The Cognitive Science of Ritual - with John Vervaeke

[@JonathanPageau]

Join us for John Vervaeke's new live course: The Cognitive Science of Ritual. The 6 weeks of lectures start on Oct 7th. Involved patrons get 10% discount. Apply code at checkout. Register today: www.thesymbolicworld.com/courses/the-cognitive-science-of-ritual Visit our brand new Symbolic World Store to pre-order our beautiful fairy tale book written by myself and illustrated by Eloise Scherrer: Jack and the Fallen Giants! Buy soon to catch the pre-order sale. Also don't miss the opportunity to get your hands on Snow White and the Widow Queen, which we have limited stock of and we're not sure when we will print more: store.thesymbolicworld.com

[@CastanOpiu]

If I have nightmares I just pray in my mind while I am asleep and I just wake up, or I am moved in the middle of New Jerusalem, I prayed so much that I created a soul memory instinct just like a muscle memory reflex. Lets see if one has faith in Jesus, if one is able to answer then you are a Christian warrior. What is your sword and shield as a Christian?

[@machinotaur]

15:04 I was on a plane last year, a night flight after Christmas, and I prayed with my prayer rope for about 30 minutes after takeoff. I stopped when the lights came up and they began the cabin service, and the woman next to me turned and said that she'd been meditating: she said I had a powerful, serene aura around me, and that it had made her meditation unusually deep. She asked if I'd been meditating too, saying I clearly had a rich practice, do I use a mantra, etc; and I said no, I was praying, and I held up my prayer rope. Her eyes lit up, and she said "Oh, you're Buddhist" and went on about her Buddhist friend; and when she'd finished, I said no, I'm a Christian, that prayer ropes have a long history in Christian prayer life. She said "Oh", turned away, and didn't talk to me again for the remaining 2½ hours of the flight 😂 What happened to my powerful aura, lady?

[@Dreadservative]

The demons in her don’t want her to learn the truth.

[@muntelestraniu14]

Mention her in your prayers if you can. That may well have been a seed that was planted. Glory to God

[@JIMMYUNKNOWN]

So you take her claim seriously still, after that response? Obviously she is a loon and you* don’t have such an aura. If you did you would never have left this comment.

[@TheApprentice007]

I love the synodal spirit you embody, Jonathan, with your bold interfaith conversations!

[@JohnWiedenhoeft]

I dont quite get this: why would realizing an aspiration require ritual? Usually we emulate people we look up to as a role model (including for rationality), without going through some ritual practices. Or am I misunderstanding that point?

[@RodrigoMera]

The ritual is the frozen in time frame which signals the achievement of an aspiration. Ritual is remembering and re-living that momment when you became or will become.

[@animula6908]

I think we don’t always think of rituals as rituals. It’s more like ritual tends to emerge in human behavior. And engaging in emulation of those we admire often involves simple actions that take on the significance of ritual if only to the person experiencing it. Oddly, the example that leaps to mind is a scene from the runaways, when the singer cuts her hair like David bowie’s. It’s a teenager cutting her hair to look like her favorite celebrity. But to her it’s a revolutionary act, or like a primal shedding of skin. I think that’s what he means about exchanging rituals for different rituals instead of being able to opt out. Maybe it’s just the human need to externalize perceived personal transformation. If something changes us, we express that change. If we fail to, then it didn’t really change us.

[@badreddine.elfejer]

much like how realizing how to ride a bike needs practice.

[@justinsmorningcoffee]

Hey John, I might be able to speak to this: Imagine you want to be a pro baseball player. The rituals you will go through involve daily habits, repeated exercises, mantras and mental exercises, and taking on a new identity (that of “ball player”) and each organization will have a “way” that they teach through these various rituals “the Cardinal way” or, as in the movie Moneyball “Oakland A’s baseball”. And if you notice, any aspirational goal state will require these types of rituals in order to get there. Another example might be writing. I’m a part of all these writing communities where people form communities, keep each other accountable for the daily habits, acquire mentors and mentorship, and work towards that goal state using repetition, practice, mental exercises and the like.

