Postmodernism and the meaning crisis w/ Rafe Kelley - Voices with Vervaeke

Rafe and I discuss the relationship between post-modernism and the meaning crisis. This is a careful and in-depth discussion of issues raised in my recent discussion with Jordan Peterson.
Rafe's channel: / channel
Video with Peterson: • A Conversation so Inte...
Plato reading list: Plato's Critique of Impure Reason by D.C. Schindler, Platonism and the Objects of Science by Scott Berman, Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for our Times by Paul Tyson, Ancient Epistemology by L.P. Gerson, and Plato and the Question of Beauty by Drew Hyland.
This is part of my series Voices with Vervaeke: Science, Spirituality, and the Meaning Crisis. You can support my work on Patreon, with the proceeds going into the research I do at the University of Toronto on the Meaning Crisis and the cultivation of wisdom here: / johnvervaeke
Join the Discord Server to discuss and reflect upon my work: / discord

[@wiktor5016]

This was very helpful to me, thanks Rafe and John. I feel I need to get better at giving my thanks for these conversations on KZbin because I honestly do not know what I would do without them. I feel, in a way that is hard to explain, hurt by my time at university. Everything was not bad and I learned a lot, but even though I did not fail to get a degree, good grades and so on, I still somehow feel that I have failed. With what I do not know exactly. But there are at least situations where I felt that I chose not to say what I actually think. I now refrain from giving examples because there are probably some part of me who just want to complain and feel sorry for myself and that was not the purpose of writing this. I just wanted to say that I think I have experienced some of the problems in academia but that I am therefore very grateful for these conversations which make me want to continue to read, think and learn.

[@wildfinchers]

Wow. I really needed to read that today. I just finished my undergraduate degree at Trent University, in Canada (close to U of T, where John teaches) and feel so deflated. Instead of that feeling of deep accomplishment of all the gruelling work I did (more on myself trying to conform to what modern learning is) I feel empty. I am moving onto my Master's next month, in Counselling Psychology, and this series has been the only thing that has allowed me to understand this completely paradoxical experience of University. Everything you think you know about University is wrong, you find out once you get in there, and no one tells you about it. Each and every time I try to express to a fellow colleague how I feel about my university experience and the existential dread that accompanied it, they skate right past the existential cry for help. Like so many people just accept that this is what it is, and you can't change it. But to me, it feels just. plain. wrong. And every time I try to express this to people in the social and natural sciences, it doesn't seem to be an issue. Like. Not even worth talking about in most cases?? These are people in university!!! Moving on to be the next intellectuals!!! Thank goodness for these lecture series, dialogos, and comments from people like you, who are honest about what they feel and think. As I go into my masters this year, I am urging my 'self' in advance to be intentional when I write that next paper I feel no connection to. I am going to make more sense of the project -- an utterly trivialized word -- I am invested in, and find the real meaning in my work. Thanks, John!

[@82472tclt]

John pointing out & speaking to Rafe making Foucault & Derrida moves is an example of powerful listening to not just content but structure. It's having me think of Korzymskoi's sense of knowledge as structure and that we can attune to that which we are attuned by and I think John exemplified this "attune-full" listening to the way structure itself attunes.

[@CBMcKinley]

Remarkably well put, Guy. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. It is helping along a deeper understanding of what occurred in that moment. I appreciated John's thoughtful reply as well, though had not fully grasped what was occurring until your comment here. It is heartening to discover minds coming together in this way. Grateful for your contributions. 🙏

[@82472tclt]

@@CBMcKinley Thanks received Chris! It also occurs to me one of the ways "distributed cognition" or "collective intelligence" can be heard via the structural way in which thinking/speaking/sensing unfolds and is a difficult hearing precisely in how it withdraws in it's letting appear...

[@austinkuipers6087]

Awesome talk aside, thank you John for leaving the intro in when Rafe left open the option to omit it. It's a pleasant sensation to see someone introspective and humble sharing with a friend their excitement at growing acceptance in a new social group of thinkers.

[@manubishe]

You recent interview with Peterson was indescribable. More power to you, and may your students carry on your name into the future.

[@JiminiCrikkit]

Always full of gratitude to watch and listen and learn from these. Thank you.

[@SeniorCebolla]

Another great example of dialogos. I can't wait for the next one!

[@joshbowe-artwork5489]

So glad I encountered this conversation, thank you both. Vital information for me, fascinating to listen to you both counter on a subject that all too often induces emotional responses

[@johnbuckner2828]

It was a really productive conversation.

[@SensemakingMartin]

Such a great chat. Thanks guys

[@nasar8480]

Amazing conversation. Thank you.

