Ep. 1 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Introduction

Awakening experiences are a subset of mystical experiences characterized by a sense that the experience was more real than ordinary reality and requires radical life transformation; research shows lives genuinely improve after these experiences.

“these are awakening experiences these are experiences in which people come back from the mystical experience and say that was somehow more real than this and i need to change my world i need to change myself they engage in what l.a paul has called a transformative experience what is also known as quantum change a radical transformation of their lives and we know we've got good research now showing that they're right their lives get better after these awakening experiences”

Shamans combine the capacities of rock stars (charisma), therapists (psychological insight), and artists (creative skill) into single individuals, who can trigger placebo effects in patients; 30-40 percent of medication efficacy is placebo effect, so shamans providing enhanced placebo response were effective healers.

“shamans are highly charismatic imagine if you could take a rock star like a super rock star a super therapist a super artist put them all in one individual and then they come to you when you're sick they can enhance your ability to trigger your own placebo effect the placebo effect is real thirty to forty percent of all real medication the ones we sell as real drugs is placebo effect”

Altered states of consciousness are connected to meaning, wisdom, and self-transcendence, and intelligent organisms—including non-human animals like Caledonian crows—deliberately seek to alter their consciousness, suggesting it serves an adaptive function.

“there's deep connections between meaning wisdom self-transcendence and altered states of consciousness why do human beings seek to alter their consciousness in fact not just human beings other intelligent organisms seek to do this right caledonian crows will tumble down roofs in order to make themselves dizzy for no other purpose than to alter their state of consciousness”

There is an increasing sense of abandonment of trust in public institutions: people have lost faith in the political system, the judicial system, religious affiliation is declining, and participation in clubs and organizations is in decline.

“you have the abandonment of trust in any of our public institutions we're losing right we've completely lost any sort of faith or trust in our political system we're losing faith in our judicial system right religious affiliation is declining consistently throughout people's participation in right clubs organization is in decline in general”

Exaptation is an evolutionary mechanism where structures that evolved for one purpose are repurposed for another; the brain frequently uses this mechanism, taking existing cognitive processes designed for one function and exapting them for different functions.

“exception in biological terms is an evolutionary mechanism so for example i'm using my tongue now to speak okay tongues did not evolve for speech if they did all the animals that had tongues would be speaking at you and that'd be terrifying especially your cat if your cat talks to you i'm sure that would be terrifying so what did tongues evolve for they evolved to move food around in your mouth they're very flexible and they're poison detectors”

The Upper Paleolithic transition, occurring around 40,000 BCE, marks a radical change in human behavior and cognition evidenced by the sudden emergence of art, music, representational objects, symbolic calendrical systems, and projectile weapons.

“so this period is known as the upper paleolithic transition it occurs around 40 000 bce now what's interesting about this is that biologically as a species we've we had existed much longer than this we existed about you know it of course there's some controversy around this but conservatively since about 200 000 bc but around again roughly 40 000 bce there's a change a radical change”

Handshakes originated as a way to demonstrate one has no weapons and to allow the other person to touch your hands to detect cues like clamminess or tension, serving as a ritual to build trust with strangers.

“this is to show you have no weapons this is allow the person to touch you to see if your hands are clammy or not there's all kinds of intuitive stuff going on”

Western culture is experiencing a mental health crisis with rising suicide rates, increasing prevalence of nihilism, cynicism, and sense of losing touch with reality among both individuals and groups.

“we're going through a mental health crisis suicide is spiking and it's right now there are some socioeconomic factors but there's clearly other things that are at work right there's increasing sense many people are expressing it of losing touch with reality we encounter more and more often in individuals and groups nihilism expressions of cynicism expressions of deep kinds of frustration and futility”

During a near-extinction event around 70,000 years ago, human populations were reduced to perhaps 10,000 individuals, caused by climate change and volcanic eruptions, which created selective pressure for sociocognitive innovations like expanded trading networks rather than technological solutions.

“we know that before the upper paleolithic transition about 30 000 up to 60 000 or 70 it's unclear because there's various times of what this might be happening we know that we went a near extinction event human beings almost went extinct we were crunched down they think maybe to maximum of ten thousand individuals we'd almost died off part of it seems to have been the overall climactic change of the end of the last ice age in africa part of it there's a super volcano that goes off around 70 000 years ago”

Psychedelic therapy achieves healing rates of approximately 80 percent for post-traumatic stress disorder, compared to conventional therapy's 20 percent success rate, representing a radical improvement in treatment outcomes.

“they can overcome post traumatic stress disorder like the normal with the best therapy right solution rate for people with post-traumatic stress disorders about right you know things go really well 20 or so you introduce psychedelics into the therapy and you can get the right the healing rate up to 80 percent so what's going on there”

It is possible to develop a scientific, cognitive-scientific account of enlightenment and explain why it alleviates suffering from lack of meaning, a phenomenon that is both historically perennial and particularly acute in modernity.

