John Vervaeke: Jordan Peterson & the Meaning Crisis 

Thanks for the great response and comments so far - if you haven't already - go subscribe to John's channel!: ru-vid.com/show-UCpqDUjTsof-kTNpnyWper_Q

"What are they putting in the water at the University of Toronto?" A massive dose of reality and a little bit of Ecstasy.

Vervaeke has a great series of vids on his channel. His insights are tremendous.

Hey--he mentioned @Paulvanderklay and Jonathan Pageau! Glad to hear their work is being recognized, but I'd take umbrage with his interpretation of Christianity's response to the meaning crisis. Christian thinkers like Francis Schaeffer addressed it as early as the 60s when the culture wars were just getting underway. As Jonathan and Paul often allude to--in less snarky terms because they are gentlemen--many in the church are figuratively muttering a sort of "Told you so"--no small number of Christians have been pointing people back to faith all along, but the secular world at large has been sneering at these attempts until lately. What is undeniable is that JBP has taken a brutally honest epistemological approach to truth and God whereas many Christians--myself among them--have unfortunately presented our beliefs in a perhaps dogmatic way at times, largely because we were worried that uncertainty would be a turn-off and taken as an admission of defeat by our interlocutors. In actual fact it was, paradoxically, this very dogmatism that drove so many away. If that is what Vervaeke is referring to when he talks about restructuring Christianity's approach to the meaning crisis then I agree, but if, as I suspect, he believes that all Christians were caught off guard by the sea change in Western thought I'm afraid he's mistaken. You could say it's like the teenager has finally outgrown their rebellion and sees the value in the parents' earlier strictures. But perhaps the parents also should have taken the teen's very real angst into account a bit more sympathetically and admitted their own ignorance a bit more readily!

I whish the audio levels were a bit more normalized. Amazing content .. thnx !

I haven’t looked forward to new episodes as I do the Awakening From The Meaning Crisis series since when The Wire came out.

We really like Vervaeke’s work and would love to speak to him on our channel sometime. His insights on the science of shamanism were profound and put life in a new perspective for me. Thanks Rebel Wisdom for doing such good work. I just spent a week with Tim Freke and we had a filming with Ken Wilber yesterday which we will post along the way. Tim said he was going to try and put us in touch. I aspire to make my filming and production as good as yours and still have a ways to go. Thanks for being a force for good in the world Rebels 👊.

I'm falling in love with the word "psychotechnology"

I appreciate getting introduced to John Vervaeke on Rebel Wisdom -- whose "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" lecture series blows Peterson's "Maps of Meaning" lectures out of the water. It's a shame that Peterson's sloppy thinking gets so much more attention than Vervaeke's much deeper and more well-organized analysis.

Listening to this was kind of like eating 5 dryed grams of psilocibe mushroom . JBP is the priest that introduced me to this other John Vervaeke wizard . I want more .

I like a lot of stuff Peterson does and says in his lectures. Particularly in regards to integrating the ego self. In his lectures Vervaeke is getting at a level below, he argues for a process by which we make the world intelligible to us in the first place. It’s about how our ego, agency, normative claims, our abilities to make categories and to have language all get off the ground. The best part is is Vervaeke makes a completely naturalistic argument without disregarding the metaphorical language of our wisdom traditions; dichotomies like heaven and earth are important to us even though they’re not describing the world directly. As I understand it Vervaeke’s world view not only incorporates all the best aspects of Peterson’s, it also goes deeper both philosophically, historically and scientifically.

Vervaeke nails it when he says the meaning crisis is aggravating the opioid and mental health crisis. Materialists often think chemicals are powerful enough to control a person, chemicals may be able to control someone in certain circumstances, but mostly chemicals can't control a person unless their personhood is already vulnerable, as it is increasingly in our society, for multiple reasons including what is labeled a "meaning crisis" here.

Do you realize that the trajectory of your interviews has lead you on an ever-shrinking orbit around planet McLuhan?

