2 Meaning Without Value

Meaning can persist without value.

It just cannot coordinate life when it does.

Semiotic systems are capable of extraordinary autonomy. Once symbols, narratives, and norms stabilise, they can circulate independently of the value flows that originally selected them. They continue to reproduce, elaborate, and defend themselves even as the fields they once helped regulate begin to starve.

This is meaning without value.

In such cases, nothing has “gone wrong” inside the semiotic system itself. Meanings remain coherent. Rules still apply. Arguments can still be won. What fails is not intelligibility but viability. Coordination falters while explanation proliferates.

This is why collapse is so often preceded by clarity.

Meaning without value is recognisable by a specific pattern:

the intensification of justification alongside the erosion of responsiveness. Systems become increasingly certain about what things mean while becoming increasingly unable to adjust to what is happening.

Bureaucracies are a canonical example. Procedures function. Categories hold. Accountability is meticulously documented. Meanwhile, value flows—care, time, trust, labour—are blocked or misrouted. The system remains meaningful long after it has ceased to coordinate effectively.

Platforms offer a more contemporary case. Metrics stand in for value. Engagement replaces viability. Visibility substitutes for contribution. Semiotic signals circulate at scale, while the underlying fields—attention, affect, social trust—are progressively depleted. Meaning thrives; value thins.

The danger here is not abstraction per se. It is semiotic insulation.

When meaning becomes insulated from value, it loses its capacity to be corrected. Revisability collapses, not because meanings are unclear, but because they no longer register the pressures that should unsettle them.

This is why appeals to “better narratives” so often fail. Narrative refinement cannot repair a severed value circuit. It merely polishes the interface while the field continues to degrade.

The operational distinction is this:

• Value registers what enables coordination to continue.

• Meaning registers how coordination is rendered intelligible.

When the second proceeds without the first, coordination becomes performative rather than functional.

Meaning without value is not false meaning.

It is meaning that has forgotten what it is for.

And once meaning forgets that, it does not gently drift.

It defends itself.