Temporal Behavior of Meaning Systems

Authors: Jordan Vallejo and the Transformation Management Institute Research Group

Status: Monograph B4 | January 2026

I. When Meaning Stops Explaining

Most people have experienced staying inside something longer than it continued to explain what they were doing. A role, a project, a way of working. It once clarified why effort was justified and how decisions fit together, and then, without an obvious break, it stopped organizing conditions in the same way.

Work continues and the language still sounds reasonable, but coordination begins to require more exceptions, more side agreements, more informal handling to keep action moving. This moment is often described as burnout, disengagement, or resistance, descriptions that locate the change in attitude rather than in structure.

What changes is the temporal adequacy of meaning. Crystallized meaning is designed to persist so action can proceed without constant reinterpretation, but persistence has limits. Over time, conditions change while the baseline remains stable, and eventually the baseline is asked to govern situations it was not formed to organize. This monograph examines that temporal behavior after meaning has settled, not the interpretive process that produced it.

II. Purpose and Scope

This monograph specifies how crystallized meaning behaves across time once it governs action as a baseline under an operative meaning regime.

B4 addresses temporal behavior only. It does not describe how interpretation occurs, how binding is pressured, how closure is achieved, or how authority is assigned. Those processes are treated elsewhere in the canon, including A7 (Forces & Dynamics of Interpretation) and the definition pages for Binding, Action-Governing Meaning (AGM), Meaning Regimes, and Crystallization.

The phenomenon examined here begins after crystallization, when interpretation may remain inactive for extended intervals while meaning continues to govern action.

B4 does not provide restoration or redesign doctrine. Its function is diagnostic: to explain persistence, exhaustion, drift, and re-opening as time-dependent system behaviors, not as failures of motivation, alignment, or character.

III. Canonical Boundary Conditions

This monograph applies only when all of the following are true:

• An interpretive event has reached an Event Closure State

• Bound meaning has crystallized and is functioning as a reusable baseline

• An operative meaning regime (PCMR or DMR) was established at binding

• Interpretation is not continuously active

B4 does not apply to event-internal dynamics, binding pressure, or closure architecture. Those belong to A7.

IV. Temporal Baselines and Regime Inheritance

Crystallization determines whether bound meaning persists across cycles. Regime determines under what authority that persistence governs.

Regime is established at binding and inherited by any crystallized baseline. Crystallization does not create, revise, or terminate regimes.

Accordingly, temporal behavior must be analyzed under the regime that was operative at binding:

• Post-Closure Meaning Regime (PCMR): crystallized meaning governs with de jure authorization

• De Facto Meaning Regime (DMR): crystallized meaning governs without de jure authorization

B4 treats regimes only as inherited authorization contexts. Their mechanics are specified on the Meaning Regimes definition page.

V. Core Temporal Terms

The following terms are used in B4 to describe temporal behavior precisely. Each names a structural time behavior, not a subjective experience.

• Persistence

  The continued reliance on crystallized meaning as a governing baseline across time without re-activating interpretation. Persistence is normal. It is a prerequisite for coordination.

• Drift (D)

  The rate of inconsistency accumulation within a crystallized baseline across time and reuse, when correction and integration throughput are insufficient. Drift is strictly post-crystallization. It is a rate, not a cause.

• Meaning Exhaustion

  The condition in which a crystallized baseline continues to govern action but no longer constrains response selection with sufficient determinacy under current conditions. Exhaustion reflects a narrowing determinacy margin, not an error in original formation.

• Compensation

  Informal variance-management and exception-handling behaviors that preserve apparent stability of an exhausted baseline without formal reinterpretation or re-closure. Compensation increases apparent coherence while accelerating drift accumulation.

• Action Determinacy Loss (ADL)

  The threshold at which a crystallized baseline can no longer deterministically route action relative to the reference conditions treated as in force, requiring interpretation to re-activate. ADL is the sole re-opening trigger.

VI. Persistence as a Temporal Requirement

Crystallized meaning enables coordination by reducing interpretive overhead. Without persistence, systems would re-interpret continuously and fail to act.

Persistence stabilizes expectations, renders tradeoffs intelligible, and allows effort to proceed without renegotiating reference conditions and constraints at every cycle. Persistence is therefore not a defect. It is the normal post-closure state of a functioning meaning system.

However, persistence increases the cost of re-opening interpretation. Revisiting meaning disrupts coordination and requires renewed interpretive work. As long as a baseline can still route action deterministically, systems will continue to rely on it.

Temporal analysis begins when persistence is maintained beyond the conditions the baseline was formed to organize.

VII. Meaning Exhaustion Without Error

Over time, crystallized meaning is asked to organize conditions it was not formed to address. The baseline still governs. Language remains familiar. Action continues.

