Yesterday Arevik said, “We learn everything in comparison.” 

This phrase brings to mind my time studying semiotics. One of the fundamental lessons that has stayed with me is that we make sense of things through comparison and differentiation. In semiotics, we understand that no word has an intrinsic meaning by itself; instead, its meaning emerges from how it differs from other words.There is no inherent link with between the word and what it signifies. 

For example, we distinguish “hot” from “cold” by recognizing the contrast between them. Similarly, “good” is often defined in opposition to “bad.” Without the concept of “bad,” we wouldn’t fully grasp what “good” means.

Similarly, we create meaning by differentiating one letter from another. For example, the word “car” has its meaning because it is not written the same way as “cat.” The presence of the letter ‘t’ in “cat” distinguishes it from “car.” The word “cat” by itself has no intrinsic meaning. Its connection to the animal is not natural but rather a societal agreement. We have collectively decided that the sequence of letters “c-a-t” represents a certain animal. This demonstrates that meaning in language arises from the differences between words and the societal conventions that define these meanings.

Moving forward,  we make sense of the world through the continuous interplay of differentiation and comparison. This concept extends beyond language to how we perceive and understand people. We differentiate ourselves from one another, forming individual identities based on these comparisons and distinctions. this means that we come to know who we are by recognizing how we are different from others. Our identities are not formed in isolation but through interactions and relationships with other people and the world around us. Interaction between similarity and difference is fundamental to the construction of personal and social identities. Without the distinction there would be no self. As Hegel has said, every identity is only its difference.