After the Meaning Crisis, John Vervaeke
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ส.ค. 2024
- John Vervaeke's 'Awakening From the Meaning Crisis' has been an influential hit of 2019. A professor at Toronto University's psychology department, the series sketches out a big vision of the trajectory of western thought from the axial age to the present day.
In this conversation with Rebel Wisdom's David Fuller, he talks about the impact that the series has had on his life, and the journey he has been on since the start of 2019, and what comes next - his new series, 'After Socrates'.
You can listen to podcast versions of our films on Spotify or Apple Podcasts by searching 'Rebel Wisdom' or download episodes from our Podbean page: rebelwisdom.podbean.com/
We also have a Rebel Wisdom Discord discussion channel: / discord
Thanks John and David.
Thanks Lee.
The last part of this video, where "how do we get there?"-type "therapeutic" impossible conversations are discussed, is critically important. Our world adrift without solutions to the perennial problems of meaning, is also a world with no reliable ladder to healthy psychological development, even the lowest rungs are gone. Therapy exists, yes, but I have not yet seen systematic generalized efforts in the domain of lifting society as a whole out of a repeating pattern of passing on our trauma.
Perhaps the most important endeavor ive ever heard. People often dont have the time or capacity to learn to ask the right questions or operate with objectivity. I appreciate your work
The benefit of the breakdown of churches (imho) is that it has broken open the philosophical /spiritual territory and allows it to flow now into the dark corners of our world/people, to find new roots in the fertile soil of anyone's mind...it is no longer just the academics and priests who are playing with the concepts. I wash my soul/self in the lovely words and concepts, and emerge renewed, refreshed. Thank you, David. A nod also to technology that brings us together in a virtual circle... an ancient practice assumed by Guy Senstock. I experience dissonance with his trademarking a practice that has been an essential tool of successful communities forever; appropriation as I see it. It is the capitalist way; and whatever works, it seems. It is an important tool and, as he puts it in the hands of people who use it, good. It is needed. Wisdom worms its way out... and in.
Everything always circles back to Heidegger is is actually fascinating the permutations his thought has had on current philosophy, technology, VR you name it.
I love Vervaeke's term "dialogos," the notion of being in a dialogic dialectic where the participants are not only talking ABOUT transformative dialogue, but are an EXEMPLAR of transformative/transcendent dialogue in the moment, in real time; being a conversation "you don't want to get over" because it captures the participants, gets them caught up (as in a rapture) in the transformative/transcendent flowing of co-emergent energies of the moment into some kind of we-space that is more than the sum of the participants contributions.
Vervaeke attempted several times, as I saw it, to get Fuller into that kind of transformative conversational dance with him, but Fuller, for whatever reasons, wouldn't/couldn't go there. Several missed opportunities.
Dialogos, dialectic, lectio divina with meditation: there's a swirl of space I'd love to be in with others.
Thank you both for your work.
Personally I would like to have an online platform to get in touch with different programmes about education, philosophy, psychology, meditation, martial arts, etc.
Excellent. Well said. That would be a good way to find a path on which to begin interesting ones self in (instead of mindlessly caught dinking around on the cellphone for lack of inspiration towards a direction in life). Yea, that's a great idea.
Welcome to TH-cam!
@@nintendude794 Yeah, i feel i did not explain myself very well. I love TH-cam, what i would say about that, but there is too much information about anything, but distracting very much often. The platform am talking about would be more narrow about the topics I mentioned, mixing different authors and programmes, spaces where you can share information and perspectives with other people in a more developed way. But Yeah, you're right, TH-cam is awesome and i appreciate It a lot.
Trungpa's critique of Spiritual Materialism very much applies here. An all-you-can-eat approach to multiple "psycho-technologies" leaves the practitioner chasing their tail and having a bunch of interesting and impactful experiences without a container to metabolize them.
It ends up as gibberish of the mind. There is no inspiration and no coherence, therefore it goes nowhere except to emptiness and disillusion.. If the heart is not inspired, then we do end up endlessly chasing our tails.
As I see it this is pointing to something greater than the sum of the different paths and not visible from only within any one of them, a different tier of meaning making.
