From: jimruttshow8596
The “religion that is not a religion” is a project proposed to provide a community and home for ecologies of practices that are integratable with a modern scientific and technological worldview [03:01:46]. This concept aims to offer the functionality traditionally provided by religions without adhering to outdated worldviews or organizational problems [04:48:07].
Purpose and Necessity
The primary purpose of a religion that is not a religion is to equip individuals with practices to deal with self-deception and enhance their connectedness and meaning in life [03:36:00]. It seeks to bring about significant transformation at individual, community, and cultural levels [03:49:09].
This need arises from what is termed the meaning_crisis [08:55:09]. The meaning_crisis has two components:
- The Perennial: Human cognition is inherently complex, dynamical, self-organizing, recursive, embodied, and enacted, making individuals perennially susceptible to self-deceptive and self-destructive behavior [09:16:00]. One-shot interventions are ineffective, necessitating complex ecologies_of_practices [09:37:00].
- The Pertinently Present: Legacy religions, largely born in the Axial Age, are no longer viable for many people due to their “Two Worlds mythology” [04:06:00]. This mythology posits an everyday world that is illusory or decadent and a “real world” achievable through wisdom practices [20:54:00]. This Two Worlds mythology is now seen as irreconcilable with modern scientific evidence and philosophical argumentation [04:30:00], leading to a “wisdom famine” [10:56:00].
The meaning crisis is exacerbated by “pseudo-religious ideologies” that offer false certainty and can lead to totalitarianism or fundamentalism [11:47:00].
Core Characteristics
Non-Supernatural and One-World View
The religion that is not a religion is explicitly non-supernatural [22:50:00]. The term “supernatural” is often used equivocally [23:01:00]. A key argument against it is that sacredness does not require the supernatural [35:08:00]. Mystical traditions themselves, particularly some of their titans, often argue for a powerful and strict monism, ruling out a Two Worlds mythology [45:36:00]. The problem with the supernatural is that it can become absurd when its principles of governance are fundamentally different from this world, leading to a lack of cognitive access [35:51:00].
Instead, it embraces the idea of mystery [38:53:54]. Mystery refers to that which is poorly addressed through propositional language [38:58:00]. Complex reality is always larger than human conceptions, and there is an inexhaustible fount of intelligibility [59:05:00]. This doesn’t mean a lack of understanding but a continuous process of discovery and realization [59:05:00].
Meaning in Life vs. Meaning of Life
A crucial distinction for this concept is between “meaning of life” and “meaning in life” [13:21:00].
- Meaning of life is a metaphysical proposal about a pre-authored plan or destiny for humanity [13:37:00].
- Meaning in life is agnostic to such a plan. It refers to the enacted senses of connection to oneself, others, and reality that make life worth living despite inherent futility, failure, and frustrations [14:05:00].
Sacredness and Ritual
Sacredness is understood as a phenomenological experience where one feels liberated, clarified, and gains insight from patterns of self-deceptive behavior [00:42:50]. It involves a reciprocal opening where the world opens up to the individual, and the individual opens up to it, leading to an intensification of connectedness [00:43:09]. This connectedness, referred to as “religio,” is properly proportioned and optimal [00:43:52].
Rituals in this context are understood as practices that use the “imaginal” (imagination for the sake of perception) to serve the “aspirational” (the relationship between current and future self) [32:01:00]. A good ritual allows insights and transformations cultivated in the practice to transfer broadly to many domains of life and deeply through one’s psyche, affording a profound reciprocal opening with reality [01:32:00]. Examples include Tai Chi Chuan [01:34:45] or even seemingly mundane activities like breastfeeding, which is seen as a “synergistic satisfier” that integrates many important functions [01:43:42].
Ecologies of Practices
Given the complexity of human cognition, one-shot interventions are ineffective against self-deception and maladaptive behaviors (e.g., anxiety spirals) [01:21:19]. Instead, there’s a need for “ecologies of practices” – self-organizing and self-correcting systems of practices that intervene in parallel across many different aspects of cognition and consciousness [01:21:50].
Key design principles for these ecologies include:
- Opponent Processing: Practices are paired in a complementary way, like meditative practices (stepping back to analyze mental frames) and contemplative practices (exploring new frames) [01:25:11].
- Layering: Different practices can be layered (e.g., still mindfulness with moving mindfulness) [01:26:50].
- Pedagogical Programs: Structured onboarding for individuals into complex systems [01:27:17].
These ecologies fall into broad domains of practice, including:
- Sapiential training: Focused on cultivating wisdom [01:28:57].
- Dialogical commuting: Practices designed to access collective intelligence and distributed cognition [01:29:11].
- Ritual enactment: Reinterpreted, non-supernatural rituals that foster reciprocal opening with reality [01:31:34].
Scaling the Religion That Is Not a Religion
A major challenge for this concept is how it can scale across social strata and developmental stages [01:46:42]. Since it’s a type of culture, it inherently can scale [01:53:43]; the question is how.
Key strategies and principles for scaling:
- Shift from Content to Context: Avoid propagating propositional content, which was a weakness of Axial Age religions [01:54:27]. Instead, focus on cultivating capacity through practices that empower individuals and groups [01:58:04].
- Positive Returns to Scale (Metcalf’s Law): Design the culture to consciously take maximum advantage of network effects. As more people participate, the value of participation increases exponentially [01:56:02].
- Holographic Structure:
- Not Centralized, but Distributed: The centralized approach of old religions cannot work in the current context [02:01:06].
- Peer-Produced and Distributed Learning: Individuals, empowered to be sovereign, share their learnings, wisdom, and experiences. This creates a “holographic learning environment” where each part contains the essence of the whole [02:01:53].
- Focus on Meaningful Relationships: Support people in creating and strengthening the richest, most meaningful relationships (e.g., family, close friends), as these are the strongest lines for propagation [01:58:24].
The current “meta-crisis” where traditional institutions are failing creates an environment where people are actively seeking ways to satisfy basic needs and live meaningful lives [02:02:50]. This provides the “wind at our backs” for a new approach [02:03:11]. The motivation to upgrade the quality of personal connections can drive adoption, similar to how a fax machine incentivized others to get one [02:04:47].
Related Concepts
- Technocracy: Seen as a new form of pseudo-religion that endeavors to manage complexity through complicated systems and propositional knowledge, leading to categorical errors and detrimental outcomes [01:40:53].
- Religio: The Latin root often associated with “to bind.” In this context, it refers to the fundamental sense of connectedness inherent in general intelligence and relevance realization, which gives rise to meaning in life [01:13:50]. It emphasizes being in “right relationship” (ratio religio) with reality [01:17:51].
- Imaginary vs. Imaginal: The imaginary forms mental pictures that disconnect from the world, while the imaginal uses imagination to sensitize oneself to subtle patterns and afford new perceptions [01:29:47].
The “religion that is not a religion” proposes that instead of pursuing certainty (a “philosopher’s disease”), individuals should cultivate wisdom, allowing them to engage in proper relationship with the inherent complexity and uncertainty of reality [01:09:57].