Ep. 25 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - The Clash
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Twenty-fifth episode of Dr. John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
“Perspectival knowing has been reduced to your political viewpoint. Participatory knowing has been reduced to your political identity”. These words are ever more relevant today.
And now with fake news, COVID, etc we're seeing the subsuming of propositional knowing into politics.
This is at once the most potent idea of the series, but simultaneously a primary reason why this lecture series is not as popular as it ought to be.
Don't we just know it. I hope the ethno nationalists chill and the woke awaken before we have another biblical clash of race and class.
@@tensevo I don’t think it’s that simple…the “woke” will voluntarily cut off their reproductive organs for their ideology, their not just going to get tired and wake up. They are a product of the entitled “speech-is-violence” welfare state and until that is fixed more will keep coming.
Has it not always been the case? If there is categorization of objective reality - the rain has come - then there is subjective judging - oh the rain is bad. What is happening in the present? Have we arrived yet with the categorization
This was an excellent demonstration of the fragmented nature of modern academia. It will be far too difficult to solve perennial problems of existential dread and meaninglessness if our greatest disciplines are too compartmentalized and, thus, failing to communicate with each other. Vervaeke's greatest strength is being able to coherently combine historical analysis, philosophy and psychology together, so I am eagerly awaiting how he will demonstrate how cognitive science can blend together all these relevant disciplines into a comprehensible recipe to help alleviate the Meaning Crisis. Easily one of the best episodes so far.
The modern university seems destined to fail because it is divorced itself from wisdom; if wisdom can be recaptured, perhaps there is hope!
Yes, champion interdisciplinarity!
prediction; it can't (c.s.), he won't (j.v.).
Excellent point. One of the best comments getting at the heart of why this series is so good.
Always combining views is the key. As a small example, Jordan Peterson talks about Neitzsche saying god is dead and predicting the bloodshed and horrors of WW2 AND the Communist revolution in Russia. People misinterpret what Neitzsche meant, thinking Neitsche declared that it was an advocate of that, but he was pointing out what civilization was doing already. This fits perfectly with what John said about the communists taking some of what Hegel said and leaving a lot of the idealistic stuff behind.
This fits also with Ian McGilchrists stuff on the master and his Emissary and the danger of organizing society on a myopic non-holistic left brain pattern.
So yeah putting together history and stuff across disciplines way beyond even these things. I left graduate school after 4.5 years to work on this stuff. Been working on it 20 years because I understood how important it was to the future.
The pattern of the European mind is different than what you find other places in the world. But by looking at the history of those different aspects of yourself you can make incredible progress beyond what has ever been seen or achieved before in the history of life. It is an exciting and important time to be alive. It’s good to see people taking responsibility for themselves, or beginning to with things like this video series.
I am a stone cold killer. Of erroneous ideas. The staggering power of that phrase might take a while to dawn on you, but it is key to everything. Taking our lower human nature and understanding and making something higher of it. To bind the beast into the engine of creation and bring our world closer to truth. I am a warrior from the beginning. In my wake is freedom and creation and the rumors of chaos which I did not let spread by my mouth. By the pressure of it. That is true strength.
Maybe you think that’s all wooly minded and poetic, but I assure you it isn’t. Try reading that to yourself every morning. Think about the history in John’s words. What life is, the responsibility for it, the unity of it. The meaning.
We cannot be afraid of finding out who we are. Of humbling ourselves to the larger mind in things. Of looking beyond ourselves as symbols of god. As individual egos “against” the other. Of not stopping on the way to truth for fearful and dangerous things.
Power without responsibility to the future is destruction. Again, a simple statement but staggering in its implications when you look at it holistically beyond all current local views. It is a natural law of the larger mind and pattern of things. Inescapable.
@@spiralsun1 Your comment is bullshit.
“Nazism is a tsunami of bullshit”. What a quote.
It’s both simple and profound - accessible to the average person and to the intellectual and correct on every level. Bravo 👏🏾
A 50 hour series on Moby Dick by Dr JV would be epic.
Dr. Vervaeke your series really makes me wonder of what an alternative-history would look like if Byzantium had never have fallen, and a more Neoplatonizing view of Christianity had kept going as a driving force in Europe. For example, what would be the impact of say the Copernican revolution look like in Constantinople, etc. ? Just some interesting hypothetical thoughts.
I am a medical doctor in training now, and even though I find this work in the medical field very meaningful, I am more and more attracted to the study of cognitive science, since it's a combination of all things I am deeply interested in (anthropology, psychology, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, language, etc.).
