Solving the meaning crisis | John Vervaeke

John Vervaeke on the meaning crisis - how can one find meaning in life?
Watch the full talk at iai.tv/video/solving-the-mean...
We are in the midst of a mental health crisis, with an increasing number of people feeling devoid of meaning. But how do we tackle this? Join John Vervaeke, as he offers a radical solution by appealing to the philosophical traditions behind wisdom and purpose.
John Vervaeke is an award winning professor at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology. He is the creator of the widely viewed, 50-part lecture series on KZbin, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
#meaningoflife #lifelessons #meaningfullife
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[@TheInstituteOfArtAndIdeas]

What brings meaning to one's life? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below! You can find the full talk here: iai.tv/video/solving-the-meaning-crisis-john-vervaeke?KZbin&

[@ben-sanford]

Thank you, a wonderful short distillation of John's work.

[@ashrf67]

that's very serious and dangerous, i never thought i would come across such an interesting problem, so people have to be aware and be careful of this....

[@mycount64]

I want consciousness to exist if I did not exist. I am having experiences to make a difference to consciousness.

[@cameronidk2]

Worthy .. i mean we expect a certain level .. this one ..very Worthy!

[@Adaerus]

John Vervaeke makes sense to me of this thing called "meaning in life" from a scientific point of view. It's not easy to understand it if all you know about science is that it tells us that matter is fundamental. That was my premise up to a few years ago. But in fact physics do point to how matter is not fundamental and time and space are emerging properties of something else that is yet to be understood. And looking for a fundamental principle that governs everything might be an exercise in futility knowing that besides bottom-up emergence there is also top-down emanation. It doesn't matter if we don't fully understand what's creating time and space yet but we can figure out what are the processess that happen in the mental realm which seem to affect or govern human actions and interactions at an individual level as well as a social level. These things do exist and ancient people refer to these as "spirits", "angels" or "demons". It's only recently from a historical perspective that this mental realm has been trivialized in a sort of a materialist understanding with incarnated horned devils and feathery winged angels even by the religious people. In fact these things are more complex and more scientifically explainable in their real manifestations.

[@petervandenengel1208]

Dissecting the theory (or when the presentation actually represents the emergence of a creature, it is not about a theory, but could still be explained differently) there are three problems with it. 1 - It confuses words. Meaning, in terms of intention (not explanation or definition as the word suggests), is not about a definition of the field. But what parts of intent under what conditions survive in individuals. Like intending to be rich, or to be well is not a definition encompassing what existence is about. In the economy one could end up being rich or poor (the two opposites), so in relation to the mission to survive one obviously choses to be rich - and the definition of under what circumstances the economy functions is skipped in thinking completely. One just supposes it functions correct. Like nature is correct. But the system has been human made and humans make mistakes. 2 - So, then the definitions given are not comprehensive. Being well, under what conditions. When being well can be reached through drugs or alcohol, or by being stupid (not paying attention to things), the other possibility being intelligent is skipped. What would one rather be. Afraid or courageous. Then the definition of life (meaning crisis is interpreted as the intention of something, not a description of the whole) is not given. The meaning of life could be about its properties/ not about what someone being alive might wish for. When to survive is the first definition, eating good food does not fall under that definition. But under a sub stack. Like having a pretty baby is not the definition of having to replicate. When the explanation of existence, as the question suggests, is not what is attended nor explained. The whole thing is a mind bend. It addresses something which is not introduced by the question. It represents a meaning crisis within itself. Like can a fool answer questions he does not understand. So what happened here? Let‘s first give a definition of the creature, which is not about a theory, but circumstances. 3 - He fails to give a definition (is a meaning crisis about the proper definition of existence in general?/ or is it a crisis in the intentions of individual people he meets, who cannot figure out what they want anymore) and he confuses words. While the speaker who is a psychiatrist talks about a crisis in confused intentions of his patients, they do not represent the world. But he might believe they do. When a psychiatrist asks himself what purpose his patients could find in their personal lives, this does not answer the definition of human existence. Having a child (the suggested solution) does not explain the meaning (definition) of life. It is an experience which results in a different psychology. This psychology does not define the abstract explanation of existence, nor its purpose. It represents a trade off. Which suggests to transfer the problem to innocence. Starting all over, but which has no problems with it. As if that solves anything. It is a weird psychiatrists advise. Not that of a theorist philosopher.

[@transcendentphilosophy]

I like to refer to this type of meaning as "transcendent meaning" so as to not preclude the existence of more simple types of meaning like pleasure and pain.

[@sohamsuke]

'The Light Gets In' Nice occult ain soph right there, Institute.

