Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

From: jimruttshow8596

Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is a video series by John Vervaeke, an Associate Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Toronto [00:00:56]. This series explores key concepts in psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy to address the contemporary meaning crisis and awakening [00:00:52].

Core Concepts Explored

Relevance Realization

Relevance is not something with a fixed “essence” in the Aristotelian sense, meaning it doesn’t have a set of necessary and sufficient conditions shared by all its instances [00:02:40]. Instead, relevance is fundamentally a process [00:02:23]. John Vervaeke argues that it is analogous to Darwinian “fittedness” or fitness [00:07:41]. Just as fitness constantly redefines and redesigns itself through evolution by natural selection [00:08:34], relevance realization is a universal process that continually evolves and helps make sense of a combinatorially explosive and constantly changing world [00:09:35].

Sacredness

Vervaeke defines sacredness not in a traditional metaphysical sense, but phenomenologically as the “inexhaustibility of our reality” [00:10:03]. It is experienced as a profound enhancement of one’s meaning in life and connectedness [00:10:50]. This concept aligns with the Neoplatonic Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition’s notion of epictasis, where God is seen as the ongoing affordance of continual self-transcendence rather than a static state [00:11:55]. When something affords an ongoing fount of new intelligibility and reciprocal opening, it tends to be experienced as more meaningful, transformative, and spiritually deep [00:13:16].

Symbols

Symbols, such as the Christian cross or the American flag, are understood in a rich, literary sense rather than just Peirce’s icon-index-symbol distinction [00:14:39]. These “heavy symbols” are culturally and cognitively indispensable [00:15:05]. They are crucial for cognitive agency, much like a language is indispensable to a speaker [00:16:00]. However, their indispensability does not imply metaphysical necessity [00:15:10]. It is a common human tendency to conflate culturally useful symbols with metaphysically true claims [00:18:28].

Religio and the Perennial Problems

Vervaeke defines religio as the realization (both awareness and actualization) of the fundamental connectedness that is at the core of our cognitive agency [00:20:50]. This connectedness extends to ourselves, to others as sociocultural beings, and to the world as dynamically evolving cognitive systems [00:22:01].

Religio is a significant part of the answer to the “perennial problems” [00:22:15]. These problems are inherent vulnerabilities that arise from the very processes that make humans adaptively fitted to their environment [00:22:37]. Examples include:

• Modal Confusion: Confusing the “being mode” and “having mode” [00:22:59].
• Absurdity: The clash between personal and cosmic perspectives, leading to a sense of meaninglessness [00:23:10].
• Alienation: The tension between individuation and participation in groups [00:23:31].
• Parasitic Processing: Tendencies towards self-deceptive and self-destructive behavior [00:23:40].
• Reflectiveness Gap: The challenge of balancing reflection and action, avoiding both impulsivity and Hamlet-like paralysis [00:55:12].
• Existential Entrapment: Overcoming existential inertia and ignorance [00:59:03].

Humans are always “two steps from despair” [00:23:57], constantly at risk of feeling disconnected from reality [00:24:53]. Religio, as a meta-meaningful system, aims to steer relevance realization away from foolishness and towards flourishing [00:25:58]. This involves cultivating ecologies of practices that address these perennial problems and enhance connectedness [00:25:08].

The Religion That’s Not a Religion (RTINAR)

The central proposal of the Awakening from the Meaning Crisis project is the “religion that’s not a religion” (RTINAR) [01:05:34]. This is an “exactive proposal” to integrate the best cognitive science with the reverse-engineering of enlightenment, individually and collectively [01:06:00]. It seeks to draw from past ecologies and practices while leaving behind outdated “two worlds mythologies” [01:07:06]. The aim is to create a worldview aligned with scientific understanding that ameliorates foolishness and affords flourishing [01:06:44].

