Ep. 2 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Flow, Metaphor, and the Axial Revolution

I just wanted to post a comment to convey my gratitude for making this series of lectures available and free of charge. This is what the internet was designed for! Thank you Dr. Vervaeke.

Another benefit of this digital age: one can come back - after a period of "incubation" - and attend the lecture series again :-) It's even more profound the second time around.

The fact that this is free for all of us to listen and watch is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much.

What a privilege it is to live in a time where this information is available to us for free. Thousands of hours of collective research and study manifested in a series that would take us all an individual lifetime (if not longer) to compile ourselves - let alone read and understand. There's a case for optimism, and it's the rise in media such as this that gives me hope.

This is brilliant - looking forward to the next episode.

Thanks for your wonderful gift and taking the time to share it, John! I wrote a vocabulary. Well, I am wondering if the flow state is irrational? And how intelligent could a person be risking her/his own life? SUMMARY OF THE PREVIOUS VIDEO: Key words: Meaning making - Enhanced cognition - Altered states of consciousness - Wisdom. Upper Paleolithic transition was probably driven by the way shamanism was a set of psychotechnologies for altering states of consciousness to cognitively exapt the enhanced abilities that trade rituals and initiation rituals and healing rituals had already been creating. Cognitive exaptation: changes in the software of the brain (functions) that were developed through evolution but its structures weren´t made with that purpose. VOCABULARY 1. Shaman: person who engaged in various disruptive strategies to alter his/her framing of reality in a different way. 2. Framing reality: it is to think out of the box that enhances the adaptability and the ability to find new or different patterns. 3. Shamanic ritual: it is a ritual for healing. 4. Disruptive strategy: it is a strategy that alters a state of consciousness because it causes significant change in the attention, for example, some of those are sleep deprivation, sex deprivation, social isolation, use of psychedelics, extended chanting , etc. 5. Different kinds of knowing: 6. Flow state: popularly describing as being in “the zone” in which a person is involved in task very demanding and his/her skill abilities can just through like sort of insight and restructuring . The flow state is much more connected to meaning in life and is universal. A kind of self-consciousness disappears and it is super salient. There is a kind of brightness and vividness through the experience. 7. Flow induction machines: the skills of a person are constantly improving and the demand of the environment is also improving in dangerous contexts or it can also be through video games. 8. Video game: it is a program that induce the “Flow state”, becoming an addiction. Problem is that it doesn´t belong to the real world. 9. Addiction: it is a condition to a particular substance, thing or activity that runs off machinery that is evolutionarily adaptive. 10. Shamanism: it can also be a way to induce the “flow state”. 11. Connectedness 12. Mindfulness training: it increases the capacity to get into the flow state 13. Phenomenology: 14. Cascade of insights: it is to have an insight that´s leadind to another insight and so on and so far. This chain of insights are going to improve skills of abilities 15. Implicit learning: it is the tremendous capacity outside our conscious awareness to pick up on very complex patterns in the environment without being aware of it. Implicit learning cannot be replaced by explicit learning. 16. Intuition: it is the result of implicit learning. 17. Bias: 18. Prejudice: 19. Correlational pattern: it is what any two or more variables are related to each other but sometimes those are not necessarily causal. Then it misleads to an illusory reality. 20. Causal pattern: it is the situation in which two or more variables maintain a cause-effect relationship in which one of those variables is independent and is the cause of, while the another variable is dependent and the result of the causal variable. 21. Science: it is a way of distinguishing causal patterns from correlational patterns. 22. Metaphor: it means to bridge and to carry over to connected things that are normally not connected. It is so powerful because it is how to make creative connections between ideas. 23. Metaphorical cognition: it is the heart of science and art. 24. Oversight: 25. Supervision: 26. Upper Paleolithic Revolution: it occurs around 40,000 BCE. And it is constituted by the Meaning-making machinery, altered states of consciousness, self-transcendence and cultivation of wisdom represented by the creation of the arts, calendars and some kinds of artillery. 27. Neolithic Revolution: it happened around 10,000 BCE. The agriculture was invented and because of agriculture, people don´t need to live as nomads. Larger groups were living together, that caused radical changes and the stone gives way to metal, appearing the Bronze Age. 28. Axial age or Axial Revolution: term coined by the German Philosopher, Karl Jaspers that is a period of the history around 800 BCE and 300 BCE. in which alphabetic literacy was invented, producing the second order thinking. It also happened that lots of armies were moving around and empires were being rebuilt; and coinage was also invented. 29. Alphabetic literacy: it is a much more learnable psychotechnology. That was invented in Canaan, taken to Phoenicians and then the Greeks. The Canaanite alphabet merges to archaic Hebrew and the Hebrew 30. Second order thinking: it is when a person internalizes a psychotechnology into his/her metacognition and it improves the capacity to critically examine and correct his/her own thinking. 31. Metacognition: it is the awareness of the own mind. 32. Coinages: physical thing made of metals that in our days is disappearing but that helped to think in an abstract symbol system and to mathematically thinking. 33. Double-edged sword of the cognition: indiscipline-discipline Indiscipline: behavior that leads to self-deception and illusion . Discipline: behavior that through self-correction and self-transcendence leads to wisdom and the ability to reduce violence and the suffering. LIST OF BOOKS (according to the sequence of the video): 1. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. 2. Reber, Arthur. Implicit learning and tacit knowledge: an essay on the cognitive unconscious. 3. Hogath, Robin. Educating intuition. 4. Schear, Joseph (Editor). Mind, reason, and being-in-the-world: the Mcdowell-Dreyfus debate. 5. Pinker, Steven. The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined. 6. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. Metaphors we live by . 7. Jaspers, Karl. The origin and goal of history . 8. Armstrong, Karen. The great transformation: the beginning of our religious traditions. 9. Drews, Robert. The end of the bronze age: changes in warfare and the catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. 10. Cline, Eric. 1177 B.C.: The year civilization collapsed. 11. Bellah, Robert and Joas, Hans (Editors). The axial age and its consequences 12. The Dhammapada.