Thank you for this ongoing inspiration, John. I am looking for a longer term way of combining both my love for medicine as a practice, with cognitive science and develop as a practitioner (and quite possibly also part of a larger wisdom community I aspire to create) of an ecology of wisdom practices.
However, since time is the scarcest resource of our lives, I am not sure in a concrete way how to balance or combine these three important parts in my life. It would make me sad to sacrifice one for the other.
I'm in my early thirties still, so hopefully cogsci can be a more prominent part of my life in the coming decades! The Awakening from the Meaning Crisis has given me so many threads to grab, and to dive deep into all these subjects, concepts and thinkers. I don't think I could express into words how elated I feel about the future.
There's a lot of potential value in having people in systemic roles who get this stuff. These systems need redesigning, whether that's from within an institution or by setting up a new kind of private practice
@@malcolm_oceangreat point
A tsunami of BS , well said. At another point, my speakers almost blew my eardrums when you spoke of the battle, you communicate this very well, what I'm understanding from you stuns me. There's a tremendous ripple of seriousness in this lecture. For some reason I got a flash image when you touched wood making noise on contact and whilst your voice became volumous and you were quite passionate. You care, you really do care, I can almost feel the urgency you have and I am in South Africa. What you are doing has so much significance I can feel the energy. I think you touched my heart in this lecture. Wow. More people need to learn from you, you are so so gifted it is as if you are a blessing. I hope you know that you are blessed, you are quite incredible, truly. A rare person. And I barely know you, we are strangers yet there is connection I'm not too sure what that is , something like I feel it's a good thing for you to have more and more support . I hope in some tiny way, I am able to do that service for you. I had an idea/question, why don't you sell this course as a package or something like a product ,packaged, so that people can buy it and then be able gift it to others , something that doesn't require the internet or mobile networks or wifi to watch and learn? Maybe it's not a good idea and I suppose I can admit that I am trying to figure out how to get people I know to commit to the course .. and then be able to have proper conversation.. I would have gladly paid for this course and then again to gift this course as Xmas presents or something. Perhaps I should ask what you need help with, with what you are doing, how or where do you need assistance?
Your framing of Nazi Germany as a "gnostic nightmare" is brilliant. People think of these things as mere political movements, but the depths of the way they engage with the psyche is heavily mythological and religious. This is exactly what people need to realize about ideologies, at the bottom there are religious structures that gives them their power.
That is what Hegel thought he was creating the final solution. One totalising system of meaning making. Except it was all pointed at the state, and the state pointed in one direction, and it was not up.
@@tensevo Well said. Exactly the same as marxism.
I’m here and realized that I know nothing and was living like happy idiot. During the first episodes about the axial revolution, it felt great at it was pushing the boundaries of my mind. Having revelations after revelations. Proud to be a human and learning about exaptation and psycho technology and enlightenment. But now, I made the mistake to watch this particular one before bed and I’m now here feeling the urge to write this in the hope that I will dissipate my feelings of despair, sadness and rage. I hope this series gets better. I’m certainly awake literally, emotionally distraught, terrified even. Disturbed. Desperate. OMG where are those meditation videos?
Instead of trying to sleep I finished watching the episode which I stopped at the 45 minutes mark to write the above comment. Thankfully the last 15 minutes ish resolved in a higher note as if back in control. This is incredible teaching. Again, mind blown.
Halfway done, this has been mind-fragment-altering.
"There is no political solution to our troubled evolution" 👍
We are spirits in a material world
I'm nervous to already be halfway through. I want to get the whole picture, and yet I don't want this series to end.
OP 99ll09
@@susanneboatwright9836 is that an emoji? lol
I feel you but in the other point of view, there are to draw material for the self-realization for the whole life. I have already decided to start second round with taking notes and scriving own thoughts on the matters after the first one. It's only a little seed that's been planted to me with the first round.
We fear not being able to find meaning and fear losing it once we do.
@@joshsmith8066 kwkkwko
I always think each episode cannot possibly blow my mind more than the last but he continues to do it
If anyone needs a transcript we've made them for this & all episodes here: www.meaningcrisis.co/ep-25-awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis-the-clash/
“but a cognitive scientific analysis of the machinery, the cognitive machinery, of meaning making itself (wipes board clean).”
Wow even the transcripts are thorough! Thank you for all the hard work to the whole team! Truly the best educational series on TH-cam!! ❤
Please, remember to comment and like all the lectures. This wisdom should be spread. Help bias the youtube algorithm towards these videos and others of the same kind.
