Why Meaning Makes Us More Capable, and Why It Is Part of Our Evolutionary Heritage
“Emergence reorganizes what exists into new capabilities.”
The Problem
One of the most famous experiments in physics, the double-slit experiment, reveals a strange feature of reality. Quantum theory describes more than one possible measurement outcome, yet each measurement records one particular event at one particular place. When the experiment is repeated many times, those individual events form a pattern that reflects the broader range of possibilities described by the theory. What can happen is therefore broader than what actually happens in any single measurement.
That raises a fundamental question: if several outcomes are possible, what determines which one actually occurs? Quantum mechanics can tell us how likely different outcomes are, but it does not uniquely determine which outcome will occur in an individual measurement. The question, however, extends far beyond quantum physics, because much of what managers, entrepreneurs, scientists, decision makers, and leaders do is an attempt to influence the transition from possibility to reality. We invest time, knowledge, money, relationships, and effort because several futures are possible and we want one to become real rather than another. We build companies to create things that do not yet exist, develop technologies because we want new solutions to become real, and change organizations because the future likely to emerge without action is not the one we want. Understanding why some possibilities become realized while others do not is therefore not only a question about how reality works, but also about how we can shape what happens next.
Imagine, then, that a deeper understanding of this process could give us a better toolkit for increasing the likelihood that a desired future becomes reality. That possibility matters because we are already constantly trying to shape what happens next. We do so through incentives, rules, investment, persuasion, organization, and leadership. But what if, beneath these familiar tools, lies a more fundamental principle associated with how possibilities become realized as complexity increases? Understanding such a principle would not give us control over the future, but it could make us better at creating the conditions under which some futures become more likely than others.
To investigate that possibility, we will begin with physics and move through chemistry, living systems, animal societies, and finally human societies. At each layer, we will ask the same questions: What new possibilities emerge? What narrows those possibilities into what actually happens? What happens to the alternatives? And what, if anything, becomes possible as a result of that narrowing? By asking the same questions across very different layers, we may discover whether a deeper relationship persists even as the mechanisms change, and whether that relationship can teach us something about increasing complexity and our own ability to turn possibilities into reality. Could there be a more practical question for those trying to shape the future?
The Layers
We will now follow these layers from the earliest to the later ones and see what changes as complexity increases: what new possibilities appear, which possibilities become unavailable or less likely, and how the range of what could happen narrows to what actually happens. We will use the four questions introduced above to guide us through each layer.
Physics
At the physical layer, we encounter matter, fields, Energy, and their interactions. Depending on their properties and the conditions of their interaction, more than one outcome may be possible. As the double-slit experiment already illustrated, quantum theory can describe several possible measurement outcomes even though an actual measurement records a particular result.
Yet the possibilities are not unlimited. What can occur depends on the properties of the interacting entities, the forces involved, the available Energy, and the conditions under which the interaction takes place. Physical laws describe the regularities we observe in these interactions and help us understand which outcomes are possible and, in some cases, how probable they are. Under any given set of conditions, physical properties and interactions restrict the range of outcomes that can occur and, in quantum systems, the probabilities associated with those outcomes.
Chemistry
At the chemical layer, atoms and molecules introduce new possibilities because they can combine in different ways and participate in different reactions. The same set of elements can therefore give rise to different molecules, structures, and reaction pathways, expanding the range of what can occur beyond the simpler physical layer.
Yet a reaction being possible does not mean it will actually occur under the existing conditions. Which reactions proceed and how quickly depends on factors such as the substances present, their concentrations, temperature, pressure, and catalysts. A catalyst can make a particular reaction pathway proceed much faster, while other possible pathways remain extremely slow. Chemistry therefore greatly expands the range of possible transformations, while the conditions present determine which part of that range is actually realized.
Life
With life, new kinds of possibilities appear. A living cell contains many molecules, genes, and chemical pathways, and it can respond in different ways as conditions change, yet it does not perform all the functions it is capable of at once. Instead, it activates some genes while leaving others inactive, increases some processes while suppressing others, directs resources toward particular activities, and changes those activities as its conditions change.
The cell itself now contains regulatory mechanisms that determine which of its available capabilities are expressed and which remain inactive. This allows the cell to retain a broad repertoire of possible responses without having to express all of them at once, and to change which capabilities it uses as conditions change.