@@WakingUpToday213 I'm a big fan of Ken Wilber's work and they've been trying to incorporate multiple techniques from a "higher tier of meaning making" for a long time. I've been directly involved with this, and there is some benefit, but mindful parkour and circling around the camp fire isn't going to do much long term.
Very much so..and isn't the aim of the 'Meta'-psychotechnology to give some structure to the babel? Similar to the fashion in which the Wilbur/Beck levels emerge from, embrace and expand upon each other as they move through the tier.. No surprise then that Rafe Kelley's tribally toned practices exemplify such a foundational or 'integral' practice.
@@myksha1 Yes, the 'meta' should give structure. That structure is measured in years.
Meaning is the central issue of our time. Great interview!
Must have been a very tall building! Dave asks for the "elevator pitch" that took JV about 5 mins to unfold!
Must have been the space elevator pitch lol :)
It's a lot shorter than 50 hours though...
@@RebelWisdom Nice one RW! Huge fanboy of both you and JV :)
Yeah, John is solid. I took his Wisdom course when I was studying psychology at UofT, then I got introduced to KW's work. Glad to see/watch these interviews.
It's challenging to summarize complex subjects, etc.
@@CaesarReb who is kw?
@@Sopranohooper - Ken Wilber
You have your meta psycho technology in alchemy. Do the alchemy on yourself. This is what Jung was saying and doing. Do the Work on yourself and the shamanic transformational circuit is activated. But what keeps you away from the solution is the shadow you must confront to get the process rolling. And it will take a lot longer than your ego would like.
12 minutes in and I am FASCINATED.
This guy is on point!💥 This is EXACTLY what my Overarching Theme is in my YT videos! Mindfulness and Mediation are both 🔑 to reach our Potentials'. We need more Peoples like him to Pioneer the Learning Process Movement... Hell yeah its a job. Awesome video 📹!
John, I believe the word you are looking for is proficient.
May you learn to be proficient in blessing God and being blessed by God. 😊🙏😇❤️
JohnyV to our rescue !
Laches not Lysis ... small correction, but intended for those who want to follow up this Platonic dialogue...(45.00 mins in)
Thank you for this correction.
@@johnvervaeke no worries i have had to correct my small notes twice already!..:)... Lysis has some great stuff in there too... has great advice for any young person in love ... never throw yourself at their feet before you win them, (only works in films) - a bad hunter reveals themselves before the attempt at capture, and shows an unattractive arrogance...
Probably also good advice for those trying to get in with their favourite youtubers :)
@jrb designer alliance i am afraid you have to pass many trials and tribulations first ...
44:00 I like to call this form of conversation a "Truth Jam." Very much like any musical jam session, aimed toward co-generating Wisdom. Been blessed here in Austin to have many friends who are capable of and enjoy doing this together. Fearless curiosity in resonant cascade.
I like it. Just try not to permit Truth Jam to turn into Truth Jelly, iGuess :P
jrb designer alliance I liked your other comment(s), but that one doesn’t strike me as very Truthy, Jammy, or Truthy Jammy.
@@nintendude794 Huh! I like the analogy, but I don't know why. Could you unpack Jam v Jelly a bit from your perspective?
John is brilliant and I find much useful perspective in his research. I am just not confident we can make a rational religion.
To me it's like quantum mechanics where the true nature of a quantum entity collapses on measurement to only one of it's dimensions, "rational-ing" a religion is inevitably going to collapse it into only a portion of it's potential, thus making it worse for us. A sort of in built paradox of the universe.
It's the ultimate limitation of science, because it is understanding it on OUR terms, and the universe is always much more complex than we will ever hope to know.
43:29 Deconstructing the contents of collective thought (like having yet more indulgent 'open dialogues’ on beaten to death current hot topics like “gender” and “migration”) as a means to address the meaning crisis is like taking apart a clock to address the concept and question of time: a futile enterprise. It’s not so much the contents of collective thought, but the structure of thought itself that needs fixing.
