Structure Vs. Meaning
Scaffolding is a structure. We use it to give ourselves a platform to build on above the ground. It’s not pretty or decorative, but it is useful and functional.
What meaning does scaffolding have?
It’s easy to identify its purpose, but what does it mean?
That seems like a silly question. Scaffolding doesn’t have meaning. It’s a structure used in place of a ladder in certain scenarios because it’s more efficient. It doesn’t have meaning on its own.
Gravity could also be considered a structure. It keeps everything from floating away.
What meaning does gravity have?
It’s easy to identify its function, but what does it mean?
Like scaffolding, gravity has no meaning on its own. It’s simply the thing that keeps us on the ground. It’s also what makes scaffolding necessary.
And it’s what allows things to fall off the scaffolding.
Now what meaning does it have?
Is gravity bad because it pulls things to the ground?
Is scaffolding bad because things can fall off of it?
Meaning is how we interpret structure. It is how we interpret what happens because of structure.
If something falls because of gravity, we don’t fault gravity. We create meaning out of the fall, or the damage that resulted from it.
Meaning often focuses on the problem with the structure.
How do we prevent the structure from causing harm?
How do we make scaffolding safe?
How do we make sure gravity doesn’t pull something to the ground we don’t want it to?
Those questions are a layer of meaning and interpretation. There is nothing wrong with preventing harm. The problem comes when we collapse meaning and structure into the same layer.
We would have trouble trying to turn off gravity to make everything feel safer, so we don’t try. We don’t make gravity the problem.
But in many other cases, we do.
We try to remove the structure to make things safer. We try to proverbially turn off gravity to prevent the problem from recurring.
When we ban things, we are restricting structure based on meaning and interpretation. We are, in effect, trying to turn off gravity.
Banning something collapses meaning and structure into one layer. We project our interpretation onto the structure itself and then treat the structure as the problem.
But is the structure the problem, or is the meaning the problem?
Which layer is more important?
Why?
People tend to make meaning more important because meaning gets mixed into identity. We take meaning personally. We react to what we believe something represents, not just to what it is.
When we talk about banning books, for example, we’re not removing the structure of books themselves. Books still exist. The structure remains intact.
What we are doing is restricting access to specific books based on the meaning we’ve interpreted from them.
It’s not the paper, the binding, or even the existence of the book that’s the issue. It’s what we believe the book represents, communicates, or might cause.
We’re responding to meaning, not structure.
It would be like banning green scaffolding because we don’t like green. The scaffolding still exists. The structure hasn’t changed. We’ve just decided that one version of it carries meaning we don’t want.
Meaning is what carries the weight. It’s why only specific books get banned, not every book.
We didn’t ban the structure of the book. We banned the content.
That distinction matters. It shows the difference between structure and meaning. It reveals which one we give more weight to and pay more attention to.
It gives us the ability to question the power of the meaning we assign to the structure we perceive.
The question is not whether the meaning is right or correct.
The question is whether the meaning is helpful, or whether it creates more confusion and pain than the structure offers on its own.
The structure didn’t create the suffering. Our interpretation of it did.
For more information on structure and meaning, please see my framework at https://philosophy.dellawren.com.