4 Patterns of Construal: Closing the Symbolic-Relational Arc

The critiques of meaning, identity, and symbolic universality reveal a familiar architecture: across semiotic and social systems, relational potential is routinely misread as absolute. What is modal — degrees of possibility, structured potential, perspectival alignment — is projected as modulation, as if reality or symbols themselves compel outcomes.

Meaning is not intrinsic; it emerges from relational construal. Identity is not given; it is enacted along perspectival clines. Universality is not inherent; it is stabilised across contexts through repeated interpretation. Across these domains, the apparent stability of symbolic and social patterns is not a decree of objects or acts, but the repeated actualisation of relational potential.

Recognising this architecture preserves explanatory power while correcting ontology. Symbols do not compel interpretation; identities do not exist independently; universals do not pre-exist. Rather, all are enacted, interpreted, and stabilised through relational patterns and construals.

The persistent rhythm is clear: modality is misread as modulation. Structured potential is mistaken for necessity. Whether in physics or in symbolic systems, the act of seeing the frame reveals that what appears absolute is in fact relational, contingent, and perspectival.

From here, future explorations can trace these patterns across social formation, mythic architecture, language, and symbolic cosmos — examining how relational potential, construal, and alignment shape reality at every scale. To see the frame is to recognise the universe, social or physical, as alive with structured possibility, interpreted and stabilised through perspective, not imposed by decree.

2 The Assumption of “Identity” and “Collective Entities”

Identity is often treated as given: individuals “have” an identity, groups “are” collectives, and social categories appear as ontological anchors. Physics might talk about initial conditions; sociology and culture speak of intrinsic essences. In both cases, the assumption is the same: these entities exist independently, with boundaries and properties that are natural and fixed.

Yet identity and collectives are never observed in isolation. They emerge relationally, through patterns of interaction, construal, and alignment. Individuals are individuated not by intrinsic essence but by their placement along perspectival clines within social and symbolic fields. Collectives are stabilised by repeated construal: shared practices, communicative acts, and relational coordination. Boundaries, roles, and traits are enacted, not decreed.

By naturalising identity and collective entities as fixed, we again project modulation — inevitability and decree — onto what is properly modal: relational potential realised through social and symbolic cuts. The seeming stability of groups and identities masks their dependence on interpretation, alignment, and contextual scaffolding.

Recognising identity as relational rather than intrinsic preserves explanatory power. Individuals and collectives retain coherence, yet this coherence is understood as enacted and maintained through relational patterns, not imposed by metaphysical decree. To see the frame is to see the fluid architecture of identity itself: shaped, stabilised, and construed rather than given.

Myth as an Ongoing Journey of Relational Meaning: 13 Towards a New Mythos — Relational Ontology and Meaning

“Myth is the art of creating meaning that binds us to the cosmos and to each other.”

As we reach the culmination of this series, we turn to the profound task of crafting a new mythos — a symbolic horizon informed by relational ontology, capable of guiding meaning and being in a complex, interconnected world.

Why a New Mythos?

Traditional myths offered frameworks for understanding existence, identity, and purpose rooted in fixed symbolic orders. Yet, the accelerating flux of modernity and the plurality of contemporary life challenge these orders.

Relational ontology reveals that:

• Meaning is not fixed or universal but emerges through dynamic construal and alignment,

• Reality is a reflexive achievement, continually produced by collective symbolic processes,

• Our symbolic infrastructures must be flexible, inclusive, and open to transformation.

A new mythos is needed to reflect these insights — to inspire shared meaning without reifying fixed universals.

Features of a Relational Mythos

A mythos grounded in relational ontology would:

• Emphasise interconnection and interdependence over isolation or essence,

• Celebrate process, becoming, and emergence rather than static being,

• Recognise the plurality of symbolic worlds and the necessity of negotiation,

• Embed reflexivity at its core, encouraging continuous reinterpretation,

• Acknowledge the power dynamics inherent in meaning-making, fostering awareness and equity.

Symbolic Horizons as Living Systems

This new mythos envisions symbolic horizons as living, evolving systems — infrastructures that sustain collective meaning while allowing for transformation and adaptation.

Rather than seeking closure, it invites openness:

• Openness to difference, change, and emergent possibilities,

• Openness to dialogue across symbolic regimes,

• Openness to the unknown and the unbounded potential of meaning.

