The Library of Babel And The Destruction Of Meaning
The first essay in a short series on Harvesting Meaning Out Of Chaos
Introduction - The Paradox of Information Abundance
In the story 'The Library Of Babel' (1941), Jorge Luis Borges imagined a universe in the form of a library containing every possible book (yet unfortunately located within a much larger corpus of every possible combination of letters, i.e. total gibberish).
Today, we find ourselves in a situation that increasingly resembles the fictional worlds he created.
A friend just confided in me that she basically regards the news and all of history as tainted and has no idea what to believe about any of it. Not coincidentally, she just received an unhinged message from a 'red-pilled' acquaintance, who came out with that immortal line about 'Hitler not being all bad'. I was pleased to note that she didn't find herself confused enough to give that suggestion the time of day, at least.
This is the paradox of our age: information abundance paired with meaning scarcity. We drown in data while thirsting for wisdom. The endless debate surrounding theories like the covid ‘lab leak’ is a prime example.
When everything is available and anything can be claimed, the very concept of truth seems to dissolve into a matter of perspective, power, or preference.
The stakes could not be higher, because when meaning collapses, so too does our capacity for collective action, shared understanding, and social cohesion. Democracy itself requires citizens capable of discerning fact from fiction, weighing evidence, and reaching reasoned judgements. Not to mention being able to read something for more than a few seconds.
To navigate the labyrinth, we must understand how we ended up here - and begin to imagine new ways of harvesting meaning from the digital abundance that surrounds us. The good news is I believe it is possible.
The Library of Babel Syndrome
When Information Eclipses Meaning
Borges’ story depicts a universe in the form of a vast library containing every possible book – truth and falsehood, meaning and nonsense.
The librarians in that universe respond in ways mirroring our own when overwhelmed by information: forming cults around randomness, attempting futile purification rituals, or succumbing to despair.
In our universe, search engines function as imperfect librarians, attempting to guide us through information vastness. They can measure relevance, popularity, and engagement, but not truth or wisdom. ’Truthy’ information can often eclipse actual facts.
We face a choice between exhausting cognitive effort or accepting uncomfortable ambiguity. Many retreat into simplifying narratives or tribal epistemologies. It's not a coincidence that 'conspiracy theories' are abundant right now.
The problem isn’t simply information overload, but our diminishing ability to translate information into knowledge and wisdom.
Weaponized Confusion - The Strategic Destruction of Meaning
In 2018, Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist, articulated a media strategy that would come to define an era: "The Democrats don't matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."
Traditional propaganda aims to convince people of specific falsehoods. Bannon's approach is more insidious - it seeks not to promote particular untruths but to overwhelm the information environment with contradictions until the very concept of truth seems naive.
The goal is not persuasion but paralysis. As Hannah Arendt observed of totalitarian propaganda:
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists."
We're pretty much there, folks!
The intellectual foundations for strategic confusion can be found in the work of Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin. While Bannon offers tactical approaches, Dugin provides philosophical justification through what might be called "weaponized postmodernism."
Dugin selectively adopts postmodern critiques of objective truth, not to advance beyond simplistic binaries, but to destabilise Western epistemological assumptions.
This approach doesn't engage opposing arguments on their merits but undermines the very ground on which rational debate occurs. It's knocking over the chess board and then claiming that you were about to win anyway (something I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Putin does on a regular basis).
The meaning crisis isn't merely a side effect of technological change but also a deliberately manufactured condition. Some elites have recognised that in information over-abundance, the strategic destruction of meaning serves their interests more effectively than persuasion ever could. This is where we are right now.
History Belongs To The Victors
The adage that "history is written by the victors" now operates in real-time. We no longer need to wait decades for historical narratives to be constructed; they are assembled before our eyes, tweet by tweet, headline by headline. Those with media power - whether traditional outlets, social media platforms, or powerful influencers - shape which events become "significant," which perspectives are legitimised, and which voices remain lost in the sea of information.
The danger in our current moment is that this legitimate critical insight about the construction of historical narrative has been weaponized. Rather than using this understanding to seek more complete truths by including marginalised perspectives, actors like Bannon and Dugin exploit it to suggest that no truth exists beyond power - that all claims are equally suspect and equally valid.
This strategic nihilism denies the possibility of distinguishing truth from falsehood at all. What began as a tool for liberation becomes a mechanism for dominance.
As Hannah Arendt warned, this approach "destroys the common factual world that binds communities together."
Next time we will examine the underlying drivers of this situation, and start seeing some glimmers of light as to how we might get out of it.
Transparency notice! This essay was co-written using various large language models and system prompts from a basis of my original thoughts. It was then edited again by me to hone it into exactly what I wanted to say. Please see my previous essay for more details on this approach to ‘collaboration with a non-human intelligence’:
Guy, thanks for this superb essay -- really appreciate the clarity and context you bring. I recognised how in discussions with people sympathetic to Trump, I have experienced the phenemenon you describe -- where the ground of debate shifts from the specifics of his policies, character and the implications of his presidency, to the question of how my own background, preferences and experiences have shaped my worldview -- implying that as you write "all facts are equally suspect." So helpful to have you lay out the context for this very personal experience in this way. The "meaning crisis" has indeed been manufactured, and many of the people who have fallen victim have no idea that this is the case.
A perfect example of this thesis is the existence of the Truth Social website and of course the potty-mouthed Orange Oaf.