Hi TOKers,
Just wanted to let you know that there is a fascinating conversation happening on the metamodern list involving John Vervaeke, Zak Stein and others. I just posted the note below, which I thought you all might be interested to see (note
I don’t have permission to forward the full line of exchange). Hopefully my note provides enough context of the meaning to be clear.
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Hi All,
Fascinating conversation. Thanks to everyone for their reflections.
I have been tracking John’s series (see here) now quite closely and am up to lecture 35. Part of the reason is that we are currently working on a two
part blog on higher consciousness that merges his integrative vision of Cognitive Science with my Unified Framework. It is really helping me “get” his language system. It is brilliant. I will explain more below, but first let me say that Zak’s point about
science and meaninglessness has indeed emerged as a powerful justification that runs through our culture, even as it is wrought with error. One of the reasons I tout the Tree of Knowledge theory of knowledge is that it offers an emergent naturalistic scientific
worldview that immediately rejects this flatland empiricist reductive mechanical bullshit. I should know because there is a strand of empirical psychologists who are some of the worst offenders in this kind of thinking. Indeed, I was (sort of) one of them
until I woke up in graduate school. If we use the ToK theory of knowledge as one example to address this, we can immediately embrace the idea that there is a sense in which everything is matter in motion (i.e., substance monism)
and we can immediately see that everything is not JUST matter in motion. Life, Mind and Culture are emergent planes of existence. This is SCIENTIFICALLY TRUE (or as scientifically true as anything else, such as general relativity). It is
grounded not in a physicalism, which is a horrible meaning crushing flatland wasteland, but a universal scientific “process/behavioral” view that affords us a totally different metaphysics. For example, it is a metaphysics that readily embraces love and meaning
making. So, we need to kill the reductive physicalist myth to re-establish educational legitimacy and start afresh via realizing what is relevant relative to dead ends and false gods.
This brings me to John’s brilliant insights regarding meaning and relevance realization (at least as far as I am understanding them). First, it is crucial to understand what “realization” means here. It has two senses, and John embraces
both. First, there is the seeing and knowing definition, which is to realize via perception or insight. Then there is the making and creating definition, which is to realize as in to make real. This
janus-faced frame is a wonderful way to conceptualize meaning. That is, meaning is not discovered as some absolute entity that exists independently nor is it completely a subjective projection, but it is
realized transvectively (another fascinating concept John introduced me to). And it is realized (i.e., recognized) via perceiving and propositional knowing and realized (i.e., generated) via procedural and participatory processes (these are John
4 P’s of knowing). I am not going to get into the cognitive scientific analysis of relevance realization, but I will say that I am now tracking it deeply, and I think it might connect some deep conundrums and tie them together. Most notably in my mind currently
is the link between information theory and information science. Realizing what is relevant refers to the capacity to identify that which reduces uncertainty toward effective problem solving.
The point I want to focus on here is the relevance this has for meaning. I shot him a note on Thursday saying that I was finding the series laying the ground work for what I referred to as the
Theory and Practice of Transcendent Realization. He concurred that this seemed on target regarding what he was after. The transcendent refers here to a number of things, but most significantly the “ego”, which is the personal, self-interested layer of
human consciousness. Realization then becomes the seeing and knowing of how that happens and the making and creating it. Thus, we need an educational/societal system that fosters the realization of ways of transcending the ego. Of course, Love (especially
agape) would be one of the most obvious concepts, which connects to Brad’s points.
For me, this gets us very much moving in the right direction. Now, I am sure Zak, as a developmental theorist and educational philosopher, will have much to say about this, as neither John nor I are primarily developmentalists. But the
outline looks great to me, and I am excited to see where this might take us.
Let me put it in the form of a question:
Given where we (i.e., humanity in general, this metamodern group, and each of us individually) have come from, the current situation we find ourselves in (i.e., our local lives and the larger global meta-crises), and where we want
to go (i.e., the ultimate end state of sustainable flourishing that is possible), how do we
see (perspectival), know (propositional), make (procedural) and
create (participatory) meaning, defined as maximizing our human potential for transcendent realization? Put succinctly, how do we awaken to the 21st Century meaning crisis and begin to realize a transformation toward the good, the true and
the beautiful?
Best,
Gregg
PS If you are interested in Tree of Knowledge Theory of Knowledge blogs on science and how to move toward a much more effective holistic emergent naturalistic worldview that is scientific and humanistic via the ToK, here are some blogs:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201812/the-big-bang-is-psychological-event
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201804/why-it-all-matters
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201309/steven-pinker-s-queer-take-scientism
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201303/completely-misguided-guide-reality
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201206/revisiting-the-science-wars
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/201201/finding-our-moral-compass