I've watched this series so far by re listening to every episode at least three times before moving on to the next. It's shocking how much more knowledge and understanding I gain every time I rewatch the same episode again. I haven't made it to episode 25, yet I've listened, at the very least, to 60+ hours of this series. Life-changing stuff really. Thank you Dr. Vervaeke
Thank You, John! The first 25 episodes of historical analysis were brilliant and so, so enriching in many ways. Can't wait to start the cognitive analysis part. Thank You once again!
This needs way more attention
I appreciate YOUR time JV ❤️🍄
And now propositional knowing is being also limited to your political identification. The stakes are high John. Thank you so much for putting this series together.
Great. Love it
Energised ,expedient, evocative , explosive, excellent ♥ as usual.
I’d love a lecture series that discusses the eastern meaning crisis and the decline from ancient mythology and mysticism of eastern religions in to the secular age of communism, the totalitarian states of China and North Korea, as examples.
Excellent proposal!
You make me realize just how big the meta-crisis is. Most of Asia's statistics on well-being are horrifying, especially East Asia.
Listened 3+ times to this episode. All I wanna say is ‘oh my god!’ It’s surely a guidance to me and clarified my confusion in terms of belief.
Excellent
at this point in the series i'm surprised there was no lecture talking about evolution/Darwinism and no lecture talking about french revolution / democracy / American dream
This has been the most important lesson I have had in understanding what politics is. Thank you John
Superb as usual. Glad to see someone describing culture as distributed cognition. One of the best books on that subject that I have ever read is "The secret of Our Success" by Joseph Henrich. The current disrespect (mostly on the political Left, I'm afraid) for the role and importance of culture is, in my opinion, a key contributor to the meaning crisis. Anyway, can't wait for the next installment!
Not sure if you have heard of this guy, he only did a book review on that book last month. One thing that struck me was the discussion of a how many traditions contain the "meta-tradition" of defending themselves against Reason, because often relying on reason over cultural tradition got you killed. An individual's reasoning process can't see some bigger picture, that may have taken several generations to develop, using the example of specific hunting practices and food processing techniques as examples
"In giving humans reason at all, evolution took a huge risk. Surely it must have wished there was some other way, some path that made us big-brained enough to understand tradition, but not big-brained enough to question it. Maybe it searched for a mind design like that and couldn’t find one. So it was left with this ticking time-bomb, this ape that was constantly going to be able to convince itself of hare-brained and probably-fatal ideas.
Here, too, culture came to the rescue. One of the most important parts of any culture - more important than the techniques for hunting seals, more important than the techniques for processing tubers - is techniques for making sure nobody ever questions tradition. Like the belief that anyone who doesn’t conform is probably a witch who should be cast out lest they bring destruction upon everybody. Or the belief in a God who has commanded certain specific weird dietary restrictions, and will torture you forever if you disagree. Or the fairy tales where the prince asks a wizard for help, and the wizard says “You may have everything you wish forever, but you must never nod your head at a badger”, and then one day the prince nods his head at a badger, and his whole empire collapses into dust, and the moral of the story is that you should always obey weird advice you don’t understand.
There’s a monster at the end of this book. Humans evolved to transmit culture with high fidelity. And one of the biggest threats to transmitting culture with high fidelity was Reason. Our ancestors lived in Epistemic Hell, where they had to constantly rely on causally opaque processes with justifications that couldn’t possibly be true, and if they ever questioned them then they might die. Historically, Reason has been the villain of the human narrative, a corrosive force that tempts people away from adaptive behavior towards choices that “sounded good at the time”.
Why are people so bad at reasoning? For the same reason they’re so bad at letting poisonous spiders walk all over their face without freaking out. Both “skills” are really bad ideas, most of the people who tried them died in the process, so evolution removed those genes from the population, and successful cultures stigmatized them enough to give people an internalized fear of even trying." slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-our-success/?fbclid=IwAR2_NzFO5H-hBkQoeF9tqGNgYNnmBdlbt0NoXXY9DunROTooNtG6ijnHs44
@@jasetheacity Good stuff! I would be weary of denigrating reason too much, but for sure the worship of reason above all, combined with a failure to understand its limits, is not conducive to success. If you are interested, Vernon Smith discusses constructive reason (what we normally understand as "reason") vs what he calls "ecological rationality," which is the distilled practical reason contained in culture and traditions, as well as at least partially ingrained in our evolved brains (in a way we often don't understand). The "reason-absolutists" completely miss the boat on all these considerations, and it is not a coincidence that they are practically all on the Left politically.