Religio, Credo, and Mythos

Within RTINAR, three concepts are critically re-evaluated:

1. Religio: As defined above, the realization of fundamental connectedness, which is the primary focus [01:06:50].
2. Credo: The use of propositions and conceptual frameworks to set criteria, distinguish signal from noise, and determine what is “on the path” [01:10:57]. While cognitively indispensable for “signal detection” [01:11:01], no particular credo is metaphysically necessary [01:14:20]. Credo should always be in service of religio, constantly evolving and self-correcting like a dynamic system, rather than becoming a tyrannical, unchallengeable dogma [01:12:47].
3. Mythos: The use of symbols, stories, rituals, and celebrations to imaginally augment and make us aware of religio, enhancing its realization and wisdom [01:16:18]. Mythos must also remain in service of religio and be wary of merging with credo, which can turn it into an unquestionable metaphysics [01:18:38]. The Nietzsche’s Influence and the Meaning Crisis idea of the madman proclaiming “God is dead” means humanity must become worthy of creating new meaning [01:19:16], which involves collectively developing wisdom rather than relying on a single prophet [01:20:09].

Reverse Engineering Enlightenment

Vervaeke proposes to “reverse engineer enlightenment” [00:48:19]. Instead of seeking a mystical, elusive state described by historical accounts, the goal is to define enlightenment as reliably overcoming perennial problems and enhancing religio in a wise and transformatively effective way [00:50:46]. Using cognitive science, this approach aims to identify practices that systematically ameliorate problems and foster flourishing [00:51:01].

Practical approaches to addressing perennial problems include:

• Parasitic Processing: Cultivating “counteractive dynamical systems” through ecologies of practices, such as a modified eightfold path [00:53:36].
• Modal Confusion: Engaging in practices like mindfulness to deeply remember the “being mode” distinct from the “having mode” [00:54:52].
• Reflectiveness Gap: Cultivating “flow states,” as emphasized in Taoism, to achieve a comprehensive state of balanced engagement and flexibility [00:56:19].
• Absurdity: Using meditation and contemplation (like in Buddhism) to achieve non-dual states where clashing perspectives interpenetrate powerfully [00:57:01].
• Existential Entrapment: Engaging in “serious play,” which involves imaginal augmentation of interaction with the world to drive transformation [00:59:25]. Mindfulness practices are considered a species of serious play [01:01:43].

Cultivating Wisdom and Rationality

A key aspect of RTINAR is the cultivation of an ecology of psychotechnologies [01:29:38]. These are practices and tools (e.g., meditation, yoga, psychotherapy, psychedelic drugs, neurofeedback, group singing, ecstatic dancing) [01:31:45] that, when combined, offer complementary strengths and weaknesses, allowing for powerful opponent processing and self-correction [01:30:08].

While intelligence (g) may be relatively fixed, rationality is highly malleable [01:42:42]. There is much that can be done to ameliorate self-deceptive foolishness and improve connectedness to reality [01:43:32].

Active Open-Mindedness

A crucial cognitive style for improving rationality is “active open-mindedness” (AOM) [01:44:54]. This practice, similar to Stoicism, involves:

1. Identifying a cognitive bias and looking for it in others [01:45:45].
2. Turning those observation skills on oneself to catch personal instances of the bias [01:45:56].
3. Actively counteracting the bias, seeking disconfirming evidence, or asking others for criticisms [01:46:07].
4. Practicing “steel manning” — formulating the strongest possible version of an argument, especially one with which you disagree [01:47:36].
5. Engaging in “dialogical movement,” genuinely attempting to move one’s own position towards the interlocutor’s with integrity to encourage mutual movement and deeper understanding [01:48:19].

This process fosters mutual self-correction, essential for democracy [01:28:36] and “real thinking” [01:51:50]. The success of such a dialogue is not necessarily agreement, but for both participants to reach a place they couldn’t have gotten to on their own [01:52:09]. This focus on process over product is key [01:51:24].

By cultivating wisdom and virtue alongside rationality, and using meta-psychotechnologies responsibly, humanity can work towards a future of reduced foolishness and enhanced flourishing [01:35:37]. The goal is to make wise enlightenment possible for individuals and collectives, and to pursue it through continuous development and transformation [01:10:08]. The meaning crisis and its implications and the collapse of traditional structures demand such an evolution of meaning and a collective, self-correcting approach to address the metacrisis and societal challenges [01:09:42].