Meaning Serves Collaboration

What makes collaboration difficult? Is it the painful experiences we have had in the past, or the painful visions we have in the present of what could go wrong in the future. Probably a mix of both.

What is learning if not finding better ways to collaborate? Why would you understand how to type, if you didn’t want to collaborate with a computer? Why would you learn to do a backflip, if you didn’t want to better collaborate with gravity? Why would you learn how to dance if you didn’t want to collaborate with music?

Life breeds collaboration. Life perhaps is nothing more than collaboration. If you’re looking for the meaning of life you don’t have to look far, drive long or dig deep, you just have to rethink what meaning means.

There was a time when collaboration was violent. The only way humans could collaborate was to have the strong holding other strong in check, and the weak living in their subservience. Most animals still embody this reality.

Then there was a time when violence gave way to story, and meaning became the average of our strength. You brought your strength, I brought mine, together we create meaning between us. We shared stories, and thus shared strength; meaning was how we joined in together to a larger collaboration along many different types of “strong” and “weak.” Meaning held us together, and so we grew to need it. Needing it was very real, because it guarded us from violence.

There will be a time, or there was a time when we created something outside meaning. Words became more than the water our thoughts swim, they became rulers. We created external structure, almost like a version of a mind to hold collaboration across a million different brain waves. The rule of law. Words written down that can’t change, even though the meaning behind them could change as we changed ourselves. Slaves could be free. Women could vote. Animals could have rights.

Meaning serves collaboration, just as death serves life. Death gives life a rhythm, a pulse. If life did not die it could not evolve and would be as a stone—always the same. For life to have some “meaning” that you find in a book, it would risk you becoming part of a story averaged-out with dead people; unevolved to the present moment.

A meaningless life will invite collaboration. Perhaps it will be to discover what that meaning will be. The story that pulls together a host of lives into collaboration together. Perhaps it will be just collaboration like a dance; wobbly wanky humans pulsing to some weird and wonderful sounds.

Perhaps collaboration is difficult because life evolves through death, and the suffering we experience collaborating inspires us to collaborate in better ways. Ways that bring in more to their rhythm. Not just the tools we used to dig a furrow, but the oxen we use to draw the plow. Not just the plants we use to make a salad, but the electrons run through diodes to feed their leaves. In a thousand different ways and with a thousand different beats. The mix of rhythms is never complete.?

Disclaimer: The content and frivolity expressed in this article is my personal perspective, it does not reflect the position of the incredible organizations I work with.