[@endlessendeavor4464]

Hey, what does “ritual” mean in this context? When you guys refer to ritual do you mean: traditions, or do you mean religion - and spirituality? (Or maybe even both.)

[@arturhashmi6281]

They mean it literally, in general. Ritual may be religious or traditional ceremony - action/s performed according to a prescribed order. Ritual does not mean tradition or religion per se, but both religions and tribal/national/etc traditions use various rituals. The fact that humans shake hands when they greet themselves is a ritual for example. I do not think that there is something like spiritual ritual though, because rituals by definition involve material world.

[@iliya3110]

Idk - sometimes it seems like our modern culture way overthinks things. If we began to lose our way with overthinking in the scholastic renaissance, will we find our way back through more rational deductive abstractions to explain why rationalism doesn’t work and what ritual is (via cognitive science, et al)? If anything I suppose it exposes the limits of all this heady stuff, but that also necessarily means we need to let it go, or at least, subject it to the nous, in its proper place in the hierarchy. To not offer “strange incense” but to offer the good incense of right belief and right worship. There is “boots on the ground” wisdom in the simple babushka saying her prayers but not in the complex jargon of intellectualism.

[@kevinquinnkelly]

Yes but for many of us John’s work is a necessary step to take ritual seriously. Only then can we take the next step of going beyond thinky-talky and just live it. If you’re already in that place then John’s work probably isn’t for you.

[@nathanfilbert2649]

I also often want to add to all these "unpacking", various modes of inquiry into living activity, that left/right, episodic/semantic/tacit, etc in reality are not distinct but commingled inseparable realities...

[@mathnihil]

@@kevinquinnkelly You're right, and not only that, John knows he's reaching a very specific sort of audience, that is, people interested in looking for new-old ways by which an interdialogical approach between different religiosities can be established. His work is not for everyone, there are few who can take their time to really study what is being said, and in some sense that few will by their own ways take this legacy foward.

[@kaufmanat1]

thinking themselves wise, they became fools. We are easily led astray. look at everyone that follows "The Science". science is good. some make it their god.

[@nathanfilbert2649]

Humility, humor, hospitality - trust in that which contains us all & everything - I don't know how else to welcome the Creator Christ

[@andrewrackliff8223]

Is there a glossary or terms? Lol, so many that I don't understand. Where do I go to get a definition?

[@SrEngr]

It’s like law. Law applies to the law breakers because law keepers don’t need it. So we are tacitly confessing in our rationality that we are under-rational? Sub-rational? Pre-rational?

[@tgrogan6049]

"A proper part to being rational is the imperative to be more rational". Okay so his point is the "imperative" is not rational? Why not? Why call rationality an "entity" this seems to be an informal fallacy. "Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity." So you need a "transformative experience and ritual" to be rational. Sounds like pure BS to me. Of course, JP eats it up because it gives aid and comfort somehow to his "magical mystery worldview".

[@llamzrt]

"Entity" also threw me off, but I believe his basic argument is that one cannot rationalize oneself into rationality - it is not "rationality all the way down". In practice, just that - one must first "practice" rationality. In philosophy, the sub-rational truth and goodness of rationality are primary to rationality itself. He's made a similar argument elsewhere about a tendency in scientific study to presuppose that we "stand outside of" the world in order to study it.

[@tgrogan6049]

@@llamzrt How about rationality is good because of the higher probability of better results?

[@educationalporpoises9592]

"Okay so his point is the "imperative" is not rational?" I haven't listened to the conversation yet so I'm just spit balling, but the quote by itself doesn't read like that to me. From the quote alone, it sounds like he's saying that being rational requires increasing in rationality. But idk the context lol. In their conversation with Jordan Hall, they talk a bit about persons and entities in a way that MIGHT (big might) address the fallacy issue. They discuss a few definitions. Moreover, sometimes this side of the internet slips between phenomenological expressions and exact expressions--which can be an issue, as you've pointed out. On rituals and transformative experiences being required for rationality, I'm not sure that's pure BS. Most rituals are very basic, not questioned, "required" and practical (washing hands before a meal, starting your workday with emails instead of whatever else you need to do, kissing your wife and kids goodnight, a 5 AM run, teaching arithmetic before teaching algebra, writing out what you know at the start of a physics problem, etc.). These are all very general examples, but that's just to say that there is an order to things that starts with action and experience. Importantly, rituals are shareable and scalable amongst peoples' and actions. Rituals can almost be understood as "protocols" that orient surrounding, related actions--for a purpose. They are like the conditioning of a ship at a port from which we leave to move forward into the ocean of action and un-realized experiences. Rationality concerns what is to be done with those actions and experiences AFTER the ritual is instilled in a person. It's just like "practice your scales" ritualistically in guitar helps prepare you to navigate guitar playing rationally, it teaches you a language so you can use it.