Multicellular Organisms
In multicellular organisms, many cells become part of a single larger living system. This creates possibilities that a single cell does not have, because cells can exchange materials and information, coordinate their activities, and perform different functions for the organism as a whole. The possibilities available to the larger system therefore expand not simply because there are more cells, but because those cells can interact and contribute in different ways.
At the same time, many cells become more limited in what they can do independently. As cells differentiate, some become muscle, nerve, blood, skin, or reproductive cells, and each becomes increasingly specialized in a narrower range of functions. By doing fewer kinds of things, a specialized cell can devote more of its structure and resources to the particular functions it performs.
As specialization deepens, individual cells typically express a narrower range of possibilities than more independent cells. However, specialized cells enable the whole organism to gain capabilities that no individual cell possesses. No single cell can run, see, circulate blood through a body, or think, yet these organism-level capabilities become possible when differentiated cells perform specialized functions and their activities are integrated within the larger whole. The parts become more limited in what they can do independently, while the whole becomes capable of doing more.
When some multicellular organisms began living in groups, the challenge of coordination emerged at a new level. The units being coordinated were no longer cells within a single body but separate organisms, each retaining far more of its own behavior and capabilities. Different species evolved very different ways of organizing these interactions, and two contrasting examples are particularly clear in social insects and social mammals.
Social Insects
Ants, bees, and other social insects can live in colonies with thousands or even millions of individuals, creating an enormous number of possible interactions among individuals. Each insect can move, respond to local conditions, and interact with others, so the colony must somehow coordinate a very large number of individual actions if it is to function as a whole.
Yet the range of actions available to each individual is strongly shaped by the colony's biology and organization. Reproduction is concentrated in a small part of the population, workers perform different tasks, and behavior is coordinated through evolved responses, local interactions, and chemical signals such as pheromones. Rather than relying on a central commander that directs every individual, much of the coordination emerges from these distributed mechanisms and the roles built into the colony's organization.
The result is a collective capable of achievements no individual insect could accomplish alone, including building and maintaining nests, defending territory, collecting and storing food, caring for young, regulating conditions inside the colony, and coordinating work on a very large scale. These capabilities emerge from the interactions of many individuals whose own behavior is more limited, while the colony as a whole becomes capable of doing far more than any one member could achieve independently.
Social Mammals
In many social mammals, especially primates, individuals retain far greater behavioral flexibility than we saw in the highly structured organization of social insects. They can recognize specific individuals, learn from experience, form relationships and alliances, cooperate in various ways, and adjust their behavior as circumstances and social relationships change. As a result, a much larger share of what each individual may do remains open rather than being strongly specified by a fixed role.
Greater behavioral flexibility broadens the range of possible actions, but it also makes coordination less predictable and more dependent on ongoing social interaction. In many social mammals, cooperation is shaped by recognition of specific individuals, social bonds, dominance relationships, reciprocity, alliances, prior interactions, and changing circumstances. Compared with the more strongly structured organization of social insects, each member's behavior is therefore less tightly specified in advance and must be coordinated through more flexible social mechanisms.
As individual capability and behavioral flexibility increase, coordination faces a different challenge. Each member retains more possible ways to act and greater freedom to respond to changing circumstances, making collective behavior less predetermined than in systems built around narrower, more fixed roles. The greater the range of possibilities each member retains, the more the group depends on flexible mechanisms that can coordinate those possibilities without eliminating the capabilities from which that flexibility arises.
We have now crossed very different layers of reality and observed very different mechanisms at work. As we moved from one layer to another, new capabilities and new kinds of possibilities appeared, while only part of that wider possibility space was expressed. In several cases, the narrowing of possibilities at one level accompanied the emergence of new capabilities at another. Before moving to human societies, it is therefore worth asking whether these observations are merely separate examples or, taken together, whether they reveal a deeper relationship among increasing Capability, narrowing possibilities, and the emergence of new capabilities at higher levels.
The Pattern
Taken together, these observations suggest a relationship worth examining more closely. As complexity increases, new capabilities and possibilities emerge, but not all possibilities remain equally available or are expressed. Physical conditions exclude some outcomes, chemical conditions make certain reaction pathways more accessible than others, living systems regulate which capabilities they express, specialized cells typically express a narrower range of possibilities, and social organisms develop different ways to coordinate the possible actions of their members.
Here, the term constraint does not refer to a single mechanism but to the broader fact that only part of the possibilities available at a given level is expressed. The way this happens varies from one layer to another: physical properties and conditions constrain possible outcomes, chemical conditions channel reaction pathways, living systems regulate their own activities, multicellular organisms coordinate specialized cells, and social systems coordinate increasingly independent individuals. The similarity therefore lies not in the mechanism itself but in the recurring relationship between a wider range of possibilities and the narrower range that is actually expressed.
