From: jimruttshow8596
This article explores various historical philosophical shifts and their profound impact on human understanding of meaning and agency, drawing insights from John Vervaeke’s video series “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” [00:00:36].
Higher States of Consciousness and Insight
A central concept in understanding human transformation is the nature of “higher states of consciousness” (HSC). The core idea of the Axial Revolution in great world religions and philosophical traditions is that these states are “more real” than everyday reality [00:02:28]. Unlike dreams, which are often strange but not considered more real because they cannot be coherently integrated with our worldview [00:03:38], HSCs, despite being unique and ineffable, are often judged by experiencers as revealing what is “really real” [00:04:02].
It is important to distinguish between the altered phenomenology of these states and their underlying functionality [00:05:32]. What truly matters is the increased capacity for insight they afford [00:06:03]. These insights are often described as breakthroughs, leading to developmental and systemic changes across various aspects of life [00:06:22]. The fascination with phenomenology can lead to “spiritual narcissism” or “spiritual bypassing,” distracting from the pursuit of “altered traits of character,” which are the true goal [00:07:07].
Fluency and Optimal Grip
The concept of fluency in psychology describes the ease with which information is processed, which the brain uses to make judgments about its content, often leading to it being perceived as truer or more trustworthy [00:08:09]. This isn’t merely about ease of processing but rather about achieving an “optimal grip” on a situation [00:09:14]. This “optimal grip” idea, originating from the phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty, involves balancing different perspectives to best fit the task at hand [00:11:00].
In the “continuity hypothesis,” fluency leads to insight (a “fluency spike” indicating a sudden optimal grip on a problem) [00:09:37]. Chaining these insights together leads to a “flow state,” an extended “aha” experience [00:12:27]. Mystical experiences are proposed as a flow state where the capacity being exercised is an “optimal grip on the world,” on “realness” or “reality” itself [00:12:54]. This provides a “meta stance” towards the world, much like a martial arts stance that enables optimal positions for any action [00:14:03].
Decentering
A significant effect of altered states of consciousness is decentering [00:15:14]. This involves reducing egocentrism and becoming more “world-centric,” where reality and one’s connection to it become more salient than the ego [00:16:57]. Egocentrism is a unifying factor for many cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias [00:16:18]. Mystical experiences, by radically re-centering individuals on realness, weaken the “blinding glare of the ego” [00:17:51].
A practical example of decentering is the Solomon Effect: redescribing a personal problem from a third-person perspective, as if a friend were observing it, often leads to insight that is not available from a first-person perspective [00:17:35]. This demonstrates how getting outside one’s immediate viewpoint can be constructively transformative [00:14:40]. The “ego death” experienced in strong psychedelic doses can reveal that the ego is merely a “thing,” not an essential part of one’s being [00:18:02]. Even the flow state weakens the “nattering nanny manager ego,” enhancing agency and offering existential lessons about agency not being dependent on egoic oversight [00:18:27].
Importance of Tradition/Community
Engaging in mystical or altered states practices within a “tradition” or “ecology of practices” embedded in a community is crucial [00:20:12]. This is because collective cognition generally outperforms individual cognition [00:20:30], allowing mutual correction of biases and access to collective intelligence [00:21:10]. Submitting personal revelations to the witnessing and critique of others is a perennial and critical corrective, akin to how science operates through intersubjective collective verification [00:21:53]. This doesn’t preclude new communities forming their own traditions [00:21:27].
Complexification
Complexification refers to a system that is simultaneously differentiating and integrating, which produces emergence [00:26:16]. This allows a system to do many more things in a coordinated manner [00:26:22]. The brain is seen as a complex system that continuously integrates and differentiates [00:26:47]. This process of complexification can couple with the complexity of the world, enabling a better fit [00:27:32]. Many modern problems stem from attempting to deal with complex phenomena using complicated (rather than complex) solutions, which often means adding more bureaucratic layers instead of understanding emergent dynamics [00:27:54].