Mythos and Praxis

A relational mythos is not mere abstraction. It grounds praxis — guiding action, community formation, and cultural innovation.

It offers:

• Symbols and narratives that phase collective orientation toward shared goals,

• Frameworks for navigating crisis and uncertainty,

• Means for bridging divides across difference.

Conclusion

Crafting a new mythos grounded in relational ontology is both a challenge and an opportunity. It requires embracing complexity, uncertainty, and multiplicity — while affirming the power of symbolic systems to bind us together and shape our shared world.

As we conclude this series, the journey of myth continues — not as a quest for timeless truths, but as an ongoing, reflexive co-creation of meaning and reality.

Myth as an Ongoing Journey of Relational Meaning: 12 Symbolic Reflexivity and the Collective Production of Reality

“We live mythologically, and our myths shape the very fabric of reality we inhabit.”

Having charted the symbolic cosmos, we now examine how symbolic reflexivity enables the collective production and continual remaking of reality itself.

The Collective as Reflexive Construal

In relational ontology, reality is not given but constructed through collective construal — a shared symbolic process that phases alignment among diverse perspectives, practices, and materialities.

Symbolic reflexivity is the engine of this process, allowing collectives to:

• Observe and interpret their symbolic systems,

• Reconfigure alignments of meaning,

• Navigate tensions between continuity and change.

Reflexivity as Reality-Making

Symbolic reflexivity does not merely reflect reality; it produces it by:

• Establishing which symbolic alignments count as “real”,

• Enabling coordinated action based on shared meanings,

• Phasing collective identities and possibilities into being.

Reality emerges through recursive symbolic operations: cuts, alignments, stabilisations, and transformations that constitute the social fabric.

Power and Reflexive Production

The collective production of reality is always entangled with power:

• Those who control symbolic infrastructures influence which realities are enacted,

• Marginalised groups contest dominant realities through alternative construals,

• Symbolic reflexivity is a terrain of struggle over meaning and being.

Reflexive Loops and Feedback

Symbolic reflexivity creates feedback loops that:

• Stabilise symbolic systems through repetition and ritual,

• Open systems to innovation and adaptation,

• Allow social formations to learn, self-correct, or transform.

These loops are essential to the dynamic maintenance of social reality.

Towards a Symbolic Cosmos of Possibility

By reflexively producing reality, collectives also open or close spaces of possibility:

• Some symbolic configurations enable openness, creativity, and pluralism,

• Others impose closure, dogmatism, or exclusion.

Understanding symbolic reflexivity highlights the contingent, emergent nature of reality, and the role of collective agency in shaping it.

Conclusion

Symbolic reflexivity is the heart of collective reality production — the ongoing, dynamic process by which shared worlds are made, unmade, and remade.

In the next post, we will explore how these ideas can inform a new mythos for meaning and being — a symbolic horizon that embraces relational ontology.

Myth as an Ongoing Journey of Relational Meaning: 11 From Symbolic Architectures to the Symbolic Cosmos

“The symbolic cosmos is not a given but an ongoing creation — a vast, evolving web of meanings that shapes human existence and possibility.”

Building on our exploration of symbolic architectures, we now turn to the idea of the symbolic cosmos — the expansive, layered symbolic universe that frames our reality and opens the space of what can be.

What is the Symbolic Cosmos?

The symbolic cosmos is the totality of symbolic systems, practices, and meanings that collectively constitute the horizon of meaning for a social formation.

• It includes mythic narratives, religious cosmologies, scientific paradigms, cultural traditions, language systems, and more.

• It is dynamic, continuously reshaped through reflexive processes and symbolic innovations.

• It forms the ontological horizon — the space in which meaning, identity, and possibility emerge and evolve.

Cosmos as Phasing Space

From a relational ontology perspective:

• The symbolic cosmos is a phase space of symbolic possibilities.

• It is structured by symbolic architectures that constrain and enable what can be meaningfully construed.

• Social formations navigate this cosmos by phasing alignments, cutting and recombining symbolic topologies to actualise new possibilities.

Layered and Multiscalar

The symbolic cosmos is:

• Layered: Different strata of symbolic systems interpenetrate — from local myths to global ideologies.

• Multiscalar: It operates across multiple scales — individual, communal, societal, planetary.