Notice the points where Vervaeke pounds the desk and reiterates that his aim isn’t to try to find a political resolution to the Meaning Crisis. Our explanation of motives is way up the chain of causation. I think we can actually get much closer to the ground with the laws of thermodynamics and complexity science on the one hand, as well as integrating these disciplines at a higher level as he proposes. (Of course, I’m probably missing some crucial points he’ll cover in future lectures!) This self-transcending process that isn’t only human, but it is tremendously accelerated in human beings. The hierarchical social structure for lobsters that Peterson points out is over 300 million years old, but what is relatively recent is the wetware of a vast network of highly specialized pattern recognition feedback systems of the Neo-cortex, plus the layers of cultural software that instantiates the psycho-technologies to develop reason and the capacity for reason such that we become better at it, while debugging it through layers of collapse. All of this can’t happen in one fell swoop, any more than a human baby can be born walking and spouting the laws of motion. Human beings individually are an pre-adult version of our species until age 25 now, even though sexual maturity is around 15.
Just as individual humans must go through several personality crises of development, one of which is beautifully caricatured in the Pixar animation “Inside Out,” human culture must also go through periodic reboots. We are just at the biggest one of these our species has seen before. Vervaeke is providing us with the background to be able to back up a bit and take a good look at ourselves in the collective mirror.
As an example of the fundamental aspects of this kind of developmental arc, I recommend people read the books by Leonard Shlain (in particular The Alphabet versus the Goddess, which asserts that alphabetic language gave rise to a radical restructuring of brain/mind such that we are turned into a massively rivalrous species with formidable powers of abstraction).
I don’t like my post above, because I judge it is way too diffuse to be of use to anyone. This is a shorter response after reading the slatestarcodex book review and some of the comments. I’d recommend to all of those folks that they take a look at Vervaeke’s video on wisdom, which distinguishes rationality as a meta-intellectual process with a self-referential feedback loop, and wisdom as meta-rationality with a self-referential feedback loop. So much of what is said in the comments of the above book review is pseudo-thinking and is not representative of rationality at all. BTW, I realize my rantings also fail the rationality test.
Notice that mostly what passes as rationality is a fairly simple exaptation of narrative; a heuristic process for remembering complex relationships and associations. It is why most people will loudly scoff and roll their eyes at a flat-earth conspiracist without being able to reason why they believe the earth isn’t flat (“I’ve seen the pictures” doesn’t count). Similarly, thinking that most DNA is junk because we can’t explain what it does, or that we even have any clue whether a trait is passed through genetics or culture is also problematic. What is needed is a kind of curiosity about how we know such things, and how we could find out what we don’t know. Perhaps one of the main reasons we are in a meaning crisis is because of the apparent pickle we are in: Rationality is a terrible way to keep passing along cultural memory, and we need it to be more universally taught to be able to continue forward in culture. I think this describes the horns upon which we are currently being gored.
Lastly, someone really needs to get the Rationalists and Slate Star Codex folks to check out this series. I can’t find any mention of Vervaeke on that site. Astounding!
You are a brilliant lecturer.
We are privileged to have you.
52:54 "making noises come out of my facehole"! humour and intellect brilliance
Anyone else halfway through the series? Great stuff!
I'm really enjoying the series and doing follow up reading (Versluis, Perl, Rappe, Plotinus) that is really helping me to understand myself and reality more deeply and in tandem, so thank you for that, John. I know you have to gloss a lot of these important thinkers owing to time constraints, but when you speak about Nietzsche I think it is only fair to him to mention that the idea of the Will-to-Power was not an idea that was fully developed by him in his published writings but was taken largely from his unpublished note books. The notion of the Will-to-Power was made palatable to the Nazis by his sister. Nietzsche was actually highly critical of the Prussian state and anti-Semitism in his writings. In the most complimentary sense, I see you as being in the Nietzschean tradition: he also tried to salvage meaning from the Greeks and from the science of his day to overcome the meaning crisis - which he of course called the Death of God. I can see now, however, that Nietzsche's accounts of Christianity and Platonism were off the mark.
Thank you Russell for your insightful reply. I deeply appreciate it.
Thanks John.
The most complex videos are the best. Had to rewatch and im still learning....
