Why the World Feels Increasingly Unstable

Understanding the State of the World Through Meaning

(Why the World Is the Way It Is — Part 1)

(2026) Luis A. Marrero. Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose

[Written by, with, and for meaning intelligence.]

Many people today sense that the world is becoming more unstable and difficult to understand.

Today, around the world, many people feel that something is off. Political divisions deepen, international tensions rise, economic inequality remains a major concern, and technological progress outpaces many societies' ability to handle it.

Across cultures and continents, people are asking similar questions:

• What is happening to the world?

• Why does everything seem more unstable?

• Where could all this lead?

Explanations often emphasize politics, economics, or technology. However, beneath these explanations lies a deeper issue that receives much less attention: the meanings through which people interpret reality and make decisions.

Logoteleology begins with a simple but powerful insight:

Meaning establishes the behavioral goals and results.

Human actions do not occur randomly. They are guided by the meanings people attribute to themselves, others, and the world around them.

What Is Meaning?

The word 'meaning' is often used casually, but in psychology and philosophy, it has a more specific definition.

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl described meaning as simply “what is meant.” Meaning relates to the interpretation through which we understand reality.

In logoteleology, I define meaning more specifically as:

An aim backed by causes, where those causes are triggered by an interpretation of reality.

In simple terms, the meanings we create about reality shape our motivations, actions, and ultimately the consequences we face. This process can be summarized as:

Meaning influences motivation, which guides action and produces outcomes.

If the interpretation is accurate and positive, the actions we take usually lead to good results. If the interpretation is wrong, the actions we take can often cause unexpected or negative consequences.

When Meaning Goes Wrong

When interpretations are incomplete or incorrect, decisions and outcomes can become distorted.

One key insight of logoteleology is that many human problems come not from a lack of effort or intelligence, but from distorted meanings. I call these distortions dysmeanings.

A dysmeaning occurs when the meaning guiding decisions is:

• Ignorant — lacking necessary knowledge

• Incomplete — missing critical information

• Incorrect — based on false or corrupted information

In everyday language, this principle is often summarized as:

Garbage in → Garbage out.

When flawed meanings guide decisions, the actions that follow often produce flawed outcomes—even when people believe they are doing the right thing.

The Meaning Behind World Events

If meaning shapes behavior, then many of the patterns we observe in the modern world reflect the meanings that dominate our institutions and cultures.

Consider economic inequality. Research from the World Inequality Lab indicates that the wealthiest one percent of the global population controls a very large share of global wealth (Chancel et al., 2022).

This outcome is not simply the result of economic mechanisms. It also reflects underlying meanings about human motivation, competition, and success.

For example, many economic systems operate on assumptions that individuals are primarily driven by self-interest. These assumptions trace back to influential ideas associated with thinkers such as Adam Smith, whose work on markets profoundly shaped modern economic thinking (Smith, 1776/2003).

Over time, simplified interpretations of such ideas have reinforced a particular meaning about human behavior: that individuals will naturally pursue their own advantage above all else.

When societies embrace beliefs and regulatory principles that promote competition, efficiency, and personal gain, institutions tend to develop in ways that reward those behaviors. Over time, such systems can unintentionally restrict opportunity, increase income inequality, and foster monopolistic practices when the pursuit of profit isn't balanced with healthy and prosocial values.

In this way, the outcomes we observe often reflect the meanings guiding the systems that produce them.

Why Systems Resist Change

When distorted meanings spread across individuals and institutions, systems often struggle to function effectively.

If distorted meanings guide behavior, correcting those meanings should improve outcomes. Yet societies often resist change even when better solutions are available.

Logoteleology describes this phenomenon as meaningantics—the tendency of individuals and systems operating on distorted meanings to resist meaningful correction.

When meanings become embedded in habits, institutions, and cultural assumptions, they can become difficult to question. New ideas may be dismissed or misunderstood because existing meanings shape how people interpret information.

This helps explain why many global challenges persist despite repeated efforts to solve them.

The Importance of Lucidity

If meaning shapes behavior and outcomes, then improving the quality of meaning becomes essential.

Logoteleology refers to this process as lucidity—the effort to examine the meanings guiding our interpretations and align them more accurately with reality.

Meaning lucidity refers to a state in which meaning is free from the distorting effects of bias, prejudice, blind spots, denialism, and other tendencies that resist seeing reality as it is.

Lucidity involves asking questions such as:

• What assumptions am I making about others?

• What beliefs guide my decisions?

• What principles regulate my actions?

• What outcomes am I ultimately pursuing?

By examining these meanings carefully, individuals and societies can begin to refine them.

When meanings improve, decisions improve. And when decisions improve, outcomes begin to change.

Seeing the World Through Meaning Analysis

Lucidity begins when people examine the meanings guiding their interpretations of reality.

If meaning shapes human decisions and outcomes, then understanding the world requires more than observing events. It requires examining the meanings that guide the people and institutions producing those events.

This process can be described as meaning analysis—the careful examination of the interpretations, beliefs, principles, feelings, attitudes, and aims that shape human behavior.

Meaning analysis asks questions such as:

• What assumptions are being made about human nature?

• What beliefs guide decisions within institutions?

• What principles regulate behavior?

• What priorities and biases influence attitudes?

• What outcomes are people ultimately pursuing?

By examining the meanings behind actions, it becomes possible to understand why certain patterns repeat across societies and generations.

Many of the problems we observe in the world today are not simply failures of intelligence or effort. They often reflect meanings that are incomplete, inaccurate, or distorted. When such meanings guide decisions, the resulting outcomes can be difficult to correct.

Developing the ability to analyze meaning—to reach what I call meaning lucidity—allows individuals to see reality more clearly and make more thoughtful decisions about the future.

In the next article, we will explore how the Meaning Construct—six elements that shape interpretation and behavior—can help explain why societies become increasingly polarized.

References

Chancel, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E., Zucman, G., et al. (2022). World Inequality Report 2022. World Inequality Lab.

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1959)

Hobbes, T. (1996). Leviathan. Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1651)

Marrero, L. A. (2026). Why meaning had to come first. Boston Institute for Meaningful Purpose. https://www.bostonimp.com/post/why-meaning-had-to-come-first

Rousseau, J.-J. (2012). The social contract. Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1762)

Smith, A. (2003). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Bantam Classics. (Original work published 1776)