Our original question concerned how a wider range of possibilities narrows into the specific reality that is actually expressed. The journey, however, has revealed a second, deeper phenomenon: in some cases, narrowing possibilities does more than determine what happens within an existing level. When some lower-level possibilities are restricted while useful differences and capabilities are preserved, that narrowing can help create the conditions under which a new level of Capability becomes possible.
Multicellular organisms make this especially clear because cells that become part of a larger organism no longer need to maintain the same broad range of independent functions. As differentiation progresses, some cells become specialized for contraction, others for transmitting signals, transporting oxygen, protecting surfaces, or performing other specific roles. Each specialized cell becomes more limited in what it can do independently, yet it can devote more of its structure and resources to the narrower functions it performs.
Specialization alone would merely produce a collection of more limited cells, so the crucial next step is Integration. When differentiated cells coordinate their specialized functions, those capabilities become complementary, and the organism acquires abilities no individual cell possesses, such as running, seeing, circulating blood through the body, or thinking. The range of possibilities normally expressed by the specialized parts therefore narrows, while the possibility space opens again at the level of the whole, where entirely new capabilities become possible.
This is why constraint by itself cannot explain greater complexity. Destroying capabilities, immobilizing components, or forcing every part into the same narrow role also reduces possibilities, but none of these changes necessarily creates anything more capable. The narrowing becomes productive only when it is selective: some independent possibilities are restricted while useful differentiation is preserved or deepened, specialization develops, and Integration allows those different capabilities to contribute to a more capable whole.
I will call this recurring relationship Emergence Through Constraint. It describes situations in which some possibilities available to lower-level parts are restricted, while useful differences and capabilities are preserved, specialized, or strengthened and then Integrated, allowing new capabilities and possibilities to emerge at a higher level. Not every form of constraint we encountered in the earlier layers is therefore an example of Emergence Through Constraint; the term refers specifically to cases in which selective narrowing contributes to the emergence of higher-level Capability.
The significance of Emergence Through Constraint is therefore not that fewer possibilities are better, nor that a new level simply adds capabilities to everything available below it. Emergence reorganizes the possibility space. Some lower-level possibilities remain, while others become constrained or no longer available independently; at the same time, capabilities that did not exist at the lower level become possible. A specialized part may therefore become capable of doing fewer things independently, while its Integration with other parts allows the larger system to become capable of entirely new things.
Emergence may bring another important change. A new level not only acquires capabilities and possibilities that did not exist below it; it may also acquire new mechanisms for determining which of those possibilities are expressed. In other words, emergence can change not only what a system is capable of doing, but also how the expanded range of possibilities available at that new level is narrowed into what actually happens.
We can now see this progression more clearly across the layers we examined: at the physical level, properties and conditions constrain which outcomes are possible; chemistry adds reaction pathways, whose accessibility depends on chemical conditions and catalysts; with life, internal regulatory mechanisms appear, allowing the system itself to influence which of its available capabilities are expressed; multicellular organisms add coordination among differentiated cells, while social organisms develop still more flexible ways of coordinating separate individuals. The way possibilities are narrowed therefore changes as new capabilities emerge, because each level can draw on mechanisms unavailable in the same form at the level below.
This process can then continue at the newly emerged level. New Capability opens a wider range of possibilities, and that wider range creates new demands for determining which possibilities will be expressed and how different activities will be coordinated. Further organization can selectively narrow some of those possibilities while Integrating differentiated capabilities into another, more capable level, which in turn opens possibilities that did not exist before.
From the perspective of the proposed Universal Law of Increasing Complexity, narrowing possibilities may be more than a limitation on increasing complexity. Under the right conditions, selectively restricting some possibilities while preserving and Integrating useful differences may itself help enable further complexity. The important question is therefore not whether possibilities are reduced, but whether that reduction allows differentiated capabilities to combine into a more capable level from which new possibilities can emerge.
If Emergence Through Constraint reflects something deeper about increasing complexity rather than a coincidence among the examples we have examined, human society presents an especially demanding test. Human beings are themselves extraordinarily complex and flexible, capable not only of acting in different ways but also of imagining alternatives, evaluating possible futures, and deciding how to use their own capabilities. We should therefore not expect human societies to reproduce the mechanisms used by cells or insects, but we can ask whether the underlying relationship remains: when the parts being Integrated can themselves generate possibilities and choose among them, how is Emergence Through Constraint expressed?
