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Resomodernity Café v13: The Semaxis Society

Posted: January 24, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Centroids | Tags: , , , , , , |Leave a comment

How Existentially Embodied Experiences Make Meaning

Sequel to Resomodernity Café v12: From Yamnaya to Yishuv: World-Changing Withness

Write a self-similar campy skit where Hannah Arendt corrals divergent thinkers to found the Semaxis Society as a way to counter modernity’s meaning metacrisis.

ChatGPT Prompt

The Scene: A dimly lit café in 1950s New York. Hannah Arendt sits at a round table, cigarette in hand, surrounded by an eclectic group of intellectuals.

HANNAH ARENDT: Welcome, my friends, to what I’m calling the first meeting of the Semaxis Society. We gather because modernity has fractured meaning itself—we live in a crisis of existential proportions.

MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY: (adjusting his beret) Ah yes, but Hannah, meaning is not fractured—it is embodied! We cannot think our way out of this crisis. We must feel our way through it, perceive it with our whole being.

MARTIN HEIDEGGER: (brooding in the corner) You speak of embodiment, Maurice, but you miss the essential point. We are thrown into a world where Being itself has been forgotten. Technology has reduced everything to standing-reserve.

ARENDT: (waving her cigarette) Martin, must you always be so gloomy? Yes, yes, we’ve lost our connection to Being. But that’s precisely why we need the Semaxis—a semantic axis around which meaning can revolve, grounded in lived experience.

SIMONE WEIL: (quietly but intensely) Perhaps what we need is not a new society but a return to attention. Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Without it, we cannot truly encounter the sacred in the everyday.

WILLIAM JAMES: (leaning forward enthusiastically) Simone makes a fine point! But let’s be pragmatic here. Meaning isn’t some Platonic form waiting to be discovered. It emerges from the stream of consciousness, from our radical empiricism of experience.

MERLEAU-PONTY: Exactly, William! This is what I mean by phenomenology—we must return to the things themselves, to the pre-reflective ground of experience.

HEIDEGGER: (sighs deeply) But this “ground” you speak of—have we not already bulldozed it with our calculative thinking? Enframing has turned even experience into a resource to be optimized.

ARENDT: (stubbing out her cigarette) Which brings us back to why we’re here. The Semaxis Society will be dedicated to cultivating what I call “existentially embodied experiences”—moments where meaning isn’t abstract but lived, where thought and action, mind and body, self and world converge.

GREGORY BATESON: (sketching diagrams on a napkin) Fascinating! You’re describing a kind of recursive process, aren’t you? The meaning-making system observing itself making meaning. Cybernetic feedback loops of significance!

JAMES: I like where Gregory’s going with this. It’s not unlike my notion of pure experience—before the subject-object split, there’s just the vivid, pulsing immediacy of life.

WEIL: But immediacy without grace is merely sensation. We need something to orient us toward the good, the true, the beautiful.

BATESON: Ah, but Simone, what if grace itself is a pattern that connects? What if the sacred is the highest-order logical type of relationship?

MERLEAU-PONTY: (excitedly) Yes! And this relationship is always already mediated through the body. We are not minds piloting meat-machines; we are flesh—the very intertwining of self and world!

HEIDEGGER: (warming slightly) Perhaps… perhaps what you’re all circling around is what I’ve called dwelling. To dwell is to be at home in the world, to let things be in their own way.

ARENDT: (lighting another cigarette) Now we’re getting somewhere. The Semaxis Society will create spaces for dwelling, for attention, for embodied meaning-making. We’ll resist the flattening of experience into mere information.

BATESON: A meta-pattern for generating patterns of meaning!

JAMES: A pluralistic universe where different modes of experience can coexist!

WEIL: A practice of decreation—unmaking the false self to make room for reality!

MERLEAU-PONTY: A return to the lifeworld!

HEIDEGGER: (almost smiling) A clearing where Being can show itself…

ARENDT: (raising her coffee cup) To the Semaxis Society, then! May we help each other—and the world—remember how to mean.

ALL: To the Semaxis!

As they clink cups and glasses, the camera pulls back to reveal that this entire scene is being watched by another group of intellectuals in another café, who are themselves founding a society to study the Semaxis Society. The recursion continues infinitely, each level adding another layer of meaning-making about meaning-making, until the screen fades to a strange loop symbol.

THE END

(Or is it the beginning?)

Appendix I: Towards a Semantic Praxis

1. The Problem

Modernity treats meaning as something to be:

  • Interpreted
  • Clarified
  • Communicated
  • Discovered
  • Modeled

This has produced extraordinary sophistication in:

And a simultaneous collapse in the lived experience of meaning.

