From: jimruttshow8596
The meaning crisis refers to a profound problem that affects individuals and society, characterized by a loss of connection to oneself, others, and the world [04:30:14]. John Vervaeke, an associate professor of psychology and cognitive science, defines “meaning” in this context as what people invoke when they say their life is very meaningful or meaningless [03:34:04]. It is analogous to how a sentence is organized to impart relevant information and allow connection to the world [03:46:08]. This concept aligns with what psychology studies as “meaning in life” – the sense of connectedness to oneself, others, and the world [04:17:00]. People intrinsically value these connections and find them fundamental to their happiness [04:38:00]. The phenomenon is distinct from “the meaning of life,” which often points to a divine plan to be figured out [04:22:00].
Symptoms of the Meaning Crisis
The meaning crisis manifests through various societal and individual symptoms, forming a continuum from reactive to more responsible responses [08:16:00]:
- Increased Suicide Rates [08:26:00]: Notably, this is rising in affluent areas and increasingly among the younger generation, including child suicide [08:33:00]. Research suggests people can transition directly from perceiving meaninglessness to suicide without first experiencing clinical depression [08:44:00].
- Rising Anxiety and Depression Diagnoses [08:59:00].
- Increased Loneliness and Addiction [09:04:00]: Addiction is understood as a meaning issue rather than solely a chemical substance issue [09:07:00].
- Virtual Exodus [09:14:00]: A preference for living in the virtual world over the real one [09:15:00].
- Politicization of Everything [09:35:00]: The replacement of religious behavior with political behavior that carries religious overtones, while people simultaneously disengage from official politics [09:30:00].
More positive responses also indicate the presence of a meaning crisis:
- Mindfulness Revolution [09:52:00].
- Revival of Ancient Philosophies [09:56:00]: Such as Stoicism and the import of Buddhism into Western cultures, which focus on cultivating wisdom [09:58:00].
- Online Communities [10:14:00]: Groups on the internet taking up sense-making, meaning-making, connectedness, wisdom, and virtue [10:16:00].
These seemingly disparate phenomena can be seen as symptoms of an underlying problem regarding meaning in life [10:37:00].
Historical Foundations and Contributing Factors
The historical roots of the meaning crisis can be traced back to profound civilizational shifts:
- Upper Paleolithic Transition (65,000 years ago) [11:05:00]: This period saw the emergence of fully symbolic and recursive language, representational art, music, calendars, and long-range projectile weapons [11:46:00]. A key development was shamanism, understood as a set of psychotechnologies for deliberately altering states of consciousness and enhancing cognitive flexibility [13:52:00]. Shamanic practices, involving rituals, aimed to induce altered states of consciousness, allowing practitioners to connect typically unconnected areas of cognition, leading to art and music [13:20:00].
- Psychotechnologies: Analogous to physical tools, these are externally and socially generated ways of organizing and communicating information processing, standardized for easy internalization [16:52:00]. They enhance cognition across multiple domains; literacy is a prototypical example [17:20:00]. Shamanism is considered a set of socially transmissible practices for altering attention and salience landscaping [17:29:00].
- Ritual: Rituals are defined as “imaginable ways of augmenting a potential way of being in the world and seeing in the world” [21:44:00]. They are a form of “serious play” that enables the development of new ways of being and seeing through genuine transformation [22:05:00].
- Bronze Age Collapse (c. 1200 BCE) [50:24:00]: This period saw a fundamental collapse of well-developed civilizations, including vast trade networks and cities [51:20:00]. This collapse led to a Dark Age of roughly 400 years [52:39:00].
- Axial Age (post-Bronze Age Dark Age) [52:57:00]: Emerging from the Bronze Age collapse, this period (c. 800-200 BCE) witnessed a “flowering” of new psychotechnologies like alphabetic literacy, numeracy, and coinage [53:35:00]. These technologies fundamentally altered cognition, leading to the development of “second-order thinking” – the ability to become critically aware of one’s own mind (metacognition) [54:12:12]. This new self-awareness revealed the mind’s double-edged sword: a source of self-deception but also self-transcendence and improved relationships with the world [55:09:00]. This era also saw the formation of many major world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and the invention of philosophy in the Western sense (e.g., pre-Socratics, Plato) [56:50:00].
- The Two-Worlds Model: A problematic aspect of the Axial Age was the pervasive “two worlds mythology,” distinguishing a “fallen” or “decadent” everyday world from a “better, more real” world [55:36:00]. While this metaphor helped cultivate wisdom and discernment, it is seen as poor language for explaining reality, especially when challenged by a scientific worldview [01:03:22].
Addressing the Meaning Crisis: Psychotechnologies and Practices
Overcoming the meaning crisis involves engaging in specific cognitive and existential practices:
- Flow States: These “optimal experiences” occur when the demands of a situation slightly exceed one’s skill level, prompting a creative, interactive push into the “zone of proximal development” [37:00:00]. In flow, individuals feel at one with their environment, experience effortless performance, ongoing discovery, and quiet their “nattering nanny narrative ego,” leading to optimal performance and reward [37:48:00]. Error in these activities is diagnostic and costly, demanding a tight coupling between actions and environmental response [42:28:00]. Flow states contribute to evolving and developing the self [41:32:00].
- Mindfulness: Defined as a way of directing attention to break up inappropriate mental frames and create new, appropriate ones [45:07:00]. This involves stepping back to observe one’s mental framing (meditative aspect) and then looking through a new frame to see the world anew (contemplative aspect) [46:12:00]. Mindfulness enhances cognitive flexibility and problem-solving insight [49:26:00].
- Attention: A prioritization function that creates a “salience landscape” where things stand out, disclosing potential interactions [14:33:00]. It is crucial for understanding how our perception and action are guided [14:59:01].
- The Socratic Revolution (“Know Thyself”): Socrates emphasized that “knowing yourself” is not about autobiography but understanding the “machinery of the self” – turning the self into a verb (“selfing”) and directing it towards becoming a wiser, more virtuous person in contact with oneself, others, and reality [01:34:52]. This approach contrasts with natural philosophers who provide facts but not the wisdom to transcend [01:36:00]. Socrates also famously critiqued the Sophists for promoting rhetoric disconnected from truth, which he saw as “bullshitting” that leads to self-deception and demagoguery [01:37:31].
- Self-Deception: It is impossible to “lie” to oneself in a strict propositional sense because belief cannot be willed [01:41:52]. However, one can “bullshit” oneself by selectively directing attention to make certain things salient and ignore others, disconnecting salience from a concern for truth [01:42:31]. This process is exacerbated by social media, which exploits cognitive biases like availability bias to foster unrealistic perceptions [01:44:07].
- Faith: Redefined as an ongoing process of cognitive development, especially at perspectival and participatory levels, to maintain continuous cognitive contact with persons, patterns, or frames that mutually afford growth and well-being [01:14:39]. It reconnects with the ancient sense of “love” as a mutually accelerating disclosure and reciprocal opening [01:16:55].
- Kairos (Critical Turning Points): A moment of criticality or instability in a system where the potential for significant intervention and redirection becomes available [01:22:12]. The meaning crisis may indicate such a kairos at a cultural level, offering an opportunity to change the course of future history [01:24:20].
Ultimately, addressing the meaning crisis involves cultivating the virtues and the meta-virtue of wisdom to realize sufficient meaning in life. This meaning compensates for unavoidable suffering, distress, and pain, allowing individuals to reliably judge their lives as “worth living” [01:50:56].