Sharing Meaning

Learning is a highly individual affair: a physical change within our brains, and an associated shift in our mental models of the world around us. As we learn, we may consciously or unconsciously change how we act, what we say, or the foundations upon which we forge belief. And learning can be dangerous: dangerous to what we believe, our identity, or an established structure of power.

But learning is not specifically infectious: just because you learn something from a book does not mean that i will learn anything. And just because you are exposed to a dramatic idea and learn, and so do i, we may not ‘learn’ the same thing. This is a strange thing: learning is not so much a direct transfer as a provocation, some materials, and a context. What we learn, however, is constructed.

One way to view this is as the creation of meaning: this is an imperfect analogy as it does not fit all types of learning, but let’s use it to explore the learning of ideas, and as a foundation of behaviour.

We may be given knowledge, but learning is more than knowledge: on to of that we synthesise meaning. We create it as a story, which is held partly in relation to what we already know to be true, and partly in relation to our imagined realities. Our sense of ‘meaning’ is essentially how we view the world around us, and everything within it. So in that sense it is an illusion that we somehow come to believe is real.

So right now i am sat at home (‘home’ is a mental construct that i have learned – or created – that comes with all sorts of associations of separation, control, and safety). It’s morning (‘time’ itself, and the ways that we break down our working hours from our non working ones are, themselves, an invented ‘meaning’, based partly on convention, partly on physics, and partly on how often we get hungry). I am operating within a constructed stage of meaning. And it’s very pleasant: these illusions are efficient and effective. They may not be perfect, nor perfectly shared between us, but they are good enough that we do not have to ‘create’ our sense of the world anew each and every day.

So some of our sense of meaning is relatively common: we probably both share a sense of what a cafe is, and how to behave within it, even if we are not agreed on the model in our heads as to what the wallpaper looks like.

But you don’t have to look far to realise that our individually created sense of meaning can also be divergent: your view of fairness, justice, purpose, and trust may differ from mine, in small or significant ways. And we are both true to our own beliefs and conception of the world as we this like this.

Which is odd, because we are using the same words. “It’s not fair” says my son. “Yes it is”, i reply. How can we both be correct?

Words do not convey meaning. They do not hold the truth within them. Rather they act as a container, or space, within which we do the building. So each of us may hold a shared vocabulary, and yet have different knowledge, and act with different beliefs, within our own individually constructed sense of meaning.

Conversation, when it happens, can consist of each of us trying to share what is in our heads: we seek to explain, rationalise, teach, and learn, from each other, but using these imperfect containers, which is why ‘message sent’ is never really ‘message received’.

Instead, i send a message, by constructing the story using the words that i have available, and you receive it through your own filters, sometimes degraded further by the space between us (which may be physical or cultural).

In Organisational learning we often rely on words as if they convey a truth: our values, purpose, and culture. And they do contain a truth, but it’s specific to each of us. This is why Social Learning can be powerful, because through both Scaffolding and dialogue, it allows space and structure for the individual and collective creation of meaning, with a recognition that what is created will be divergent. And unlike in more formal learning approaches, we never seek to reconcile them into one perfect (and coherent) narrative.

It’s an odd thing that we can find success through difference: that perhaps a recognition of the individually divergent creation of meaning, alongside the spaces and opportunities to share what has been understood, can weave us together more strongly.