The Meaning Crisis and Meaning in Life

From: jimruttshow8596

John Vervaeke, an associate professor of psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto, focuses his work on the intersection of cognitive science and philosophy, particularly concerning humanity’s place in the world [00:00:32]. His 50-hour video series, “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis”, explores a vast amount of material related to the challenges humanity faces [00:01:33].

Defining “Meaning” and the Meaning Crisis [00:03:06]

Vervaeke clarifies that when he uses the term “meaning” in the context of the Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, he is referring to the sense people invoke when they say their life is “meaningful” or “meaningless” [00:03:37].

He distinguishes between “meaning in life” and “meaning of life” [00:04:17]:

• Meaning of life refers to a phrase often used to point to some divine plan that one is supposed to figure out [00:04:22].
• Meaning in life describes the profound sense of connectedness individuals feel to themselves, to others, and to the world [00:04:28]. These connections are intrinsically valuable and fundamental to human happiness [00:04:35]. The series delves into how these connections are formed and why individuals feel their world is relevant to them and vice versa [00:04:47].

Vervaeke emphasizes his commitment to naturalism, rejecting any “two worlds mythology” where a supernatural world operates on different principles [00:05:47]. While terms like “spirit” can be reinterpreted to point to important phenomenological and functional aspects within human beings, he challenges any supernatural interpretation [00:06:12]. He identifies as a non-reductive naturalist, acknowledging metaphysical and ontological issues without confusing them with supernatural ones [00:06:25].

Symptoms of the Meaning Crisis [00:07:48]

The meaning crisis manifests through a range of societal and individual symptoms, forming what Vervaeke calls the “symptomology of the meaning crisis” [00:08:06]. These symptoms can be placed on a continuum from reactive to more responsible responses.

Reactive Symptoms

• Increased Suicide Rates: Particularly perplexing in affluent areas, with child suicide rates rising in the United States [00:08:30]. Research suggests that a perception of meaninglessness can directly lead to suicide without prior clinical depression [00:08:42].
• Rising Anxiety and Depression Diagnoses: A general increase in mental health struggles [00:08:59].
• Growing Loneliness: A significant concern in modern society [00:09:04].
• Increased Addiction: Understood not merely as a chemical issue, but fundamentally as a meaning issue [00:09:07].
• Virtual Exodus: A preference for living in virtual worlds over the real world [00:09:14].
• Politicization of Everything: The replacement of traditional religious behavior with political behavior that carries religious overtones, alongside a simultaneous disenfranchisement from official politics [00:09:26].

Positive Responses

Despite the reactive symptoms, Vervaeke also identifies more constructive responses to the meaning crisis [00:09:46]:

• Mindfulness Revolution: An attempt to address the crisis, despite some criticisms [00:09:50].
• Revival of Ancient Philosophy: A growing interest in cultivating wisdom through practices like Stoicism and the integration of Buddhism into Western cultures [00:09:56].
• Online Communities: The emergence of internet communities dedicated to sense-making, meaning-making, connectedness, wisdom, and virtue [00:10:14].

These varied phenomena can all be interpreted as symptoms of an underlying problem related to meaning in life [00:10:37].

Psychotechnologies and the Evolution of Meaning [01:00:45]

A psychotechnology is defined as an externally generated, socially generated way of organizing and communicating information processing [00:16:52]. Analogous to a physical tool that enhances physiological function, a psychotechnology is standardized to be easily internalized, widely disseminated, and capable of enhancing cognition across multiple domains [00:16:52]. Literacy is a prototypical example, massively empowering cognition [00:17:18].

Shamanism as Psychotechnology [00:12:31]

In the Upper Paleolithic transition, roughly 65,000 years ago, humanity developed new cognitive abilities and psychotechnologies, including fully symbolic and recursive language, representational art, music, calendars, and long-range projectile weapons [01:11:15].

Shamanism emerged as a significant psychotechnology during this period [00:12:31]. Theories suggest that cave paintings were religious in nature, designed to induce altered states of consciousness through specific conditions (e.g., deep underground, darkness, flickering lights on rock morphology) [00:12:36]. This deliberate alteration of consciousness is believed to have enhanced cognitive flexibility, leading to developments in art and music [00:13:35].

Shamanism involves a set of socially transmissible practices for altering attention and salience landscaping, impacting various problem domains for the individual [00:17:29]. Modern mindfulness practices are considered analogous, sharing a similar function of enhancing cognitive flexibility [00:17:44].