[@Matterful]

John -- make more public book / reading lists! Thank you both for everything that you do.

[@BruceBalensiefer]

Hey! This is wild! I love Vervaeke and I know of Rafe from the Northwest parkour and martial arts community! The world is so amazingly small.

[@Starbat88]

This was a mind-blowing conversation. Thanks for your work!

[@leedufour]

Thanks Rafe and John!

[@johnvervaeke]

Thanks Lee.

[@jackdods]

John at the end you mentioned a sharing a list of Plato readings. Would you be able to share these with the rest of us? I feel many of us have taken a similar path to Rafe and are also ready to dive into Plato. Very much looking forward to your next dialogue about 'Différance' and Relevance Realisation! Thank you 🙏

[@abickett]

This discussion highlighted to me a fundamental question that I've been thinking about, as I work through the Awakening from the Meaning Crisis lectures. What are the mechanisms through which the ideas developed by great philosophers cause real changes to society and the world? It is clear to me that there is value in separating the philosopher, the philosophy, the arguments, and the framing they propose, and their impacts on the greater philosophical discussion, as well as their influence on society and the world. Is there a formal name for the field of inquiry that examines how philosophical works impact society? Only a vanishingly small proportion of society has a deep understanding of the thinkers to whom so much is credited. With critical theories, there is an avowed commitment to a praxis, to an active application of the ideas. In parts of the discussion, the postmodernist approaches of Foucalt, Derrida are considered perhaps as forms of psychotechnology, or ways of framing or challenging a problem, in absence of a particular telos. Should we segregate the methods from the goal? And how does one start to investigate the manner in which these tools, framings, or ideas ultimately end up shaping society?

[@arifisher1698]

I’d like to see that list of Books on Plato too!

[@sciencetutortv]

I second that request.

[@yosefrazin6455]

Im so glad that he is finally addressing levinas - there are so many important pieces for JVs agapic work that could be developed re:Levinas

[@johnvervaeke]

Yes, I want to explore this more.

[@yosefrazin6455]

@@johnvervaeke if you are open to a few ideas: the idea that we can't assume i - thou is mutual (unlike Buber) but must be taken by the individual as asymetric (especially in response to the big o Other). This is the non-reciprocrating aspect of agape. However, another might be the difference between the framing of agapic love vs 'response-ability' both as ethic and response- the flip side of the sacrifical element of the agapic is that the encounter which calls it first is violence (at least in the post modern noncensusual sense see Levinas Talmudic Discourse on Shabbat 98) - in your language i wouldnt call it violence as much as the real world encounter of the Other/Face is embedded cognition, coming out of participatory knowing that is in some sense prior to propositional or even perspectival ontology (in Levinasian retrospective construction of the Subject). Going back this space between answering the ethic called forth by the encounter with the face of the Other (God) embodied by the Law/Torah vs the love embodied in sacrifice and forgiveness (Jesus) could be chalked up to Jewish vs Christian framings (though the later kabbalastic tzimtzum parallels the necessary retraction of Self to make room for the other its not tied to the sacrifice framing though some do continue to tie it to love). also Pauls 'mistake' in the jewish framing being that its God's sacrifice allows humans to have free will and the Law being meant to train us not in blind obedience but in responding to the Other through commitment, trust - the means by which we hand over control as individuals. And yes plenty more to discuss here but ill leave it at that for now. Looking forward to engaging with you more! Be well

[@opposingshore9322]

@@johnvervaeke Not sure if you've engaged much with Ivan Illich, but his angle on Levinas concerning agape and the human face was really impactful for me. I highly recommend Illich's "The Scopic Past and the Ethics of the Gaze". Here is a salient quote: "Levinas set out to save "the face." The face of the other stands at the center of his life's work. The face of which he speaks is not my own, which appears reversed in the mirror. Nor is it the face that a psychologist would describe. For Levinas, face is that which my eye touches, what my eye caresses. Perception of the other's face is never merely optical, nor is it silent; it always speaks to me. Central in what I touch and find in the face of the other is my subjectivity: "I" cannot be except as a gift in and from the face of the other."

[@TheBotuto]

Greetings from Mexico. Thanks Rafe for your intuition base on the faith

[@timyork8642]

This was really helpful. Would it be fair to say that later Derrida said we have an absolute obligation to the other while later Foucault said we can only realize ontological freedom through care of the self and Plato saw that the self and other are combined in a person's actuality and their potential such that proper care for the self is simultaneously fulfilling one's obligation to the other? This reading of Plato is what I gathered from Schindler.

[@rachelhayden2586]

Hard digging, this. Very grateful to witness.