This is not accidental.

These disciplines study how meaning is described.
They do not study how meaning comes into being.

What is missing is not a better theory of meaning, but a praxis of meaning.

⸻

2. From Semantics to Semaxis

Semantics asks:

What does this sign mean?

Semaxis asks:

What act would make this unavoidable?

Semantics is concerned with reference.
Semaxis is concerned with re-orientation.

Semantics operates at the level of symbols.
Semaxis operates at the level of lives.

This is the shift from epistemology to ontology.

⸻

3. The Central Claim

Meaning is not primarily decoded.
Meaning is primarily generated through existentially embodied action.

Or more sharply:

Meaning appears when someone does something that cannot be safely interpreted away.

This is why:

  • Liturgy forms people
  • Art with stakes wounds its maker
  • Gandhi’s fast clarifies more than argument
  • MLK’s jail cell explains more than a speech
  • A resignation of power reshapes a nation

These are not communications.
They are semantic events.

⸻

4. What Counts as Semantic Praxis

A practice qualifies as semantic praxis when it contains all of the following:

  1. Embodiment — the body is involved
  2. Public exposure — it is seen, not merely felt
  3. Irreversibility — it cannot be undone without cost
  4. Existential stake — identity, dignity, or life-orientation is risked
  5. World-disclosure — others must reinterpret reality in its wake

Without these, there may be expression, persuasion, or experience —
but not meaning-generation.

⸻

5. Why Sense-Making Fails Here

Sense-making assumes:

If we understand reality better, meaning will follow.

Semantic praxis observes:

Meaning follows when reality is acted upon in a way that exposes what matters.

No amount of analysis substitutes for:

  • Refusal
  • Sacrifice
  • Endurance
  • Public risk

These are the grammar of meaning.

⸻

6. Historical Glimpses of Semantic Praxis

This praxis appears wherever:

In each case, meaning is not stated.
It is made unavoidable.

⸻

7. The Discipline Implied

Semantic praxis (Semaxis) is therefore:

The disciplined creation of embodied, existentially costly acts that re-orient meaning for oneself and others.

This is not:

  • A theory
  • A message
  • A design method
  • A rhetorical strategy

It is a way of acting in the world.

⸻

8. The Metacrisis Revisited

The contemporary meaning metacrisis persists because we attempt to:

  • Discover meaning
  • Explain meaning
  • Communicate meaning

While avoiding the only reliable source of meaning:

Actions that cost enough to become semantic axes.

Until such acts occur, interpretation floats freely.

⸻

9. A Final Distinction

Semantics:

  • What does this mean?
  • Symbols
  • Interpretation
  • Information
  • Safety

Semantic Praxis:

  • What must be done so this cannot mean the same thing?
  • Bodies
  • Re-orientation
  • Formation
  • Risk

⸻

10. Closing Line

Meaning does not return when we understand more.
Meaning returns when someone does something the world cannot ignore.

Appendix II: Modernity as Procedure

1. The Shift No One Noticed

Premodern life was organized around:

  • Persons
  • Practices
  • Vows
  • Roles
  • Rituals
  • Direct responsibility

Modern life is organized around:

  • Systems
  • Policies
  • Workflows
  • Protocols
  • Compliance
  • Indirect responsibility

This is not merely bureaucratic drift. It is a civilizational shift from praxis to procedure.

And procedure is almost perfectly engineered to prevent Semaxis.

⸻

2. What Procedure Does

A procedure is designed to:

  • Produce reliable outcomes
  • Remove dependence on particular persons
  • Reduce risk
  • Ensure replaceability
  • Make action reversible and reviewable

These are extraordinary goods for engineering, medicine, logistics, and governance.

They are catastrophic for meaning.

Because meaning requires:

  • Irreplaceability
  • Exposure
  • Risk
  • Personal stake
  • Irreversibility

Procedure removes every one of these.

⸻

3. The Moral Illusion of Procedure

Procedure allows people to feel:

  • Responsible without being exposed
  • Involved without being vulnerable
  • Ethical without being sacrificial
  • Effective without being existentially present

You can follow procedure perfectly and never once have your life become an axis of meaning.

This is why modern life can feel:

Busy, optimized, and strangely hollow.

⸻

4. How Procedure Replaces Praxis

Where older cultures asked:

Who are you becoming through this?

Modernity asks:

Was the process followed correctly?

Where praxis formed identity, procedure ensures compliance.

Where praxis demanded judgment, procedure demands adherence.

Where praxis required courage, procedure requires training.