Attention [00:14:12]

Attention is a prioritization function that creates a salience landscape, foregrounding and backgrounding information, thus disclosing potential interactions and affordances for action [00:14:32]. It is “prioritization for the disclosure of potential interaction” [00:14:55]. Vervaeke advocates moving beyond the simple “spotlight metaphor” of attention to appreciate its complexity and diverse functions [00:15:10].

Ritual [00:18:01]

Ritual is understood as a form of “serious play” [00:19:34]. Just as children develop through play by enacting identities and exploring different ways of being in the world (e.g., pretending to be Zorro), rituals allow adults to augment potential ways of being and seeing [00:20:09]. Rituals make a “live option” (William James) out of a potential self, opening up possibilities for genuine transformation [00:21:40].

Flow States [00:34:56]

Flow, as studied by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is an optimal experience in two ways [00:35:36]:

1. Optimal Reward: It is one of the best experiences people report, highly motivating them to seek it out [00:35:38] (e.g., rock climbing [00:35:49], skiing [00:40:11], complex farm work [00:41:40]). People often judge their well-being by how frequently they enter flow states [00:36:21].
2. Optimal Performance: Individuals often function at their peak in flow states, a reason it’s a hot topic in sports psychology [00:36:35].

Conditions that bring about flow include being in a demanding situation where the demands slightly exceed one’s current skill level, requiring creative interaction and pushing into a “zone of proximal development” [00:37:04]. In flow, one feels at one with the environment, experiencing grace, effortless behavior, an ongoing sense of discovery, and a silencing of the “nattering nanny narrative ego” [00:37:48]. Time perception shifts, often experienced as a relief [00:38:50]. Flow is considered universal across cultures, genders, and socioeconomic statuses, suggesting an adaptive function [00:39:18].

Key cognitive factors in flow include:

• Diagnostic Error is Costly: Mistakes disrupt performance in a meaningful way [00:42:30] (e.g., physical danger in rock climbing, social status in jazz [00:42:40]).
• Tight Coupling: A direct and immediate relationship between one’s actions and the environment’s response [00:43:08].
• Clear Information/Feedback: Unambiguous signals from the environment [00:43:34].

Mindfulness [00:44:00]

Mindfulness is a way of directing attention that facilitates two crucial processes:

1. Breaking Inappropriate Frames: Becoming aware of and disrupting unhelpful mental frames (like the nine-dot problem where implicit assumptions limit solutions) [00:45:17]. This is the meditative aspect, “stepping back and looking at your mind” [00:46:26].
2. Making New Frames: Constructing new, more adaptive mental frames [00:45:22]. This is the contemplative aspect, “looking into the world” to see deeper patterns [00:47:07].

Both processes are interdependent, correcting each other [00:47:32]. Mindfulness involves a dynamic shifting of attention, moving between looking at one’s mind and looking through it to the world, and between creating unified gestalts and breaking things down into features [00:48:12]. This cognitive flexibility enhances insight [00:49:28]. Vervaeke argues that insights priming and cascading into each other might constitute the flow state, linking mindfulness practices to achieving flow [00:49:49].

The Axial Age and Two-Worlds Mythology [00:52:59]

Following the Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BCE, a significant disruption to ancient civilizations akin to an “asteroid hitting” the “dinosaur kingdoms” [00:51:20], a dark age ensued for approximately 400 years [00:52:39]. This period of widespread societal experimentation, especially in tiny kingdoms and city-states, led to the emergence of the Axial Age (roughly 800 to 200 BCE) [00:58:28].

The Axial Age saw the rise of new psychotechnologies like alphabetic literacy, numeracy, and coinage [00:53:35]. These tools fundamentally altered cognition, leading to “second-order thinking” – a metacognitive ability to become critically aware of one’s own mind [00:54:12]. This new self-awareness highlighted the mind’s double-edged capacity for both meaning-making and self-deception [00:55:07].

A pervasive “two-worlds mythology” emerged, distinguishing a “fallen” or “decadent” everyday world (beset by self-deception and violence) from a “real,” “better,” or “more realizable” world attainable through enlightenment [00:55:36]. This framework offered a path to self-transcendence, promising a life with reduced suffering and violence [00:55:36].

During this period, many of the world’s major religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and Western philosophy were founded [00:56:50]. While this two-worlds model provided a powerful framework for cultivating wisdom and systemic self-transcendence [01:03:36], it also has a problematic aspect [01:03:31]. It can be perniciously used for exploitation and manipulation, justifying earthly horrors for the sake of a supernatural end or reward in an afterlife [01:05:05]. Vervaeke argues that while we need to preserve the wisdom-cultivating legacy of the Axial Age, the two-worlds mythology has been “smashed” by the scientific worldview [01:03:51].

