John Vervaeke’s Lectern
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2019–2022
59:16 · 844K views · Jan 23, 2019
The first episode of John Vervaeke's lecture series on the modern meaning crisis, tracing its history through philosophy, cognitive science, religion and psychology. It introduces the series and its themes.
HN recommends the series as a thorough, non-dogmatic look at meaning, spirituality and escaping nihilism.
7 comments from Hacker News
For anyone deeply interested in philosophy, the evolution of religion from a cognitive science perspective, or escaping a nihilistic perspective, this series has it all. I can’t recommend it enough. this video
> Other gurus teach that meditation is “doing nothing”. Okay, but then again there’s nothing special about it, we all do it from time to time. Eastern spirituality sees "nothing" or nothingness as a spiritual place to relax in and be. Western religions see "nothing" as something that can't exist. That nothing is impossible for Christ. One function of prayer and meditation is to organize your thoughts and let go of thoughts and aims that are not helpful, sometimes called Sin. You can let them go into nothingness (eastern), into the altar of fire (catholicism) or let them flow away (anglican/methodist). You can also use prayer to aim and think about things that are good for you and you do want. If you want real detail, John Vervaeke's Awakening from the Meaning Crisis series [0] does the history of spirituality as a psycho-technology, cog-sci breakdown. It is very good and leads into discussions with him and Curt Jaimungal [1] on the Theories of Everything channel, which has a slightly more Eastern and hyper-intellectual physics blend to it. [0] this video [1] [LINK] The practice of prayer and meditation has been degraded by practicing psychologists and pop culture. Stay away from that stuff, it eats into the prayer life and meditation from the inside or bottom-up.
> bogus nonsensical ones that say you need to light candles and get into some funky position and whatnot. It usually helps when investigating something you're a novice in to at least attempt to clear your mind of preconceptions. Do you know posture makes no difference? Where did you get that information from if you're a complete novice? Do you know setting (candles, incense) makes no difference? Where did you get that information from? Untrained intuition? It's notable that 'spiritual'* traditions from many different places and times emphasise posture & setting. It wouldn't do any harm to at least consider whether there may be more to this than you're assuming. * see (amongst many possible sources) John Vervaeke's fascinating 'Awakening from the Meaning Crisis' lecture series for why this doesn't necessarily connote other-worldly metaphysics: this video
This was a great read. There was a series focusing on the underlying problem driving people to seek these types of communities - this video The series touched on Gnosticism, and how it developed into future philosophies - even evolving into the foundation of the Nazi belief system. We’re at a point where, due to a wholesale rejection of religion, we’ve thrown the baby (practical wisdom traditions) out with the bath water (improbable metaphysical axioms) The author also touches on the notion of a metaverse, and I’ve been writing on the subject as well. This vision of a “metaverse”, as the author alludes to, is one that is not divorced from reality but perpendicular to it. It could be a great thing, or a digital hell. We live in weird times, and collectively are in dire need of wisdom.
Here's an interesting new series addressing exactly the "crisis of meaning" issue you mention: this video I've only gotten through the first lecture—and it does take him ~20 minutes to lay out something like the full plan for the lecture series, but he also paints a pretty interesting picture by the time he gets to that point. David Chapman has also been writing on this subject, apparently from a somewhat related angle, for years: [LINK] The two of them try reconciling their approaches here: [LINK]