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December 24, 2023 - 3:00pm
All around us are signs of crisis. UnHerd’s Flo Read and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke sat down at the UnHerd Club to diagnose the alienation and anxiety that pervades our contemporary culture. Is a “meaning crisis” at the root of all the other crises we face – environmental, political, spiritual?
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SubscribeIt’s late on Christmas Eve, but not too late to say thanks to the Unherd team. Freddie and Flo are consummate in what they’re doing, and this interview demonstrates that.
Hear hear. Well done UnHerd team and happy Christmas
Kudos to Flo for shepherding that particular cat, especially her summaries of his less intelligible explanations. As for the speaker, there’s doubtless wisdom buried in what he said, but my suspicion is he uses too many ten-dollar words to express commonplace ideas.
Merry Christmas to all. Unherd continues to be a source of fine journalism and interesting ideas.
Note to self: Never ask a proud, professional SCIENTIST his thoughts on the crisis of meaning and purpose in our world…
This is the second time I’ve listened to Vervaeke and I find him incredibly annoying. In addition to health gurus and yoga gurus and mindfulness gurus to help the stranded find meaning and purpose in life, we now have science gurus. When he mentioned his 50 YouTube videos about purpose and meaning I thought, maybe I’ll check ’em out. But, shortly after that he decided to explain Meaning to Flo (or was it Purpose?). Of course, there are actually four different components of meaning and one of them even had two parts to it! I quickly lost track of the points he was making, but rest assured, as he pointed out, he’s a Scientist and his explanations all sounded so…..Scientific!
The buzzwords – Wow. He even gave a special one to Flo so she could use it on her friends and impress them. And the catchphrases! I wouldn’t say he was using $10 words but they cost at least $8.50 a pop. He’s not nearly as bad as someone like Judith Butler, but I find this type guru speak almost as annoying. Everything in the world is overlapping and there are rock climbers and people doing martial arts and others meditating and some playing video games and they’re all experiencing…Flowww. Blah, blah, blah…
About half way through the talk, I was reminded of a scene from the movie “Contact”. In it, Ellie and Palmer are debating the existence of God. Ellie’s dad died when she was very young and the loss still pains her deeply. Palmer is aware of this and it’s clear he loves her. They’ve grown very close in a brief period of time. As they’re debating, Ellie hits Palmer with all of the anti-God arguments we atheists (and Sciency people in general) are familiar with: there’s no evidence of God, it’s all made up, etc. In essence, there’s just no proof that God exists and that’s that. The scene ends something like this:
Palmer: “Did you love your father, Ellie?”
Ellie: “Of course…”
Palmer: “Prove it.”
It’s a great scene. It’s a great end to that debate – and the debate hasn’t changed much since that movie was made. Listening to Vervaeke, I thought what I was hearing was akin to what that scene would have been like if Ellie had spent the next 45 minutes proving, Scientifically, of course, that she loved her father.
The next time I see the name ‘Vervaeke’ on a podcast agenda or a book discussion, I’m gonna just Flowww away from it.
There must be some value in trying to express deep human experience in rational terms. Then you must come up with some categories, so here’s how you end up with Four Noble Truths, Eight Glimmering Ways, One Hundred Names of Allah, Three Hypostases et cetera ( different traditions but the same idea )
Dear Robert, I advise you to read McGilchrist: The matter with things. He says very similar things but easier to grasp.I agree that Vervaecke tries to explain something that cannot be explained and only can be experienced, through scientific language, which is very difficult to do and therefore becomes very convoluted. But I must say he made quite a good job out of it.
And, yes, you could if you like call him a Guru of the science of the objective explanation of the subjective experience….
Sounds intriguing but almost impenetrable to me. I admit my limitations. And by the way he sounds like he actually has something valuable to say unlike many others, Eric Weinstein comes to my mind or Schmachtenberger