I LOVE it! Perfect. Brilliant! That is the right direction to unfold and go into, delving, observing-looking, learning. Yup. People need this type of help. This would definitely help us to get back into the dimensions the MULTI dimensions of life, and of ourselves and existence. Thank you!
Anyone know if or where the 4-way convo JV talked about is available on YT
th-cam.com/video/7g6rwOa-pGs/w-d-xo.html
yes, there are two recorded tetralogues between Johh, Jordan Hall, Christopher Mastropietro and Guy Sengstock. They are available on Guy Sengstock's channel.
Pete N thanks Pete
Josh Graham thanks Josh
Some very interesting ideas percolating here. Is a new religion being born out of a long, difficult birth process?
Reminds me strongly of iain mcgilchrist's work on the divided brain. Either the world's intellectuals in the psychological sphere are moving towards a more spiritual way of experiencing life or I'm displaying confirmation bias in the stuff I'm absorbing :).
McGilchrist says “attention is a moral act”
“The model we choose to use to understand something determines what we find. If it is the case that our understanding is an effect of the metaphors we choose, it is also true that it is a cause: our understanding itself guides the choice of metaphor by which we understand it. The chosen metaphor is both cause and effect of the relationship. Thus how we think about our selves and our relationship to the world is already revealed in the metaphors we unconsciously choose to talk about it. That choice further entrenches our partial view of the subject. Paradoxically we seem to be obliged to understand something-including ourselves-well enough to choose the appropriate model before we can understand it. Our first leap determines where we land. 11 If we assume a purely mechanical universe and take the machine as our model, we will uncover the view that-surprise, surprise-the body, and the brain with it, is a machine.”
Confirmation bias is good if your bias is good. Too banal?
I’m guessing that Vervaeke has a more mechanical bias than McGilchrist, judging by some of his descriptions of cognition; maybe that’s a good thing, though perhaps it’s better that more people have the ‘McGilchrist bias’
@@kiljoy3254 I agree with much of what you say. I haven't studied Vervaeje's take - from the little I see he does feel more mechanical. As you will know Mcgilchrist has an extraordinary broad educational background and I love his drifft towards the philosophical and spiritual alongside his medical smarts since he is so well read in both. It is this synthesis which I find unique. Also his humility in being able to know something and nothing simultaneously and to dismiss easy 'truths' - rare in the world of certainty. I have concluded there is no truth simply a perspective at a point in time and even that I attempt to eschew in favour to experiencing over sense making. Against that objective I loathe my own confirmation bais and when I know I'm in the wrong place for my purposes I try very hard just to get curious. It is very hard but rewarding). Boxing Day rambling.... Thank you for a considered response. One of my jobs for today is to find a meet up group who focus on this kind of stuff to try and scratch more grey cells with people asking difficult questions that are probably always beyond our human reach.
@@advocate1563 and thank you... hope you find a group 😎
I think when John talks about his suspicions that Christianity is too embedded in the Platonic two worlds dualism fundamental grammar, he has a point, these suspicions could be further increased by the Cartesian split which has happened within Christianity itself.
But ultimately Christianity whilst it was born from that two worlds matrix, asserts something dramatically different from the dualism you might assume it does through the natural/supernatural distinction.
To some extent this is clearer if you look at the Catholic or Orthodox traditions. Christ rose from the dead, and this was the first day of a new creation, the new cosmos, heaven and earth as one. In the liturgy this union is constantly represented and re experienced. The Mass is the wedding feast of the Lamb, the New Jerusalem, all things made new. Here is no gnostic escape to another less fleshly and more spiritual reality, it is the divination of reality itself.
The evangelistic spirit is always dangerous for humans; in our emotional commitments we tend to take things too far. But yes, a new jerusalem should be inspiring to people in good deeds. But unfortunately we know the masses attend today's modern ritualistic church services in a somnambulistic daze, more something to check off their list and then pursue again their mindless and coveting existences. The need for improved, deepened, and anti-materialistic education is everywhere. Overall, we can take the great axial messengers and their spiritual commonalities, and imbue them with new and modern understandings, as we grow together ... humanity really only just beginning to know itself.
