The adventure of meaning is as old as the history of humanity. This term has developed as humanity has developed, and even under every kind of intellectual change and transformation throughout all stages of history, it has lost nothing of its essence.

In fact, it has left its mark on human history. This term, which has served as the foundation for all political, cultural, artistic, moral, and religious breakthroughs throughout human history, must be questioned and understood in a serious way. Terzi Hermes, Babak, Mithra, Hurrem, Hallaj Mansur, Sheikh Bedreddin, and many others whose names we cannot list here became pioneers and symbols of the search for meaning throughout history. The Apoist movement has made, and continues to make, the present-day reflections of these figures a premise of life.

It must be known that meaning needs an essence, a point of departure, and ultimately something to relate to. When it is considered that nothing in nature exists without a before or an after, and that everything is part of a cycle both within itself and beyond itself, the reality that meaning too must emerge from a certain point will be understood. Leader Apo explains this as follows: “Meaning points to relationality and sharing; characteristically, it is a communal and social concept. Meaning, above all, is the meaning of something. One cannot speak of meaning independent of existence. So how does meaning come into being? Human beings develop the power of meaning by listening to nature. This is why the first mode of learning was mimetic. By listening to nature, human beings transform from nature.”

Starting from this assessment by Leader Apo, we see that human beings first try to understand nature by listening to it; as they understand, they learn, and as they learn, they put into practice what they have learned from nature through imitation. This is why it is defined as mimetic. In other words, the first act of understanding reveals that human beings learned mimetic thought, that is, they brought forth what they learned from nature through imitation. In the natural cycle, the human species is actually the most defenseless living species. As evolutionary processes developed, human beings’ ability to learn and to apply what they learned also developed. Over tens of thousands of years, humanity gradually became not a species affected by nature, but a species that established dominance over nature. During this period, the desire to understand developed more and more, creating a social ground. In other words, meaning engraved its essence into the being of the human. Sharing what one understands has become humanity’s life adventure and its greatest test.

Here again, Leader Apo clarifies the matter as follows: “In every period of history, we see that the dominant thought of each period becomes the truth of that period. In other words, if there is a dominant thought in a given period, it is accepted as the truth of that period. There is a reality, there is an expression of that reality, and that expression conveys a thought or an imagination. For example, we call the period in which mythical thought was dominant the mythical period. That is, a period expressed entirely through imagination. It is the longest period humanity has lived through. In fact, this period, whose mimetic aspect is predominant, is intertwined with the imitative instincts of animals… We call these millions of years the mimetic period. Following the mimetic, mythical thought developed. This largely corresponds to the truth of the Neolithic, Upper Neolithic, and Mesolithic periods. Its social counterpart is the clan-tribe society.

What is called the domestication of plants and animals is actually the expression of a period in which a new culture and a new way of life were experienced for the first time. Mythical thought is a thought that goes beyond animal instincts of imitation. It is expressed entirely through imagination. Symbolic thought develops in human beings. There is a separation from the animal in terms of thought; symbolic thought is unique to human beings.

Human beings are distinguished from animals through symbolic thought. In mimetic thought, there is no symbolism; there is imitation. Whether imitation is a thought or not is debatable. Animals may have a mind, but that mind is not a state of thought or thinking. In this sense, the thought of the mythical period is symbolic. At the same time, the world of thought in the mythical period consists of tales; a little beyond that, there is religious thought, which we call monotheistic religion or something similar to it. More or less up to the present day, there has been a stage of religious thought and religious interpretation. Both originate in the Middle East, in what we today call Upper Mesopotamia, the cradle of humanity.”

If the balance between the past, present, and future is to be understood, then the adventure of meaning within the natural cycle must be understood correctly. This requires giving life a meaning and taking steps with a firm commitment to the ideal of a free life. Of course, as human beings become more conscious, their power of meaning increases; therefore, science and thought must have a leading role in human life. Otherwise, human beings will be unable to give meaning either to themselves or to life, and will continue living merely as rigid-minded beings driven only by the necessity of biological existence. This is precisely what the dominant mentality desires.

Leader Apo wants us to be in search of bringing together, as a synthesis and a whole, all searches for meaning before and after him. This aims to allow the searches that developed yesterday to illuminate the present, and to guide the course of future development within a balance. In the new period, this search for meaning will gain even greater importance in favor of freedom. Throughout the Apoist movement’s struggle, which has exceeded half a century, and under all conditions and circumstances, this search for meaning has been taken as a foundation, with the aim of achieving results in the struggle. At the point reached today, in the new process, the Manifesto for Peace and Democratic Society, which Leader Apo has put forward in a very clear and simple way, carries this half-century-long adventure of meaning to a new stage. Both as the Apoist movement and as the Kurdish people, it is very important to see this struggle as indispensable for giving meaning to life, making peace permanent, and establishing an honorable life.

Leader Apo states that “differences are life, while sameness means death.” From this perspective, as the power of meaning and the search for it develop, the value and importance of differences begin to be understood, and the struggle against the system that wants to place people into the same mold begins to develop through different paths and methods. Because in order to know what death is, one must be acquainted with the secrets of life. This necessity is, just as it is for every human being, also the adventure and test of meaning itself.