# Titles - Watch This Before Awakening From The Meaning Crisis By John Vervaeke # Thumbnail - John Vervaeke is staring intently at the audience in the middle of the thumbnail. In the background is a burning cross. # Script So you want to make your journey through the lifechanging video series that is Awakening From The Meaning Crisis. But you know it's over 50 episodes long and each episode is an hour. That's a lot of Mullah. In addition, the series isn't beginner friendly. It includes lots of difficult language and ideas. **In this video I'm going to give you a primer for Awakening From The Meaning Crisis.** It's truly a lifechanging experience. My meaning in life has increased greatly and I feel my understanding of reality has significantly deepened. My relationship with myself, others, and the world has gotten stronger. I hope you get the same experience upon watching the series. **Let's start with the thesis of the series: why are we experiencing a meaning crisis?** ## Why Are We Experiencing A Meaning Crisis? ![[Why are we experiencing a meaning crisis]] ## What Is John Vervaeke's Solution? John Vervaeke sees the problems we have with meaning making in our secular present day society. But he doesn't believe we should all return to the religion for our meaning making. [[Why has religion been important in the past and now|Religions have been essential in the past and even now for creating meaning.]] Telling those that are religious to leave their religious practices take away what is for some indispensable rituals and practices for meaning making. The reason he doesn't want to push return to them, however, is [[Religions create rigid thinking in their members|religions can create rigid thinking in their members]]. In the past this has led to horrific acts of genocide and oppression. John Vervaeke believes we need a secular ecology of practices we can ingrain that will help us create meaning out of our lives in the absence of religion. A secular worldview that will allow us to create meaning without creating close mindedness in its members. This sets John on am epic adventure through the history of meaning making, how we create meaning out of our lives, and ultimately how we can secularly create meaning out of our lives. He uses cognitive science--a mix of neuroscience, psychology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy--as the scientific practice through which he does this because he understands any one science isn't enough to fully understand our meaning making. Ultimately John believes we can awaken from the meaning crisis by creating a worldview that incorporates all of the machinery for cultivating wisdom and rationality to overcome self deception and create meaning in one and others life. Then creating a co-op network of community of practices. People researching into the meaning crisis through analyzing practioners that are actually implementing the machinery talked about in the course. This way, more strides can be made in how to create meaning and it can be implemented to see if it works. **It's a totally non-secular view of overcoming the meaning crisis but isn't hostile toward religion as well.** It's respectful. To do so John must explain how we create meaning out of our lives? ## How Do We Create Meaning Out Of Our Lives? John believes we create meaning out of our lives through a [[John Vervaeke's 4P3R Model Of Cognition|the 4P3R model of cognition]]. ### 4Ps - Different Kinds of Knowing 1. **Participatory Knowing:** - This is the most fundamental type of knowledge, according to Vervaeke. It is not about knowing facts or how to do things, but about knowing how to _be_ in a certain context. This form of knowledge is pre-conceptual and not describable and has to do with the fit between the agent (the person) and the arena (the environment or context they are in). It's about the attunement of the individual to their surroundings, which enables a flow state as opposed to confusion. For example, if you were playing The Witcher 3 participatory knowing would be the immersion of yourself within the Universe. The identification with Geralt, other characters, and the Witcher Universe, and the affordances those relationships give you. 2. **Perspectival Knowing:** - This refers to knowing the subjective viewpoint from which one and others perceive the world. It is a context dependent knowing which changes depending upon one's environment, the people you're with, and what's happening around you, and how you fit into that scenario. In the previous video game example, perspectival knowing would be your understanding of your position in space and time within in the Witcher world and what is happening around you in relation. 3. **Procedural Knowing:** - This is knowledge about how to do things. It involves skills and procedures and is often tacit, meaning it can be hard to explain verbally but is evident in action. It ranges from simple tasks like tying shoelaces to complex ones like performing surgery. In the previous video game example this would be your ability to establish hand eye coordination for various game moves like killing vast amounts of bandits, and set up routines like quick saving before leaving the game. 4. **Propositional Knowing:** - This type of knowledge is about facts and truths. It's expressed in declarative sentences and involves assertions that can be true or false. It’s the kind of knowledge that can be easily communicated and argued about. In the previous video game example, this would be knowing the mechanics consciously like how to use signs in combat, that a specific game item increases your health, or the victory conditions for a certain quest. ### 3Rs - Cognitive Features 1. **Relevance:** - Relevance refers to the importance or salience of something within an environment or context. It's about what matters to an agent at a given moment. Cognitive systems need to filter through a lot of information, and relevance helps in modeling the situation to anticipate future states. 