When meanings become unstable, inventiveness through exchange may be possible, and new habits may be made and laid down. But…
“When meanings become unstable, inventiveness through exchange may be possible, and new habits may be made and laid down. But when reciprocity is refused or absent, then we are nothing but a chaos of broken relations. With that, we are in the presence of what the Estonian semiotician Ivar Puura called semiocide. Carelessness over meanings – in nature and in culture – is a symptom of relational sickness. This sickness can kill the systems it infects.”
–Wendy Wheeler. In Other Tongues: Ecologies of Meaning and Loss.