Each new layer begins with relatively little internal variation, yet introduces capabilities unavailable at the level below. As variation and the available repertoire expand within a layer, selected elements can become Integrated through more constrained relationships, allowing a higher level of Complexity and Capability to emerge. Earlier layers remain and can continue to develop. Selected layers are shown. Conceptual illustration, not to scale.
Human Society
Later levels of complexity do not leave the earlier ones behind. Human beings remain physical, chemical, and biological systems, so the mechanisms of those earlier layers continue to operate within everything human societies do. The same layering also occurs within social evolution itself; mechanisms that coordinate people in small bands, kin-based communities, and villages, such as personal relationships, reciprocity, reputation, status, shared norms, and face-to-face communication, do not disappear as societies become larger and more complex. Instead, cities, states, companies, and other large organizations add new mechanisms, such as specialized roles, formal institutions, law, markets, bureaucracy, writing, and increasingly sophisticated communication systems. New levels of social organization therefore tend to build upon earlier mechanisms while adding forms of coordination enabled by newly emerged capabilities.
We should therefore not expect the mechanisms distinctive to complex human societies to resemble those found in living cells or insect colonies, or even to be identical to those that coordinated much smaller human communities. The mechanisms change and accumulate as new capabilities emerge, while earlier mechanisms continue to operate within the larger system. The question is whether the underlying relationship persists when the units being Integrated are human beings.
Communication offers a simple example of how a continuing requirement can be met through very different mechanisms. Human societies have always depended on exchanging information among people separated by role, place, or time, yet the means have changed repeatedly, from speech and writing to messengers, telephones, and the internet. The mechanisms may therefore change dramatically while the underlying function remains. Continuity of function does not require continuity of mechanism.
Human beings make the challenge especially demanding because each individual retains enormous Internal Complexity. People carry knowledge, experience, relationships, preferences, imagination, and judgment, while also being able to learn new capabilities, consider alternative futures, change roles, reject expectations, leave organizations, and invent possibilities that nobody else anticipated. The same Internal Complexity that makes people highly capable also gives them an unusually wide range of possible actions and futures.
A useful human example can be found in economic organization, particularly in agriculture. A traditional smallholder may personally manage much of the production process, from selecting inputs and growing the crop to pest management, harvesting, transport, and selling, and therefore retains a broad range of functions within one individual. In contrast, in a highly Integrated agricultural company, many of those same functions may instead be divided among specialists in agronomy, irrigation, plant protection, quality assurance, finance, logistics, and marketing. Each specialist performs a narrower range of functions but can develop deeper Capability within that field, while Integration combines those specialized capabilities into a production system that none of the individuals could reproduce alone.
The organization is therefore not merely a larger farmer. Some of what it can do exists only because specialized capabilities are brought together through the larger system: no single agronomist, logistics manager, quality specialist, or marketer possesses the organization's full Capability. The higher-level Capability emerges from their differentiation and Integration rather than existing fully within any one individual.
Here, however, an important difference appears. A specialized cell becomes more limited in the functions it normally expresses, whereas a human specialist does not cease to be a complex person when taking on a narrower organizational role. The agronomist, engineer, manager, or plant-protection specialist still retains other knowledge, interests, relationships, ambitions, judgments, and possible futures, and can change roles, leave the organization, or redirect their life altogether. Human specialization can therefore narrow what a person does within a Structure without eliminating the much broader repertoire of capabilities and possibilities that the person continues to possess.
Human societies therefore use many mechanisms to influence which of the possibilities available to people are actually pursued. Laws set boundaries, hierarchies assign authority, contracts define obligations, and money and other rewards create incentives, while punishment and coercion can make some alternatives costly or unavailable. Reputation, status, belonging, norms, and social expectations influence choices in other ways, and organizations add procedures, targets, budgets, and performance measures to direct activity. Together, these mechanisms can coordinate very large numbers of people, showing that collective action does not depend on a single way of narrowing human possibilities.
Coordinating behavior, however, is not the same as making full use of human Capability, because much of that Capability lies precisely in the ability to generate and evaluate possibilities rather than merely executing predetermined actions. When the required action is already known, rules, instructions, incentives, and supervision can often direct it effectively. But a scientist searching for an unknown solution, an engineer confronting an unexpected problem, an entrepreneur trying to create something that does not yet exist, or a manager facing an unforeseen situation must identify and evaluate possibilities that no one could fully specify in advance. This creates a distinctive tension in human systems: greater external constraint can make behavior more predictable, yet if that constraint suppresses people's ability to generate, evaluate, and pursue new possibilities, the system may gain predictability while losing precisely the Capability for which those people were needed.
