This-essay is a8003011.htm which is available at the web-site www.essayz.com. See more notes at the bottom. Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay By-Months By-Years By-Words Webs of Like-&-Un-Like ESSAYS <==> Like-&-UN-Like This-One ========================================================== %DEFINITIONS OF SOCIAL MEANING 800301 Social meaning is defined by human subcultures, and is not an objective reality existing independently of human subcultures. Social meaning pertains to answers to the questions "Why?", "What does it mean?", "What next?", and other of like kind. Social meaning is defined by how people behave collectively: Role models create social meaning. Legislatures create social meaning by what legislation they pass. Businessmen create social meaning by the products they promote and sell. Educators define what life in a sub-culture means by how and what questions they ask and answer. Social meaning is embodied in patterns of social responses to social behavior, both conformal and non-conformal behavior. It is embodied in the significance associated with words, rituals, actions, inactions, etc. It is misleading to seek to discover social meaning as if it was an objective reality which exists independently of those who define it. To fail to recognize the role of human choice in defining social meaning---is to make it impossible to understand the dynamics of the origin of and change in social meaning as it is defined by and experienced by people who are enabled, fulfilled, trapped, and/or suffer within the matrix of social meaning. Humans are social creatures. The meaning of people's lives resides in social contexts, in communication networks. Without dialogue there is no meaning in life. Whatever blocks/inhibits dialogue deprives lives of meaning which they might otherwise have. Some dialogue is hardly more than anticipated, yet it is thereby made real and contributes to the social context which gives meaning to those who anticipate the dialogue---even though there is no guarantee that it will be realized. Much meaning is realized through fantasy, in social contexts which are hoped for according to wished for definitions of the significance of desired behavior patterns. That which is not yet real may be given significance through fantasized social contexts, and then people seek to realize the roles they have perceived through fantasy. In this way new definitions become embodied in new role models who shake the foundations of traditional cultures and sub-cultures. (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in www.essayz.com Search for Integrity and Honesty (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================
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