[@alanjones5639]

People have crises of meaning because they look for and accept (even submit to) meanings made by others. When people become responsible for making their own meanings, they are also be able to change those meanings as their values and appreciations change. Perhaps he speaks to this later.

[@patrickwilkerson6303]

The question he asks at the beginning for assessing how much meaning one has in life is “what do you want to exist even if you don’t and how much of a difference do you make to it?”. This is very personal.

[@alanjones5639]

Yes, the questions are very personal. But will the answers be processes, qualities, relations, and other significances derived from one's own experiences, or will they be significances received (like dogma) from others? @@patrickwilkerson6303

[@projectmalus]

Yes, it's like knowledge and self responsibility allows one to move past triggering to see at least two brilliant truths, one's vulnerability and how oneself responds. Everyone gets triggered but the mechanisms are boringly obvious after a while, they diminish the perp since their world is reduced in terms of creative response. The self responsibility is like a flaming sword that can help such people by explaining well the self trickery.

[@ewencameron4269]

funnily enough the next link on my you tube was John Lennox”Seven days that divide the world”🌎

[@seanhewitt603]

Ultimately, if we exist in the prime reality, and not a simulation, our purpose as biological beings is to procreate. We as a species aren't children anymore. Haven't been for a long, long while. The younger dryas caused a bottleneck in our population, but intellectually, we are capable of recovering our legacy. Our purpose is to observe and learn, we're good at that.

[@oneworldonehome]

"You were sent here for a purpose-to play a small but vital part in a greater education and upliftment of humanity. You were sent here to give to the world and to be in the world. The world needs you, and as you are able to regain your relationship with the world, you will experience what it is calling for and how you can respond." From _The Meaning of Christmas_ - a teaching from _The New Message from God_

[@valariemgutierrexa.k.a.map6085]

What do you "mean" by the word "mean"? Like....in the context of having "mean intentions"? What is the "meaning" of the word "meaning"? Something meant or intended? What is the meaning of your purpose and what is the purpose of your meaning? "Do you mean what you say and do you say what you mean?" Also, did you notice that religio rhymes with gigolo?

[@TimCCambridge]

👍👍

[@joshwyant7474]

Important connections, but still too abstractified. It's like throwing a drowning person a book on how to swim. People need a more concrete and personal defining of the source of meaning: family, truth, love, or ethnicity. But he can't come out right and say these things because then he would cease to be a theorist and start begin a religious leader. As long as the definitions are shackled to pluralistic, theoristic intellectualism, the masses' meaning will continue to suffer. I would posit the sources of meaning as: Truth/Recognition (historical immersion, empirical study), Familial love/Reproduction (wanting to continue the legacy of love by reproduction), and Responsibility (realizing that you as an agent must create these things.)

[@projectmalus]

My opinion is that truth/recognition is better thought of as relevance realization, which is more abstract seeming, but it avoids this human only world, where our observations of the world are recorded and the energy used is sequestered from that which produced or realized the knowledge. The recording of knowledge is brilliant though. See how the Familial and Responsibility get folded into the "only human"?

[@friesNcoke]

He never talks, philosophically, about power--except as an aside. The tools he hopes to wield are too powerful to accept that carte blanche. Who will protect and how will these tools be protected under adversity, even from other nations? I suspect he takes for granted that nations can be brothers.

[@mellonglass]

Water in the river crisis and what of emergent-see. I love the traffic control hands. Go make some friends is the message.

[@tuckerbugeater]

What is the chemical reaction that lowers male aggression after they have children? Did the male want the child or the orgasm more? Meaning is codependency to offload tasks to other brains. When we mimic others and they mimic us we feel meaning. If this path is broken we are alienated. We can find novel attachments distance us from inevitable suffering. The ultimate detachment is the rejection of the human bias of longevity obsession.

[@kinghyrule86]

The empirical analysis of yapping

[@johnn522]

It's astonishing how every one that brings the meaning issue misses the whole point of it's need and cruciality!! if life were easy and infinite i don't think that a meaning would be much of a concern , the emotional gratification would be enough for most people unless for those that are inquisitive . the whole point in my opinion is that we are mortal creatures that are aware of our immortality in addition to the fact that life isn't easy for everyone.. so when you realise that you have a finite time to live and that this is the case for all individuals , and if you're not fond of the cheap psychological tricks that makes us feel that we have more permanent existence than we actually have like piling up things and properties and think of leaving a legacy which i think is idiotic . You will inevitably need a meaning to make sense of the difficulty and pain, with finding real value in things and with dealing with the finite existence . if we started with 0 and ended up with it and there was no log or effect for what ever equations there was in between would it really matter?!

