From: jimruttshow8596
The Meaning Crisis and Its Aftermath
The concept of the “death of God,” articulated by Nietzsche, signifies not merely atheism but the collapse of humanity’s ability to render the Axial Age worldview and the experience of sacredness intelligible and viable. Nietzsche viewed himself as a prophet announcing this focalization of the meaning crisis [00:03:27]([00:03:27].
Pseudo-Religious Responses to the Meaning Crisis
In response to this crisis, the 20th century saw the rise of pseudo-religious movements like Marxism and Nazism. These ideologies represented a “complete politicization of the quest for meaning,” proposing that ultimate meaning and history could be resolved solely within the political arena through the clash of ideologies [00:08:31]([00:08:31], [00:08:50]([00:08:50]). This approach, which elevates propositional commitment to an ideology over profound meaning-making machinery like worldview attunement, ritual, and transformative practices, is seen as a profound misunderstanding of how meaning functions [00:09:15]([00:09:15]). Nazism, in particular, is described as a Gnostic and decadent romantic response to the meaning crisis, emphasizing a “true self” and leading to a racist worldview [00:10:44]([00:10:44].
The trauma of World War II, a clash of these pseudo-religions, undermined world-encompassing political movements, but there is concern that society is forgetting this lesson and returning to dangerously polarized, politicized views [00:12:10]([00:12:10], [00:12:27]([00:12:27]).
The Enduring Functionality of Axial Age Thinking
Despite the critiques and the perceived “death of God,” a significant portion of the population still holds traditional religious beliefs [00:13:20]([00:13:20]. This suggests that the Axial Age way of thinking, particularly its functionality in providing meaning, persists [00:13:17]([00:13:17], [00:14:07]([00:14:07]).
Augustinian Christianity provided a stable and rich sense of meaning through three key orders:
- Narrative Order: The sense that one’s personal story fits within a larger, authoritative story, providing a sense of purpose [00:15:50]([00:15:50].
- Normative Order: An account of how self-transcendence is possible, allowing for personal betterment and the cultivation of wisdom, which contributes to a sense of depth and significance [00:16:28]([00:16:28].
- Nomological Order: A coherent account of the relationship between agents and the world, making the world intelligible [00:17:09]([00:17:09].
These three orders collectively afford a fourth crucial factor for meaning: mattering – a deep connection to oneself, the world, and others [00:17:37]([00:17:37]. This well-architected memeplex provided significant value and stability for a long time [00:18:26]([00:18:26]).
The Path Forward: Meaning Cultivation and Relevance Realization
Since a return to past models is not viable, the path forward involves meaning cultivation. This concept moves beyond empiricism (meaning is found) and romanticism (meaning is expressed), suggesting an active but responsive process, akin to cultivating a plant, where one is both doing something and responding to external processes [00:19:07]([00:19:07]. This applies to processes like insight and flow, which must be cultivated rather than simply made or received [00:20:06]([00:20:06]).
Intelligence and the Problem of Relevance
A core aspect of human intelligence is its ability to navigate the combinatorial explosion – the infinitely many ways to parse sensory data and infer actions in a complex world [00:27:00]([00:27:00], [00:27:47]([00:27:47]). This problem highlights that not all problems are well-defined, and much of our intelligence lies in problem formulation [00:33:17]([00:33:17]).
Intelligence and Rationality differ: while general intelligence (g) is highly predictive of life outcomes and largely fixed, rationality (reasoning) is significantly transformable [00:48:09]([00:48:09], [00:49:17]([00:49:17], [00:49:22]([00:49:22]). Rationality is a higher-order recursive enhancement of our abilities, training our relevance realization machinery to more reliably track truth [00:49:37]([00:49:37], [00:50:04]([00:50:04]). Preliminary evidence suggests that long-term mindfulness practice may enhance working memory function, potentially influencing g [00:50:55]([00:50:55], [00:51:07]([00:51:07]).
Relevance Realization (RR) as the Core of Intelligence
Relevance realization is proposed as the underlying engine supporting general intelligence [00:47:19]([00:47:19], [00:47:25]([00:47:25]). It is not an algorithm, as the concept of “relevance” itself lacks an essence or definition [00:35:50]([00:35:50], [00:36:15]([00:36:15]). Instead, RR is a dynamic mechanism, akin to Darwinian evolution, constantly adapting by varying options and selecting them down in an ongoing feedback loop [00:37:29]([00:37:29], [00:38:40]([00:38:40]. This process is evident in how deep learning systems operate (e.g., wake-sleep algorithm) [00:39:00]([00:39:00].
