• How Context Creates Meaning

    by Alexander Becker on July 03, 2007 | Link

    The sky is blue.

    What a surprise. Is it news? It depends. Great if you know and can see the sky and the blue. What if you never ever caught a glimpse of the sky, color notwithstanding? Then, it becomes news and the most interesting thing in the world.

    A claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device.

    Being reminded of the self-evident, under appropriate conditions -- in the right context -- is often priceless. The most commonplace information becomes special when applied, or ignored, at its appropriate moment.

    Some people are said to be always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being wrong just once is enough.

    What about actually being the right one, in the right place, at the right time? What's the point? Isn't it true that --

    • you're always the right one,
    • there's is always a right place,
    • and the time is always right?

    It's perfectly true, but to get started, attempt to combine only two of the rights; meeting two conditions at once is hard enough. The right one in the right place, but at the wrong time -- one second too late is sufficient -- isn't any better than no one at all. Miss the right time by as short as one second and don't bother to show up at all. The right one at exactly the right time in the wrong place? You get the idea.

    The trick is to meet the three conditions at once. This, you can't fake, by definition. On the other hand, to top it, you have to do it again. And again.

    Either it fits together or it doesn't.

    Within the right context, even the trivia and the truism become breaking news.

    I'm not telling you anything new. I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know. But what I am telling you makes sense, now, at that exact time, in this exact place, for you, for the right one. And only for you.

    Within your very context, it makes sense or it doesn't. But just in case it does indeed make sense, just imagine, wouldn't it make perfect sense? Wouldn't it create meaning?

    The sky is blue.

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