Buddhism and Parasitic Processing
Buddhist practices, particularly the Eightfold Path, are presented as a “counteractive dynamical system” designed to combat parasitic processing [00:32:49]. Parasitic processing occurs when individually adaptive cognitive heuristics (like confirmation bias or availability heuristic) self-organize and mutually reinforce each other in a maladaptive spiral, such as anxiety or depression [00:31:00]. These spirals feed on themselves, sucking life from the individual, and are resistant to simple intervention because they adapt to attempts to get rid of them [00:31:50].
Reinterpreting Dukkha
Traditionally, the Buddhist concept of dukkha is translated as “suffering.” However, a reinterpretation suggests it refers more broadly to a loss of agency [00:35:41]. Parables used by the Buddha often illustrate self-entrapment and loss of control rather than just pain [00:35:50]. The Buddha’s emphasis on “freedom” as the taste of his teaching further supports this, as freedom is an agency-related concept [00:36:44]. Dukkha can encompass situations of overwhelming pleasure that also lead to a loss of agency [00:37:45]. This reinterpretation helps explain why ignorance is a primary mark of dukkha, as ignorance profoundly undermines agency [00:38:26]. The etymology of dukkha as “off-center” or “out of joint,” like a wheel destroying itself, aligns with the concept of parasitic processing [00:38:37].
The Hellenistic Age and Domicide
The philosophical impact of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on Western thought was profoundly influenced by the “frozen accident” of Alexander the Great [00:39:03]. Alexander’s conquests spread Hellenistic culture, which helped preserve and disseminate Greek philosophy, though the legacy is complex [00:39:49]. The fusion of Greek and Eastern ideas, such as the emergence of the first statues of the Buddha made by people of Greek heritage, is a notable example [00:42:08].
However, Alexander’s empire also initiated a phenomenon called domicide, which means the loss of home [00:43:51]. This has two meanings: the loss of physical housing, and the loss of the sense of being at home [00:43:57]. In Greek city-states (polis), people were deeply rooted through shared religion, language, and ancestral connections [00:45:23], making ostracism a punishment worse than death [00:45:38]. Alexander’s mega-empire displaced populations, distanced governance, and mixed diverse cultures, leading to a profound loss of belonging and rootedness [00:45:55]. This ushered in the “Age of Anxiety” [00:46:39], paralleling modern globalization’s impact on feelings of homelessness and the rise of tribalisms and nationalisms [00:46:56]. The shift from extended families and face-to-face communities to abstract government and market systems as sources of sustenance further contributes to this modern domicide [00:47:25].
Philosophical Responses to Domicide
Stoicism
In response to the domicide of the Hellenistic Age, philosophy took a therapeutic turn, aiming to relieve existential suffering [00:49:36]. Stoicism emerged as a significant answer to anxiety, with direct influence on modern psychotherapies like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) [00:50:15]. Stoics, influenced by Socrates through Antisthenes, emphasized mastering internal dialogue to replace rumination with Socratic self-inquiry [00:50:47].
The Stoic goal was to find a different way of being at home, coining the term “cosmopolitan” – finding the cosmos as one’s polis or home [00:52:23]. Unlike the Cynics who rejected contingent external things (power, wealth, fame) as foundations for home, Stoics focused on the internal process of “homing” the world [00:52:15]. They advocated for “prosoche” – paying careful attention to how one’s moment-to-moment thinking and perception create agent-arena relationships that “home” the world [00:52:47]. This conscious intervention aims to make the homing process resilient to the contingencies and conventionalities of the world, recognizing that life is always subject to fate [00:53:17].
Jesus, Agape, and the Two-Worlds Model
The “two-worlds model” gained prominence during the Axial Age, with Jesus seen as a “chirotic figure” embodying a new way of being [00:54:58]. A key concept here is agape, a type of creative love [00:57:39]. Unlike eros (love of consumption/unification) or philia (brotherly/reciprocal love), agape is the love a parent has for a child: a love that seeks the child’s independent development, transforming “non-persons into persons” [00:58:20]. Jesus is seen as revealing God’s creativity as agape [00:59:28].