2. **Realization:** - Realization carries a dual meaning, bridging perception and action. To realize is to both comprehend (see, grasp) and to bring into being (make, construct). In cognitive terms, when one realizes relevance, they both understand what is important and are able to take the necessary steps to act upon it, moving closer to a goal. 3. **Recursive:** - This refers to the feedback loops that are intrinsic to cognitive systems. Recursive processes allow for constant updating and refining of models and behaviors based on feedback from both internal states and the external environment. It's about the dynamic interplay between the agent and their environment where each informs and shapes the other. The 3R part of this model points to what John calls [[Recursive Relevance Realization]]. In simple terms relevance realization is the process through which organisms realize relevance in their environment. In this definition realized is used in both definitions of the word: to become aware of, and create or cause something to happen. A great metaphor for relevance realization is a chess match. In a chess match you can think turns into the future to try and beat your opponent. But the more turns you think into the future the less likely what you predict will happen might. At some point, you will reach combitorial explosion, the point at which the amount of future options becomes so overwhelming it's impossible to act. This is why chess masters need to determine what move to make and how far in the future to look based on the context. **The moves that are relevant to them shift.** This same logic can be taken outside of chess. You are constantly confronted with way more information than you can handle. Some important some not. The process through which you determine what information is relevant and should be used to realize things is relevance realization. Here are some everyday examples of relevance realization to understand it more concretely: 1. **Grocery Shopping**: When you go grocery shopping, you're bombarded with a multitude of choices. Relevance realization occurs as you focus on items that fit your dietary needs, budget, and preferences, ignoring irrelevant options. 2. **Driving in Traffic**: While driving, you're presented with a continuous stream of information – traffic lights, road signs, the behavior of other drivers, pedestrians, etc. You selectively pay attention to what's relevant for safe driving and navigation, such as the traffic light's color or a pedestrian crossing the road. 3. **Social Interactions**: In conversations, you constantly pick up cues to determine what topics are of interest or importance to others. You focus on certain aspects of the discussion, while ignoring others, to maintain meaningful and appropriate interactions. Why do we do relevance realization? We do it because we are both embodied and embedded. Embodied means the mind sits inside of a body, which alters how it behaves. Our mind changes due to the fact it’s enmeshed inside a body. It's also embedded in that it's inside an environment. These two things combine to make us organisms constantly in the process of optimizing between efficiency and resiliency to adapt to our environment, survive, and replicate our genes. Organisms that can realize relevance most effectively will be more apt to doing this. This is why [[You can only understand evolution in the context of an environment]]. A shark is only adaptive in the environment it’s evolved for, but put it in a dessert it dies in minutes. This is John's secular naturalistic explanation for how we create meaning out of our lives. In summary, relevance realization acts as a dynamic, adaptive process that guides us in navigating these four kinds of knowing. We continuously interact with a complex and changing environment, selecting and focusing on what is pertinent and valuable. This ongoing process helps us to: - Develop and maintain a coherent sense of of our agent and arena relationship (participatory knowing). - Understand the subjective viewpoint from which one and others perceive the world (perspectival knowing). - Acquire and apply skills effectively in various situations (procedural knowing). - Form and refine our propositional understanding of the world (propositional knowing). Through this integration, we create a sense of meaning in our lives, constantly adjusting our understanding, skills, perspective, and agent arena relationship in response to our changing environment and internal states. This process is essential for our ability to thrive, adapt, and find fulfillment. ## How Do We Optimize The Integration Between The 4Ps and Relevance Realization To Find Meaning In Life? The question is that John poses as the foundation for the series is, how then do we optimize the integration of the 4 types of knowing with relevance realization to create meaning out of our and others lives? **The problem is many people's relevance realization machinery and four types of knowing are deeply counterproductive to finding meaning in life.** For example, if someone struggles with relevance realization, they might find it challenging to discern what is important in a given situation. They may be overwhelmed by information or choices, unable to decide what to focus on. Without being able to prioritize and focus on what's truly important, life can feel chaotic and directionless. **John believes the answer in navigating this problem lies in developing rationality and wisdom.** Let's deal with rationality first. ### Rationality We have lost touch with what it means to be rational. **By losing touch with rationality, we have lost the cultural grammar for talking about overcoming self-deception, creating meaning, virtue; in other words we don't have the language for discussing wisdom.