Social Meaning Meta-Elements

Social meaning is an agreed upon dynamic interaction between an institution in society and the individual.  While the institutions may vary, there's a commonality in the properties of the interaction.

1.  The Promise.  The institution (or, organization) promises to the individual benefits,  including money, to perform certain activities on behalf of the institution.   As such, the institution is offering meaning to the individual as providing a significant societal activity from which others can benefit.

2.  The acceptance.  The individual freely accepts the purpose of the institution as his directive and his self-interested enterprise to perform as best he can in situ.

3.  Areas of societal advancement.  Just by doing what he wants, he is advancing the goals of the institution he participates in.  There is a coalescing of self-interest and organizational goals, i.e., those of selfless interest.

4.  Provisions for breakdown of social meaning attribution.  Should an institution fail to live up to the conditions under which the individual has contributed to its goals, he can raise objection to the paucity of benefits and rights that it has bestowed upon him.  He may become disassociated with that particular institution or organization.  For instance, a doctor who includes wholistic applications may go off on his own, decrying the AMA.  But he risks the isolation from the mainstream medical world that would likely result.

Similarly, should an individual acting on his own imply that he has the backing of a particular institution, he becomes subject to the institution's sanctions and disbarment.

5.  Utopian vision pursued.  The institution promises society successful achievement of social goals.  Its social meaning is dependent upon its fulfilling its objectives as understood in the cultural context.  Importantly, it is through the individuals  who work to achieve the objectives set forth in the institution's educative practices and advances through its structures that the worthiness of the institution becomes justified and socially supported.  In sum, the social meaning of the institution and its manifold organizations is vouchsafed and attested to by individuals with their own social meaning that only includes that of the institution to which they are identified.  The institution awaits an evaluation by the society which increases its institution's social meaning.