• Heterogeneous: It contains diverse, sometimes conflicting symbolic regimes, whose interactions produce tension and innovation.

Reflexivity at Cosmic Scale

Reflexive processes operate not only locally but cosmically:

• Societies reflect on their place within the cosmos through myth, science, and philosophy.

• The symbolic cosmos enables meta-reflexivity — reflection on the conditions of reflection itself.

• This meta-reflexivity opens possibilities for symbolic transformation at the highest scales.

Implications for Meaning and Being

Understanding the symbolic cosmos as a constructed, evolving space challenges assumptions of:

• Fixed, objective realities independent of meaning.

• Singular, universal cosmologies.

• Linear progressions of knowledge or culture.

Instead, it invites a view of reality as a plural, open-ended symbolic domain — one continually negotiated through the infrastructures and phase-shifts we have explored.

Conclusion

The symbolic cosmos is the ultimate horizon of relational ontology — the symbolic universe within which all meaning, identity, and possibility are phased and sustained.

Our next post will explore how this cosmos shapes symbolic reflexivity and the collective production of reality.

Myth as an Ongoing Journey of Relational Meaning: 10 Symbolic Architectures — Infrastructures of Reflexive Reality

“Symbols… give meaning and order to the flux of experience, allowing human beings to live within a world that is intelligible and meaningful.”

— Inspired by Joseph Campbell

Building on our discussion of symbolic reflexivity, we now explore the symbolic architectures that scaffold and sustain reflexive reality itself.

What Are Symbolic Architectures?

Symbolic architectures are the structured systems of symbols, practices, and meanings that collectively produce and maintain the coherence of social reality.

• They include myths, rituals, language, art, and institutional practices.

• They are not mere containers of meaning but active infrastructures that phase, constrain, and enable the flows of symbolic alignment.

• They form the ontological scaffolding upon which reflexive social formations emerge and persist.

Reflexive Reality as Infrastructure

Reflexive reality is not a given; it is constructed and continually reconstructed through symbolic architectures that allow collectives to:

• Align on shared meanings,

• Negotiate difference and conflict,

• Generate new possibilities for identity and social formation.

These architectures provide the topological space in which meaning circulates and evolves.

Components of Symbolic Architectures

Key components include:

• Mythic Systems: Narrative patterns and archetypal constellations that orient collective understanding.

• Rituals: Embodied enactments that phase symbolic realignments, renewing social bonds and ontological commitments.

• Language and Discourse: The primary medium through which symbolic meanings are negotiated and stabilised.

• Institutions: Organised social structures that regulate and reproduce symbolic systems across time and space.

Together, these components form a complex, dynamic web of symbolic infrastructures.

Dynamics of Symbolic Architecture

Symbolic architectures are:

• Reflexive: They include mechanisms for self-observation, critique, and transformation.

• Distributed: They exist across individuals, groups, and material environments.

• Multiscalar: They operate at local, regional, and global levels.

• Adaptive: They evolve in response to internal tensions and external pressures.

Implications for Social Formation

Understanding symbolic architectures as infrastructures reveals:

• How social formations phase and sustain their reality.

• How symbolic breakdowns lead to crisis or transformation.

• How power operates through the control and modulation of symbolic systems.

• How innovation occurs through reflexive reconfiguration of symbolic infrastructure.

Conclusion

Symbolic architectures are the foundations of reflexive reality, enabling the collective production and negotiation of meaning, identity, and possibility.

In the next post, we will examine how these architectures enable the symbolic cosmos — the expansive, evolving symbolic universe that shapes human existence.

Myth as an Ongoing Journey of Relational Meaning: 6 The Hero’s Journey as Symbolic Cut

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experiences available… The call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration.”

— Joseph Campbell

Campbell’s “monomyth” — the so-called Hero’s Journey — has become a cultural cliché, used to template everything from Hollywood blockbusters to personal growth seminars. But beneath its formulaic popularity lies a deeper function: not the transmission of timeless narrative, but the symbolic cutting of a reality system into phase.

From a relational-ontological standpoint, the Hero’s Journey is not a tale to be told but a symbolic operation: a cut in the topology of construal that enables new alignments of meaning, identity, and possibility.

The Cut: From Stability to Instability

Every symbolic system maintains a coherence — a reflexive alignment between collective values, ontological assumptions, and lived practices. The Hero’s Journey begins when that coherence is ruptured.