“maybe we can bring all of this together and actually propose and and maybe some people will be affronted by this but propose a scientific a cognitive scientific account of what enlightenment is and why it alleviates the suffering from lack of meaning that is particularly pertinent for us today but has always been a perennial threat since the axial revolution”

A psychotechnology is a systematic set of tools that fit the brain (rather than fitting the body) and enhance how the brain operates; literacy is an example: it standardizes information processing and allows temporal and social networking of cognition.

“a psychotechnology fits your brain and enhances how it operates... it's called literacy you're not born literate... it's a standard set of tools that standardize how you process information... i can take my brain now and link it to my brain back then and my brain in the future so those are i'm networking all these instances together i'm improving my cognition i can also network my brain with your brain and improve my ability to solve problems”

The word 'shaman' etymologically means 'one who knows,' 'one who sees,' 'one who has insight,' and shamans are considered wise people; the word 'wizard' also means a wise person, and shamanic figures like Yoda and Merlin have become archetypal wise figures in modern culture.

“the word shaman means one who knows one who sees one who has insight shamans are considered wise people and that's why you know that's why we have all these words like the word wizard means a wise person okay so that's it for our first video”

The nine-dot problem (joining nine dots with four straight lines) illustrates how people unconsciously project a square frame onto the problem, activating pattern-completion skills that lock them into an unsolvable frame, and insight requires disrupting this unconscious framing rather than believing one needs to 'think outside the box.'

“you projected a pattern here the square and then you engaged unconsciously unconsciously your skills of connecting the dots when you were a kid you connected the dots and when you connect the dots you're not supposed to do this make a non-dot turn if you do that you won't get a picture of a picnic table you'll get like an acid trip psychedelic thing right so unconsciously you project a pattern and then you activate the appropriate skills and then you're locked and you're blocked you can't solve that problem”

The meaning crisis is distinct from but interdependent with the environmental crisis and socioeconomic crisis; all three crises are interconnected and cannot be understood in isolation from one another.

“i'm not claiming that this is the only crisis we're facing far from it what i want to do in fact is talk about how the meaning crisis is interacting with other crises the environmental crisis the socio-economic crisis but in addition to those which are quite well discussed in the public at large there is a meaning crisis which is being discussed quite significantly within academia but needs to be brought to the public at large because one of the things i'm going to argue is that these three crises are not inter not independent from each other they're interdependent in important ways”

The machinery that makes humans adaptively intelligent is the same machinery that makes them susceptible to foolishness and self-deception, suggesting a deep structural vulnerability in human cognition.

“the very same machinery that makes you so adaptively intelligent is the same machinery that makes you susceptible to foolishness that will take us into some of the topics that are relevant to people's existential experience meaning crisis topics like absurdity alienation futility horror”

Most horror movies are not truly horrific; real horror is an experience in which one's grip on reality itself is being undermined, which is why people find it terrifying.

“right most horror movies aren't horror we'll talk about what horror really is and what people experience when they're actually experiencing horror their sense of grip on reality is being undermined and people find that as you can imagine terrifying”

Meaning can be understood through metaphor: just as sentences have meaning through pieces fitting together and making cognitive impact, life has meaning when its pieces fit together and connect one to the world in an analogous way.

“when people use this word meaning it's a metaphor they mean there's something in their life that is analogous to how a sentence has meaning the pieces fit together in some way they make an impact on your cognition and connect you to the world in some way there's something about our lives that is analogous to the way sentences have meaning”

The word 'project' derives from projectile weaponry (thrown object), 'object' means thrown-against, and 'subject' means thrown-under, suggesting that abstract cognitive operations are metaphorically rooted in the concrete experience of projectile throwing.

“think about how you talk about how you have a project that you're working on right project from your throwing or people will talk about oh there over there there's an object that means thrown against or i'm the subject that means thrown under all day long cognitively you're throwing that's because this throwing task is such a complex task”

Trading rituals developed to create trust and enable communication between strangers in expanded networks; they function by enhancing mindsight—the ability to intuit others' mental states—which in turn enhances one's ability to understand one's own mental states through increased metacognition.

“we need various trading rituals because the the thing you're doing now and again think about how this you take this for granted in living in a city it is the deep presupposition of civilization you hang around with strangers lots of them and that's just like oh yeah well it's not oh yeah that's a hard thing other species don't do that”

Initiation rituals developed to reinforce group commitment in the face of temptation from external groups; they function by requiring risk, threat, or sacrifice, which trains the ability to regulate emotion and adopt a de-centered (non-egocentric) perspective focused on the group rather than the self.

