This series did not begin with a definition of meaning.
That was deliberate.
To define meaning too early is already to misunderstand what kind of work it does.
What shifted
Across the posts, meaning was progressively released from familiar frames:
from representation,
from stored content,
from objects,
from explanation,
and from value.
What emerged instead was not a new theory about meaning, but an orientation toward it.
Meaning appeared as relational activity, not as a thing to be possessed.
What survived
Once representation stopped doing the work, meaning did not disappear.
It persisted — sturdily, quietly — as construal, alignment, misalignment, and practice.
This persistence matters.
It shows that meaning is not a fragile philosophical luxury, but a basic condition of intelligibility and coordination.
What this makes possible
Reframing meaning as practice opens new possibilities:
education becomes cultivation rather than transmission,
communication becomes coordination rather than exchange,
disagreement becomes productive rather than pathological,
and thinking itself becomes something that evolves through use.
Meaning is no longer something we have.
It is something we do, together, repeatedly.
A closing orientation
This series ends without a final claim.
Instead, it offers a way of attending:
To notice construal as it happens.
To recognise misalignment without panic.
To sustain conditions where meaning can continue to emerge.
If representation once promised certainty, meaning as practice offers something else instead:
participation without closure.
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