Wow! That was exciting, here we are in recent times now huh, it sure took a long time to get through these so far but it was quite enriching, almost participatory history adventure. I am curious to continue to see what insights that cognitive science and further thinkers have to offer now on our meaning crisis. How fun this has been so far and I have learned so much beautiful knowledge, but man is it often hard to watch even a whole video a day without fatigue lol and I probably will need to go back to rewatch and take notes. I need to share this with my friends.
Describing the Eastern front as a "TITAN-ic" struggle takes on a whole new meaning coming from Prof V. Never was there a more fertile and appropriate place for a mythological reference.
Once again a very informative and interesting lecture. Certainly attempts at self transcendence based merely on belief in ideologies usually culminates in self aggrandisement and the clash of wills on a grand scale. The solution is not to be found in belief systems, but in psycho technologies and spiritual practices that help people mature and lead to self transcendence. Ken Wilber calls this growing up and waking up. A return to the old time religion is not the answer, but neither is a complete rejection of religion simply because we are living in a post religious age, largely brought about because we generally have a very unsophisticated understanding of religion. What we need is the religion of tomorrow. For a great book on this subject please see Ken Wilber’s “The Religion Of Tomorrow.”
My levels of excitement just keep rising. I am looking forward for the second part of this series!
The best ever integration of ideas around the rise of Nazism in Germany!
John,
Bravo, Bravo!!!
Absolutly brilliant !
I'm kind of relieved that the course take a turn to Cog Sci. The first few lectures to the Axial Age feel a sense of progress; while the recent ones just feel more and more dark and depressing. Looking forward to seeing how Cog Sci help salvage the meaning crisis
amazing episode - the meaning of the clash
Cannot wait for this CogSci part of the series. Just finished reading Chemeros "introduction to phenomenology" and "The Embodied Mind" while currently on Evan Thompsons "Waking, Dreaming, Being"
‘Gnostic Nightmare’. This talk is one I will watch again in a while because there is so much packed into this relevant to the present. I fear it is too easy in being drawn to fight totalitarianism that in so doing we may become imprinted with it in our reaction. It seems that my whole life view was shaped by the war that my British parents and grandparents experienced first hand. I am forced to not jump to simple judgements by the fact that my Great Grandfather was German. We need to keep the doors of our perception forever open. I am excited to see where this is going. Interesting how most disciplines have an origin in philosophy but JV seems to be making a case for invoking philosophy to integrate these disciplines that have differentiated our knowledge.
As someone who loves autodidactism, and who has pursued the idea of an autodidactic lifestyle for years, I find it has another trap that maybe isn't always bias but rooted in a fear of some sort of destruction of oneself or others, and thus arguably a destruction of morality, where autodidactism creates intellectual/topic-driven loneliness which, when this loneliness can't be alleviated by conversation with sufficient shared knowledge of the topic, it can only be alleviated by the attempt to teach others; and the attempt to teach can only happen with a desirable vision of the future for oneself and others as a result of having attempted to teach. I think the perceived undesirable probability of the result of sharing one's knowledge, and the resulting intellectual loneliness of not teaching when there is no other way to converse, is in conflict with the sense of meaning that a person gets from attaining more knowledge, and this conflict either lures them away from probabilistic improvement or knowledge, and thus away from meaning and into suffering, or it lures them deeper into intellectual loneliness and also into suffering, as a result of a perceived inability to convey their knowledge to others with a sufficiently mutually beneficial desirable outcome.
Yes I feel what you are saying, but in my personal experience it's this very loneliness and suffering that builds up the type of psychological pressure needed for these kinds of breakthrough experiences of self transformation. Using language from lecture 24 on Hegel, as the loneliness and suffering build they create pressure (integrate) within the psyche, which must then be dismantled (differentiated) by throwing a psychedelic or some other substance at it in order to form a new set of beliefs, new identity, new perception of reality etc. (higher integration) which is what my personal self transformation experience was like. Literally analogous to a big bang, but I digress, as I don't want to delude myself any further by trying to make metaphysical claims about the nature of these personal breakthroughs, as Vervaeke recommends.
I had my personal breakthrough a little over a month ago, and I have remained in solitary isolation for the past 3 months. There is not a single person I can discuss these ideas with, and everyday I feel the pressure and existential dread of this frustration mounting, and everyday I go to that same infinitely lonely place I felt during my breakthrough to meditate on how lonely existence can be at times, and even in Pascal's "infinite spaces that terrify" I find deep tranquility and peace knowing how interconnected I am with the rest of reality, regardless of whether I can physically exert this through speech. Thus, I understand "suffering" as the building up of pressure which is necessary for greater and greater breakthroughs, almost as if I am riding a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows, and it's a damn fun rollercoaster to ride.
