Viewquake: making meaning after the fact

A couple years ago I started to reckon with the idea that, whereas some meanings of events are felt immediately, and some are intrinsic to those events, others are negotiable. Here's what set me on this line of thinking:

  1. This Tweetstorm by Matt Glassman about elections.
  2. This related Glassman article about attempts to shape public meanings of elections.
  3. Apology 39e and following, when Socrates wants "to show you the meaning of this which has now happened to me."
  4. Negotiation literature, especially Never Split The Difference.

I have nothing profound to add to these here, but a lot of the world makes more sense when you see more behavior as negotiating over meaning. (And more events as mechanisms to force the negotiation over meaning.)


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