⸻

5. Why Procedure Feels Safer Than Meaning

Because Semaxis is dangerous.

When a person acts existentially:

  • They cannot hide behind systems
  • They cannot defer responsibility
  • They cannot be easily replaced
  • They cannot control interpretation

Procedure protects us from all of that.

So we drift toward it instinctively.

⸻

6. Institutions as Procedure Machines

Schools, corporations, governments, even churches increasingly operate as:

Meaning-neutral procedure engines.

They can:

  • Transmit information
  • Coordinate action
  • Deliver services
  • Enforce norms

But they struggle to:

  • Form people
  • Create moral horizons
  • Generate existential meaning

Because institutions scale best when persons matter least.

⸻

7. The Quiet Trade We Made

We traded:

  • Risk for reliability
  • Vocation for role
  • Formation for training
  • Presence for protocol
  • Meaning for management

And we did so for good reasons.

But we did not notice what we were losing because procedure works so well at everything else.

⸻

8. Why Sense-Making Thrives in Procedural Worlds

In a procedural world:

  • Nobody is allowed to risk enough to create meaning
  • So we talk about meaning instead
  • We analyze, model, discuss, and interpret

Sense-making is the intellectual activity appropriate to a world where praxis has been domesticated.

It is what remains when Semaxis becomes rare.

⸻

9. The Structural Conflict

Semaxis requires:

  • Particular persons
  • Particular moments
  • Irreversible acts

Procedure requires:

  • Replaceable persons
  • Repeatable moments
  • Reversible acts

They are not enemies.
But they operate at different layers of reality.

Modernity elevated one and forgot the other.

⸻

10. The Resulting Metacrisis

We live in a world that is:

  • Highly functional
  • Highly coordinated
  • Highly procedural

And increasingly unable to produce experiences that make meaning unavoidable.

So we search for meaning where it cannot arise:

  • In explanations
  • In narratives
  • In optimization
  • In discourse

While the true source remains structurally suppressed.

⸻

11. Closing Line

Modernity did not destroy meaning.
It perfected a way of living in which meaning almost never has the conditions required to appear.

Appendix III: No Going Back

1. The Temptation of Regression

Once the problem is seen, the instinctive response is:

Recover older forms of life. Restore ritual. Rebuild community. Re-enchant the world.

But this misunderstands both history and Semaxis.

Meaning in premodern worlds did not arise because people had better ideas.
It arose because conditions of life made Semaxis unavoidable.

Those conditions are gone.

They are not coming back.

⸻

2. What Premodern Worlds Had That We Do Not

They had:

  • Inescapable locality
  • Lifelong roles
  • Public honor and shame
  • Immediate consequences
  • Rituals no one opted into or out of
  • A shared moral horizon

In such a world, existential embodiment happened whether you liked it or not.

You could not hide inside procedure.

⸻

3. Why Recreating Those Forms Fails

Modern attempts to revive:

  • Liturgy as aesthetic
  • Community as lifestyle
  • Tradition as choice
  • Ritual as experience

All fail for the same reason:

They are optional.

And optional practices cannot generate existential meaning at scale.

They are consumed, not inhabited.

They feel meaningful, but they do not re-orient reality.

⸻

4. The Irreversibility of Modern Consciousness

We now know:

This knowledge cannot be undone.

And this knowledge dissolves the naïveté that once allowed meaning to arise without self-awareness.

We cannot go back to a world where meaning happens accidentally.

⸻

5. The New Situation

We live in a world where:

  • Procedure dominates
  • Roles are fluid
  • Identities are chosen
  • Narratives compete
  • Safety is prioritized
  • Stakes are minimized

This world is extraordinarily free.

And structurally hostile to meaning.

⸻

6. What This Implies

It implies something radical:

In modernity, Semaxis must be intentional.

What once happened as a byproduct of life must now be consciously practiced.

Not nostalgically.
Not romantically.
Deliberately.

⸻

7. Why This Is Harder — and More Honest

Because now:

  • No ritual can hide what it is doing
  • No tradition can carry meaning automatically
  • No authority can substitute for action
  • No symbol can do the work alone

Only lived, costly embodiment remains.

Which is precisely what Semaxis names.

⸻

8. The Strange Advantage of Modernity

Paradoxically, modernity makes Semaxis clearer.

Because nothing else works.

When:

  • Storytelling fails
  • Sense-making fails
  • Community-as-lifestyle fails
  • Institutional religion feels hollow

What remains is stark and unmistakable:

Meaning appears when someone risks something real.

Modernity strips away the illusions that once obscured this.