Listening to these lectures is like being continually infused with high quality narcotics... Getting buzzed off this pure knowledge and wisdom. Thank you for your contribution to the world John!

Short-form cliffs: 0:30 - 2:30 recap of previous episode --> origin of meaning making --> meaning making, enhancing cognition, altered states of consciousness, and wisdom --> Upper Paleolithic transition --> Psychotechnology , and psychological exaptation --> Shamanism --> Different kinds of knowing _______________________________________ 2:54 - shamanic techniques 3:30 - the flow state 5:13 - Video games = one of most reliable ways of inducing flow state 9:10 - effortless effort --> Altered sense of time --> Altered sense of self 9:44 - burden of self-consciousness 10:35 - super salience of flow state 13:30 - breaking the framing (restructuring what you find salient) 14:25 - a sustained cascade of insights = flow ________________________________________ 15:35 - capacity for implicit learning (Reber) 18:50 - experiment on “psychic” abilities 21:05 - Hogarth’s Argument - Intuition is product of implicit learning 22:30 - (Hogarth) Distinction: “Intuition” vs. “Bias” --> How does implicit learning go wrong? 23:11 - Two Types of Patterns (Correlational vs Causal) 26:20 - Setting up the environment for good intuition (Hogarth) control the context 32:50 - Capacity for Metaphor 37:20 - the reason the flow state is universal - (it exapts some of our most basic machinery and enhances it in a powerful way) 40:00 - Meaning Making Machinery and the Neolithic Revolution (agriculture) 41:00 - The Bronze Age 45:23 - The Late Bronze Age Collapse 48:20 - A new (alphabetic) kind of literacy emerges (important new psychotechnology) 51:30 - Second order thinking and metacognition 53:20 - Invention of coinage (teaches you 1: numeracy; 2: to think in abstract symbol system) 55:20 - Increased awareness of capacity for self-transcendence / self-correction _________________________________________ Massive thank you Prof. Vervaeke once again for posting this seriously excellent content on YouTube for free. I wrote these cliffs for my own convenience, but I hope that others will find them useful as well. This is a more concise break-down, but I will also post a longer-form breakdown of the video with more notes, and more detailed timestamps that I felt would be useful.

Brilliant! What a time to be alive that we can stumble across presentations of this calibre while scrolling for funny cat videos.

Every once in a while I hear someone speak and can feel my brain changing creating new folds as I listen. You are giving me that experience right now John. Thank you so much and I cant wait to listen to the rest of your content. Much love.

Was exposed to John's thought during the Peterson conversation. Mental dynamite ! TY sir for sharing.

Akira the Don, please make “ahhhhhh - that’s the flow state” into a funky tune.

I have discovered being in the Flow State when I was 12 while learning hand- embroidery. Loved it. I became a painter. One of my recent works was chosen among world’s top 39 plein air paintings of 2022, the one that I painted in the deep flow state, for three days, four-hour sessions outdoors, hiking with all supplies on my back. It was the most impressive flow state I experienced so far. I didn't want to leave, I literally just set there by my finished painting, not wanting to go home.

As I listened to your description of the flow state, I realized: THIS is exactly what I experienced during natural childbirth (4 kids, including twins). Intense engagement & physical pain, loss of the sense of time, ultimate significance & salience, some of the best experiences of my life, a sense of at-one-ment, nonverbal know-how, just past the boundary of my capacity and yet I managed it. I knew natural childbirth involved an altered state of consciousness, but now I see why so many women love, treasure, and seek it... for the flow!

I cannot believe it took me this long to find this series. This is tremendously useful and I'm excited to listen (and re-listen) to the rest of this! Thank you!

Every time I finish jotting down a note and then smack the spacebar to continue playing, I can feel my mind sparking as it feeds on real protein. The gift of your wisdom means more than you can know. Thank you so much for these lessons.

Vervaeke's himself - throughout the lecture - is a perfect example of being on the flow!

A person can get used to getting into the flow when they are doing something they love to do. Another, as mentioned, is music, especially a musical instrument like the highland bagpipe where it demands precise coordination of so many things just to play the instrument you must memorize the tunes completely to play. Most practice is frustrating and difficult, but there are days when it's perfect. The instrument is perfect, the reed is perfect, one's fingering is perfect and one's playing is perfect. Then it's like an altered state where one is "not-doing", or non-action.

There's 50 of these!? So much wisdom! Im going to be watching and rewatching these forever