This conversation is a nice holiday treat. May the peace announced by the bright angels of Christmas find a place in your hearts and homes. I do want to question and perhaps push back a bit on John's characterization of those who are going to religion as nostalgic. It seems to be verging on the ironic for someone who is advocating Socrates from 2500 years ago, to accuse of nostalgia those whose allegiance is to the Babe of Bethlehem from 2,000 years ago.
It may be that he is referring to the emotive aspect of nostalgia rather than the strictly chronological but I did not get the sense that this was meant as a dismissal of those values, only a statement of concern that they are no longer broadly supported or even articulated here on the verge of 2020.
I share your treat in that it is massively heartening to hear these arguments articulated in such a way as to elevate the need for freedom of, as well as freedom from the religious. Good tidings Mary.
@@myksha1 I don't think it is dismissive but I think it is negative. I have used the example of Agriculture, and back to the land movements to illustrate this. As someone who has spent a lot of time studying and attempting to practice permaculture, I'm well aware of the attitude toward people in that field that they are simply trying to nostalgically go back to a previous time. But that is not the case, because practitioners of permaculture today use the very latest in soil science, mapping Technology, and genetic research. They marry that with understanding natural systems and a willingness to learn from long-standing traditions. Many times the long-standing traditions do not know why their systems work. We can use soil science for example to understand why certain things they have been doing for Generations are good practices. so just because a permaculture practitioner uses those practices, does not mean he or she is merely being nostalgic. The same thing is true of religion. John's work is revealing to religious people why some of their practices work. and religious people have been at the Forefront of embracing new technologies and psycho Technologies. people who today enter into a religious community are not being any more nostalgic then are John and his friends practicing doing Socratic Dialogue on TH-cam.
I don't know if it is dismissive or negative, but I do think that the differing perceptions of the male and the female aspects play a major role here in how we experience this realm. As a female, the spiritual needs to be grounded in my body. The narrative of the babe of Bethlehem elevates the female aspect in a way no other narrative ever did up to that time and we have still not realized its profundity even in our times. A religion or a spirituality that does not move me emotionally, does not touch my intuition, is not inspiring, is dead to me. The rational, the mental paths, are all useful tools but I would not place them in any superior way, above my female soul.
@@KENTUCKYUSA1 👏🤗
@@KENTUCKYUSA1 I'm getting into this stuff on my channel, too.
Does anyone have a link to the Video John was referring to around the 41:00 mark?
th-cam.com/video/7g6rwOa-pGs/w-d-xo.html
@@myksha1 Thanks!!
I'm enjoying John's online lectures, but here he doesn't seem to be able to complete a sentence without spiralling and fracturing off into multiple points (which don't conclude). Perhaps he's a little overwhelmed and attempting to adjust to his emerging online intellectual presence. Perhaps he's had too much coffee, I don't know.
Great speaker
Click link above
Why
@@jmaico the book link for your benefit or not just trying to pay it forward. Its free
@@jmaico drive.google.com/file/d/1HvbTDmw8_8XgD98234w9u-CeyW8MFgxS/view?usp=drivesdk
@@333STONE ok thanks! Now I see the link
Please interview or at least discuss Nick Fuentes, E. Michael Jones, Mencius Moldbug, Groyperism, and/or the global resurgence of nationalism and progress-skepticism.
John what is your favourite Platonic dialogue?..and why?
mwuhaha! i commented first during the premiere! some people just dont look around to keep situational awareness i guess!
Fantastic conversation. Would anyone be so kind as assist me with understanding how to Lexi Divina ( sic) ? Sincerely wish to give it a try. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. P de H
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectio_Divina
Where can I view Rafe Kelly's lectures?
100👍
I think John needs to investigate sociocracy.
Yep, I imagine he'd dig it. Powerful psychotechnology, when properly embodied.
I know of a couple of replacements possibiliries.
1) Quantum physics is nothing if not otherworldly.
2) Simulation theory is a direct replacement. Superior being simply replaces Supreme being.
3) My favorite is the forensic evidence for the Shroud of Turin being legitimate. I will provide an old playlist I assembled but I am sure it has been updated someplace.