External control can more easily tell people what they must do than what they should think about next, because novel judgment, creativity, and adaptation cannot be fully specified in advance from the outside. The more a human system depends on the Internal Complexity of its members, the less it can afford to suppress that complexity merely to make their behavior easier to coordinate. The distinctive human coordination challenge is therefore not simply how to narrow individual possibilities, but how to create sufficient Direction and Integration for collective Capability to emerge while preserving the autonomy, differentiation, judgment, creativity, and adaptability from which much of that Capability arises.
Humans also possess an extraordinary capability that once again changes the available mechanism: we can represent futures that do not yet exist, compare them, communicate them to others, and allow what matters to us to influence which possibilities we pursue. This raises the next question in our journey: could the mechanism of Emergence Through Constraint become partly self-directed when individuals themselves can decide that some possible futures matter more than others?
Meaning
As we defined it in the previous column, meaning is experienced significance: the condition in which someone or something comes to matter to a conscious being. At the human level, that significance can influence which of the possibilities available to us we choose to pursue.
Meaning itself is not necessarily unique to humans, because other conscious animals can experience offspring, companions, territory, safety, or relationships as significant and allow that significance to shape their behavior. Humans, however, developed an extraordinary capacity to represent significance symbolically, attach it to distant or imagined futures that do not yet exist, communicate that significance to others, and organize present actions around those futures. When something matters, our underlying capabilities do not necessarily disappear, nor do most alternatives become physically impossible. What changes is their priority: some possibilities become worth pursuing, others become less relevant, and some may be rejected because they conflict with something that matters more.
A parent may remain physically and intellectually capable of living in many of the ways that were possible before having a child, yet those possibilities no longer carry the same weight because another person now matters deeply. A scientist committed to solving a particular problem may leave many other interesting questions unexplored, while an entrepreneur who believes strongly in a future that does not yet exist may spend years pursuing it while rejecting easier alternatives. In each case, many possibilities remain available, but they no longer compete equally for attention and action. Meaning can therefore narrow the effective possibility space without necessarily narrowing the underlying Capability. In this sense, Meaning can function as a self-directed selective constraint. The individual remains able to think, judge, adapt, and choose, while significance influences which possibilities are treated as worth pursuing and which are allowed to remain unrealized. Part of the mechanism for narrowing possibilities can therefore reside within the very person being Integrated, rather than depending entirely on external rules, incentives, or commands.
This becomes particularly important when the correct action cannot be specified in advance. Compensation, Structure, rules, incentives, accountability, and clear responsibilities all matter, but none of them can determine every discretionary use of a capable person's curiosity, judgment, creativity, persistence, or initiative. Meaning can therefore help provide Direction precisely where detailed instruction reaches its limit, and the individual must decide how best to contribute. None of this makes Meaning a substitute for compensation, Structure, rules, or accountability, nor does it make Meaning inherently good. People can attach profound significance to destructive causes just as they can to constructive ones. Its importance in the present argument is structural: Meaning can influence which possibilities a capable person chooses to pursue while preserving the judgment, adaptability, and underlying Capability needed to respond to changing circumstances.
Commitment adds durability to the priorities set by Meaning, helping keep what matters from being reconsidered every time a competing possibility arises. As those priorities guide repeated choices over time, they create Direction, allowing the larger objective to remain relatively stable even as the ways of pursuing it remain open to adaptation and invention. This becomes especially important in work that depends on exploration and innovation. When an organization already knows what must be done, procedures, targets, incentives, and supervision can effectively direct much of the activity, but innovation begins precisely where the path is uncertain and the right answer is not yet known. An organization that depends on people discovering possibilities its leaders cannot yet see must therefore preserve their ability to generate, evaluate, and pursue those possibilities for themselves.
The challenge is therefore not to replace compensation with Meaning, because fair compensation remains important for attracting people, rewarding their contributions, and sustaining their participation. The mistake is to assume that compensation alone can determine how much judgment, curiosity, creativity, persistence, and voluntary effort highly capable people will invest when those contributions cannot be fully specified in advance or written into a job description. Meaning can influence that additional layer of contribution by helping people understand why the outcome is worth investing themselves in.