Myth [01:00:15]

Myths are expressions that help us relate to perennial or pressing patterns [01:10:50]. For example, the zombie is a modern myth that emerged to express the meaning crisis [01:11:11]. People engage with it through “enacted symbolism” and “serious play” (e.g., zombie walks), trying to grasp the concept of meaninglessness [01:11:42]. However, Vervaeke considers the zombie a “failed myth” because while it expresses the problem, it doesn’t offer intelligibility or clear advice on how to alleviate the meaning crisis [01:12:40]. Successful myths, conversely, provide guidance on how to relate to perennial or pressing problems [01:13:16].

Faith [01:13:51]

Vervaeke seeks to recover a more functional sense of faith, moving beyond the idea of “believing ridiculous things for which there is no evidence” [01:13:53]. Drawing on the example of being faithful to someone, he defines faith as:

• An ongoing process of cognitive development, particularly at the perspectival and participatory levels [01:14:43].
• Maintaining continuity of cognitive contact to remain in “right relationship” where interactions are mutually beneficial and affording [01:14:52].
• A sense of being “on course” [01:16:00], building flexibility to stay coupled and afford each other’s growth [01:16:30].

This notion reconnects faith to love, which is understood as “mutually accelerating disclosure” and “reciprocal opening” between individuals, or between oneself and a situation [01:16:57]. Romantic relationships, often depicted in romantic comedies, are criticized for trying to bear the impossible burden of meaning that was once carried by God, religion, and wisdom, leading to unrealistic expectations and suffering [01:18:36].

Kairos [01:21:46]

Kairos (or Kairos) is a Greek term, important in Christian theology, meaning a “turning point” [01:22:14]. It signifies a moment of criticality or instability in a complex system, where a constellation of factors makes it possible to massively steer or redirect the entire system [01:22:27]. Socrates’s revolution, for example, is considered a kairos that altered the course of Western civilization [01:23:36]. The meaning crisis may indicate a current kairos, an opportunity for humanity to significantly change its future history [01:24:28]. This implies a moral obligation to deeply understand the situation and cultivate wisdom for intervention [01:24:51].

Socratic Revolution and Self-Deception [01:17:16]

Socrates’s watchword, “Know Thyself,” does not refer to one’s autobiography or a pre-packaged destiny [01:33:31]. Instead, it means understanding the “machinery of the self” and directing this “selfing” (turning the self into a verb) towards becoming a wiser, more virtuous person in contact with oneself, others, and reality [01:35:06]. For Socrates, these three dimensions are interconnected: one cannot truly know oneself without knowing others and together coming to know the world better [01:35:50].

Socrates contrasted his approach with natural philosophers, who provided facts but not the wisdom needed for self-transcendence [01:36:04]. He sought “transformative truths” – truths disclosed in transformation and which, in turn, propel further transformation [01:36:44].

Socrates also famously criticized the Sophists, who invented rhetoric as a psychotechnology [01:37:31]. While the Sophists presented things that were salient and promised powerful transformation, these promises were often disconnected from truth [01:37:50]. This leads to bullshitting (in Harry Frankfurt’s sense): making things deeply salient with a promise of transformation, but without concern for truth [01:38:16]. For example, a shampoo commercial uses salient imagery and promises of a happier life, knowing the product doesn’t deliver, but people stop caring about the truth due to the overwhelming salience [01:39:13].

According to Vervaeke, one cannot lie to oneself because lying requires asserting a known falsehood to manipulate someone else into believing it [01:41:22]. Belief isn’t an act one can simply choose [01:41:52]. However, one can bullshit oneself [01:42:31]. This occurs by directing attention to make certain things salient, and this attention is affected by its own history, creating a vicious cycle [01:42:51]. For example, selectively focusing on positive comments while ignoring negative ones to convince oneself that everyone loves them [01:43:22]. Social media platforms, especially Instagram, are seen as exacerbating this self-deception by constantly presenting unrealistic, hyper-salient images that grab and hold attention, leading to anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia [01:44:09]. This relates to the availability bias, where recent mental content is more likely to be recalled and influence thinking [01:46:15].

Socrates believed that “the unexamined life is not worth living” [01:48:38]. This means a life where one does not strive to couple transformative salience with truth [01:49:09]. It involves cultivating virtues (which are powers combining skills, states of mind, and character traits) [01:49:14], especially the meta-virtue of wisdom, to pursue transformative truths [01:49:26]. Living such a life provides sufficient meaning to compensate for unavoidable suffering, distress, pain, and loss [01:50:01]. The pursuit of meaning in life, rather than the avoidance of suffering, is the primary existential pursuit [01:51:13].