Is the Meaning Crisis a New Thing?

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Is the meaning crisis a new thing or has it always been with us? Is it part of the human condition in general? That's an excellent question and part of the argument I made in awakening for the meaning crisis is there's two aspects to it. One is that there are perennial problems, perennial threats to meaning. And then pressing historical factors which have to do with the loss of the resources thatHuman beings have typically crossed historically and cross culturally made use of in order to address these perennial problems.

John Vervaeke is a psychologist and cognitive scientist at University of Toronto. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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Books mentioned:
Flow: https://amzn.to/3cQDby9
On Bullshit: https://amzn.to/3PZDvYW
The Denial of Death: https://amzn.to/3KsIctp

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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(07:03) – Meaning
(27:17) – Consciousness
(36:17) – Relevance realization
(47:40) – Wisdom
(54:54) – Truth
(59:38) – Reality
(1:11:59) – Meaning crisis
(1:35:27) – Religion
(1:43:17) – Nontheism
(1:58:26) – Distributed cognition
(2:16:37) – Flow
(2:36:35) – Psychedelics
(2:45:03) – Marxism and Nazism
(2:57:08) – Evil
(3:01:19) – Powerful ideas
(3:08:10) – Advice for young people