From: jimruttshow8596
This article explores the historical function of religion in society, its relationship to the modern meaning crisis, and a proposed framework for understanding its underlying psychological and cognitive mechanisms, referred to as “religio.”
Historical Context and the Meaning Crisis
The conversation delves into the historical evolution of societal meaning, beginning with the Axial Age and its lasting impact.
Nietzsche’s Prophecy
Friedrich Nietzsche is described as a prophet of the meaning crisis [03:30:31]. His famous declaration, “God is dead,” was not addressed to Christians, but to atheists [03:43:00]. This statement signified the end of humanity’s ability to render intelligible and viable the worldview provided by the Axial Revolution and the experience of sacredness [04:21:55]. Nietzsche believed that “killing God” had severed humanity from its foundational meaning, akin to cutting the Earth free from the Sun, leaving it perpetually falling [04:44:00].
Nietzsche’s thinking, despite his critique of Christianity, was deeply permeated by it, evidenced by his concept of the “transvaluation of all values” and the “ubermensch” (superman), which mirrors Christian ideas of a “new birth” or “new man” from Pauline theology [06:14:00]. He secularized Christian concepts, replacing “agape” (love) with the romantic notion of the “will to power” [07:25:00].
Pseudo-Religious Movements and Politicization
The 20th century witnessed the clash of two major pseudo-religious movements: Marxism and Nazism [08:04:00]. Both are seen as pseudo-religious responses to the meaning crisis [04:04:01]. They represent the complete politicization of the quest for meaning, asserting that the political arena is where the ultimate meaning of life and history will be resolved [08:37:39].
These ideologies exalted the propositional, believing that commitment to a set of propositions could carry the “machinery” previously handled by worldview attunement, religion, culture, ritual, and transformative practices [09:13:00]. Nazism, in particular, is described as a gnostic response to the loss of “domicide” (sense of home) in Europe, characterized by decadent romanticism and the “will to power.” It promoted the idea of a “true self” born with inherent traits (e.g., race) that must be expressed, leading to racist worldviews [10:44:11]. The clashing of these ideologies in World War II traumatized the West, undermining faith in world-encompassing political movements [12:08:00].
This politicization of meaning is observed returning in contemporary Western societies, leading to dangerous mutually incompatible views of world history [12:33:00].
The Axial Age Legacy
Despite the critiques and the perceived “death of God,” the Axial Age way of thinking continues to influence popular culture. A significant percentage of Canadians (65%) and Americans (56%) still believe in God or a higher power, indicating a “residual of Axial Age thinking” [13:17:10]. While this offers a functional solace, it is seen as a “deleterious nostalgia” [14:16:00]. To address the meaning crisis, simply being atheist is insufficient; it is necessary to understand and appropriately replace or renovate the functionality of religion [14:34:00].
The Augustinian model of stability, particularly through Christian influence, provided a rich sense of societal stability through three orders [15:14:16]:
- Narrative Order: The sense that one’s personal story fits within a larger, authoritative, and authored cosmic narrative, providing a sense of purpose in life [15:50:00].
- Normative Order: An account of self-transcendence, how individuals can improve and become more real, contributing to a sense of depth or significance [16:28:00].
- Nomological Order: An account of the relationship between agents (humans) and the world, forming a meta-meaning system that makes the world coherent [17:09:00].
These three orders collectively afford a crucial fourth factor in meaning in life: mattering, which refers to how connected an individual feels to themselves, the world, and others [17:32:00]. Christianity integrated these elements with rituals and wisdom cultivation, providing a “well-architected memeplex that provided value to a society for a very long time” [18:26:00].
Meaning Cultivation and Relevance Realization
Given that a return to past religious frameworks is not viable, the focus shifts to “meaning cultivation.”
Meaning Cultivation
Meaning cultivation is proposed as a way to move beyond the empiricist model (world writes meaning on a blank slate) and the romantic model (world is an empty canvas for self-expression) [19:09:00]. The metaphor of cultivation implies an active process where an individual does “stuff” while also responding to external processes, much like cultivating a plant [19:11:00]. This applies to phenomena like insight and flow states, which cannot be simply made or received, but must be cultivated [20:06:00].
Relevance Realization
A core concept in understanding meaning is Relevance Realization (RR), the underlying engine that supports general intelligence [47:25:00]. RR is not an algorithm for finding relevance, but a mechanism by which relevance is constantly evolving and being remade [35:24:00]. This is analogous to Darwinian evolution, where adaptivity is not a fixed definition but a dynamic process [37:50:00].
