What Is MANES?

This paper asks what human beings continue to assign meaning to, and what they continue to treat as gain and loss, under conditions in which they cannot grasp the full range of consequences of their actions. In response, it introduces the concept of MANES (Meaning Anchor for Narrative and Existential Significance). MANES is the anchor of meaning and commitment that operates as the axis of narrative and existential significance, orienting what is foregrounded, what is backgrounded, and what is pushed outside the horizon of cognition. The argument can be summarized in three propositions. First, substantive rationality cannot be defined without specifying MANES. Second, rationality can exclude the condensed forms of MANES, but it cannot extinguish its dilute phase. Third, the dilute and condensed phases of MANES are different phases of the same entity: in its condensed phase, MANES takes a three-layered structure consisting of a coordinate system, a reward function, and conditions of coexistence, and it further assumes solid, liquid, and gaseous phases depending on circumstances. From this perspective, the crisis of contemporary civilization does not arise from the absence of rationality, but from the excessive operation of local rationality under a particular MANES, whereby long-term, wide-ranging, and interdependent consequences recede from the foreground. This does not mean that the gaseous phase or a shift toward the gaseous phase is inherently inferior. The issue is rather which phase becomes dominant under a given configuration of tasks and demands. The paper therefore interprets the self-destructive tendencies of civilization not as the collapse of rationality itself, but as a mismatch between the structure and dynamics of MANES and the phase dominant under a particular task configuration.