Agitated, probably overly enthused ( almost feverish)mind - please calm down and explain it with less psychobabble jargon and less intellectual/academia-driven puzzle language. Simple language is not stupid language! In fact I cannot imagine wisdom ever arising in a convoluted form. JBP first came across to me as a lone warrior in the midst of battle with complexities and cognitive contortions - I appreciate how he calmed down and now wisdom can really shine through. I also appreciate both Eric and Brett Weinstein for their clarity.

thanks for introducing me this John Vervaeke I have been overdosing on JBP for about 4 or 5 years

Amazing as usual. You've inspired me to start my RU-vid channel and join the conversation. Although, I do have more contextualized plans moving forward. Thanks, a dozen.

Great content, I really love this channel. Actually talking about things, rather than just shouting each other down.

We have to look beyond ourselves for meaning. We cannot look to other humans (we know our darkness even if we don't acknowledge it). Spirituality provides the horizon, psychology the map and cognitive science the directions at their best.

I've commented on all of the Awakening from the Meaning Crisis because Vervaeke and his colleagues are engaging with the relevant information.

I can definitely confirm Dr Peterson was a gateway drug for both Rebel Wisdom and John’s series.

More mind blowings at 34:38 where he articulates how an invented and intentionally adopted psychotechnology can be so deeply and profoundly internalized. Amazing.

Psycho technology?? This term implies there would be a totally objective technologist at hand wielding the technology in the manner he or she perceives it to be appropriate. BIG MISTAKE! Read Jung again folks. He reminded us again and again that we cannot escape from our subjectivity. That’s why we need so desperately to watch and try to understand our dreams and to talk with others who see what we can’t see. I am open to hearing from others as to what they think of my reservation. I love Jordan Peterson’s approach re the path to finding meaning incidentally.

Wow! Just wow. Great syllabus of thought. The interviewer properly prepared and guided this explosion of thought. I will certainly be viewing the recommended series from John.

This video as a definite step forward in the evolving dialectic. The Cartesian split is an unfortunate result of our mechanistic science tradition and probable cause of nihilistic materialist malaise. Rupert Sheldrake has relevant material in this regard vis a vis the Whiteheadian understanding rather than the unfortunate substance ontology we've inherited in academia. Historic Neoplatonism and Buddhism fit rather well with cognitive science, i.e., Evans & Varel. As we explore multi-disciplinary/multi-level analysis in academia of this sort, I believe we may solve much of our existential crisis.

I can’t help but feel these people are just making a new vocabulary to explain what all ancient traditions already knew. Unfortunately, engaging in this new religion will still require faith.

The (dis)embodied brain--again, C.S. Lewis well ahead of the curve, David! He talked about this in "That Hideous Strength" (1945) It may be cutting edge in Cognitive Science but Lewis was addressing it 75 years ago! As he would've said, "It's all in Plato--What do they teach them in these schools!"

The 'what' is important, the 'how' is important …… … but none of these make sense without the 'why' …. …. only through the narrative … the Logos do we get anywhere near it … and there will always be the 'gap' …. it's the filling of the gap that gives us meaning….. and the ultimate question is why is there a gap in the first instance.

It would be nice if there were references to articles, books, people referenced in this interview. Thanks, I really enjoyed the talk.

You just reminded me,for some reason, of Bill Donahue hidden meanings/photon boson ... thank you ...i'm off to check out mare o this John Ve fella in 2mins

14:00 Excellent example of Systems-Thinking's advantages over Hierarchy-Thinking.

This conversation is exactly what I need. I've been looking for people who have the words to express these ideas, concepts, realities, etc. I feel a sense of calm after watching and listening to this discussion. Like a place to land. Thank you so much.

I find Jordan Peterson more accessible in that he tones down the jargon. His forte is plain speaking, quite apart from his extraordinarily penetrating mind.

5th lobster, was cleaning my room.