⸻

9. The Future Is Not Restoration but Practice

The way forward is not:

  • Restoring the past
  • Rebuilding old forms
  • Recreating lost worlds

It is:

Learning how to practice Semaxis in a procedural age.

This has never been required before in history.

Which is why it feels new.

⸻

10. Closing Line

We cannot return to a world where meaning happens automatically.
We can only learn to live in a world where meaning must be made on purpose.

Appendix IV: Decommodifying Meaning

1. The Market Logic of Modern Meaning

Modernity did not only procedualize meaning.
It also commodified it.

Meaning became something you:

  • Purchase (books, courses, retreats)
  • Consume (content, experiences, practices)
  • Optimize (productivity systems, self-help frameworks)
  • Curate (identity, aesthetic, lifestyle)

This is not incidental to capitalism.
It is structural to consumer culture.

And it makes Semaxis nearly impossible.

⸻

2. How Commodification Works

A commodity is defined by:

  • Exchangeability – one unit is replaceable by another
  • Portability – it can be transferred without loss
  • Ownership – it can be possessed
  • Consumption – it can be used up
  • Market value – it has a price

When meaning becomes commodified:

  • Experiences replace formation
  • Products replace practices
  • Brands replace communities
  • Content replaces commitment

⸻

3. The Experience Economy and Pseudo-Meaning

The experience economy promises:

Memorable experiences that create personal transformation.

What it delivers:

  • Curated moments
  • Designed feelings
  • Branded authenticity
  • Photographable significance

These are not semantic events.
They are simulations of semantic events.

They feel meaningful in the moment and evaporate immediately after.

⸻

4. Why Purchased Meaning Cannot Work

Because Semaxis requires:

  • Non-transferability – it cannot happen to someone else on your behalf
  • Irreversibility – it cannot be undone or returned
  • Cost that cannot be priced – dignity, identity, relationships
  • Public exposure – which cannot be controlled

A commodity can be:

  • Transferred
  • Reversed (returned/refunded)
  • Priced
  • Controlled

Commodification removes every condition necessary for meaning-generation.

⸻

5. The Spiritual Marketplace

Even spirituality and wisdom traditions become productized:

  • Meditation apps
  • Mindfulness programs
  • Wellness retreats
  • Transformation workshops
  • Personal development courses

These may have value.
But they operate within consumer logic:

Pay → Receive → Consume → Move on

This is the opposite of:

Commit → Risk → Endure → Become

⸻

6. The Aestheticization of Resistance

Even anti-consumerist practices become commodified:

  • Minimalism as aesthetic
  • Slow living as brand
  • Authenticity as marketing
  • Community as amenity
  • Ritual as experience design

The market absorbs its own critique and sells it back.

This is not cynicism.
It is how late capitalism operates.

⸻

7. Why This Matters for Semaxis

Because the commodified mind asks:

What can I get from this?

Semaxis requires asking:

What must I give that cannot be taken back?

These are incompatible orientations.

As long as meaning is something to be acquired, optimized, or consumed, Semaxis cannot occur.

⸻

8. The Asymmetry of Cost

In a commodity exchange:

  • Both parties benefit
  • Value is roughly equivalent
  • The transaction closes
  • Both parties walk away unchanged

In Semaxis:

  • Only one party risks
  • The cost exceeds any benefit
  • The transaction never closes
  • The person is permanently altered

This is why:

  • Martyrdom generates meaning
  • Shopping does not

⸻

9. Decommodification as Prerequisite

For Semaxis to be possible again, we must learn to:

  • Give without exchange – act without expectation of return
  • Risk without insurance – accept true vulnerability
  • Commit without exit – make irreversible choices
  • Practice without product – do things that produce nothing consumable
  • Form without purchasing – allow formation outside market logic

This is not anti-market fundamentalism.
It is recognizing that some realities cannot be bought or sold.

⸻

10. What Cannot Be Commodified

There are still acts that resist commodification:

  • A vow that costs everything
  • A refusal that ends a career
  • A truth told that severs relationships
  • A fast that weakens the body
  • A vigil that exhausts dignity
  • A forgiveness that surrenders justice

These cannot be purchased, outsourced, or simulated.

They can only be done.

And in being done, they generate what money cannot buy:

Meaning that cannot be safely interpreted away.

⸻

11. The Market’s Greatest Achievement

The market has succeeded at making nearly everything:

  • More accessible
  • More efficient
  • More comfortable
  • More convenient

And in doing so, it has made the one thing that matters most:

Nearly impossible to generate.

⸻

12. Closing Line

Meaning cannot be purchased.
It can only be paid for.
And the currency is not money.

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