Critical Thinking and the Game Theoretics of Criticism w/ O.G. Rose

This is the second podcast I’ve recorded with Daniel Garner. In this episode, we talk about the meaning crisis as a sign of hope, game theoretics, critical thinking, and the dark renaissance.

The Meaning Crisis as a Sign of Hope

The meaning crisis is a sign of hope because we have higher moral and ethical standards than we did in the past. In the past, we solved the meaning crisis through ideologies like nationalism, racism, fascism, totalitarianism, etc. Instead of responding to the meaning crisis with apathy, we can instead become enlivened by it becomes a heroic act of maintaining moral standards and developing new approaches to meaning in the 21st century.

Part of the problem is that we don’t know what new solutions to the meaning crisis may look like. Yet many people are actively engaging with this systemic crisis — see the work of John Vervaeke.

Critical Thinking Doesn’t Entail Being Critical

Words have a way to capture our thinking without our realizing that’s what’s happening. Garner introduces the perspective that being a good thinker is not synonymous with being critical. And that the impulse to be critical engenders a culture of deconstruction — or perhaps a postmodern, deconstructive culture engenders an environment of breaking down and being critical as opposed to developing new mental models and ways of thinking.

Reconstruction is just as important as deconstruction.

The reason that we like critiquing everything without building our own theories is that it positions us as superior. Whereas constructing new theories puts us in a vulnerable space, at risk of people breaking our prized mental framework down.

And perhaps the reason that deconstruction is so endemic in our culture is because the game-theoretic environment of our culture is conducive to positioning ourselves as intellectually superior to the ideas of others. We are rewarded by critiquing the ideas of others and thus incentivized to continue doing it.

The Dialectic Between Freedom & Control

O.G. Rose has a fascinating and long-time running series titled Belonging Again, which we discuss in this episode of the podcast. In it, they dive into how belonging and feeling connected to a community is often in direct tension with freedom and lack of social-legal order.

These are just a few of the topics that Daniel and I discuss in this episode. For the full episode listen to the audio above or search Becoming Conscious on your podcast player of choice!

You can find Daniel and Michelle (together O.G. Rose) on substack, youtube, Twitter, and Instagram.

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