"How do we bring our best cutting edge cognitive science to bear on these issues?" - please, either John or Rebel Wisdom, bring Bernado Kastrup into these conversations.

this guy is expending a ton of mental effort to inject meaning into life which has no context for the concept, those questions don't make sense in the grand scheme of the universe, maybe you can make some level of understanding where you fit in and conceptualize your own interpretation or personal meaning, but he's talking in circles about almost nothing, I'm a fan of Jordan Peterson and even he gets to the point about this subject, and doesn't sugar coat it

Yes, this is the stuff of anthropology which I've loved since the 70s. Asking questions such as how is our culture and thinking process intertwined with our technology. But there's an insight that is missing in this talk that is even more relevant to today, and that's our ancient evolved impulse towards tribalism and the belief systems resulting and enabling the urge. Belief systems from which we derive meaning. Sometimes the urge to band together works for the good, often it has the exact opposite effect. E.g., Freud identified circumcision as the root cause to the anti-Semitic feelings that resulted in the Holocaust. Discussions of FGM and MGM are highly relevant in Canada today. Is it a harmful anachronistic tribal rite of passage? Or a meaningful covenant from God? This is a fundamental reason why we need sex ed in our schools. These are brief talks by Robert Sapolsky providing an overview of our neurology and why we feel disgust to "the other" so quickly: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BavY9XqOrKA.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lrzXE5XttOE.html

Wow! Thank you for putting this chat together, my friend. Prof. JV is another life-changing Prof at UofT. And I didn’t know that ‘bullshit’ is an technically and academically studied term (5:10).

Thanks for another great video! I would suggest fixing the sound (seems like you're shouting).

Yeah, we are more than just input-output systems. There is something else.

Awesome, inspiring discussion. It’s so refreshing to see more and more brilliant scientists and academics exploring the full breadth and depth of this multiversal experience. Thank you Rebel Wisdom, you guys rock.

Embodied Brain Theoretical cultural grammar Software vs Hardware Bioeconomy

Forgot to mention the Jargon Framework.

I wonder if these different "psycho technologies" as he calls them could be analogous to ego defenses which we outgrow as we mature or evolve. They were essential to our survival as cultures until they become rigid, narrow, superstitious and outdated.

John should be the newest member in the “Intellectual Dark Web”.

Watch 27.10 to 30.29. Awesome. Share it. One highlight for me.

brilliant

Perennial Problems of Despair, Absurdity and Self Deception

4:00 "where I think I would be in disagreement with Jordan is Jordan tends to pitch this as a political issue as a confrontation from ideologies" Jordan has only has gotten worse in this respect. Lucrative business though.

I would really like John's take on the relation between self-deception and dogmatic thinking.

Comfort is the antithesis to meaning.

Had the privilege to take COG250 @UofT taught by this man. Truly brilliant mind.

I think my disagreement with this gentleman is that he believes our system is self organizing. I believe the only way it functions at all is that it is organized around the constant of Logos. Logos is and has been guiding and organizing society as we seek it. Not necessarily self organizing IMO but organized by the transcendent logos as we seek it.

Axial Age 2 Worlds Mythology Psychotechnology

His hand gesture game is on point

Do all U of T profs speak with their hands?

Can computers have conversations like this one? 😐

Twenty minutes in and I have no idea what he's been saying.

Can anyone explain the phrase " overthrow of the new atheist hegemony " to me ?

What happened in the 12th century?

Transformation and Transcedence people are longing for

I smelled rain sweeping up the valley and knew there was a name for that. Like John, Jordan and Richard Feynman I waved my arms around but the word was just out of reach. I waited, refusing to google, and eventually did a deal with my brain where the word would come while I was thinking about something important, and it did. As I watched Ian McGilchrist's Emissary and Master my brain said 'petrichor'.

