From: jimruttshow8596
The core concept behind the “religion that is not a religion” is to create a framework that provides a home and community for ecologies of practices. This framework aims to be integrable with our scientific and technological worldview, helping individuals deal with self-deception and enhance their connectedness and meaning in life 00:03:06. Traditional religions, particularly those from the Axial Age, are deemed no longer viable for many due to their “Two Worlds mythology” which is irreconcilable with modern scientific evidence and philosophical argumentation 00:04:06. The goal is to exact the functionality of religions without adopting their specific worldviews or historical organizational problems 00:04:48.
The Meaning Crisis and the Need for a New Framework
The concept of a religion that is not a religion emerges as a response to the “meaning crisis,” which has two components:
- Perennial Susceptibility Human cognition, being complex, dynamical, self-organizing, recursive, embodied, and enacted, makes individuals perennially susceptible to self-deceptive and self-destructive behavior 00:09:16. One-shot interventions are unlikely to work, necessitating complex ecologies of practices 00:09:44.
- Pertinently Present Problem While information and knowledge are abundant, there is a “wisdom famine” 00:10:11. Many people, especially the growing demographic of “nuns” (spiritual but not religious), seek wisdom and meaning autodidactically, which carries significant risks 00:10:36. The traditional structures that once housed these practices, such as legacy religions, are no longer viable for many 00:11:19. This vacuum is often filled by pseudo-religious ideologies that have historically led to bloodshed 00:11:26.
This new framework differentiates between “meaning of life” (a metaphysical proposal of a pre-authored destiny) and “meaning in life” (the enacted senses of connection to oneself, others, and reality that make life worth living, regardless of futility or frustration) 00:13:21. The “religion that is not a religion” focuses on meaning in life 00:14:05.
Components and Design Principles
The “religion that is not a religion” is explicitly non-supernatural 00:22:50. The term “supernatural” is seen as a “category error” that misapplies propositional knowledge to aspects of reality better understood as mystery 00:30:30.
Key concepts and their application:
- Sacredness vs. The Sacred Sacredness is defined as a phenomenological experience where one feels liberated and clarified from patterns of self-deception, experiencing intensified connectedness 00:42:50. “The sacred” is merely an ontological placeholder for the cause of that experience 00:42:07. This experience does not require supernatural belief; atheists can have profound, sacred experiences 00:44:47.
- Mystery: That which is poorly addressed through propositional language, representing the inexhaustibility of complex reality 00:38:58.
- Imaginal vs. Imaginary: The imaginary involves forming mental pictures that disconnect from the world, while the imaginal uses imagination for the sake of perception, sensitizing individuals to subtle patterns and affording insight 01:29:47. This can be used to connect with one’s aspirational future self 01:31:54.
- Religio: Derived from the Latin “to bind,” it encompasses conscientiousness, duty, and connectedness 01:13:56. In this context, it refers to the fundamental sense of connectedness central to cognitive agency and the pursuit of meaning in life 01:18:39.
- Ecologies of Practices: This refers to self-organizing, self-correcting, dynamic systems of practices that intervene in complex cognitive dynamics at multiple points, unlike single-shot interventions 01:21:50. Examples include:
- Self-Knowledge/Awareness: Opponent processing between meditative practices (stepping back to analyze mental frames) and contemplative practices (applying corrected lenses to see more clearly) 01:25:11. This makes one “insight prone” 01:26:29.
- Moving Mindfulness: Layering practices, such as still mindfulness with moving mindfulness (e.g., Tai Chi), engages different brain systems for deeper integration 01:26:58.
- Active Open-mindedness: Practices that dampen the “insight machinery” to allow for more careful inferential reasoning 01:27:50.
- Ritual Enactment: Rituals are defined as imaginal-aspirational practices that broadly and deeply transfer their effects across different domains of life and levels of the psyche, affording profound reciprocal opening with reality 01:33:16.
- Folk Psychotechnologies: Singing, dancing, and ecstatic drum circles are considered beneficial in psychological literature 01:28:26. These are part of “ritual enactment” where individuals gain a sense of something “more than just the aggregate sum” 01:29:11.
- Life Event Rituals: Rituals around birth and death are crucial for navigating powerful and dangerous moments 01:41:00.
- Breastfeeding: Presented as a “synergistic satisfier” that integrates multiple important functions simultaneously and is a powerful “religious practice” within small human groups 01:43:57. The decline of breastfeeding in the modern world illustrates a loss of traditional lineage knowledge 01:44:57.
Scaling Challenges and Solutions
A significant challenge is how to scale this “heady” movement across different social strata and developmental stages, ensuring it appeals to diverse populations (e.g., rich/poor, uneducated/educated) 01:46:19.
Responses to Critics
Early criticisms, such as from Paul Vander Klay and Jonathan Pageau, questioned the scalability of an initially individualistic model 01:47:21. In response, the concept shifted towards:
- Collective Intelligence and Distributed Cognition: Focusing on emerging ecologies of practices and rituals that bring collective intelligence into conscious awareness, creating a “we space” that serves as a normative touchstone for individual practice 01:48:04. This involves “dialogical commuting” 01:29:11.
- Pedagogical Programs: Developing workshops and learning sequences to onboard people into these complex systems 01:50:00. Examples include video games to draw in young people, integrating ideas into international Baccalaureate programs, and working with folk high school systems 01:50:08. The goal is to provide a pedagogical continuity from adolescence to adult communities of practice, similar to how historical religions engaged diverse ages 01:52:15.
Designing for Scale
The core question shifts from whether it can scale (as it’s a form of culture, and all humans have culture 01:53:50) to how it can scale effectively.
- Beyond Propositional Content: The focus should not be on scaling “content” (e.g., propositional knowledge or doctrine), which is seen as a “category error” that led to the failure of Axial Age religions 01:54:27. Propagating propositional knowledge is weak and prone to dilution 01:55:00.
- Positive Returns to Scale (Metcalf’s Law): The culture should be consciously designed to take maximum advantage of exponential scaling, like Metcalf’s Law 01:56:05.
- Holographic, Not Photographic: Scaling should be distributed and context-focused, not centralized and content-focused 02:00:19. Centralized approaches are deemed ineffective and will always produce wrong results 02:01:06.
- Empowering Individuals and Meaningful Relationships: The approach supports individuals in becoming “sovereign in themselves” and choosing to engage in practices that create more meaningful relationships 01:58:14. This taps into the “sacred relationships” (e.g., with spouse, children) that carry the highest potential for meaningfulness 01:58:41.
- Distributed Learning Environment: Individuals, once empowered to gain wisdom and achieve meaningful lives, will naturally share their learnings and experiences with others, creating a peer-produced and distributed learning environment 02:01:53. This can leverage modern technology for censorship-resistant and capture-impermeable dissemination 02:02:00.
- Societal Context: The current “meta-crisis” where traditional institutions are failing and the secular world is seen as “absurdly terrible” in providing meaning, creates a “wind at our backs” or “fire beneath our feet” 02:02:50. This widespread search for basic needs and meaningful lives provides the necessary energy for a new framework to be adopted 02:03:51.
- Motivation for Adoption: When individuals can upgrade the quality of their connections to those they care about most, there is a strong incentive for them to encourage others to adopt these practices 02:04:39. This taps into the inherent human desire to share deeply meaningful discoveries 02:02:28.
The ultimate goal is to present “beautiful ways of life” that draw people in, allowing them to pursue refined practices and embody the “love of wisdom” 02:05:46.