• The Call to Adventure signals a phase-shift: a destabilisation of the current construal.

• The Departure does not represent literal movement but the symbolic unbinding of alignment — the dislocation of self from the coordinates of the known.

• The Threshold Guardians and Initiatory Ordeals figure the forces that resist or reconfigure the symbolic architecture of the self-world relation.

At each turn, what appears as narrative sequence is actually the enactment of symbolic instability — a traversal of construal that puts the social ontology itself into motion.

The Journey: Traversing Possibility Space

As the journey unfolds, the hero undergoes transformation — but not as an individual alone. What is transformed is the phase-relation between collective construals.

• The Road of Trials sequences the traversal of alternative symbolic construals — each trial a perspective, a cut, a provisional alignment.

• The Abyss marks the limit of symbolic coherence — a point where reflexive orientation collapses, and the possibility of rephasing becomes both necessary and uncertain.

• The Revelation is not a truth discovered but a new symbolic topology — a shift in alignment that reconfigures the system of meaning itself.

This is why myths of descent, death, or dissolution feature so prominently. They are not tales of suffering alone, but symbolic mechanisms for transitioning between incompatible construals of reality.

The Return: Rephasing the Collective

The final arc of the journey — the Return with the Elixir — completes the symbolic operation. The hero does not bring back “knowledge” or “power” in a literal sense, but a new alignment of the collective symbolic field.

• The Return is a symbolic re-entry into the shared system of construal.

• The Gift is the new reflexive phase: a reconfiguration of self, community, and cosmos that can now be lived.

• The Master of Two Worlds embodies the capacity to mediate between incompatible construals — to sustain coherence through symbolic reflexivity.

In this light, the Hero’s Journey is a collective symbolic cut — a traversal and rephasing of social ontology that allows for the reconstitution of meaning.

Myth as Reflexive Infrastructure

Campbell interpreted the Hero’s Journey as a map of psychological transformation. But through a relational lens, it is better understood as symbolic infrastructure for reflexive re-coordination.

It is:

• A mythic technology for shifting alignment.

• A recursive traversal of the possible.

• A symbolic system for phasing the collective into a new ontological topology.

Not every culture has heroes. But every culture faces moments when the symbolic fabric begins to fray — when coherence gives way to ambiguity, and the real becomes unliveable.

The Hero’s Journey is a mythic grammar for such moments. Not because it resolves them, but because it allows a system of meaning to cut, collapse, and reconstrue itself — all while keeping the symbolic infrastructure intact.

That is the true power of the monomyth: not its archetypes, but its function as reflexive topology in motion.

Myth as an Ongoing Journey of Relational Meaning: 2 The Function of Myth: A Construal of Possibility

“Mythology is not a lie; mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth — penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words.”

— Joseph Campbell

Campbell famously insisted that myth is not falsehood, but metaphor — a way of gesturing toward truths too deep for discursive reason. In this, he elevates myth above literalism and grants it symbolic power. Yet in casting myth as “penultimate truth,” he positions it as a bridge between the known and the unknowable, the concrete and the transcendent. Myth, for Campbell, is a symbolic vehicle for delivering meaning from a realm beyond language.

But if we take relational ontology seriously, this formulation cannot stand.

There is no realm beyond construal. There is no unspoken truth prior to symbolisation. Meaning does not await discovery; it emerges through the very act of rendering — the cut that phases possibility into alignment. From this view, myth is not a metaphor for the transcendent. It is a material infrastructure for construal: a way of shaping the symbolic field such that certain realities can appear.

To put it plainly: myth does not point to the real — it phases it.

Construal as Ontological Action

In relational ontology, all reality is construed. There is no raw substrate, no thing-in-itself lying behind experience. What appears as real is the outcome of a perspectival cut — an alignment of systems that enacts a distinction within the field of potential. This means that construal is not merely interpretive; it is constitutive. It does not happen after reality; it brings reality into being.

Myth, then, is not secondary to ontology. It is one of its key mechanisms. A myth is a repeatable, shareable construal — one that can align across generations and institutions, giving shape to a shared symbolic architecture. In this light, myth is neither “primitive science” nor “eternal wisdom.” It is a collective technology of construal: a way of patterning perception, identity, and possibility at scale.