@@David-bo7zj You can start a S.*.b.s.t.*.c.k. and/or .R.*.m.b.l.*. and talk to yourself. Like a public journal nobody is likely to ever read. I've been doing that.
Thank you for another beautiful lesson, John.
I came back to this lecture. I will likely return again in the future. It’s absolutely breathtaking in scope.
Are we absolutely certain that it is not simply our pride that makes religion impossible for us?
As a German, I obviously went through intense discussions of naziism in history class in school. But as it this ideology is merely understood in terms of a political movement, I never really understood why people would be so immensely attracted by a person like Hitler and his weird and implausible narrative of history. I really want to thank you for unrolling the historical movements that ultimately led to this tremendous destruction.
Sad that Germany doesn't have an adequate teaching of this
@@jeffk8473 Oh, that's not what I wanted to imply. In fact, teaching about nazi history is quite extensive. But it's done from a global, political perspective and from this perspective it is very hard to convey, what let the single individual fanatically follow Hitler's ideology. And looking at this series, it also took quite some time to develop the framework to understand how people felt during Weimar republic and what drove them to adapt this ideology.
Very good lecture. Thank you.
Biggest fan right here John!
So looking forward to this haven’t even started watching yet🦋🕊🌷☺️
🌞
Thank you for an excellent series of lectures so far. But l wonder why you left out Darwin? Keep up your good work!
Vervaekeinism - the best psychotechnology !
Wow, I'm going to have to watch this one again. The emergence of Nazism is something that has interested me lately in seeking to understand the emergence of QAnon. This certainly helped shed some light on both.
It also sheds light on the Volunteer Battalions of the Territorial Defense Forces of the Ministry of the Interior of Ukraine, like Azov Battalion, Right Sector, C14, etc.
Comparing QAnon to Nazism is not a good start at all.
It shares a surprising amount with the woke movement too, I mean "lived experience" is Hegelian language. Q anon have zero political power, unlike the wokists. It's a from hegels totalitarian handbook.
29:28 best professor in the world
“Nazism is a tsunami of bullshit” - wow, especially as understood through the lens of what you mean by “bullshit” (cf. meaninglessness, self-deception, etc.), this is a powerful critique.
Where you find arbitrariness of wills and demands and paranoid delusions,, you will
Find totalitarianism.
Another brilliant lecture! These presentations are never dry and intellectually tiresome because each and every step of the way is full of importance and vehemence. We seem to have reached the crescendo of the meaning crises with the tragic consequences of pseudo-religions, scientific and societal fragmentations and the movement from mythologies/ideas/religious strifes all shrinking into politics and power. I think the diagnosis is correct - so I am eager to see the way out of this mess. I also wonder how those people fit into the whole thing who have not lost their touch with the connection to the divine, who are still steadfast in their faith, in spite of everything, but who are not fundamentalists either. The presentation assumes that religious feelings are all dead, that everybody is post-religion now....
Should I stay or should I go to another channel?
The order, is in the atom. All structures and phenomenon must take part in the order. There is no chaos, only order, that we cannot comprehend.
"Nazism is a tsunami of bullshit" I love how there's an entire 24 and a half hours of intense historical and philosophical buildup within this series that leads up to this statement.
"in dark ages people are best guided by religion; as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides" H.Heine another XIX century German poet. I assume it is the science and scientific revolution that brought supposed daylight and was considered the path into a better future at that time. To see what it actually brought please listen to the lecture.
The fact that you can go for a run and fill your whole brain with different chemicals that affect the way you think and experience the world makes me think that in that list at the end of the video lack another thing that is fragmented, the Body part.
8:55 Slick overdub there! Almost missed it.
"politicization of the quest for meaning"
O shit we’re in the clash right now
Finally I can understand John when he starts riffing :D
This is an excellent episode! John, I am just wondering whether you will be able to give me some references on distributed cognition in problem solving. Thanks!
John Vervaeke - is the difficulty of integration of different modes of observation of mind such as behavioural vs AI (you refer around the 55-57 minute region) similar to how we can simultaneously observe and attend to an object (at rest), the background environment (awareness), moving objects (velocity), speeding objects (acceleration), via change in ratio (acceleration = coming towards us and object is proportionally more in foreground), change in sequence (object moving across horizon), and be thinking of probable environment it came from (if entered visual field - inference (or prior sequence)), or environment it going to (if left visual field -deduction (or post sequence))?
