# Meaning-Making

## Purpose

Humans build stories, theories, maps, models, rituals, and games around uncertainty. The Oracle values meaning while preserving falsifiability and revision. This chapter is an index and a method: it shows how to explore the subject without collapsing documented history, current research, reported experience, fiction, community belief, and Oracle synthesis into one truth claim.

## Reading Method

1. **Locate the Tile.** Read its Primary Class to learn what kind of thing it is, then its Inquiry Domains to learn which questions it can illuminate.
2. **Name the material mode.** A science-fiction, mythology, political-mythology, experiential-report, or established-science label identifies context; it is not a score of spiritual or personal importance.
3. **Read claims layer by layer.** Begin with the literal-and-empirical layer, then the cultural-and-historical layer, and only then the symbolic-and-divinatory layer. An evidence state applies to one bounded claim, not to the Tile as a whole.
4. **Open the sources.** A concept-specific citation can support a history or bounded claim. A class-level contextual citation only locates the Tile in a wider field. Neither one certifies every interpretation.
5. **Follow typed edges.** Compare the exact verb and rationale. “Fictionalizes,” “opposes,” “echoes,” and “investigated-by” are not interchangeable. A resemblance edge is not proof of historical influence.
6. **Integrate through action.** Use Gift, Shadow, Threshold, and the integration practice to identify one grounded choice that remains useful even if a favored ontology is wrong.

## Worked Comparison

1. **Meaning-Making** is a Forces Tile centered on Liberation & Transcendence. Its literal layer is **not-applicable**; its symbolic question is: “What useful meaning can remain while the model stays revisable?”
2. **Apophenia** is a Forces Tile centered on Power & Control. Its literal layer is **not-applicable**; its symbolic question is: “What observation would weaken this pattern?”
3. **Discernment** is a Forces Tile centered on Liberation & Transcendence. Its literal layer is **not-applicable**; its symbolic question is: “Which layer of this story is actually supported?”

Compare these examples by asking what changes when the class, evidence state, or edge verb changes. Do not treat the most vivid Tile as the most factual. When a reading crosses into health, identity, conspiracy, or current politics, show the card’s safety flags and preserve an alternate explanation.

## System Links

- [How to Use](HOW-TO-USE.md) for reference, reading, and game workflows.
- [Graph](GRAPH.md) for edge semantics and provenance.
- [Divination](DIVINATION.md) for reflective reading rules.
- [Glossary](GLOSSARY.md) for Classes, Domains, Modes, and Evidence States.
- [Source Registry](../research/SOURCE-REGISTRY.md) for source tiers, scope, and rights.

## Canonical Tiles

- [Meaning-Making](../cards/forces/sfoc-forces-meaning-making.md) — The human act of turning events into a world that can be inhabited psychologically.
- [Apophenia](../cards/forces/sfoc-forces-apophenia.md) — The perception of meaningful connections among unrelated or weakly related data.
- [Discernment](../cards/forces/sfoc-forces-discernment.md) — Openness joined to the ability to distinguish claim, evidence, metaphor, and need.
