Dr. John Vervaeke1 Jan 2023

Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

We are in the midst of a mental health crisis. There are increases in anxiety disorders, depression, despair, and suicide rates are going up in North America, parts of Europe, and other parts of the world. This mental health crisis is itself due to and engaged with crises in the environment and the political system, those in turn are enmeshed within a deeper cultural historical crisis that I call "The Meaning Crisis". It's more and more pervasive throughout our lives. And there's a sense of drowning in this old ocean of bullshit. And we have to understand, why is this the case? And what can we do about it?

Today, there is an increase of people feeling very disconnected from themselves, from each other from the world from a viable and foreseeable future. Let's discuss this, let's work on it together, let's rationally reflect on it. Getting out of this problem is going to be tremendously difficult. It's going to require significant transformations in our cognition, our culture, our communities. And in order to move forward in such a difficult manner, we have to reach more deeply into our past to salvage the resources we can for such an amazing challenge. I'll be talking about a lot of people who have spoken in ways that will provide us the resources we need. We'll talk about ancient figures like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Jesus of Nazareth, Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, but we'll also talk about modern pivotal figures. We'll talk about people like Carl Jung, we'll talk about Nietzsche. We'll talk about Heidegger.

I want to bring all of this together in a coherent and clear fashion, so that together we can discover how to awaken from The Meaning Crisis.

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Episoder(249)

John Vervaeke & Guy Sengstock: Why Modernity Can't See the Sacred Anymore

What does it mean to "see God again" after modernity has taught us to look for the sacred in all the wrong ways? In this special Lectern conversation, John Vervaeke is joined by Guy Sengstock for a de...

10 Jul 1h 44min

Live Q&A with Brendan Graham Dempsey | Questions, Dialogue, and the Pursuit of Wisdom

What is applied metatheory - and why might it matter for ordinary people trying to make sense of reality, meaning, spirituality, and complexity? In this live Q&A from The Lectern, Ethan Hsieh speaks w...

26 Jun 1h 25min

Why Wonder Is More Than Curiosity with William Desmond

What happens when wonder is reduced to curiosity, and curiosity becomes a drive to master everything? In this second conversation with William Desmond, John Vervaeke returns to the question of astonis...

26 Jun 1h 32min

Why We No Longer Know What We Should Do with Jordan Hall, Guy Sengstock, and Christopher Mastropietro

What happens when a society possesses extraordinary technological power but lacks a shared sense of what that power is for? John Vervaeke, Jordan Hall, Guy Sengstock, and Christopher Mastropietro reun...

19 Jun 1h 40min

Ish Peregrino: Pilgrimage Is More Than Travel. It Changes How You See Reality

What if pilgrimage is not primarily about reaching a destination, but about learning how to be addressed by reality again? In this episode of Lectern Dialogues, John Vervaeke speaks with Ish Peregrino...

5 Jun 1h 19min

William Desmond and John Vervaeke: Strong Transcendence, Plato, and the Between

Can transcendence still make philosophical sense after modernity? John Vervaeke speaks with philosopher William Desmond about Platonism as a living tradition, the meaning of strong transcendence, and ...

28 Mai 1h 37min

Reconnect to the Real: John Vervaeke, Guy Sengstock, and Kyle Koch Announce the Whistler Retreat

Why is the modern world making us lose our "taste for the real," and can ancient practices like animal tracking and Socratic dialogue actually save our personhood from the "virtual matrix" of AI? John...

21 Mai 1h 4min

Brendan Graham Dempsey: Matters Over Time

What if the question is not simply whether life has meaning, but how our capacity for meaning develops? In this Lectern conversation, Ethan Hsieh speaks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about his upcoming ...

18 Mai 1h 21min