[@johnvervaeke]

Thanks Rachel. I hope you are well.

[@willgiorno1740]

Hello J John, or perhaps someone else here...how d I I join your q and a on Bridges of Meaning tomorrow? Do I just click on the youtube notification...or do I need to join something or download something in order to participate? Would love to ask a question there. Thankyou.

[@BrianArrigo]

Please share the Plato reading list that John promised!

[@lizellevanwyk5927]

Was just about to type the same ;-)

[@91bumbi]

@@lizellevanwyk5927 Plato reading list: Plato's Critique of Impure Reason by D.C. Schindler, Platonism and the Objects of Science by Scott Berman, Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for our Times by Paul Tyson, Ancient Epistemology by L.P. Gerson, and Plato and the Question of Beauty by Drew Hyland.

[@lizellevanwyk5927]

@@91bumbi thank you!

[@alexanderlindsey7134]

you should post the book list he requests at the end of the video into the description.

[@user-vw6xp5nl6t]

John, could you talk on ‘Irrelevance unrealisation’? - the state of not knowing your irrelevance? How off the mark / out of alignment you are?

[@jamesburns4226]

Apologies for yet another comment, but John could you please post your Plato reading list in this video's description, or provide link to it? I think a few beyond myself would appreciate it. I've just started digging back into Plato, due to your meaning crisis series. The last time I read anything either by or about Plato was quite some time ago. :)

[@johnvervaeke]

Hi James. Sorry for the delay. I have added a list to the description. It is by no means complete or exhaustive but it should be instructive for this video.

[@jamesburns4226]

@@johnvervaeke Awesome! Thank you very much.

[@RafeKelley]

@@johnvervaeke thanks John

[@johnmott8047]

Without detracting from the quality of this discussion, John's obvious discomfort with Rafe's p-m critique would seem to confirm the extent to which it has overtaken and corrupted academia.

[@HANECart1960]

On the contrary John's discussion involves both crit and support and is unemotional..Rafe's clearly emotional and has come into the discussion to re-affirm that PM is an evil devil. he has a bone to pick and John's patiently and gently dismantling his argument for the most part. Seems to me that donating a philosophy as "corrupted" is a pretty untenable position. Philosophies are or can be tools to use if you need them or not. Sure the methods of philosophies can be misused as i feel that surly some of PM IS in terms of current use in some fields, but to wholesale dub a philosophy or philosophers as "evil" etc seems a task without much intellectual worth? Though i must admit that it is an interesting and necessary discussion at the very least to debunk MOST of Rafe's prejudices.

[@FortYeah]

This is so great, thank you both! Thank you also for the neat and short definition of nomalism. around 1:14:00 Jakob Boehme, according to Berdiaev, said that before there was God there was liberty. Liberty is a scream coming out of nothingness. That is why there is light, that is why there is God. Nature comes out too because of that same liberty. There is a Gotteit (Goddity) that precedes God (or the logos if you prefer). The talk about motivation as the primal instinct recalled me Boehme who also said that the primal darkness form which liberty, potentiality and nature arise has no choice but to order itself and become a symbolic representation of the inner world, the spiritual world (Nicholas Berdiaev, Études sur Bohme I et II).

[@requited2568]

Thank you for this conversation. I gather you guys are focused on where these ideas come from and presenting the arguments, however when you move to discussing the state of society I think it would be beneficial to go more in depth into the Bolshevik influence and then the Russian Communist infiltration. While I am sure you guys have better sources, for those not already well read on the subject Jocko's The Unraveling podcast has a tasteful episode on it, I believe episode 16 and it's probably the least controversial place to easily get the history. They have self titled website you can listen to it on if interested.

[@dezatron]

Near optimal reaching for revelation was demonstrated here :)

[@wanderingpoet9999]

If someone has a moment could you reference the thinker mentioned called R. Scott Baker if I heard correctly? Looked up the name found a fantasy author spelt Bakker - is that the man? Surely not - but anyway the fantasy novels look interesting and good ones are very hard to find so thanks for that anyway!

[@Ac-ip5hd]

Those are great books, but not for the faint of heart. If you find the first one hard, it pays off in the second half, he drops so much world building and made up words/culture it’s a bit tough in the first book, but it pays off.

[@Ac-ip5hd]

Dr. Gregory B Sadler has a philosophy channel with a speculative fiction playlist that does Bakker, and some of his thought and cultural reference. The channel is just his name, I’d recommend not watching it until you’ve read it first, or he’ll ruin it for you.

[@jgarciajr82]

I would love for John V to talk to Joe Dispenza.

[@artandculture5262]

Not everybody can speak in all of the lanes.

[@aWomanFreed]

YES!!!!