[@jordancollings5379]

I feel like I’m in this situation once u fall of the boat theirs no climbing back on

[@johnn522]

it's good that someone was able to extract the gist of what I'm trying to say, since it's something ppl would rather not to process in their heads even if it were written neatly let alone the case here where it's written in a clumsy way . Yes exactly and this is part of the reason that i consider my self as an alien. finding the truth and the objective meaning of life is apparently beyond our reach and therefore i understand when people take the practical helpful ,effective approach to the matter and live in their own bubble . for me i just can't do that. knowing how fallible our memory and our reason and that we can't perceive reality and the role of our emotions on our thinking process just exacerbate the problem more and more but despite all of this i can't think of anything more important than keep seeking the Truth. one can rely on emotional meaning instead and reduce everything to what feels good and makes him happy but in my case even such a meaning is unreachable! i wonder what's preventing me from just letting go and stop this misery of being stuck in the ocean my whole life without being able to reach any shore.. I'm i that coward ? is it just the survival instinct! or maybe because I'm trying to get to the truth and i try to avoid subjectivity and biases and self deception and staying in the active agnostic mode that i'm not able to take any actions because i admit that i don't know anything for sure and therefore i can't act and just resorting to the inaction instead ?! @@jordancollings5379

[@jordancollings5379]

@@johnn522hey John I’m wondering if u ever attempted to go for anysort of help with doctors I’m at the point I’m gonna give it a try no meds but just wanna talk through some things, I no I’m not able to just trick myself into some silly truth but maybe just maybe a professional will be able to do some trickery… I have also realized that I was in a depression and had a form of ptsd because of events in my life which lead to searching but the simple ability to google things now a days prevented me to search for the meaning myself… where before u could find this sense of purpose in love or nature or animals or religion or science but now it takes a quick google to find out why u feel that way from those things and then u go back to the question of why bother…. If only we were in the days of no internet where a true search for meaning took going out and interacting and learning different things from different places finding answers on your own, but now how am I gonna let my brain trick myself with these things when I no what they are doing… sorry for the terrible typing but I’m glad to no theirs someone in the same spot

[@projectmalus]

@@johnn522 Isn't allowing an action? Possibly the trouble is in the individual and the collective and the power of each, a sort of guilt felt by a conscious person at the collective power misaligned with virtues at the individual level. It's a tough one to reconcile. I had an existential crisis when a teen, if I couldn't change my family (as the youngest) how could I ever change the world? I now think statistically while acting locally. I look at rates of production of harmful elements in culture like "sugar production in the americas" or wheat, and look at rates of preventable disease increasing, then I don't participate and try to educate. It's really the way to change the world to offer a better product that's cheaper especially when that product is home. Look at rent and how easy it would be to change the direction of money, back into the community but paid forward to those without, in an open source template without an Uber corporation skimming off the "profit". The amount of money is staggering.

[@johnn522]

@@projectmalus isn't allowing an action giving that one is only interested in Truth and doing the right thing accordingly , knowing that even if it's possible to live in a bubble like the majority of people it will eventually burst. therefore if i can't know the truth, i can't take actions.. fully voluntarily and by my own choice at least.. giving that we have any free will or choice in the first place. I'm not able to see any solution to the problem in your approach, maybe because I'm too dumb. consciousness as far as I'm convinced or as far as I'm concerned is local at the individual level and the individual always vanish ( unless we are in a simulation ,there's an after life, there's any kind extension to our awareness or at least an impact of it) so i don't get why i should care about the society that will survive beyond the single individual ,about "making the world a better place" , why should i care about a country, why should i care that the specie will survive as a whole ?! maybe those who have kids or want to have kids have a sort of extension to the future with their selfish genes , but even in this case as far as one can tell that the earth and the whole universe is going to end . so in my view there's no objective meaning and purpose that justify our existence or bringing another life being to it, what's left is the emotional meaning and one problem with that is the observation at least if not the fact that the universe doesn't care about whether an individual is going to reach it or not. it's interesting that you mentioned that you had a failed attempt to ameliorate your family and that caused or was corelated with your crisis . I've been attached to my mother so tightly since childhood but she's a disaster, and i tried to get her to make changes but it was always a failed attempts even toward the smallest and most mundane issues, so maybe it's the root of the problem after all ..(º～º)

[@haraldtheyounger5504]

I have no purpose, and have no interest in purpose. Life is fine without purpose. Seeking other makes its own problems, needlessly.