Start with the number four presentation which discusses C-14. Many people dismiss the whole thing on the basis of a C-14 test from the 1980s but they tested a cotton patch, not the shroud material itself.
Playlist. I have never tried this before so it might take some time.
th-cam.com/play/PLtF8hOWRyzryInVV3XKIjYXMrKl_qDbWD.html
What is "Meaning"?
Sincerely,
Satori -cal
HubrisNaut What do you mean, “what is Meaning”?
@@nintendude794 Meaning in this sense was directly defined by Vervaeke in this vid. Someone with more energy please find and quote it here; preferably with a timestamp.
Maybe you should consider talking to Steve Turley th-cam.com/video/b5n5EN0q02w/w-d-xo.html (presentation begins 6:38)
If you haven’t already.
He speaks of Philosophia here th-cam.com/video/q3JsRL_NeTw/w-d-xo.html
I get the impression people like Vervaeke and Vanderklay deliberately avoid him. Maybe he’s too ‘tribal’ i.e political/conservative.
Richard Carrier is another one, though on the left. I don’t like Carrier’s politics but his historical scholarship is very interesting and, I believe, had JBP had a conversation with him, JBP’s reticence about the resurrection, for instance, would be far more understandable, and that’s no small thing.
By the way, I just caught a monologue by Tucker Carlson on Universities as a giant scam. He’s also elaborated on the sort of critique of Globalism that Steve Bannon has been focusing on (the supposed left and their ‘workers rights’ should identify with that)
Here’s Turley on Universities/colleges
Colleges th-cam.com/video/ELI8HX9H6d0/w-d-xo.html
Ultra liberal colleges th-cam.com/video/2W-mEg7C_aow/w-d-xo.html
Watching these videos reminds me why it's so much better to have friends in low places. Thanks! #workingclasswisdom
Seems to me that interpreting meaning from a cognitive science perspective has parallels to Brett Weinstein’s mental gymnastics in transcendent secular religion from the evolutionary biology paradigm. It’s placing explanatory power above phenomenology. This is also very wordy and inaccessible
Don't you mean the meta mental gymnastics, meta transcendent secular religion and the meta evolutionary biology paradigm?
I keep wondering why JBP and Vervaeke aren't in more conversations together post 2016 considering both are deep into 'meaning' and both are from UofT.
I suggest the reason is here in front of us - chalk and cheese - and tattoos!
I appreciate your purpose for this channel but this guest left me feeling i was inside the tower of Babble,.He seems to be speaking but saying nothing that i can assemble into logical order. Lots of fluff which left me irritated; hardly a complete sentence.
Elon musk auto didactically taught himself his craft
Umm Christianity takes a multiverse perspective not sure where he is getting the two worlds narrative?
I commend the quest and the goal of this endeavor, but I unfortunately doubt it will lead anywhere fruitful.
A religion with no religion is a hollow prospect. For a religion to work, it must either fool the believer into believing it is the truth, or it must actually BE the truth... These are indistinguishable from a believer's point of view.
Artificially constructing something like that must either be done in secret and then distributed in the guise of truth, or it must actually stumble on REAL truth in the process. I think Schamchtenberger was far closer with his view on "propagating memes" and "protector memes" as the components of religion. To create them artificially won't work if you tell people it is an artificial construct.
(I am a deeply non-religious person by the way, so I am not selling any religion as an alternative.)
Am similarly, committedly a-religious myself (inoculated against such by catholicism at an early age) and so was dismayed to hear this enormously fascinating and burgeoningly pertinent body of thought describe/define itself in the negative; ie "the religion that is not a .."
Perhaps a 'Way'.. a 'Means', 'Communitas'? Who's to say?
Overall though I don't share your pessimism towards the endeavour. Promoting the act of inquiry is per se vital and of value.
@@myksha1 Of course, I believe the endeavor should not be cancelled just because I doubt it.
Perhaps it will lead somewhere, and that would be good.
Humans aren't meant to live in a interconnected clusterfuck grid of billions of different people with distinct cultures, socioeconomic status, and even neurotypes. We live in a n alienated mass society rather than in healthy tribes and communities that allow neaningful narratives to weaved out of commonality.