[@SempreGumby]

Ritual is a way of conveying information from the past to the present. Elimination of Ritual is a way of forced forgetting.

[@clay8546]

It’s more likely ritual is a way to connect with a community. Within Christianity alone, rituals have changed within denominations

[@stvbrsn]

Time binding

[@michelhaineault6654]

It's justification by the flesh

[@SERAPHIMA_777]

Enlightenment framework crumbling? Yipee

[@DoubleOhSilver]

Not even the first time 😓

[@alphabeta8284]

I think Jonathan Pageau has jumped the shark.

[@ganeshaa23]

how so?

[@JIMMYUNKNOWN]

Vervaeke is one with “hidden motive” and “secret agenda”.

[@arturhashmi6281]

What do you mean by that? Whats hidden about his agenda?

[@a1cRobertson]

Any time I see the word 'cognitive' I know John Vervaeke will be poking his head out!

[@arturhashmi6281]

Maybe because he is a prof of cognitive science?

[@knockda887]

🔥

[@ScottMannion]

Enough of this jonathan, stop propping him up and enframing and technicalising the divine.

[@JamesStevensTEXALTA]

Some of us appreciate it, though...

[@theangryslav9115]

@@ScottMannion based take.

[@pricklypear6298]

The care that goes into the choice of words by John Vervaeke is incredibly humbling to someone like myself with a loose tongue.

[@UNOwenWasMe]

stop advertising your wares like a goblin merchant during these conversation dude

[@alphabeta8284]

Hahaha

[@theseventh7865]

I really recommend anyone watching this to read Philosophy of Freedom(Spiritual activity) by Rudolf steiner. It is such a great text and experience, and a great cure for anyone whodepends on the "hermeneutics of suspicion" as the basis of their rationality. Steiner demonstrates how knowing the real and knowing our freedom is enteined/participatory. Vervaeke likening rationality with serious play inspired me to share.

[@DagothJab]

Anyone else wanna see Jonathan on the talk tuah podcast?

[@nomadinsox8757]

Oh man, how many years have I spent trying to explain the intro point of this video to atheists and materialists. John and Jonathan, please give me the vocabulary needed to reach them!

[@peepas2633]

This is amazing

[@j.p.marceau5146]

Looking forward to this!

[@Artisan_GenZ]

So many things that we now have to explain explicitly were once just lived out by people without being said. We’ve become so self-aware and conscious of why we act, yet it seems harder than ever to simply be who we are.

[@BrandonGray]

For the youth, participatory understanding is being lost, not propositional. They, the youth, have false intermediaries such as AI or smartphones to try to feel in the gaps. AI nor smartphones experience. Information transferred from person to person by experience is greater than propositional knowledge. However, the two together are good, but more so participation greater. Everything will be lost if propositonal is only used. Everything!!!

[@47StormShadow]

"you have to imagine and project yourself into that space before you enter into it because why would you desire it if you couldn't imagine yourself in it?" ok great point but how does this apply with our desire for Heaven or Theosis or the Beatific Vision, whatever you want to call it. Are the images in scripture of light, gold and other splendid things there to provoke our imaginative desires? How else could we want what we have never experienced....hmm this is a very provocative notion.

[@ElonMuskrat-my8jy]

I'm not sure if I've ever encountered a more boring rambling pseudo-intellectual than Vervaeke in my life.

[@DemetriosLevi]

What a strange way of saying you're stupid.

[@ElonMuskrat-my8jy]

@@DemetriosLevi Ok Shmuel.

