The word digital usually refers to something represented, processed, or communicated using discrete values rather than continuous signals. We know that digital systems encode information in binary (0/1) rather than analog waveforms. A digital clock displays exact numbers; an analog clock sweeps smoothly. Digital data is stored and transmitted as discrete units (bits and bytes), not continuous signals.

But we often forget: signs and symbols—the words of our language—are also digital. They, too, compress complexity into discrete units. Thus human language is a digital system of signs, even when carried by analog sound waves.

While this “feature” of language, i.e. the compression of the environment, is a necessary condition for communication, it implies that communication is loss-prone. Furthermore, there are no ultimate foundations or essences in language, no definite ground beneath our signs, even though we act as if there were.

Programming seems to offer firmer ground. Classes, objects, and definitions feel well-formed, precise, and self-contained. There is a clear separation between syntax and semantics. Yet even here, meaning is not given by the machine, because a machine destroys the reference horizon. In other words, machines do not recognize complexity, because for them, there are no more possible environmental references than those currently being actualized. A machine can “understand” something only in one way, and thus cannot understand it at all. Meaning arises because I, as a programmer (psychic system), interpret and use the system. The code works or fails, delights or frustrates, earns money, sells goods, plays music, organizes life. Meaning is not in the code itself but in the observed, expected and assumed effects it produces and the uses we make of it.

But our interpretations are not unique. We have to select from the reference horizon that we build and imagine together. This meaning is mediated by natural language—so we are already outside the pure formal system and also limited by our cultural memory.

The reference horizon is contingent but not random. When we listen to music, we anticipate the next tone based on what we have already heard and what we are used the hear. Similarly, the past gives us the structure to see the future, but it also conceals other ways to think, imagine, and live. We need the past, culture, traditions as memory function to be able to anticipate and realize the next step—our future.

Now step further outward into everyday life: the ambiguity multiplies. What does it mean to call someone a “mother”? Is there an essence of “motherhood”? I would argue there is not. Instead, there is a shifting pattern of experiences: shelter, protection, food, conflict, laughter, school lessons, beginnings, and countless other associations. A mother is not a father, not a flower, not a lake—but a fluid constellation of relations and meanings. It is also a trace. But this does not imply arbitrariness.

Similarly, we can also ask the nowadays politically charged question: What is a woman?—and immediately run into difficulties. Yet, if we think about it, this is hardly surprising. How could language—a digital system of signs—ever objectively capture the infinite complexity of our realities that constantly drift in the ocean of evolution? The word “woman” only gains meaning in relation to the usage of terms like man, not-man, mother, or feminine. Its meaning is never fixed; it is always shifting, unstable, and deferred. To ask “What is a woman?” already risks reinforcing the man/woman binary as natural, when in fact that binary is itself the product of language, institutions, and history. It can and will change. Any attempt to pin down a definition will necessarily exclude certain possibilities and identities.

In this spirit, communication functions not through mutual understanding, but rather through the absence of misunderstanding. It persists as long as connectivity remains—that is, as long as one contribution can trigger another to continue the discourse. Because meaning is an internal construct of our psychic systems, it cannot be transmitted; it is this deep operational separation that allowed society to emerge. Despite our inability to inhabit one another’s thoughts, we have learned to organize and cooperate. This operational closure—and the inherent “loneliness” it implies—is the source of many of our troubles, yet it is also the foundation of our autonomy and, likely, the very reason we possess a sense of self.

Outrage arises because different groups want their preferred vocabulary to dominate—for example, biological essentialists versus trans-inclusive definitions. In truth, the conflict is a clash of competing language games. Each side feels its way of speaking is under threat, which explains the emotional intensity.

As Richard Rorty once observed:

There is something potentially very cruel about the claim that [the language people speak is, for ironists, a game of chance]. For the most effective way to inflict lasting pain on people is to humiliate them by making everything that had seemed especially important to them appear futile, outdated, and powerless. – (Rorty, 1989)

This is why the demand for a single, definitive answer generates tension: it denies the play of difference that actually structures meaning. The difficulty of the question is not incidental—it is intrinsic. Woman is an aporia, a site of endless contestation. Outrage arises precisely because the question both demands and resists resolution.

The point, then, is not to settle the metaphysical question but to enjoy ambiguity and to foster solidarity. That means choosing the description of woman that best promotes human flourishing and reduces harm and is open to interpretation. Rather than offering a final definition, our task is to help society continually renegotiate its self-descriptions.

We can also ask more generally: What is a human being? Here too, the problems multiply if we think in terms of essences.

A person is not a fixed substance but a pattern of modulated repetition. Life seems coherent over time because of habits, recurring desires, aspirations, and flaws. But a person is not a stable essence—it is a process, an event, a “happening”. Like a hurricane, a person is a complex system: dynamic, shifting, and contingent. And this observation, of course, is made by yet another hurricane, observed by still others—each shaping and shaped by the rest.

This is precisely why I find contemporary reporting so taxing. It systematically ignores this inherent complexity. While communication admittedly requires compression, must it always collapse into reductive binaries—right vs. wrong, friend vs. foe? Must every event and every individual be flattened into a single label just to fit a pre-existing semiotic network? Must every person have an opinion on any matter?

Everything must be explained, everything should be understood, and if something cannot be understood, it counts as nothing. [… So believe] many people, who are constantly having everything explained to them and are presented with a world without secrets, without the inexplicable or the overly complex, eventually come to believe themselves that they understand everything. – (Bauer, 2018)

Too often, complexity is reduced to a “profile”—a checklist of traits or, worse, a binary moral judgment. But a hurricane is neither good nor evil; it is a phenomenon. It destroys, it endangers, and it compels us to react. If we wish to address such forces, we cannot moralize them. We must instead understand—and perhaps alter—the structural conditions under which they form and transform.

People, too, resist moral simplification. A person can be both a criminal and deeply kind; they can support terror while enduring horrific cruelty; they can be a brilliant poet and a member of the Nazi party. I choose to acknowledge these realities with an “and” rather than a “but”.

There is no escape from this complexity—only further layers of it. Yet, it feels increasingly difficult to transcend our digital condition: a world structured by discrete representations, binary code, and rigid networks. In such an environment, the richness of lived experience is flattened into exchangeable symbols—tokens that are used and abused to force a sense of order, to draw hasty conclusions, and to conjure yet another storm.

References

  1. Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (p. 201). Cambridge University Press.
  2. Bauer, T. (2018). Die Vereindeutigung der Welt (p. 104). Reclam.