We are too massive in social scale and much too centralized. Countries should not be bigger than the size of portugal, and more autonomy and self sufficiency must be enabled for smaller scale regions and communities, otherwise we will continue to live in this unhealthy hive--like modern society.
Tribes not Hives
Many of your points are correct. However, we cannot navigate global crises without global governance structures. We need to upscale and downscale. Stronger global coordination and cooperation, and also strong meaningful subcultural identities. Scientific rationalism and consumerism were sufficient stories to hold people together at a large scale for a while. As they break down, we see a resergence of tribal nationalism and religion. People seeking deeper identities. But these themselves are hollow, for reasons that Vervaeke does well at explaining. We need local subcultural communities of practice cultivating wisdom while identifying fully with the reality of irreversibly global humanity. Our technologies and information management systems won't let us go back.
The pursuit of perfection one of life's greatest sins always seeking that which is unattainable by mere men. Humanity never happy with where they are trying to return to the stars by which they were formed.
Here's the problem. This project is flawed from the beginning. You haven't read your Iamblichus. Wisdom is non-discursive. It doesn't have tenets or systems. True wisdom attainment comes about through symbols. Iamblichus is unapologetically incisive when he berates the discursive posturing and shallowness of the Greek intellectuals of his time. Let's be clear, for all of our technological and scientific achievements, not much has changed psychologically.
Not gonna happen. By devaluating religion and faith, the doors have been opened to nihilism. A religion of no religion is a vain project, like the Tower of Babel. One must understand that the loftier and the higher the desired goal is, the greater and stronger the foundation must be. In my opinion, the Judaeo-Christian Western project is the best we have. We should build upon it.
@Nelson Camacho Tirado - Paul Vanderklay and Jonathan Pageau both see a lot of value with Vervaeke’s contribution without needing to affirm it wholesale nor throw it out. He isn’t arguing against religion, just wants to bring along others who may not make it through this path of wisdom if Jesus or any other teacher is seen as the only way.
His lecture on Jesus is one of the best perspectives on Jesus from my perspective and actually opens me up to aspects of Christianity which I had problems with based on my upbringing. I have heard others say the same thing, though his understanding may not adhere fully with doctrine. You might want to check it out : th-cam.com/video/Jbwm03djuJc/w-d-xo.html
I don’t say that you need to like him or agree, make up your own mind, obviously. I don’t think what he is saying would entice a believer to give up Christianity, and in fact may deepen their relationship with Christ.
And he's trying to secularise the definition of "meaning" with all those incoherent rambling too...
To me a "religion of no religion" means a religion built on the foundation of Mystery rather than Myth.
The idea that we need religion or else we will fall into nihilism is a false dichotomy. "Devaluing religion and faith" is a necessary step to reach reality. It only opens the door to nihilism if we stop enquirying and exploring. If we throw out the false and then keep going, we will find the truth. You have to let go of this shore to get to the other shore.
As a completely secular person, I too think this religion of no religion-project is doomed. It is too artificially constructed, without any sort of "divine" inspiration and/or spiritual leader-figure of sorts.
For my part, I am utterly incapable of adopting any variant of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), due to the fact that I don't believe in a soul. Nor is eastern faiths within my cultural scope, as their conception of time, flow of events and such is not compatible with my scientific world-view.
But I still recognize that there needs to be a component of spontaneous inspiration when searching for meaning. Artificially constructing it won't work, for the same reason that a liar knows the lie he tells isn't the truth. Meaning must be something that is genuine, an honest belief.
- Of course, one can construct something artificial and then pretend towards others that it is true (see modern cults, scientology ect.), but then the believers still hold genuine inspiration, no matter how misguided.
A religion must either fool someone into thinking it is true, or it must actually BE true. From the believer's perspective, these are indistinguishable. This religion of no religion breaks this pattern with the transparent creation-process.
All those words and he did nothing but drain time....
isn't this guy mimicking Jordan Peterson - what's new here?
Imogen Rex they are colleagues, same profession, same department, same university. Look up discussions they had with each other here on TH-cam.