The Gospel of John famously links Jesus’s agape (kairos) with the Logos, the Greek philosophical concept of intelligibility and ordering [01:00:10]. Logos means to “gather together so that things belong together,” creating order [01:00:40]. Agape, as creative love, also brings people together (“where two or three are gathered in my name”) [01:00:47]. Thus, Logos and Agape are seen as interpenetrating aspects of reality, enabling individuals to become vehicles for expressing and creating more Logos and Agape [01:00:55]. This Christian insight, offering a new way of “homing” oneself in the world (ecclesia), was profoundly empowering within the Roman Empire, where many felt disconnected [01:02:16]. The idea of all people being “equal children of God” became fundamental to many positive Western developments [01:01:54].
Augustine’s Synthesis
Augustine, a “titanic” figure and the last great philosopher of antiquity, created a model that shaped Western civilization for over 1500 years [01:02:50]. He integrated Neoplatonism (which unified Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics) with Christian agape and the ancient Israelite idea of a moral history [01:03:33]. Augustine personalized this synthesis in his Confessions, detailing his own metanoia (turning point), providing a template for individual transformation [01:04:22].
His synthesis offered:
- Coherence: Through the Logos of Greek philosophy [01:05:03].
- Purpose: Through the moral history of Christianity [01:05:08].
- Significance: Through the depth of connection provided by agape [01:05:12].
This powerful framework provided a comprehensive worldview that was widely accepted, especially during the decline of the Roman Empire [01:05:54].
Cracks in the Augustinian Synthesis
The Rediscovery of Aristotle
Around the 13th century, new ideas, particularly the rediscovery of Aristotle’s works (often through Islamic civilizations), began to produce cracks in Augustine’s architecture [01:06:44]. Aristotle represented a scientific worldview focused on the fundamental reality of this world [01:08:34], challenging the prevalent, more extreme Platonism of the Middle Ages that emphasized a beautiful “upper world” in contrast to a harsh earthly reality [01:09:15].
Aquinas’s “Patch”
Thomas Aquinas, another brilliant thinker, responded to this challenge by making a division between the natural and supernatural worlds [01:10:33].
- The natural world could be known through science, reason, and observation [01:10:54].
- The supernatural world could only be known through faith, a special “gift” or “grace” from God [01:11:02].
This “patch” solidified the two worlds as distinct: a natural world continuous with human experience and a supernatural world operating by different, magical principles, inaccessible to reason [01:11:46]. While this saved the roles of both the Church and emerging scientists, it unfortunately destroyed the Platonic concept of anagoge (ascent from lower to upper reality) and undermined wisdom as a bridging relationship [01:12:30]. More importantly, it made the self-sufficiency of the natural world possible, leading people to eventually find the supernatural world less plausible and irrelevant [01:12:48].
Galileo “Kills the Universe”
Galileo, a key figure in the scientific revolution, further shattered the traditional worldview [01:14:14]. Building on nominalism (the idea that most patterns are in the mind, not the world) [01:15:01], Galileo asserted that mathematics is the true “language of the universe,” cutting through illusory everyday experience [01:16:07]. This was a radical break from Aristotle’s view, which grounded metaphysics in the structure of language and experience [01:17:12].
By trusting mathematics and experimentation over sensory experience, Galileo discovered inertial motion [01:17:49]. This implied that things were not happening “on purpose,” had no inner drive, and lacked inherent meaning or coherence [01:17:50]. In Aristotle’s world, everything moved with purpose; in Christianity, God had a grand plan [01:17:57]. Galileo’s insights, by showing that matter is “inert” and that the universe is “just a bunch of stuff slamming into each other,” effectively “killed the universe” in terms of its perceived inherent purpose and narrative [01:18:24].
Loss of Knowing and Propositional Tyranny
With the rise of scientific objectivism, there was a significant loss of “perspectival” and “participatory knowing” [01:20:40]. Knowing was reduced to propositional knowledge – justified true beliefs about facts [01:22:17]. This narrowed the scope of reality.
- Skills are not true or false; they are powerful or weak [01:22:52].
- Perspectives are not true or false; they give a sense of presence and connectedness, or they don’t [01:22:57].
- Identities are not true or false; they open up affordances and provide belonging [01:23:01].
Losing these other senses of knowing and realness is disastrous [01:23:20], leading to a “propositional tyranny” where much of therapy involves helping people move beyond mere true propositions about their plight to recover or acquire necessary skills, perspectives, and identities [01:23:40]. This calls for a cultural “therapy” to regain a fully formed sense of agency and sovereignty [01:23:51].