** This is part of the reason discussions over wisdom are so rare in every day society. As a result, it's rarely thought about by the vast majority of people. To show my point, what comes to mind when you hear rationality? Likely intelligence and logic--you might see images of Spock from Star Trek. **This notion of rationality is completely counteractive to how rationality has been seen historically.** Rationality to the Aristotle was the capacity one had for acting in a way that grows their character. Rationality had ties to virtue, overcoming self-deception, creating meaning, and ultimately becoming wise. This is no longer the case. We need to bring back a new definition of rationality that will allow us to talk about the things mentioned above. My favorite definition comes from John Vervaeke's Awakening From The Meaning Crisis: **"Rationality is the capacity to reliably and systematically overcome self-deception."** There are a few important aspects to this definition of rationality: - Firstly, being rational means you *consistently* (not necessarily always) act in a way to overcome self-deception. - Secondly, rationality is systemic meaning it's not domain specific. This is what differentiates rationality from expertise. Expertise is domain specific; a tennis expert isn't necessarily good at solving mathematics and in fact their expertise might hurt their ability to play squash or ping pong. Rationality, however, transcends to all domains of life. - Thirdly rationality is not the same thing as logic or intelligence. In fact according to research cited by John Vervaeke intelligence only has a .3 correlation with what the researchers operationalized as rationality. - Fourthly, rationality, unlike intelligence is incredibly malleable. One who is not rational can become rational by aspiring to be more rational. - Fifthly and finally rationality is pre-inferential and inferential. Rational people are good at solving problems using evidence and reasoning. But they also have an incredibly trained insight for seeing through self-deception. You're probably thinking, that sounds great Aidan. **But how can you train your capacity for rationality? I'm glad you asked:** - Develop a need for cognition. A NEED--almost craving--for COGNITION--to formulate problems and solve them. The more problems you formulate and solve the better you will become at using evidence and reasoning and learning more about yourself. - Develop a growth mindset. Failure is necessary to grow. - Learn about: - Logic - Probabilistic thinking - Systems Thinking - Evolution - Scientific Thinking - Meditate. This will develop your capacity for insight and your self-knowledge as you will see your frames of the word. - Contemplate. This will help you change your framing of the world to be less prone to self-deception. - Immerse yourself in a community of reasoners who spot each others fallacies. Often, others spot our self-deception better then we do. - Become radically open minded. - Differentiate your information diet. This will break you out of your echo chambers. I know that was a lot to take in. But philosophizing over rationality like this is essential. Writing this down myself and understanding more deeply what is involved in becoming rational not only helps me aspire to be more rational but also gives me the grammar to talk about it with others. Like I am right now! **It's this grammar that is critical for addressing the meaning crisis.** ### What is Wisdom? Wisdom integrates rationality but goes a step further. In simple terms, Wisdom to John is the aspiration and realizing of the optimal integration between relevance realization and the four types of knowing to create meaning out of ones life and others as well as overcoming self-deception. [[Wisdom is more about the process than the outcome.]] It is fostered on the level of perspectival, participatory and procedural knowing rather than just the propositional level. Because of this it takes more than just knowledge OF wisdom to be wise; [[Knowledge and wisdom aren't the same thing]]. It requires changes in participatory, perspectival, and procedural knowing. This can be helped through propositional knowing but ultimately isn't sufficient enough. [[On the difficulty of passing on wisdom compared to knowledge|This is what makes it so hard to pass on wisdom compared to knowledge.]] [[One aspect of wisdom is determining what degree of the virtues is relevant for any given context]]. Ultimately John believes we can awaken from the meaning crisis by creating a worldview that incorporates all of the machinery for cultivating wisdom and rationality to overcome self deception and create meaning in one and others life. Then creating a co-op network of community of practices. People researching into the meaning crisis through analyzing practioners that are actually implementing the machinery talked about in the course. This way, more strides can be made in how to create meaning and it can be implemented to see if it works. It's a totally non-secular view of overcoming the meaning crisis but isn't hostile toward religion as well. It's respectful. ### 6 Lessons I Learned From Awakening From The Meaning Crisis For Creating Meaning In My Life - Relate beyond propositional knowing - Cut through self deception - Don't go at it alone - Learn to get into flow more often - See how you see. We tend to look at the world through our frames without realizing it. Our values and beliefs. It's like we are all wearing shaded glasses which make us see the world differently. Practice taking off those glasses and looking ON them. This allows for transframing. - See life as your practice. Develop a [[Need for cognition]] and [[Growth mindset]].