Transformative Experience

Saturn conjoining Pluto in the sign of ultimate issues, Capricorn, leading up to 2020. The opposition of these two major planets last occurred at 9/11. A crisis of relationship (opposition). Now it is an internal, personal crisis, probing deep inner issues (conjunction). There is no “order of causation”. It is all of a piece, it is acausal. “What is the purpose of a flower? It has no purpose, it just IS” - Krishnamurti

Watch the "Awakening to the Meaning Crisis Series", and in parallel do the practices in the "Meditating with John Verveake" series. Good stuff.

Beautiful exchange.

Wisdom Traditions Meaning Making

15:58 is where JV lays out what his core goals are. Awesome. If anyone could plausibly accomplish that in our era, it's the team of JV and JBP.

I see Jordan Peterson as engaging the battle for human freedom directly, as a warrior faces a monster coming to take over the world; and John Vervaeke as a kind of contractor far behind the lines, not sticking his neck too far out there, content to explore ever further down an endless rabbit=hole of academic, epistemological metaphor-making. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see any confrontations, debates, interviews with Vervaeke where he helps correct false philosophies, deadly ideologies, or basic human darkness. Did I miss them? Vervaeke and all intellectuals of his substantial caliber and truth-loving bent, who love human freedom, are needed to engage and face and push back with all their power those who are fighting to control or exploit their intellectual freedom. JP and JV are not in opposition, at all, and their varying approaches to specific points represent helpful angles of view. However, in the cause of human progress, doesn't it seem that using what we already seem to understand, wielding and testing it in the heat of battle, would be a better, higher use of a mind like Vervaeke's? Here in 2019, engaged action must be preferred to comfortable theorizing. There is not all the time in world to work out where meaning comes from.

Dr. Peterson, thank you for introducing me to Dr. Vervanke (why do I suspect I misspelled his name the act of which I am sorry if true). I had a thought during your talk that I would love to har Dr. V talk to Dr. Iain McGilchrist. Then I found that they had done a video a year or so ago. It was as entertaining, enlightening and meaningful as this your talk in this video. I am worried that I noticed, Dr. Peterson, that you seemed to be distracted by something quite painful. It pains me to hear you speculate about your value. You have helped me and so many (uncountable?) people. I have no such resume. If humanity could, at this pount , survive without you then it sure as hell doesn’t need me. It seems that in your pain and continuous suffering that the idea that I would think ill of you for finding an out is unimaginable to me. I am blessed that you have not let that cup pass from you. Thank you for all you have done for humanity, sanity, a fresh view of reality and an introduction to an enormous number of brilliant people who are seeking the truth via the logos and also seeking love which is the coming together of people seeking truth. I have this elementary idea, that has formed in me by listening to these videos , that God is a combination of the logos and “love” or of a becoming one with the other also seeking truth. I can tell you that I feel love for you and your family in the same way that I have love for my family of choice (closest friends, brothers really(. To the extent that I can choose you as a part of my family- and understand ing that you have obligation to reciprocate,, i can say that you have become a part of my family of choice from a distance.

@15:23 I think that missed the point to properly state the greater point being driven at, that specifically-minded interventions are themselves possible destabilizing to the self-organization-adaption that would otherwise get developed. The milieu of the total crisis is an important function to generating the correct cultural synthesis of wisdom (an informal cultural solution, instead of say, a state-ideology).

Any solution, if viable, MUST find a way to avoid a relativistic metaphysic, or it will not have the power to resolve these issues. The only solution I can see that addresses this issue are religious philosophies that have a component of divine revelation. I don’t see how any other solution can provide the foundation that is needed to avoid devolution into nihilism. (For context, I’m still currently an atheist)

I can’t help but feeling these people are just making a new vocabulary to explain what all ancient traditions already knew. Unfortunately, engaging in this new religion will still require faith.

With all due respect the metaphor“gateway drug” isn’t how drug users actually experience a syncretic drug effect and there isn’t a “level-up” metaphor of any use for a rebel wisdom vidya but vervaeke is likeable like Alan Watts was likeable go there next mr fuller then we can go to hofstadter

Reciprocal adaptation of an unmovable object and an unstoppable force?

