The Meaning Crisis

Social imaginarian Ellie Hain joins me to talk about her new project, Rebuilding Meaning, a multi-layered endeavor to rethink meaning, value, and the sacred in a way that can help bring color and vibrancy back to existence and cut through the proliferation of b******t in modern life. We talk about moving from paradigm thinking to the crafting of ideology, the nature and reality of the meaning crisis, what is meant by "the sacred," the idea of "the void," social norms vs. emergent value, and what it looks like to architect new cultural realities for the future.

0:00 Introduction

0:58 From Mapping Social Imaginaries to Articulating Ideologies

7:36 New Myths

10:30 Is There Actually a Meaning Crisis?

17:01 The Sacred, the Profane, and the Meaningful

22:46 The Void: Chaos and Possibility

28:34 Rigid Social Norms vs. Emergent Autonomy

35:10 Creating New Systems

41:37 Follow-Through

46:32 Imagining a Beautiful Future

55:25 A Values-Driven Pluralism