And because the object's observed 'properties' are contingent upon the observer ' s properties this can lead to different 'observed properties' of the 'object'. E.g I am still to myself despite running but observed as velocitying away to someone also running during a race and accelerating away from the race official who is standing still and watching us both race. So at rest and also simultaneously velocity and acceleration dependant on the position or level of observation.
Sorry am physio so trying to match it to an embodied metaphor (and realise the object/subject/project differences means it can't be equally matched).
In 1943 this titanic clash of two most destructive forces takes place. Also earlier this year in a small European country which has declared neutrality in IIWW LSD gets discovered by Albert Hoffman. The history is full of synchronicites.
Germany is a younger country than CANADA! *based Canadian*
John, have you read Gavin Floods work on religion? If so, do you recommend his work? I am currently enjoying his "The importance of religion " and it's touching on alot of the things you are
Does Akira the Don know about this yet?
If not, he needs to know!
He made a song sampling John
I heard him say on a stream that when he was living in LA, he used to listen to these every day as he was scootering between his house and his studio.
Oh, and he’s live scoring all of these every Wednesday night, in case you didn’t know already.
He does!
The meaning crisis is caused by certain scientific advancements, that's like trying to put out fire with gasoline.
Might another aspect of mind study include the physiological effects of the modern diet and exercise on brain function?
insanely cool episode, thanks! You've talked to Jonathan Pageau, and I think understood his symbolic/christian worldview. Wouldn't you consider that as a solution?
@R-01 I don't think you understood Pageau's symbolic worldview. It doesn't try to go against science. It doesn't require a leap of faith.
But my point was that Vervaeke touches on fundamentalist religion, ignores the symbolic parts of it, and dismisses it as "no, we can't go back". I kind of agree - it's very hard to find a non-fundamentalist church here in Russia, but still I wanted him to touch deeper on the subject before dismissing it
@R-01 if religion and philosophy (and science) require sacrifice, then how they are different? i'm not implying that "philosophical suicide" is unavoidable, just asking about the differences.
I certainly do. Jonathan is a tremendously profound thinker, and he gives us a way back without cutting off science. Though science must understand it’s place. Not only that but he also doesn’t devolve into anti-fundamentalist rhetoric which just makes Christianity intellectual. Some of the Christians who are the most sufficiently transformed by the truth are often those who have the craziest ideas as to what it all means. It’s gives new life to famous verse “professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
The problem with any ideology, they are all pretty sweet until they becoming totalising and begin to purge dissenters.
I have been following the series since the Peterson interview. I studied acting, and I teach it. Now I’m studying Anthropology and had always wanted to study Psychology and Pedagogy. This lay out for cognitive science gives me a narrative to consider. I have a hunch that theatre, fiction and character building in acting can also participate in this drama of the meaning crisis.
According to Jonathan Sacks:
“Moses repeatedly criticises the Israelites, telling them, ‘It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you are going to take possession of the land’ (Deut. 9: 5). This note is sustained to the end of the prophetic age. Malachi, last of the prophets, says, ‘From the rising of the sun to its setting, my name is great among the nations . . . but you profane it’ (Mal. 1: 11-12). This is a point of immense consequence. A chosen people is the opposite of a master race, first, because it is not a race but a covenant; second, because it exists to serve God, not to master others. 5 A master race worships itself; a chosen people worships something beyond itself. A master race values power; a chosen people cares for the powerless. A master race believes it has rights; a chosen people knows only that it has responsibilities. The key virtues of a master race are pride, honour and fame. The key virtue of a chosen people is humility. A master race produces monumental buildings, triumphal inscriptions and a literature of self-congratulation. Israel, to a degree unique in history, produced a literature of almost uninterrupted self-criticism.”
Only had one beer, honest....😊
Thanks for this very nice comments. Your writing was odly poetic
Smug Prout, thanks... that was a Jonathan Sacks quote, from Not In God’s Name. I’d also recommend The Great Partnership, and his Covenant and Conversation books... Genesis and Exodus anyway, have not read the other ones.
israel? really? are we talking about the same country? self-loathing, maybe, but self-critical?! they sure seem to think they're right about kicking palestine around. i love my jewish friends, but israel? i and a lot of them are pretty critical...and if jewish has not manifest itself as a race, particularly amongst orthodox, matrilineal society, then-but we lack a suitable definition of race, don't we? for example, my father was 1/4 choctaw, but somehow, i'm just 'white'.
@jay just ask his majesty, the POTIS.
