From: jimruttshow8596
The concept of meaning in human culture is complex, particularly in the wake of what is described as the “meaning crisis.” As traditional frameworks for understanding the world and our place in it have become less viable, there’s a recognized need to find new ways to connect with what is deeply significant and meaningful [04:29:16]. This exploration often delves into the nature of sacredness and the powerful role of symbols in shaping our understanding and experience.
The Meaning Crisis and the Search for Sacredness
The decline of traditional worldviews, articulated by figures like Nietzsche who proclaimed “God is dead,” signifies not merely atheism but the loss of our ability to make the worldview given by the axial revolution intelligible and viable [04:29:16]. This existential predicament spurred various responses, including pseudo-religious movements like Nazism and Marxism, which attempted to politicize the quest for meaning [08:31:00]. Such movements highlight the human need for deep meaning and the dangers of attempting to capture the “transformative machinery” of religion and culture through ideology alone [09:30:00].
Despite these challenges, a residual of “axial age thinking” persists in popular culture, indicating an ongoing search for functionality that traditional religion once provided [13:46:00]. This search points towards the necessity of “meaning cultivation” – a process that is neither purely subjective projection nor passive reception from an objective world, but rather an ongoing engagement with reality, akin to cultivating a plant [19:09:11].
Religio and Spirituality
The term “religio” is used to describe a fundamental “binding” — a living connection to oneself, one’s body, and the world [01:00:49]. This concept aims to capture the deep functionality often sought in spiritual experiences, distinguishing it from specific creeds or propositional beliefs [01:03:05].
Key features often associated with spirituality, which can be understood through the lens of cognitive processes like relevance realization, include:
- Self-transcendence: The capacity for qualitative development and moments of insight that go beyond one’s current self [00:59:02].
- Deep Connectedness: The dynamic coupling of an individual to the world [00:58:08].
- Primordiality: A sense of being deeper than conceptual or experiential understanding, making it phenomenologically mysterious [01:00:02].
- Sagacity and Wisdom: The ability to cultivate wisdom and navigate self-deception [00:58:36].
This “religio” can manifest as a “secular wonder,” an atmospheric state of cognition where one appreciates “how this all hang together” without necessarily expecting a propositional answer [01:09:11]. It’s a “transjective” process, meaning it’s neither purely subjective nor objective but rather relates the two, making truth possible [01:16:18]. Psychotechnologies, like literacy or mystical experiences, can profoundly impact this “transjective trajectory flow state” by resetting the parameters of relevance realization [01:19:56].
Sacredness vs. The Sacred
A crucial distinction is made between “sacredness” and “the sacred” [01:21:26]. This distinction, influenced by 19th-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, separates the experience from its proposed cause [01:22:00].
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Sacredness: Refers to the psycho-existential aspect — the experience, realization, and transformation that occurs within an individual [01:22:12]. It is characterized by states such as:
- Awe [01:24:10]
- A sense of the “really real” [01:24:17]
- An auto-normative call to undergo transformation [01:24:19]
- Feeling “homed” in the world, protected from absurdity and alienation [01:25:43].
- Exposure to the “horizon of horror” (the numinous) [01:25:52]. Sacredness is posited as a “higher order relevance realization,” involving a dynamic interplay between assimilation (homing) and accommodation (numinous experiences) [01:26:11].
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The Sacred: Refers to the metaphysical proposal regarding what causes sacredness [01:22:29]. While the experience of sacredness can be consistent, the metaphysical explanations for its cause vary widely (e.g., God, Dao) [01:25:06]. The function of religion, in this view, is to create a meta meaning system that coordinates the agent-arena relationship, enabling specific meaning systems (legal, moral, aesthetic) to be possible and protecting individuals from absurdity and culture shock [01:27:05].
The Power and Peril of Symbols
In the context of cultural meaning, symbols are understood in an anthropological/religious studies sense, distinct from their semiotic or computational meanings [01:32:21]. At their core, symbols are metaphors that provoke insight by altering the “salience landscaping” of something, allowing us to see important similarities and differences [01:33:17].
Beyond being mere metaphors, symbols allow us to hold in mind concepts that cannot otherwise be easily grasped, and they “exact” or trigger cognitive machinery to help us engage with these concepts. For example, the symbol of Justice (a blind woman holding scales and a sword) employs the metaphor of balance, which activates the cognitive machinery responsible for dynamically balancing and coordinating variables, thus helping us to “practice justice” [01:35:00].
However, symbols, while exceedingly useful, are also exceedingly dangerous [01:37:41]. The power of symbols can be abused, leading to phenomena like the crusades under the banner of the cross or the unquestioning devotion to the Nazi swastika [01:37:07]. Paul Tillich’s distinction between an “idol” and an “icon” is pertinent here:
- An idol is a symbol where its symbolic nature is lost, leading to automatic, reactive, and foolish participation. It becomes transparent, viewed as the thing itself, rather than a pointer [01:38:48].
- An icon maintains an awareness of its symbolic nature, allowing for wise and reflective participation, where one looks “through it while remembering its actual status” [01:38:57].
The ability to carefully engage with symbols is crucial, as symbols connect the subjective and objective aspects of reality and are fundamental to our cognitive agency [01:39:51]. Understanding and thoughtfully cultivating symbols is an essential part of addressing the meaning crisis and building a future where meaning is robust and adaptable.