This is not a symbolic reading of myth. It is a symbolic ontology.

The Work Myth Performs

Myth performs multiple ontological functions:

• It phases a cosmos. Every myth constitutes a cut in the real: separating divine from mundane, self from other, sacred from profane.

• It aligns a collective. Myth is not private belief. It is a shared infrastructure through which a community construes itself and its world.

• It modulates time. Myth places the present within a broader temporal arc: cyclical, linear, ancestral, eschatological — aligning human life with cosmic rhythms.

• It scales construal. Through repetition and ritual, myth allows individual construals to align across a population, giving rise to stable symbolic systems.

• It infrastructures reflexivity. Myths don’t just tell us what is. They shape what it means to know, to act, to belong, to be real.

Importantly, none of these are “functions” in the biological or utilitarian sense. They are reflexive performances of reality — ways of maintaining alignment across a symbolic field.

Why Construal Matters More than Content

One of the most common misreadings of myth is to fixate on its content: gods, heroes, animals, monsters. Campbell himself was often guilty of this, reducing diverse symbolic systems to shared archetypes and motifs. But this comparative approach treats myth as a container for universal meanings, rather than a situated construal of local possibility.

In a relational ontology, what matters is not what the myth says, but how it phases reality:

• What distinctions does it enact?

• What alignments does it generate?

• What reflexive loops does it sustain?

• What worlds does it allow to appear?

A dragon, an underworld, a sacred tree — these are not symbols of some fixed unconscious. They are infrastructures of alignment, enabling a collective to orient itself within a particular phase of the real.

In this sense, myth is always historical, situated, contingent — and yet, because it works at the level of symbolic architecture, it exerts real causal power.

The Stakes of Misunderstanding Myth

When we misunderstand myth as mere metaphor, or as reflection of inner archetypes, we obscure its ontological force. We treat myth as quaint or decorative, rather than as a primary mechanism by which reality is phased. This makes us blind to the myths we continue to live by — myths of the market, the nation, the individual, the algorithm.

These are not secular stories. They are symbolic construals, no less mythic for being unacknowledged. And because they are not recognised as myth, they are not subjected to reflexive scrutiny. They shape our realities invisibly, structuring what is possible, desirable, and sayable — all while masquerading as fact.

To re-read myth through the lens of construal is not only a theoretical move. It is a political and ontological act. It is a way of making visible the symbolic architectures that align our worlds — and of opening space for other alignments, other realities, other myths.

Symbolic Architectures: The Infrastructures of Reflexive Reality: 8 Contestation and Capture: Struggles for Symbolic Control

Symbolic infrastructures are not neutral terrains. They are contested fields—arenas of struggle where different construals of reality compete, collide, and consolidate. The fight is not merely over meaning, but over the infrastructures that make meaning durable. To shape a curriculum, a classification system, a canon, a ritual protocol, a digital interface—is to shape the very conditions under which construal becomes possible, recognisable, or enforceable.

Contestation occurs when different social formations seek to re-align symbolic architectures to their own construals. This may be driven by shifts in material conditions, collective identity, epistemological frameworks, or systems of value. The symbolic infrastructure becomes a site of friction—not simply because of disagreement over content, but because of incommensurable construals being projected through the same scaffolding.

Capture, by contrast, is a particular form of consolidation. It occurs when a dominant formation succeeds in locking in its construals by reconfiguring infrastructures to naturalise, obscure, or enforce them. The infrastructural becomes ideological not through explicit argument but through silent design. For example:

• A standardised testing regime may silently embed particular semiotic hierarchies as if they were natural.

• A database schema may preclude the expression of certain social categories by design.

• A content moderation algorithm may encode implicit normative construals into the architecture of communicability itself.

In each case, contestation has been pre-empted: the symbolic infrastructure becomes a mechanism of closure.

But capture is never absolute. Even in the most rigid infrastructures, leakage occurs. Unintended construals proliferate in the margins. Subversion, reappropriation, parody, tactical misuse—these are all ways symbolic systems are re-opened from within.

Contestation can also take the form of parallel infrastructures: new genres, new systems of notation, new protocols for recognition. These may begin as niche or marginal but can grow into full symbolic architectures in their own right—often via networks of alignment not yet visible to dominant frames.