Meaning becomes even more consequential when it is shared, because a mechanism that helps one person prioritize among possible futures can then begin to coordinate many autonomous people, each making such selections for themselves. Shared Meaning does not require those individuals to make the same decisions, but it can give sufficient priority to a common future so that their different decisions become more compatible and easier to Integrate. People who share Meaning do not need to make identical decisions, because their different knowledge, roles, and circumstances may require very different actions. A scientist may investigate one problem, an engineer solve another, a manager may allocate resources, and an entrepreneur may reconsider the business model. Yet all can give sufficient priority to the same larger future, so their independently chosen actions can become compatible. Shared Meaning can therefore align many independent decision makers without requiring them to think alike or surrender the differences that make their contributions valuable.
This may be a particularly important human form of Integration because differentiation need not be eliminated for coordinated action to emerge. Individuals can remain capable of generating and evaluating possibilities independently, while a sufficiently shared understanding of what matters helps their different choices become complementary and contribute to a larger whole.
Degania, the first Kibbutz, offers a useful historical illustration. Its pioneers shared commitments to equality, collective responsibility, agricultural labor, and building a Jewish future in the Land of Israel. Because these commitments mattered deeply, some possible ways of living became less attractive or less relevant. Yet the pioneers themselves did not become simpler or more alike. They retained different personalities, knowledge, abilities, and judgments. What narrowed was not their Internal Complexity, but the range of purposes toward which they chose to direct it.
Because the pioneers shared a strong sense of the purpose of their collective effort, coordination did not depend entirely on specifying each person's actions in advance. This left room for people to contribute in different ways while giving those contributions a common Direction. Structure, specialization, and Integration could then make their differentiated capabilities increasingly complementary, allowing individual Capability to become part of a more capable whole. Prosperity need not have been the outcome the pioneers consciously set out to maximize, but it could emerge from this wider configuration, in which Shared Meaning sustained Commitment and Direction while Structure enabled differentiated capabilities to be Integrated productively.
We can now return to Emergence Through Constraint with a clearer understanding of the human case. Reflective and Shared Meaning can enable the individuals being Integrated to participate in narrowing their own effective possibilities: they can imagine alternative futures, decide that some matter more than others, and voluntarily direct their capabilities toward helping particular futures become real. The human mechanism is therefore different from those we encountered at earlier layers, while the underlying relationship remains recognizable: possibilities are selectively narrowed without necessarily eliminating the differentiated capabilities from which higher collective Capability can emerge.
If this interpretation is correct, Meaning is more than a source of motivation or a useful leadership tool. It may be one of the mechanisms through which highly capable and autonomous people can become more Integrated while preserving the Internal Complexity that makes them valuable, allowing collective Capability to increase without requiring the individuals themselves to become simpler.
There is also a useful lesson here about certainty. Quantum mechanics, on which much of modern electronics ultimately depends, does not tell us with certainty which outcome will be observed in any individual quantum measurement. Yet it can describe the probabilities of outcomes with extraordinary precision, and by controlling the conditions under which quantum processes occur, we can build technologies whose overall behavior is remarkably reliable. The lesson is not that human societies operate like quantum systems, but that scientific usefulness does not require certainty about every individual event. We may never be able to predict exactly what every person will do, but if we understand the mechanisms that influence which possibilities people are more likely to pursue, we may become much better at creating conditions under which some collective futures are more likely to emerge than others.
This brings us back to the practical question with which we began. When we try to build a company, develop a technology, transform an organization, or create a future that does not yet exist, increasing Capability gives us more possibilities, but it does not determine which of those possibilities people will choose to pursue. The challenge, therefore, is not only to increase Capability but also to create conditions in which capable people can remain differentiated and autonomous while directing enough of that Capability toward a sufficiently shared future so that something new can emerge. Reflective and Shared Meaning may be among the distinctively human mechanisms that help make this possible by making some futures matter enough that people voluntarily help turn them into reality.
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* I strive to stay true to the facts and the reality they reveal. If you find an error or see a need for clarification, your insights are welcome.
See you soon,
Nimrod
Dr. Nimrod Israely writes on the structural foundations of prosperity and human systems, and is the CEO and Founder of Dream Valley and Biofeed.
P.S. Fresh-fruit exporters: We will be closing some of our most attractive 2027 EU retail programs in October. If you are interested in participating, contact me before then.
P.P.S. Previous column: “Meaning: What Makes It Powerful and Why No Leader Should Ignore It”
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