What changes is not correctness, legitimacy, or intent. What changes is determinacy margin.

Meaning exhaustion occurs when increasing numbers of cases require exception-handling, contextual override, or informal adjustment in order for action to proceed. The baseline still applies, but it no longer constrains response selection cleanly.

This distinction matters. Exhaustion is often misdiagnosed as disengagement, resistance, or misunderstanding. Systems respond by reinforcing the baseline, restating it, defending it, or demanding renewed adherence. These responses treat temporal limitation as interpretive failure. They increase compensation rather than restoring determinacy.

Exhaustion does not require error at formation. It reflects elapsed time and changed conditions.

VIII. Compensation and Drift Accumulation

As exhaustion increases, systems rely more heavily on compensation to preserve apparent stability.

Compensation allows action to continue without re-opening interpretation, but it does so by expanding informal variance:

• exceptions accumulate

• workarounds proliferate

• authority is exercised ad hoc

• correction becomes selective or non-reconstructable

Compensation does not cause drift directly. It raises drift rate (D) by increasing inconsistency accumulation faster than integration and correction can absorb.

Drift therefore accelerates after crystallization, under conditions of exhaustion and compensation.

IX. ADL as a Threshold Event

Interpretation does not re-activate gradually.

As long as a crystallized baseline can still route action deterministically, systems will continue to rely on it, even under significant strain.

Action Determinacy Loss (ADL) is reached when the same baseline yields non-deterministic routing for the same reference conditions treated as in force.

At ADL:

• response pathways conflict

• exceptions contradict each other

• coordination cost spikes

• continued reliance becomes untenable

When ADL is reached, interpretation must re-activate. A new interpretive event begins under renewed jurisdiction.

What changes is not the past closure outcome. What changes is what meaning must now do to govern action.

X. Replacement and Accretion

When interpretation re-activates after ADL and produces a new closure outcome, a new baseline may crystallize.

Replacement in meaning systems is not repudiation by default. It is succession.

Earlier meaning organized conditions as they were. New meaning organizes conditions as they are now.

Accretion preserves continuity across replacement. Prior meanings remain intelligible as historical baselines. They explain past action without governing present action.

Accretive capacity matters because systems that frame replacement as repudiation undermine their own legitimacy. When change requires disowning prior reasoning, trust erodes and conflict escalates.

Accretion allows completion without discrediting.

XI. Regime-Specific Temporal Signatures

Temporal behavior differs depending on the operative regime inherited at binding.

PCMR temporal signature

Under PCMR, crystallized meaning governs with de jure authorization. Exhaustion typically appears as increasing mismatch between the baseline and current conditions. Compensation may occur, but authorized revision and re-closure pathways remain available.

Earlier recognition of exhaustion allows re-activation before extensive drift accumulates.

DMR temporal signature

Under DMR, meaning governs without de jure authorization. Persistence is often maintained through compensation, informal enforcement, or private reinterpretation.

Drift accumulation is typically faster because correction cannot integrate formally. When ADL is reached, re-activation is often abrupt and destabilizing.

Many environments that appear stable are operating under DMR rather than PCMR. Persistence remains visible, but authorization has terminated or was never present.

XII. Upstream Amplifiers of Temporal Instability

Although B4 does not define pre-binding failures, two upstream conditions materially affect temporal behavior:

• Constraint Failure (KF): increases reliance on workaround routing prior to crystallization

• Closure Failure (CF): restricts revision permeability after closure

When present, these conditions increase compensation dependence and accelerate drift accumulation once a baseline persists.

KF and CF are defined in A7 and are referenced here only as temporal risk amplifiers.

XIII. Implications for Transformation and Governance

Temporal instability is often misattributed to motivation, culture, or resistance. B4 shows that many failures originate instead from extended reliance on exhausted meaning under regimes whose authorization or correction pathways cannot sustain endurance.

Transformation rarely fails because explanations are wrong. It fails because explanations are used longer than they can organize deterministically.

Recognizing exhaustion earlier reduces compensation, limits drift, and preserves accretive continuity.

XIV. Completion as a Structural Event

Meaning does not need to be false to end.

One of the most destabilizing errors systems make is treating completion as failure. When meanings are allowed to finish without being discredited, succession can proceed without legitimacy loss.

Temporal behavior shows that endurance has limits, and that recognizing those limits is a form of governance responsibility.

Transformation does not begin with better explanations. It begins with knowing when an explanation has done enough.

Citation

Vallejo, J. (2026). Monograph B4: Temporal Behavior of Meaning Systems. TMI Scientific Monograph Series. Transformation Management Institute.