To contest symbolic infrastructure is not merely to offer critique. It is to build alternatives, to render other construals not only possible but infrastructurally liveable.

In the next post, we will examine how such alternatives scale: how symbolic architectures expand, sediment, and propagate across time and space.

Symbolic Architectures: The Infrastructures of Reflexive Reality: 6 Materialising the Symbolic: How Infrastructures Take Form

To speak of symbolic architectures is not to speak of abstractions suspended in air. Every symbolic stratum, every layer of reflexive alignment, is materialised—given form, durability, and constraint through matter, media, and built environments.

Materialisation is not a derivative process whereby ‘pure’ meanings are externalised into inert form. Rather, form is constitutive. What we call a symbolic architecture exists as the coordination of meaning through material and social constraints. From printed laws to keyboard layouts, from road signs to ritual spaces, every symbolic infrastructure is mediated by its capacity to persist and operate across time and social difference.

Crucially, materiality does not simply transmit meaning—it conditions its actualisation. A court transcript is not a neutral record of speech; it invokes a register, demands specific speech functions, and orients participants to particular roles and entitlements. A school timetable does not merely organise time; it scaffolds an institutional construal of learning, discipline, and subjecthood.

This means that infrastructures do not simply reflect symbolic systems—they instantiate and reproduce them. The library catalogue is not just a finding aid: it is a stratum of epistemological order, organising what knowledge exists and how it can be retrieved. The passport is not just a document: it is an artefact of geopolitical construal, bounding the symbolic architectures of identity, nation, and mobility.

Material forms do not merely stabilise meaning. They also delimit possibility. They define what counts as a legitimate token or type within a given symbolic order. They preconfigure the semantic space of action. They restrict what can be said, seen, or remembered. In this way, material infrastructures act as filters of symbolic alignment: they permit certain flows while foreclosing others.

And because these materialised architectures are publicly distributed, they enable scaled construal: shared orientations to reality that extend beyond immediate interaction. An architectural blueprint enables coordination among strangers; a legal statute guides interpretation across jurisdictions; a diagram or flowchart or user interface constrains the enactment of specific semiotic logics.

But material infrastructures also age. Their affordances decay, their relevance shifts, their constraints ossify or loosen. A church converted to a nightclub, a file format that no longer opens, a ceremonial rite whose symbols no longer resonate—these remind us that symbolic materialities are not timeless containers of meaning. They are historically contingent instantiations, susceptible to repurposing or erosion.

Next, we will turn to the dynamics of maintenance and breakdown: how symbolic infrastructures are sustained, repaired, contested, or allowed to decay—and what happens when infrastructures of reflexivity begin to fail.

From Collective Construal to Symbolic Cosmos: 29 Thresholds and Crossings

If vectors align motion, thresholds construe transformation. They are not just spatial boundaries or temporal moments. They are symbolic cuts: decisive shifts in what is possible, what is required, what is real.

1. The Symbolic Cut

Every threshold marks a cut in the field of meaning:

• Entering the temple is not just stepping into a building—it’s crossing into a sacred order.

• A rite of passage is not a change of status alone—it reconstitutes identity through symbolic death and rebirth.

• Leaving one’s homeland is not only geographic—it fractures and reconfigures the self.

A threshold, then, is where symbolic topology and vector converge: a boundary cut through a trajectory of becoming.

2. Three Phases of Passage

Symbolic thresholds are rarely instantaneous. They unfold in phases:

• Separation – withdrawal from a prior state or collective.

• Liminality – suspended between meanings, norms, and roles.

• Reincorporation – entry into a transformed order of being.

This triadic construal is widespread not because it is culturally inherited—but because it structures how symbolic reality phases itself.

3. The Gatekeeper Function

Every threshold implies a gatekeeper:

• Sometimes literal (priest, judge, guard).

• Sometimes systemic (ritual, test, ordeal).

• Sometimes internal (doubt, readiness, desire).

Gatekeepers regulate symbolic transition. They instantiate the cost of passage, ensuring the threshold is not trivial, but world-reconfiguring.

4. Failed Crossings

When thresholds are crossed improperly—or prematurely—the consequences are profound:

• A novice becomes a fraud.

• A society tears through limits it cannot sustain.

• A sacred space is violated, and profaned.

Such failures register not as mistakes, but as violations of symbolic order. Meaning itself breaks down—or is reforged at a cost.

