John Vervaeke on Wisdom and the Meaning Crisis

Do scientists know how to make life meaningful?

For thousands of years, philosophers and theologians have talked about the meaning of life, yet we currently face a crisis of life’s apparent meaninglessness. Perhaps the tiller should be turned over to cognitive scientists so they can finally solve the problem.

In the overview video, Vervaeke lays out the meaning crisis as a pervasive feeling of alienation from the world and from each other. Suicide rates and loneliness, depression and anxiety are increasing even in affluent societies like the United States and the UK. Video games and social media exacerbate these “First World Problems” which were diagnosed as far back as Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Kafka.

For Vervaeke, the essence of the modern sense that there’s no meaning in life is a feeling of disconnectedness. He turns, then, to cognitive science to show how this happens and how we can counter that tendency by opening ourselves to more uplifting kinds of experience. In particular, he says, we should be striving to achieve flow and peak states, including a “cascade of insights” and a broadening of perspective which amount to wisdom and to “optimal connectedness” between the agent and his or her arena.

A lack of meaning in life occurs when a person is stuck in a rut. Translated into Vervaeke’s cognitive scientific language, this means she’s unable to grow and challenge herself, because her perspective has been narrowed by “parasitic mental processing.” She’s been paralyzed by suboptimal assessments of what’s relevant in her environment, so that she no longer fits well into it. Instead of flowing like an artist who’s “in the groove” or like an athlete who’s on a winning streak, she’s at a…

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