“if they go through pain and fear that shows that they're really committed to you they're really committed to your group but what does that mean cognitively what does it mean for how the mind gets trained you have to really improve your ability to regulate your emotion you have to really improve your ability to call do what's called de-centering to let yourself right be in the hands of other people a non-egocentric perspective because what's important now is no it's not centered on you the ritual centered on you but you through the ritual are being centered on the group”

Participatory knowing—used by shamans enacting animals—is distinct from belief; the shaman becomes the animal by embodying its perspective, skills, and lifeworld, enhancing tracking and hunting ability through this enacted understanding.

“this sense of participatory knowing that i mentioned when the shaman is enacting the animal the shaman isn't having beliefs about the deer the shaman is becoming the deer i don't mean metaphysically but the shaman is trying to get together the sense of the skills the way the kind of perspective the deer has the way the deer thinks the kind of world the deer lives in and by becoming the deer by having this participatory knowing of what it is to be a deer it enhances the ability to track and find the deer”

Wisdom is not merely abstract knowledge but is fundamentally about realizing meaning in life in both senses: becoming aware of it and making it real in practice.

“what is this meaning let's come into crisis why do we hunger for it how do we cultivate the wisdom because that's what i'm going to argue wisdom is ultimately about to generate enhance this meaning wisdom is about realizing in both senses of the word becoming aware and making real it's about wisdom is about realizing meaning in life in a profound way”

Foolishness is distinct from ignorance: ignorance is lack of knowledge, while foolishness is lack of wisdom—a failure of one's capacity to pursue one's goals due to self-deception and self-destructive behavior.

“foolishness as something different from ignorance ignorance is a lack of knowledge foolishness is a lack of wisdom foolishness is when your capacity to engage your agency pursue your goals is undermined and threatened by the self-deception and the self-destructive behavior”

The Upper Paleolithic transition involved a software change (how humans use the brain) rather than a hardware change (the brain itself remained unchanged for 160,000 years), and shamanism likely played a significant role in this software change.

“it's not a hardware change the brain has already existed for 160 000 years it's not changing significantly during the upper paleolithic transition it's much more likely that it's not a hardware change in the brain it's a software change in how human beings are using the brain and what part of what i want to argue is that shamanism is probably playing a significant role in that software change”

There is an increasing prevalence of BS (bullshit, in Frankfurt's technical sense) pervading culture, society, and academia, which has spiked in concordance with other increases in dark cultural factors.

“we're going to use this term technically we're going to talk about this and frankfurt's use of it there's an increasing sense of more and more [ __ ] everywhere pervading and if you take a look at the book we actually chart how this has been spiking and it's concorded with all kinds of other increases in these dark factors”

This is a complex and difficult problem for which there are no simplistic answers; anyone offering a one-hour solution to the meaning crisis is either deceiving, manipulating, or significantly self-deceived.

“this is not something that i can do simply because this is not a problem for which there are simplistic answers if anybody offers you an answer to this crisis in an hour i would wager that they are deceiving you manipulating or they are themselves significantly self-deceived there's a reason why we're stuck there's a reason why this is hard this is a complex and difficult thing we are undertaking”

Western culture has reduced all forms of knowing to one form: having special kinds of beliefs, making us belief-centric and ideologically focused, when knowing encompasses many other modalities including procedural knowledge, experiential knowledge, and participatory knowing.

“we tend to have reduced all of the ways that the ancients talked about how we know to one thing to to know is to have a special kind of belief and so we are very belief-centric which is why we are so focused as a culture on ideologies but it turns out that we're going to have to have a much more expanded notion of what knowing means”

Zombies and superheroes have become pervasive in entertainment and mythology because they are cultural expressions of a sense that people are stuck, unable to act with full agency, reflecting the existential sense that civilization is in crisis or collapse.

“why are zombies so big right why are superheroes so big right now right there's an increase this these mythological and we'll talk about myth means these mythological forms i'm going to argue are expressions of a cultural sense a sense that we're stuck somehow”

Therapy is booming in modern culture partly because of the meaning crisis and partly because people seek therapy to recover lost kinds of knowing—insight, transformation of how they see things, and transformation of their sense of self and realness rather than just transformation of beliefs.

“some of you might be aware of those other kinds of knowing because you know how integral and important they are to therapy which is another thing that is booming in our culture part of why it's blooming is the meaning crisis part of why it's booming is because people seek out therapy precisely because they're trying to recover these lost kinds of knowing the kinds of insight that is needed the kind of transformation not of your beliefs but of how you see things your sense of self and your sense of realness have to be transformed”

This series will develop both a historical account of the meaning crisis (how it arose) and a structural-functional account of meaning (how its cognitive mechanisms operate), and these two accounts will inform and constrain each other to provide a comprehensive understanding.

“this will give us this will give us a structural functional account of meaning what is the structure of it what are its cognitive processes what are its cognitive mechanisms how do they function how can they fall into dysfunction we're going to have this historical account and this structural functional account and we're going to make them talk to each other they're going to inform and constrain and enable each other”