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Thresholds symbolise rupture and reconstitution. They are how symbolic cosmoses generate new phases of being. But even more than thresholds, what animates transformation is the drama of refusal and return—our next point of focus.

From Collective Construal to Symbolic Cosmos: 28 Symbolic Vectors

If topology configures where things are in the cosmos, then vectors configure how things move, orient, and relate. A symbolic cosmos is not static. It is saturated with directionalities: trajectories of value, vectors of identity, gradients of transformation.

1. Directionality as Meaning

Symbolic vectors mark direction—not as brute motion, but as meaningful alignment:

• The pilgrim moves toward the sacred.

• The sinner turns away from the light.

• The initiate ascends; the outcast falls.

These are not metaphors imposed on a neutral world—they structure the world in and through symbolic construal.

2. Vectors of Becoming

The cosmos is not just a map of positions—it’s a staging ground for phased becoming:

• The child becomes adult, the apprentice becomes master.

• The spirit ascends, the body decays.

• The world is unfolding toward redemption—or disintegration.

Each vector construes possibility, aligning identity with a direction of transformation.

3. Gradient and Intensity

Not all vectors are equal. Some are:

• Graded: slow, arduous climbs or sudden drops.

• Intensified: sacred vectors burn hotter, moral ones cut deeper.

• Ambiguous: a path may both liberate and destroy.

These intensities structure symbolic effort: what must be done, endured, or resisted.

4. Orientation and Misalignment

Symbolic vectors also define what it means to be aligned:

• A person may be “on the right path,” “off course,” or “pulled in two directions.”

• A collective may feel “lost,” “called,” or “headed toward collapse.”

These aren’t mere expressions. They are acts of symbolic positioning within a directional cosmos.

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Symbolic vectors animate the cosmos. They do not merely describe movement—they constrain what movement means, and what movement makes possible. But movement always implies thresholds. In the next post, we turn to the construal of symbolic thresholds: the gates, cuts, and crossings through which transformation unfolds.

From Collective Construal to Symbolic Cosmos: 20 Temporal Dynamics in Symbolic Space — Phasing Time and Space in Social Formation

Building on our exploration of symbolic space, this post turns to the temporal dimension that intricately weaves with space to produce coherent social realities. Symbolic time is not merely clock time but a complex layering of phases and rhythms that order collective experience.

1. Time as a Semiotic Construct

Time in symbolic systems is always construed, not simply given. It is:

• Structured by recurring events, rituals, and cycles.

• Experienced as phases—durations marked by beginnings, middles, and ends.

• Infused with meaning that shapes expectations and orientations to the future.

The semiotic construction of time enables coordination beyond immediate presence.

2. Phasing and Alignment in Social Temporality

Just as spatial construals phase into collective topologies, temporal construals phase through alignment of rhythms and schedules:

• Social synchronisation happens when individuals and groups share temporal markers—work shifts, holidays, ceremonies.

• These alignments generate temporal cohesion that supports collective intentionality and action.

3. Symbolic Temporality and Memory

Symbolic time also encompasses memory and anticipation, creating a temporal horizon:

• Memory anchors collective identity through narratives of origin and continuity.

• Anticipation orients towards potential futures, motivating social innovation or conservatism.

Together, these temporal layers sustain social reality as a dynamic but coherent flow.

4. Temporal Power and Control

Control over symbolic time reflects power dynamics:

• Imposition of calendars, deadlines, and histories shapes what is visible and possible.

• Marginalisation can occur through temporal exclusion or erasure.

Symbolic temporality, thus, is a terrain where meaning, agency, and power intersect.

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Understanding the temporal phasing alongside spatial topology enriches our grasp of how collective construals scale and stabilise social formations. This temporal-spatial interweaving lays the groundwork for exploring the reflexive capacities of symbolic systems—our next focus.

From Collective Construal to Symbolic Cosmos: 16 Alignment, Persistence, and the Temporal Depth of Meaning

In a symbolic cosmos, persistence is not the endurance of objects across time, but the continuity of alignment across symbolic cuts. To persist is to hold across perspectival shifts—to remain coherently construed even as the phase-space of meaning changes.

This reframes how we think about memory, identity, and time. A memory persists not because it is stored like data, but because it is recoverable into alignment. An identity persists not because it is static, but because it coheres through construal. And time itself is not a container through which things move, but a structuring of phases that allows coherence to be maintained—or lost.