Key aspects of Relevance Realization:
- No Free Lunch Theorem: There is no single, general problem solver or search algorithm that works for all problems [32:54:00]. RR hacks this by using various heuristics in a trade-off relationship [44:37:00].
- Embodied and Embedded: RR is an embodied, embedded, and dynamical system, operating below propositional thought [44:06:00]. For example, the autonomic nervous system constantly calibrates arousal levels, integrating opposing biases (sympathetic for alertness, parasympathetic for relaxation) to dynamically determine what is salient [45:00:00].
- Preconceptual and Affective: RR is preconceptual and pre-propositional, prior to beliefs [01:02:51]. It is always within a context of caring and affect, arising from our bioeconomy. Every act of RR is affectively laden, akin to “paying attention” as a form of “cognitive coinage” where one places bets in the world [53:02:00].
- Relationship to Attention: RR is an underlying process organized up to attention. Attention itself is a process of signal prioritization, simultaneously bottom-up and top-down, constantly evolving what is salient [54:41:00].
Religio: The Modern Concept
The speaker proposes a new understanding of the term “religio” to capture the underlying functionality of traditional religion without its specific metaphysical claims.
The Nature of Religio
Religio, derived from the etymological origin of religion meaning “binding” [01:00:54], describes the living way we are bound to ourselves, our bodies, and the world [01:00:49]. It is viewed as a “transjective trajectory flow state” [01:03:03].
Key features of religio:
- Transjective: Meaning is not purely subjective or objective; it is “transjective,” relating subjectivity to objectivity and making both possible [01:16:00].
- Phenomenological Mystery: Religio is phenomenologically mysterious because one cannot get outside of one’s own relevance realization to observe it as an object [01:13:11]. This is distinct from a theoretical mystery, which is scientifically explainable [01:11:46].
- Secular Wonder: Paul Acostas’ idea of “secular wonder” illustrates how meaningfulness is like an atmosphere we breathe and that refracts light, rather than a focal object [01:08:47]. We become aware of religio through atmospheric states like moods and wonder, which represent an appreciation of the process by which things become meaningful [01:09:22].
- Impact of Psychotechnologies: Psychotechnologies (e.g., literacy, mystical experiences, psychedelics) can fundamentally reset the parameters of relevance realization, profoundly impacting religio [01:19:50]. Literacy, for instance, dramatically affects categorization, problem-solving, and memory [01:20:19].
Sacredness vs. The Sacred
A crucial distinction is made between “sacredness” and “the sacred” [01:21:26]:
- Sacredness: Refers to the psycho-existential experience – what is happening, how we are making sense, the machinery of sense-making and transcendence [01:22:12]. It is an experience of a “higher order relevance realization,” moving between assimilation (homing) and accommodation (numinous) [01:26:07].
- The Sacred: Refers to the metaphysical proposal about what causes this experience of sacredness (e.g., God, Dao) [01:22:29]. The metaphysical proposals vary widely across individuals and cultures, unlike the relative constancy of the experience of sacredness itself [01:25:06].
It is suggested that society should prioritize understanding the phenomenology and functionality of sacredness, then make new proposals for what “the sacred” might be, rather than starting with fixed metaphysical claims [01:23:42].
Meta-Meaning Systems and Symbols
Clifford Geertz’s concept of a “meta-meaning system” posits that religion is not itself meaningful, but rather coordinates the agent-arena relationship, making specific meaning systems (legal, moral, economic) possible [01:26:41]. Religion protects against absurdity, alienation, culture shock, and “domicide,” providing a profound sense of being “homed in the world” [01:28:45].
Symbols play a crucial role in religio [01:31:06]. In this context, a symbol is a metaphor that allows individuals to hold something otherwise inchoate in mind, triggering cognitive machinery to come into proper relationship with it [01:35:36]. For example, the blind woman holding scales and a sword representing justice is a symbol that evokes the machinery of dynamic balance, which is useful when trying to be just [01:34:54].
While symbols can be exceedingly useful, they are also dangerous and prone to abuse. The risk lies in their potential for idolatry, where the symbolic nature is lost, and the symbol becomes an opaque object rather than an icon pointing beyond itself [01:38:02]. Pseudo-religious ideologies rely on unquestioned devotion to such idols [01:39:30].
The challenge for modern society is to create an “Enlightenment 2.0” that acknowledges the human need for an integrated sense of meaning and homeness, recognizing that these are human creations that can be evolved through new social and mimetic institutions [01:30:46]. This project, termed “the religion that’s not a religion”, aims to profoundly understand religio and enhance it through psychotechnologies and ecologies of practices [01:30:01].