Luther and Descartes: Precursors to Individualism and Irrelevance of God
Martin Luther and René Descartes, though from different domains, contributed to a similar shift: a move away from external, communal transformation and towards individualistic frameworks [01:24:17].
- Luther’s version of transformation was entirely “heteronomous” – driven completely by God, without human participation [01:24:40]. This fostered an extreme form of individualism, where salvation depended on an unmediated relationship with God, removing the role of the Church or tradition [01:25:34]. His metaphysics of an arbitrary God, amplified by Calvinism, made God seem absurd and irrelevant to human life [01:26:09].
- Descartes felt a similar displacement due to the scientific revolution [01:26:47]. He believed that no personal transformation was needed; only a “mathematical method of certainty” was required to properly connect with the world [01:26:56]. In his philosophy, God primarily serves as a guarantee for the scientific method, otherwise being largely irrelevant [01:27:15].
Both inadvertently made God and the supernatural world profoundly irrelevant, leading to the fragmentation of the Protestant church which lacked a unifying ultimate vision [01:27:46].
The Enlightenment and Modernism
The ideas of Luther and Descartes paved the way for the Enlightenment, a period that fundamentally shaped the modern world [01:28:07]. The Enlightenment, particularly through figures like John Locke and Isaac Newton, established Modernism, which posited that:
- Reason, understood as the logical-mathematical manipulation of propositions, combined with evidence, provides all the tools needed to alleviate human suffering [01:31:57].
- This points towards science and democracy as the self-correcting mechanisms for running the world [01:32:25].
- Secularism, the idea of a natural world running independently from the supernatural, became central, rendering religious authority irrelevant to governance and other worldly affairs [01:32:32].
The Enlightenment vision is still powerful, assuming that a “standard smart adult person has all the tools they need to navigate the world” [01:35:12]. However, a key critique is its “naive Newtonianism” [01:35:51], lacking concepts of complexity, relativity, and systems thinking [01:35:56]. This “clockwork universe” perspective, central to the Enlightenment’s reliance on self-organizing processes like markets and science, is inherently flawed because complex dynamics cannot be managed with merely complicated propositions [01:37:38], leading to a lack of capacity for cultivating wisdom [01:37:55].
Romanticism: A Reaction and Its Decadent Forms
The Enlightenment’s austere and often inwardly focused worldview, epitomized by Kant’s philosophy which posited that the mind shapes experience such that we have no knowledge of “the thing in itself” [01:39:52], led to a reaction: Romanticism [01:40:07].
Romantics sought to reconnect to the world by moving “backwards” through the mind’s layers of processing, delving into “irrational” aspects to discover a “true self” that exists before the filters of civilization [01:41:46]. This search for wisdom involves strategies of accessing these earlier layers of processing to reconnect with one’s authentic self and the world [01:42:26]. Rousseau, for instance, reinterpreted Augustine’s autobiography into a search for the “true self” untainted by civilization [01:42:08].
However, a major flaw in this view is the problematic notion of a “true self” that isn’t emergent from one’s engagement with the world [01:43:13]. The self, from an alternative perspective, is a complex, recursive, developmental, and aspirational dynamical system, akin to the Socratic model [01:43:49]. Romanticism also reversed John Locke’s idea of the mind as a blank slate, instead viewing the world as an empty canvas upon which the individual expresses their “authenticity” through acts of will and imposition [01:44:40]. This idea that the world is “free of properties and structures” is considered a “stupid idea” with profound consequences [01:45:27].
Decadent Romanticism and Ideologies
Decadent romanticism has led to some of the worst nightmares of the 20th century [01:47:44]. The idea of the world as a blank canvas upon which individuals or groups express themselves through acts of will is a core epistemological claim of ideology [01:48:15]. This philosophical basis underlies destructive political ideologies and shifts such as fascism and Marxism [01:48:00]. The romantic glorification of the “true self” and its willful imposition leads to concepts like the “will to power” and, disturbingly, notions of an “inborn true self” can be closely linked to racism [01:49:03]. The 20th century saw these implications worked out politically, often at genocidal levels [01:49:42].
The next philosophical shift to consider is the impact of Nietzsche [01:50:00].