Podcast TCCR #015 - The Layers of the Cognosystem: Interaction, friction, and movement

This episode introduces a profound analytical framework within the Cognosystemic Theory of Human Psychosocial Relational Construction (TCCR) for understanding how meaning is organized in psychosocial reality. The layers of the Cognosystem function as interdependent ecosystemic levels, where narratives are produced, circulate, clash, and transform. This episode is essential for grasping the dynamic architecture of meaning and for designing strategic interventions in Social Work.

What Are Cognosystemic Layers?

Cognosystemic layers are symbolic and relational levels where the discourses and meanings that shape human experience are structured. They act as hermeneutic filters: legitimizing, restricting, or transforming the narratives that circulate in society. Far from being isolated compartments, these layers are constantly interacting, shaping what can be thought, said, and done in any given context.

Ecosystemic Levels of the Cognosystem

The TCCR identifies four primary layers that make up this architecture:

- Microsystem: intimate, familial, and school-related narratives—the subjective base.

- Mesosystem: intermediate social relationships (community, groups, institutions).

- Exosystem: institutional, legal, and media structures that exert indirect influence.

- Macrosystem: overarching civilizational, ideological, and cultural narratives that provide global meaning.

These layers interconnect continuously, generating complex webs of meaning.

Narrative Movements Between Layers

The episode explains how narratives may:

- Move upward: marginalized stories gain symbolic power.

- Move downward: dominant narratives lose legitimacy (e.g., radical individualism).

- Shift horizontally: narratives hybridize or combine within the same level (e.g., contemporary spiritualities).

These movements are not neutral—they reshape the symbolic structure of the Cognosystem.

Permeability and Interdependence

The Cognosystemic layers are highly permeable, enabling:

- The circulation of cognosystemic memes.

- The breakdown of rigid meaning structures.

- Narrative reconfiguration in response to symbolic crises or disruptive events.

This explains how a personal story can become culturally influential—or how institutional change can reshape everyday subjectivities.

Friction Between Layers: Symbolic Conflict and Opportunity for Change

Friction arises when incompatible narratives collide across different levels. These tensions generate:

- Crises in the symbolic order.

- Reconfigurations of narrative hierarchies.

- The emergence of hybrid or innovative discourses.

Examples include:

- Meritocracy vs. Equity

- Free market vs. Protective State

- Religious tradition vs. Reproductive rights

Implications for Social Work

Understanding these layers allows practitioners to:

- Identify symbolic conflicts at the appropriate ecosystemic level.

- Design more precise and ethically grounded interventions.

- Support narrative reorganization following crises, trauma, or social transformation.

- Critically intervene in narrative shifts that shape everyday life.

The episode concludes with a key premise: The layers of the Cognosystem are the dynamic map of human meaning.

To intervene in them is to intervene in how individuals and societies construct their realities.

The TCCR provides a powerful tool for thinking and acting in contexts of complexity, conflict, and change.

Listen and explore how narratives travel, collide, and reorganize the world we inhabit.

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