I’m not convinced this idea is useful. You explain that communities can be better understood through what they find meaningful, and how this becomes a valuable signal to identify status in each culture. But if I were to walk up to a culture I had little experience with, I would previously ask ‘What do these people do, who do these people respect and why?‘. If I instead ask ‘I want to understand this culture, so what do they find meaningful?’ how exactly have I become better at understanding the culture?
In other words, could you taboo the word ‘meaningful’ and perhaps give one or two counterfactual examples of cultural behaviour that could not be explained by it?
I’m not convinced this idea is useful. You explain that communities can be better understood through what they find meaningful, and how this becomes a valuable signal to identify status in each culture. But if I were to walk up to a culture I had little experience with, I would previously ask ‘What do these people do, who do these people respect and why?‘. If I instead ask ‘I want to understand this culture, so what do they find meaningful?’ how exactly have I become better at understanding the culture?
In other words, could you taboo the word ‘meaningful’ and perhaps give one or two counterfactual examples of cultural behaviour that could not be explained by it?