[@matthewbramlett4483]

Jessie… I agree that would be a great discussion. Are you interested in trying to make this happen?

[@jgarciajr82]

@@artandculture5262 that's the point

[@jorgejimenez5658]

I would love a book of yours summarizing your thoughts...

[@RafeKelley]

John will be releasing an Awakening from the meaning crisis book soon. I am in talks with publisher to start writing a book in the fall.

[@jorgejimenez5658]

@@RafeKelley wuuuu that's great news !!! Good luck with your book !

[@jrdifferent]

Wish the audio was better. Made it difficult to follow the conversation

[@marcinkryczka7044]

"Postmodern Phenomenon" vs "Postmodernizm" sound a lot like "Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon" vs "Uinindentified Flying Object" :D

[@dezatron]

Hanzi Freinacht and Lene Rachel Andersen have entered the chat...

[@ubertrashcat]

All this makes me think that John could be one of the pioneers in post-postmodernism. And I don't mean this as a joke. In an Integral way (whether you like Ken Wilber or not) he's able to simultaneously overturn postmodernism and NOT revert back to modernism, but integrate them together.

[@jamesburns4226]

Around 1:46:00 you mention Rules for Radicals. On the political right you are probably thinking of Roger Stone or Roger Ailes (yikes the irony of them being roger with what they have done to minds). There is a book out now called Rules for Deplorables by Cathi Chamberlain where jettisoning ethics for a heuristic playlist of tactics to fight "socialism" is its intent. A sad direction to take things, but an example of the intellectual impatience John is talking about.

[@RafeKelley]

The figure I was referring to was Karl Rove but I don't know that much about the role of Stone and Ailes and be interested to know more about their role in the propagation of the the post ruth approach on the right.

[@jamesburns4226]

@@RafeKelley If I recall Ailes came up with Dukakis: Willie Horton revolving door for HW Bush in his 1989 presidential campaign and later was head honcho for Fox News until he left over a sexual harrassment scandal. Stone is probably the more recently influential post truther. Trump pardoned him. Watch 'Get Me Roger Stone' on Netflix for one perspective. The biggest difference I see between left/progressive propaganda and the right, is the left seems slightly more subtle, and as I mentioned in another comment here, has really started relying on circular citations of other progressive reporting/propaganda. I think it is about playing to their respective audiences. Right is in your face Trump-style blatant attack to appeal to a more working class base (Hillary's deplorables). Left is for the "educated elitists" but definitely those who view themselves as more sophisticated with a rhetorical need for "evidence".

[@havadatequila]

Skip to 7 mins for start of convo.

[@HeloIV]

I recently read Foucault's writings on power and it's now obvious to me that he'd be appalled by the state of the academy and society at the moment, parts of his philosophy were picked as tools to attack but not to self criticize (Geoff Schullenberg has talked about this in his blog and podcast). On another note, it seems to me that you both make equivalencies between the left and the right but that's a reductionist way to view politics. I'm absolutely not saying you need to change your political stances (nor that you make politics more central to your work) but it sounds as if you never had conversations with people on the right, which is quite lacking if we're talking about dialogues being essential to the path to truth.

[@sallyjom-cooper470]

1755, lotr changed my life, yes me also, go on

[@fbalvim]

I don't agree with Kelley about Mohana, the way i see her papa represents the conservative force and the move dont make fun of him, yes he is against the change that the liberal force, the grandma, is pointing, but the movie let clear that importance of conservative force to keep and maintain the culture. What i think the movie is saying is that in some cases, like the environment problem, if we dont break with SOME traditions, this conservative force can bring us to destruction. Conservative force and liberal force are both essential for life itself, we need to avoid polarization.

[@RydSpyn]

Read Baudrillard and you will be enlightened^^

[@thevulgarhegelian4676]

I thought you were going to say something right and then you totally cleared it up and made the same point John makes that as soon as we objectify these thinkers just like how these thinkers may have ADD rectified other thinkers we totally cut them off for good or for ill. Todd McGowan a great hegelian philosopher along with shisha make the point that soon as any of these thinkers justify the means for their ends they always end up doing damage period which is very much where Stalin and Lenin go with the Revolution in Russia

[@sallyjom-cooper470]

Oooooo so basically there are real patterns that’s all we are arguing

[@noxot13]

people think they can get rid of their subjectivity, what a laugh. subjectivity is the real beginning of post-modernism. there is always an interpretation of what one reads and it is never just a book that stands alone. subjectivity is what allows us to commune with angels and God or what allows us to fornicate with devils. pick whatever you want, that is what you will become.

[@jp2135744]

Whats wrong with trump?