What is Dilemmas of Meaning?
When we talk about meaning-making we talk about a dialogue. A conversation between the text and the traits that constitute our self: our experiences, beliefs, and resulting biases. Via this back-and-forth, the person achieves an understanding of the world, the text, others, and, in truly sublime moments, themselves.
However, that conversation is drowned out by a cacophony of texts. How can we, amidst the noise, understand any of the texts surrounding us nonetheless understand ourselves? What happens when we move from a dialogical model of meaning-making to a multilogical model, when text exists everywhere and every time? We posit that, in our present technological era, whereas one’s self existed and had meaning independent of text, the two previously distinct worlds of real and online now fit over each other like a double-glazed window, we see through both simultaneously to gain meaning of the world. Indeed, our self-knowledge becomes more and more obfuscated as the real and virtual realms become more and more entangled. The conversation becomes a screaming match.
Appreciating this condition leads to a dilemma of meaning. Where who we are is constantly in flux and reality appears impenetrably opaque. This problem motivates the creation of this publication, as a diagnostic tool addressing this dilemma. We aim to produce short essays that explore and critique this phenomenon: from the political consequences to the existential to the technological. All to understand what makes us, us.
This dilemma circumscribes the essays this journal will produce. We aim to centre the self, rejecting the view that upholds ideas as transcendent. This is not to perpetuate the rugged individual’s cultivation but rather to uncover how the individual is cultivated. We are grounded in how technology affects real people and their identity. This journal aims to write about people, for people, from people.
We hope you’ll join us on our journey working through difficult but pressing ideas in public, and the ensuing conversation.
