University of Toronto professor Dr. John Vervaeke
Lecture series
Symptoms:
-Sense of more bullshit everywhere
-People lost trust in authority
-Can see this evidence in public media, academia
We’re spending too much time in online environments, social media
Why are zombies and superheroes so big rn?
These myth forms are cultural expression of feeling “stuck”
Meaning crisis – interdependent with other crises like environmental crisis, political crisis
Wisdom = realizing meaning in life in a profound way
(“wizard” root = wise)
Questions
1. What is this meaning?
2. Why do we hunger for it?
3. How do we cultivate the wisdom to realize it?
4. Why do we seek to alter consciousness? Not just us, but animals do too!
Subset of mystical experiences are crucial – “awakening experiences” – “quantum change”
The same (mental) machinery that makes you intelligent also makes you foolish
We’re very belief centric – very focused on ideologies – but there’s many more kinds of knowing
Therapy is booming – because of meaning crisis, because loss of the many kinds of knowing
No simplistic answers, but will try best to offer rational, careful answers
Paleolithic revolution – 40K BCE
Radical changes
1. Start making cave paintings, music
2. Radical change in cognition – use of calendars, tracking time
3. Develop projectile weapons – throwing spears, slings
Why did it occur?
Near extinction event
To protect themselves, create broader trading networks
Widens scale for human cognition
Cognition is participatory
Rituals make this work
1. trade rituals – eg, handshakes
2. initiation rituals
3. shamanic rituals
Initiation rituals
As you interact more out-group, weakens in-group ties
So initiation / commitment rituals grow
Requires pain and fear = shows commitment
Must improve ability to regulate emotion
Exaptation = evolutionary mechanism
eg, using tongue for speech, but not evolved primarily for this purpose (primary = taste / poison detector)
Shamanic rituals
Take enhanced perspective on others – “mind sight”
Shamanism = altering consciousness to control mental and emotional states
Archetype – wise old man (Yoda, Merlin)
Shamans improve a group’s healthcare, coordination, wisdom
Shamanism thesis = explains rise in cognition
Not hardware but software change
You’re a natural born cyborg = evolved to integrate with machines = your clothes, shoes, pens, computers, desks, literally everything except your naked body
This can apply to not only physical but intangible / cognitive things too (psycho tech)
eg, literacy
Shamanism = sleep deprivation, long periods of singing + dancing, imitation / masks, social isolation
Psychedelics
Altering consciousness
Disrupting how you find patterns in world
How you find patterns is profound
Shamanism teaches you HOW to disrupt patterns and gain new insight
Participatory knowing
Enhancing your cognition by manipulating the meaning of things