John Vervaeke: Meaning Crisis, Atheism, Religion & the Search for Wisdom | Lex Fridman Podcast #317

John Vervaeke is a psychologist and cognitive scientist at University of Toronto. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Mizzen+Main: https://mizzenandmain.com and use code LEX to get $35 off - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off - Eight Sleep: https://ww

the universe doesn’t care about your personal narrative you can just have met the person that is going to be the love of your life it’s the culmination of your whole project for happiness and you step into the street and a truck hits you and you die that’s mortality mortality isn’t just some far-flung event it’s that every moment we are subject to fate in that way so you can think of lots of little deaths you experience whenever all the projects and the plans you make come up against the fact that the Universe can just roll over them the following is a conversation with John ravaki a psychologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto I highly recommend his lecture series called Awakening from the meaning crisis which covers the history and future of Humanity’s search for meaning this is Alex Friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here’s John viveki you have an excellent 50-part lecture series online on the meaning crisis and I think you describe in the modern times an increase in depression loneliness cynicism and wait for it the term used technically by Harry Frankfurt and adopted by you so let me ask what is meaning what are we looking for when we uh engage in the search for meaning so when I’m talking about meaning I’m talking about what’s called meaning in life not the meaning of life that’s some sort of metaphysical claim meaning in life are those factors that make people rate their lives as more meaningful worth living worth the suffering that they have to endure and you study that what you see is it’s a sense of connectedness uh connectedness to yourself to other people to the world and a particular kind of connectedness you want to be connected to things that have a value and an existence independent of your egocentric sort of preferences and concerns this is why for example having a child is considered very meaningful because you’re connecting to something that’s going to have a life and a value independent of you now the question that comes up from me well there’s two questions one is why is that at risk right now and then secondly and I think you have to answer the second question first which is well yeah but why is meaning so important why is this sense of connectedness so important to human beings why when it is lacking do they typically fall into depression potentially mental illness addiction self-destructive behavior and so the first answer I give you is well it’s that sense of connectedness and people often express it metaphorically they want to be connected to something larger than themselves they want to matter they don’t mean it literally I mean if I change you to a mountain you wouldn’t thereby say oh now my life is so fulfilling right so what they’re trying to convey they’re using this metaphor to try and say they want to be connected they want to be connected to Something Real they want to make a difference and matter to it and one way of asking them well you know what’s meaningful is tell me what you would like to continue to exist even if you weren’t around anymore and how are you connected to it and how do you matter to it that’s one way of trying to get at what is the source of meaning for you is if you were no longer there you would like it to continue existing that’s not the only part of the definition probably because there’s probably many things that aren’t uh source of meaning for me that maybe I find beautiful that I would like to continue existing yes if it contributes to your life being meaningful uh you’re connected to it in some way and it ha and it matters to you and you matter to it and that you make some difference to it that’s when it goes from being just sort of true good and beautiful to being a source of meaning for you in your life is the meaning crisis a new thing or has it always been with us is it part of the human condition in general that’s an excellent question and part of the argument I made in Awakening for the meeting crisis is there’s two aspects to it one is that there are perennial problems perennial threats to meaning and in that sense human beings are are always vulnerable to despair you know the Book of Ecclesiastes is it’s all vanity it’s all meaningless but there’s also historical forces that have made those perennial problems more pertinent more pressing uh more difficult for people to deal with and so the meaning crisis is actually the intersection of perennial problems finding existing existence absurd experiencing existential anxiety feeling alienated and then pressing historical factors which have to do with the loss of the resources the tip that human beings have typically crossed historically and cross-culturally made use of in order to address these perennial problems is there something potentially deeper than just a lack of meaning uh that speaks to the the fact that we’re vulnerable to despair you know Ernest Becker talked about the in his book denial of death about the fear of death and being an important motivator in our life as William James said death is the warm at the core of the human condition is it possible that this kind of search for meaning is uh coupled or can be seen from the perspective of trying to escape the reality the thought of One’s Own mortality yeah Becker and the terror management theory that have come out of it now there’s been some good work um around sort of providing empirical support for that claim um some of the work not so good uh so so which aspects do you find convincing can you still man that case and then can you argue against it so what aspects I find convincing is that Human Being Human infinitude Being finite uh being inherently limited is uh very problematic for us [Laughter] given the extensive use of the word problematic I like that you use that word to describe one’s own mortality it’s problematic because people sort of on Twitter use the word problematic when they disagree with somebody but this to me seems to be the ultimate problematic aspect of the human condition is that we die and it ends I think I’m not just agreeing with you but I’m trying to I’m trying to get you to consider that your mortality is not an event in the future it’s a state you’re in right now that’s what I’m trying to get that’s what I’m trying to shift um so your mortality is just a we talk about something that causes mortality fatal yes but what we what we actually mean is it’s full of fate and I don’t mean in you know in the sense of things are pre-written what I mean is this sense of the universe doesn’t care about your personal narrative you can just have met the person that is going to be the love of your life it’s the culmination of your whole project for happiness and you step into the street and a truck hits you and you die that’s mortality mortality isn’t just some far-flung event it’s that every moment we are subject to fate in that way so you can think of lots of little deaths you experience whenever all the projects and the plans you make come up against the fact that the Universe can just roll over them the death is the indifference of nature of the universe to your to your existence and so in that sense it is always here with us yeah but you’re vulnerable in so many ways other than just the ending of your biological life um because it’s interesting if you rate what people fear most death is not number one they often put public speaking as number one yeah because the death of status or reputation can also be a profound loss for for human beings and drive them into despair so as