RR is grounded in an economic and pragmatic model, recognizing the “infinitary predicament” of limited time and processing resources [00:51:44]([00:51:44]. Every act of RR is “affectively laden,” meaning it is driven by care and commitment, reflecting our fundamental need for self-preservation (autopoiesis) [00:53:05]([00:53:05], [00:53:15]([00:53:15]. Attention is seen as the process of signal prioritization, an underlying component of RR [00:54:40]([00:54:40], [00:55:24]([00:55:24].
Spirituality, Religio, and the Sacred
The concept of spirituality is deeply intertwined with relevance realization. It encompasses capacities for self-transcendence, deep connectedness, and a sense of primordiality [00:58:03]([00:58:03]. These features are explainable and even implied by RR, as RR drives complexification, leading to qualitative development and moments of self-transcendence (insight) [00:59:12]([00:59:12]. The dynamic coupling with the world through RR gives rise to a sense of connectedness and “mattering” [00:59:40]([00:59:40].
The speaker introduces the term religio (from the Latin “religare” meaning “to bind”) to describe the fundamental, living way we are bound to ourselves, our bodies, and the world [01:00:54]([01:00:54]. This pre-conceptual, pre-propositional level is prior to our beliefs [01:02:51]([01:02:51]). The attempt to recover religio that is not identified with a particular credo (belief system) is seen as crucial [01:03:13]([01:03:13].
Integrating spirituality with scientific rationalism involves bridging the gap between the phenomenology of religious experience and scientific understanding [01:05:07]([01:05:07]. Many people identify as “spiritual but not religious,” seeking the functionality and phenomenology of spirituality separate from specific critical propositions [01:05:20]([01:05:20], [01:05:26]([01:05:26]).
Religio can be experienced as a transjective trajectory flow state, where “transjective” implies a relationship that is neither purely subjective nor objective but makes both possible [01:16:08]([01:16:08], [01:16:57]([01:16:57]). This state involves constant “transframing,” a transformation at the level of the agent-arena relationship, leading to moments of wonder and awe [01:18:17]([01:18:17], [01:19:02]([01:19:02].
Sacredness vs. The Sacred
A key distinction is made between sacredness and the sacred:
- Sacredness refers to the psycho-existential experience itself – the machinery of sense-making and self-transcendence that makes meaning [01:22:12]([01:22:12], [01:22:25]([01:22:25]. It’s an experience of “the really real” that calls for transformation and is affectively arousing [01:24:17]([01:24:17], [01:24:21]([01:24:21].
- The Sacred refers to the metaphysical proposal about what causes this experience [01:22:29]([01:22:29]. While the experience of sacredness shows constancy, the metaphysical explanations (e.g., God, Dao) vary widely [01:25:06]([01:25:06].
The goal is to clearly understand the phenomenology and functionality of sacredness first, then make new proposals about what the sacred might be [01:23:43]([01:23:43]. Sacredness, as a higher-order relevance realization, allows us to navigate between assimilation (homing, protecting from “domicide”) and accommodation (exposure to the numinous, the “horizon of horror”) [01:25:40]([01:25:40], [01:26:11]([01:26:11].
Meta-Meaning Systems and Symbols
Religio functions as a meta-meaning system, which coordinates the agent-arena relationship to make specific meaning systems (legal, moral, economic, etc.) possible [01:27:09]([01:27:09]. It molds the world and us so they fit together, protecting us from absurdity, alienation, and “domicide” [01:28:25]([01:28:25], [01:28:45]([01:28:45].
Symbols (in the anthropological/religious studies sense, distinct from Peirce’s) are crucial to this. At their core, symbols are metaphors that provoke insight by altering our salience landscaping [01:33:17]([01:33:17]. They allow us to hold in mind and properly relate to concepts that cannot otherwise be held in mind (e.g., Lady Justice symbolizing balance) [01:34:15]([01:34:15], [01:35:35]([01:35:35]. Symbols achieve this by re-engaging cognitive machinery that allows us to dynamically balance and coordinate multiple variables (e.g., the concept of “balance” activates the brain’s machinery for physical balance) [01:35:50]([01:35:50].
While symbols can be incredibly useful, they are also dangerous and can become idols when their symbolic nature is lost, leading to automatic, reactive, and foolish participation [01:37:02]([01:37:02], [01:38:12]([01:38:12], [01:39:39]([01:39:39]. Care and wisdom are required in building and engaging with symbols [01:37:44]([01:37:44].
The Future of Meaning-Making
The “Enlightenment 2.0” or “Game B” movement aims to re-integrate the understanding of these human institutions and create new ensembles of social and mimetic institutions to recapture the sense of meaning and homeness previously provided by traditional religions [01:29:06]([01:29:06], [01:30:48]([01:30:48]. This project seeks a profound understanding of religio and the psychotechnologies and ecologies of practices that can enhance it, aiming to “do better” in addressing the meta-crisis of our time [01:29:34]([01:29:34], [01:30:01]([01:30:01], [01:30:15]([01:30:15].