge in interaction.

• Creation without Genesis — not ex nihilo, but unfolding actualisations of potential.

• Transcendence without Divinity — not timeless absolutes, but perspectival positions within processes.

• Metaphysics without Substance — not inert particles or immutable constants, but patterned constraints that hold only in relation.

Where physics sought eternal laws, relational ontology sees constraints that actualise within shifting contexts. Where physics invokes beginnings and endings, relational ontology sees cuts in the flow of potential. Where physics projects timeless truths, relational ontology finds perspectival alignments.

Physics Without Divinity is not a rejection of physics, but a refusal of its hidden theology. It is an invitation to see physics otherwise: as a practice of mapping possibility and constraint within the becoming of relation.