Can I get a upgrade for my mathematical psycho technology, I’m pretty sure the installation was a crap job.

Optimal functioning

Rationality of emotions

MEANINGWAVE EXISTS!!

The world was very much in thirst and hunger for people like this man and Jordan Peterson and countless others that’s starting this IDW category - consciousness is evolving Thank Goodness and thank you for your work.

We have to ask ourselves how we feel about a logical conclusion.

Excellent content as ever but sort out the audio please. I was listening to it in the car and the difference in levels of the speakers was just too much.

Synoptic integration

Deeper level of reality

Psychoengineering

I don't want psychoengineering, thanks.

so fascinating

What a great conversation! Really inspiring...

Every time you put out a new video, I become more excited for the next one. Please keep seeking out these interesting thinkers and flowing through these interviews/conversations.

The meta meaning crisis is the loss of God. Finding God again now will end the crisis and begin the new age.

J.V. ‘s R.R. video series is amazing .

As soon as I heard Vervaeke's elaboration as to what he does in the cognitive sciences, it reminded me of Dr. Bartlett who cautions us about the dangers of scientism even though he did not use that term. As Ernest Becker said, there is a difference between the *man of science* and the *science of man* It seems Vervaeke has unwittingly enthralled himself with the former i.e. with countless ideas and theories about cognitive psychology, that he lost sight of the latter i.e. with the urgent need to discover the underlying cause of human suffering. The quote below is just one of the many ways scientists gets lost in its own theories. _As a consequence of the psychology of belief, when we look at the history of science we see that its most basic concepts and presuppositions are often the least examined. They form the basis for all else in scientific thought, so that in their very mental activity scientists make habitual use of them. This results in it being all the more intellectually difficult and challenging to place them in the light of day. Since they serve as the fundamental, core conceptual vocabulary of scientific thought, they resist critical examination, because for a scientist to do this, he or she believes, often incorrectly, that those very concepts and presuppositions must be used. It can be hard intellectual work to find ways of stepping back or out of the habitual reference frame, and if necessary to develop new concepts and flexible ways of thinking that make it possible to render basic concepts and presuppositions explicit enough so they can be thought about without being themselves used in the process. Unfortunately, when efforts like this are made, practitioners of a discipline very naturally often feel that one must step into an altogether different discipline-into "philosophy" or "metatheory" which is then judged to comprise a separate area of study, one that can safely and conveniently be ignored by the scientist when his or her paradigm, tools of thinking, and habitual approach are made objects of explicit critical evaluation. This reaction has led to an unnecessary and undesirable compartmentalization of science and a divorce of science from "foundational questions" that are held at arm's length and encapsulated as alien-as just so much pure theory entirely divorced from practice. As a result, the critical examination of the conceptual foundations of science is often disconnected from science and considered to be a distinct discipline, so that responsibility is transferred to philosophy of science or perhaps to epistemology studied within cognitive science. This has served both as an excuse for scientists to shift the responsibility for their conceptual clarity to others and as a source of encouragement for philosophers of science and epistemologists to take on such meta-thinking without the requirement of firsthand competency in science_ If there is anyone David Fuller should interview, it would be Dr. Bartlett Steven James Bartlett. Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health: The Need to Look Elsewhere for Standards of Good Psychological Health

“Oh I get it it’s a boring but more robust Alan Watts” F these ppl Lmao Imascientlolololollol

I don't mean to be rude but the question on my mind is: where were you on Sept 17/16? Did you stand with your colleague in his hour of need or did you stick to your knitting?

Brilliant Job, David.

19:30 yep this is the biggest problem !!

Socrates talking to Vervaeke

So.....Jesus is coming?

"You can't search for truth without meaning" agree, why bother then. "19:50"

A lot of BS.

Well done as always.