John Vervaeke and Rebel Wisdom are going in the wrong direction. If you prioritise meaning, then you will inevitably compromise truth. Our standard should be truth, not meaning because truth is real whereas meaning is created and mostly illusion. To pursue truth, you need to abandon the false first, then truth or a mystery will remain. Of course, this requires bravery because you might find that there's no meaning or the false meaning you preferred will be replaced by the true meaning, which might not be comfortable.
"Truth" can be constructed too though. We all do it all the time to varying degrees. Facts are not truths. That is why we are in a crisis now. People are making their own truths, detached/devoid of the meaning connection.
I don't think they are presenting this nor I think this is a priority of competing ideas. They are necessarily connected, complementary. They validate each other where taken alone the are more susceptible to corruption in their utility.
It may be my novicity in this area but I am deeply impressed by the job V'v'ke/RebWis et al are doing here. Perhaps I am still at the stage of seeing them as unfolding a map rather than striking a course.
Am I right in thinking that what you take issue with are the tensions in the pursuit of meaning and the pursuit of truth? Is it because you sense that the direct existential issue is in the pursuit of fittedness, in the alarming and unyielding Darwinistic pragmatism which allows no intrinsic value to either truth or meaning?
I ask because this pragmatism and (more significantly) the fears it can provoke seem to be what many identify with in J. Peterson, what causes many to recoil from his views and thus what causes much of the polarisation in this dialogue.
@@myksha1 Whatever we do, there’s a starting place, a goal, and a method. Even if you are process-oriented rather than goal-oriented, there is the implicit goal of appreciating the journey of your life. In almost every case, people are focused on the goal and the method, and so they devalue the starting place. That’s okay and even necessary with small goals and in emergencies. But before formulating large goals, my suggestion is that we should entirely focus on the starting place for a while. You have to ask, “What’s happening inside me?” For example, instead of jumping to the goal of political power and prestige, the person should understand the underlying feeling of insecurity that might be triggering the goal.
Rebel Wisdom and their friends are focused on the goal of ending supposed polarisation and supposed nihilism. They assume that polarisation and nihilism are the problems and that collective sensemaking and reconnection to previous meanings are the methods for solving those problems. If they look at the starting place, they will see that fear is causing their assumptions. Then they will stay in touch with the uncomfortable feelings of panic within instead of jumping to romantic solutions. In other words, they will be staying with current reality rather than acting from fear and dubious assumptions. That will lead to deep self-understanding, which is a solid basis for understanding the world and formulating appropriate goals and methods.
To stay with current reality within requires bravery. It requires placing truth above harmony and meaning. Spoiler alert: If you stay at the starting place, you find real harmony and meaning as by-products anyway.
Perhaps Rebel Wisdom and their friends are too committed to their goals and methods to hear what I am saying. But people reading these threads might still be exploring.
What is truth?
@@kunipeg8706 Oxford dictionary says:
true: "in accordance with fact or reality".
Generally, I think we can find the truth of small things. Big things are hard to prove.
metacognition? HA! Whilst 1 child on this planet dies from starvation, science, religion and academia have failed miserably but sure, just keep making up words and gesticulating.
What makes you think it’s the job of ‘science, religion and academia’ to solve the whole worlds problems just like that? Why aren’t you feeding starving children?
@@fainitesbarley2245 Your reply, on this day in particular, shows exactly what is wrong with the world at large. That you could express this publicly and either expect everyone to nod and think. "ah yes, good point" or that you are so variously psychotic and fragmented/demented that you need the instant gratification of sensationalism you felt, is, frankly, perverse. I am feeding starving children, my own. Name one place on the face of the planet where labour is more valuable than food and the price of survival is not far outweighed by the levy of debt.
The fact that you are problematic, is not my problem. Idiot.
@@GhostyGu science and Academia are definitely in bed with exploitative business. Everyone wants to think they are siloed off from the monster. But it has come to the point where all buying and selling has the mark of the beast.
bairns?!
@@marykochan8962 One thing that differs between science/academia and religion is that science/academia doesn't sexually abuse children and hide its pedophiles from justice. That seems to be the delightful territory of the god botherers.