[@Matterful]

You have to ignore the thumbnail, Vervaeke is not primarily concerned with purpose.

[@Synodalian]

Let's follow that logic through all the way to the end: Does politics have no purpose? Is everything fine just the way it is, with all the demagogic trends we're seeing over there? Is history totally contingent and thus inapplicable to our present?

[@haraldtheyounger5504]

@@Synodalian You're asking the wrong questions, which merely perpetuates unnecessary problems. What happens when you step out of the mix?

[@Synodalian]

@@haraldtheyounger5504 When you step out of politics, you step out of the scope of _power,_ and that renders you completely subject to its partisan whims. If there truly is _no_ purpose to our lives whatsoever, then there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop totalitarian dictatorships and genocidal crimes from emerging, and therefore we have no reason to mourn when they happen. Everything becomes relative because it is all ultimately arbitrary and contingent. There is no real _reason_ for anything. Such is the State of Nature. The question is whether or not you can take the Stoic/Buddhist/Absurdist route and simply _accept_ that.

[@ReflectiveJourney]

​@@haraldtheyounger5504humans are social by nature. You cant check out fully. You can just move to a neiche culture that is not mainstream which is fine by itself but not a solution for the mainstream

[@gofai274]

Free will, absurdism, unit 731, suffering, eternal...

[@SolaceEasy]

Casting a new, unattainable goal on a already psychologically burdened humanity. The hubris of a richer person declaring we must all value the few individuals who have gotten off the moving train of meaning, and are satisfied with their current position on the meaning of It All. Not a word spoken on those who find life meaning in, for extreme example, inflicting the pain they feel on others. In short, Big "M" Meaning has no meaning.

[@RicardoSenzo]

Vervaeke is not offering a practically applicable solution here. A "do this, get this" fix-all. More like, if we are able to discover what's happening under the hood we can then effectively work on the problem. He's working to bring together the most significant internal and external factors. The most useful statements are: Meaning in life is composed of 4 distinct needs: Purpose (an overarching goal), coherence, significance (everything but you), mattering (you). "What do I want to exist, even if I don't? And how much do I matter to it? If you've got good answers to both of those, you have meaning in life. If you have the first but not the second, you're seeking. If you have neither, you're in trouble."

[@anatolwegner9096]

He lost me when he said 'and by the way you never see a full object - that's only an imaginal thing'. Soo deep...🤣

[@DJTheTrainmanWalker]

What 'meaning crisis'?

[@Benson_Bear]

LOL exactly.

[@badreddine.elfejer]

Nihilism

[@DJTheTrainmanWalker]

@@badreddine.elfejer So no crisis of meaning.

[@badreddine.elfejer]

actually, the very end of nihilism on a large scale makes a crisis. The whole philosophy is a dead end and affords no way to cultivate wisdom. Just sad to make one think he can actually "find out" meaning "of" life instead of "in".@@DJTheTrainmanWalker

[@DJTheTrainmanWalker]

@@badreddine.elfejer I can't see a reason why. In context, nihilism would seem to be a red herring. The only 'crisis' that might be imagined would be the death throes of theism... But then theism has been the most destructive and hateful notion humanity has ever inflicted on itself from the get go, so it's end has to be a positive. If there is to be a 'meaning to life' it can only be one we make ourselves, individually and bespoke to the individual. Otherwise it's just programming. And at least by taking personal responsibility we might create a morality worthy of the name, which a theistic view cannot logically provide. Wisdom comes from experience, experience is often the result of a lack of wisdom.

[@qedqubit]

"What do i want to exist , even if i don't"...Rrrraaaight... Forget it ; i'm not gonna watch this video

[@korpen2858]

Why not?

[@TheJackal917]

No, we don't.

[@oguzzengin9435]

what don't we?

[@TheJackal917]

@@oguzzengin9435 answer to the question on the thumbnail.

[@anatolwegner9096]

The title should have been solving the meaning crisis with a meaningless word salad. Not too bad if you look at it as stand up comedy though...

[@itsameamarioyaplumber3981]

Maybe try watching it twice?

[@anatolwegner9096]

@@itsameamarioyaplumber3981 Oh it all makes sense now.

[@arono9304]

This comment should’ve been “I did not attempt to understand what he was saying.” Not too bad if you look at it as stand up comedy though.

[@anatolwegner9096]

My impression is that this stuff is not meant to be to be understood in the first place. Yeah sure maybe it's me but I only hear a wild mix of incoherent ideas and trivialities, with random fancy terminology thrown in to give a false sense of profoundness. @@arono9304

[@tiagovasc]

Tell me aspects are word salads and I'll explain each one.