[@immortalityprjct]

God be with you

[@theangryslav9115]

Cognitive science of religion. How to act religious yet avoid its true devotion to it. These people like Vervaike are dangerous and at one point Jonathan should move on from their gatekeeping.

[@HavocJackGames]

Vervaeke is not dangerous.

[@-Monad-]

You are the only one gatekeeping anything, with a very hardened heart. I can only wonder why that affliction was put upon you.

[@theangryslav9115]

@@HavocJackGames yes he is. He is up for 'AI Sages', AI Jesus Christs to act as our guides. He is also a neoplatonist, it can lead to gnostic herecies. He is creating a new religion thats not a religion. He is dangerous.

[@virgilcrowe7795]

Can anyone tell me anything about the " Don Chappie" Vervake references at about 40:30ish? I'm hearing impaired so I just can't tell what he' saying and the transcript isn't helpful. Much thanks to anyone who could fill me in. Pax V

[@exploriter]

He's referencing the paper "Distributed Cognition and the Experience of Presence in the Mars Exploration Rover Mission" by Dan Chiappe and John Vervaeke.

[@virgilcrowe7795]

@@exploriter Thanks so very! Pax V

[@WhiteStoneName]

Dr. Vervaeke's clip at the beginning of this is a technical way of succinctly saying something that I've been trying to articulate for years. Hopefully, this will help more technically minded folks awaken to this truth.

[@9502937]

Two words: spontaneity and authenticity. Modern society sees spontaneity as authentic and ritual as inauthentic and devalues ritual accordingly.

[@Aquaticphilosophia]

Ritual is writing in space rather than on paper. Also, water is ritual

[@fabricedemonaco6886]

"Ritual is writing in space rather than on paper" Magnifique

[@marincusman9303]

I like that. Could you explain the water part?

[@Aquaticphilosophia]

@@marincusman9303 I have plenty of videos. Check out the overview on somatic intelligence/noetic perception ones. Everything is vaguely satire of online teaching via extremely low production value but it’s also the most advanced relevance realization on the planet in the public sphere at the moment

[@Aquaticphilosophia]

@@fabricedemonaco6886 all my conceptualization are. Thank you. I’ve been offering to help John with his blindness but he’s not interested in corrective lenses.

[@DoubleOhSilver]

​@@Aquaticphilosophia probably because of your arrogance lol

[@tgrogan6049]

Trivial point! 😂😂😂

[@AprendeMovimiento]

Rational means Relational, to be relational means to be in the pursuit of relations, now what kinds of relations? in Christianity we would say relations that reflect the inner life of the most Holy Trinity but in an incarnate manner, so you will get rituals out of that yes or yes, because to be properly ordered in such saintly relations we need proper alignment and for that we need correction in our aim to proper relationality thus we will have rituals that helps us mediate our relationality in an orderly manner.

[@AugustasKunc]

+

[@alexandereggleston8893]

Whenever you practice a musical instrument.. You are mining for grace. The quality object and quality of your ritual will be evident in the fruit that flows. Its very frustrating when the way you practiced a piece worked, but you aren't sure what about your practice made it work

[@DigitalDamager]

Looking forward to the discussions to come!

[@47StormShadow]

This is so interesting. If the rituals are the function then the form has to be something like a church or courthouse. Can the function come before the form? Can the marriage ceremony originate at a time and place where there is no church or courthouse? I can't imagine how that could be so and therefore implies to me a simultaneous apotheosis type of event in consciousness which could only be given as grace from above, not something the grows out of the particularities below. Thanks for proving God exists John :D

[@alexandereggleston8893]

It seems like ritual is where there is something implicit in action that connects the vertical and horizontal Vertical=observer Horizontal=participant Perfect observation is timeless. Perfect participation has no perspective.

[@alexandereggleston8893]

Of course Timeless could also mean Contains all of time within and no time without.

[@random_person6041]

🤯🤯🤯

[@HavocJackGames]

I find it interesting our interface with computers is a device to point and a device for logos

[@austin0_bandit05]

38:00 ostension 27:53

[@sebastiaan_de_vries]

Subscribed! Very much looking forward

[@kevinhertzler7662]

Yall describe the water we drown in