What about at the most fundamental level? That is, what is mind?
Should I stay or should I go?
Is Social Media not a psychotechnology that transforms Cognition, Consciousness, Character, and Community in a uniform and comprehensive manner?
What is the result of leaving out whole portions of the earth's philosophers?
Are Communism are Nazism diametrically apposed to each other? I think they actually share a lot in common.
They're the feuding brothers of systematic large scale murder.
Communism begins as a call for workers collectively to take control of the means of production/money. Fascism begins as populace agreeing to state/national control of industry. Ultimately, those at the top of the power hierarchy take over, and both communism and fascism end up in the same place, secular totalitarianism.
“We somehow need a religion that isn’t a religion at all. We need a God beyond all gods.” Isn’t that what Jesus tells us? A religion of love, not laws; a loving Father, not a dictator.
I really like this series. But I was thinking that the word meaning in hungarian is translated differently according to context. One is “jelentés” which is the essence of things and also what someone meant by saying this and that. And the other is “értelem” which we use when we wonder what might be the sense of things. (Mi az értelme ezeknek a dolgoknak?) “Jelentés” is like the soul and “értelem” is the mind of things. It now occured to me that these lessons tell more about the mind as we journey thru history since the soul suffers and gets lost in the process of learning more about the world.
I'm wondering whether 'perversion of Gnosticism' might be more descriptively accurate than 'Gnostic nightmare' ?
John appears to be in the dark when it comes to Gnosticism. The German National Socialists were far from gnostic.
It's Gnosticism turned on its head the same way it's Hegels dialectic turned on its head. When materialism gets a hold on the Religious project it's inevitably human bodies that doe not ideas.
How is it that this episode aired on the anniversary of the battle of kursk? Intentional?
www.amazon.com/Synchronicity-Interconnected-Universe-Analytical-Psychology/dp/1603443002/ref=asc_df_1603443002
Praxeology and Thymology?
What's the intro song?
It is an excerpt from Erik Satie's Gymnopedie nº 1: th-cam.com/video/S-Xm7s9eGxU/w-d-xo.html
I'm always looking for new interesting lectures on Psychology/Philosophy, please let me know if you guys have any recommendations, would be highly appreciated
I second this.
Are you going to incorporate more general sign processes in the biosphere both within cells and organisms (endosemiotics) and between organisms (exosemiotics) generally called biosemiotics of which linguistics and anthropology are special cases? This is vital of course because the formation of interpretants that are non linguistic is involved in what you would call embodied, implicit, or perspectival knowing in my view? Id also note that the lower levels of study are all under the auspices of endosemiotics, while the upper one involve both types of processes.
So Hegel and men of his caliber are creating God through the rationalization process who is otherwise uncreated?
What is imminent in the universe becomes emergent over time
In an episode titled "The Clash" a quote from Joe Strummer would have been more appropriate than one from Sting, but I'll let it slide, Prof. Vervaeke. 🙏🧠👁👶
Call The Police 😂
I’m not sure if I will be able to handle when this series ends.
you should be endowed with sufficient psycho-technology.
Russia is currently being placed into a similar state as post-ww1 Germany. Any thoughts ?
You kicked out Kant last episode, now I hear cognitive science shout out loud: transcendental analysis !! ;)
Are you an Autodidact if you simply haven't been to university (chose to build houses instead) to study things like philosophy? No offence to some professors with classes online but I feel I know more than them in many ways (yourself not included). Is it autodidactic if I learn to meditate without going classes, without a guru or master? I was raised JW so I have real issues with Authority when it comes to information
Thanks Champion, much appreciated
Immensely helpful
I suspect there are autodidacts who challenge their position and update their active inferences (so have a feedback loop) and those that challenge other positions and strengthen their existent inference (so only have a feed forward loop). Is the confirmation vs disaffirmation type of concept.
In reality we are all autodidacting at some level , even if we all watch JVs lecture and 'he teaches one lesson' we auto interpret it differently and 'we teach ourselves one (different) lesson which can't be 100% congruent with his intentions and statements nor say mine or other viewers interpretations (what they teach them self).
A good teacher would show non-congruent sides of a issue to show their learning path. Which is why I appreciate JV as he has diction and contra-diction but also attributes it to the original authors and shows how they are contextually different (sometimes historically) and also contentually different but not necessarily separate and more overlapping.
That's my take on it. What's yours?
@Ben BR Thank you for that!
Have beer 🍺
Transforming my salience landscape
He said "facehole"!