In this view, time becomes a modulation of construal. Temporal depth is not a sequence of moments, but a layering of symbolic alignment:

• The past is not simply ‘what happened’, but what holds in the present through persistent construal.

• The future is not ‘what will be’, but what can be phased into the system of alignment.

• The present is the site of symbolic cut: the moment in which reflexive construal enacts coherence across phases.

This has implications for how we understand historical change, cultural memory, and even scientific theory. In each case, persistence is symbolic: what continues is not the substance, but the pattern of alignment that makes the substance meaningful.

For example:

• A tradition persists not because its rituals survive, but because its symbolic coherence continues to hold within a changing social phase-space.

• A scientific concept persists not because it ‘corresponds to reality’, but because it maintains coherence across shifts in symbolic alignment.

• A person persists—not as a body in time, but as a reflexive system of meanings that continues to phase itself across contexts.

So when we speak of ‘deep time’, we are not just referring to geological epochs. We are speaking of the depth of alignment—the capacity of meaning to hold across massive shifts in context, structure, and scale. The deeper the symbolic coherence, the more resilient the construal.

This also means that symbolic collapse—when alignments can no longer hold—has ontological consequences. What was once present becomes inaccessible, not because it has ceased to exist, but because it can no longer be cut into coherence within the current system of meaning.

Thus, in a symbolic cosmos, to persist is to be recursively re-construable. Meaning is not carried forward like cargo. It is re-enacted in each phase—each symbolic cut—that aligns the present with a possible past and an imagined future.

Persistence, then, is not continuity through time, but coherence across reflexive construal.

Construal and the Collective: 34 Scaling Construal: Reflexive Growth in the Collective Horizon

Introduction: Returning to the Question of Scale

We began this series with a question fundamental to relational ontology and semiotics:

How does construal scale?

This question asked how meaning emerges, grows, and aligns from individual construals through social collectives and beyond.

Now, after tracing phasing, alignment, and reflexivity,

we offer a new understanding:

Construal scales reflexively through the very processes that produce collective coherence and transformation.

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1. From Individuals to Collective Horizons

Scaling is not mere aggregation.

It is a reflexive reorganisation of construals.

Individuals do not simply add up;

they phase-align, co-construct, and transform meaning together.

Each collective horizon is:

• An intersubjective field of semiotic potential

• A reflexive architecture that organises individual construals

• A phasing medium that supports symbolic turns

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2. Reflexive Scaling as Semiotic Phasing

Scaling is best understood as a process of phasing:

a series of reflexive alignments and re-alignments

through which construals recursively fold into larger, more complex forms.

At each level, the collective:

• Refines construal boundaries

• Coordinates differences in perspectives

• Performs transformations to sustain coherence

This recursive phasing is the signature of scaling in relational ontology.

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3. Symbolic Turn as the Locus of Scaling

The symbolic turn—where a collective construes its own construals—

is the critical locus where scaling leaps occur.

Such turns create:

• New semiotic registers

• Expanded fields of possible meaning

• Novel modalities of reflexivity

Scaling thus unfolds as an evolutionary spiral of symbolic turns.

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4. The Collective Horizon as an Open System

Collectives are open, porous systems:

continuously engaging with environment, other collectives, and internal dynamics.

This openness allows:

• Diffraction—patterns of meaning refracted and transformed

• Resonance—shared symbolic vibrations that sustain alignment

• Phase transitions—moments of rapid systemic change

Scaling is not static growth but dynamic flow.

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5. Implications for Ontology and Meaning

Understanding construal scaling as reflexive phasing:

• Challenges linear or hierarchical models of social complexity

• Grounds collective identity in processes, not fixed states

• Reframes meaning as an emergent, recursive, and relational phenomenon

It invites new ways of theorising social formation, communication, and cognition.

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Conclusion: Toward a Relational Horizon

This series closes on the horizon of possibility:

A relational ontology that embraces reflexivity, phasing, and symbolic turn

as fundamental mechanisms of meaning and reality.

Our next blog series will explore how these insights apply

to specific domains of social life, language, and culture.

For now, we leave readers with the invitation to reimagine construal not as isolated acts,

but as rhythms within collective horizons—ever scaling, ever transforming.