Shaun Newman Podcast - #443 - John Vervaeke

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

He has his PhD and is an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science and Buddhist psychology. For over 3 decades, cognitive scientist Dr. John Vervaeke has given his life to pioneering the scientific study of wisdom and transformation. His discoveries blend ancient and modern ways of knowing—bringing together philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, information processing, linguistics, and studies of religion. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 SNP Presents: Luongo & Krainer https://www.showpass.com/snp-presents-luongo-krainer/ Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast

This is Nicole Murphy. This is Rachel Emanuel. Hi, this is John Cohen. Hey, everyone, this is Glenn Jung from Bright Light News. This is Drew Weatherhead. This is Terrick. This is Ed Dowd, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Monday. Hope everybody's weekend went well. We dusted off the old ball gloves, played in, I don't know how long it's been since I played ball, but played in a slow pitch tournament and got a few aches and pains today. Let's leave it at that. It was amidst those days. Anyways, I hope wherever you were at, you got to in. enjoy the weekend and spend it with some friends, family, or whatever activity, you know,

floats your boat, that kind of thing. Speaking of different activities that are coming up, Canadians for Truth, non-profit organization, they've been putting on different shows. They got Thea, uh, Thea, sorry Theo. Theo Fleury and Jamie Saleh have been doing their Fire and Ice tour. And the next one they got coming up is Sarah Palin at the Grey Eagle Event Center in Calgary. It's June 18th. So if you're looking to catch something with a little bit of, well, I mean, similar feel,

but a different, you know, speaker that, you know, I think when I saw that name come across the board, I was like, hmm, that should be interesting, you know. Anyways, Sarah Palin, June 18th, you can get tickets, Canadians for Truth.com. Profit River, Clay Smiling, and Team over there, specialize in importing firearms from the United States of America. They pride themselves on making the process as easy as possible for all their country. Customers, of course, they ship all across Canada. So it doesn't matter where you're tuning in from,

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this weekend. I'd like to say, sorry Tyson, Tracy, about your luck, but we did come out on top on that one. Either way, Mitchco is looking for equipment operators with a farming experience as a bonus. So if you got a little farming experience there, they certainly look favorably upon that. They're also looking for laborers for seasonal, holy, seasonal or full time. So if you're in the market, you know, you're, maybe you're moving out this way, or maybe you're looking for a change of scenery, give Mitchco a call, 780214, 4004, just go to MitchcoCorp.com.com.com. C.A. Carly Cawson, team over Windsor Plywood, builders of the podcast Studio Table for everything would. These are the guys. I got him actively signed up, hopefully, for a round table,

building a round epoxy table for the studio, which I think would be super, super cool. We'll see. We'll see. Either way, you know, I've been having a few more people in studio, it seems, and they all come in, they're all looking at the table, and they're going, oh, man, that's something. I'll tell you what, it is. Whether we're talking mantles, decks, windows, door, sheds, or a podcast studio table, Carlyne, and the team of Windsor Plywood are the people to go talk to. Finally, we've got SMP Presents coming up, Luongo and Craneer this Saturday, June 10th. You can't get tickets at the door.

You have to buy them here in the next couple days. we lock it up here in about two days time and there won't be any more tickets sold. So if you haven't bought any, head on down to the show notes. There's a link there. Go grab your tickets for the Longo Criner. That looks to be a fun evening here in Lloyd Minster at the Gold Horse Casino. Finally, let's get on to that tale of the tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals delivering to your farm commercial or oil field location.

for more information visit them at hancock petroleum.com.com. C.A. For 30 plus years, he's given his life to pioneering the scientific study of wisdom and transformation. His discoveries blend ancient and modern ways of knowing, bringing together philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, information processing, linguistics, and studies of religion. He's got his PhD and is an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto in the Departments of Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Buddhist Psychology. I'm talking about John Verveke.

So buckle up, here we go. This is John Verveke, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by John Vervakey. So, sir, first off, thanks for taking some time and hopping on. Pleasure to be here, Sean. I've been, I don't know, I've been doing a little bit of a slight deep dive on some of your lecture series. I enjoy in the comments that, you know, the first time I ever,

thought of ever doing this was with Jordan Peterson. I read his book and then I went down the YouTube rabbit hole of listening to somebody talk for a long time and I never thought I would ever be that person or ever get there. And then I told you when we first talked, I stumbled upon you and I can't remember if it was with Peterson or if it was somewhere along the ways. Anyways, you have a YouTube channel as well and you have a lot of content on there as well. I started digging into that, and it's one of those things all over again, where you've got to pace yourself because there's a lot in an hour when you're talking. That's my journey to you, John, but I think for my audience, if they don't know who you are, maybe we'd just start there.

You could give a little bit of your background, and then we'll jump in from that point on. Sure. So I'm an associate professor in cognitive psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto. I'm the director of the cognitive science program there. I do a lot of research on intelligence, consciousness, mindfulness, rationality, wisdom, higher states of consciousness. Those are sort of my areas of expertise. And they sound disparate, but they're actually quite highly integrated.

At least that's what I argue. I have a couple of YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning from the Meaning Crisis. and after Socrates, I have a regular show like this where I dialogue with people called Voices with Raviki. And then I have a playlist where I actually do with other people a cognitive science. And we do a collaborative together and you can watch us working on a topic together like consciousness, the nature and function of the self, et cetera. And that's called the cognitive science show. And then I show up on, you know, a lot of people's.

channels and we have a thing called this little corner of the internet that I play a role in. And then finally I have a foundation of Ravaki Foundation that takes the money from all of this and tries to build communities, fund some science, help develop ecologies of practices, etc. With all that, what's your favorite part? I mean, do you enjoy it all? Are you like, I really enjoy when I get to sit and do, you know, like your awakening from the meaning crisis is, I believe, 50, if I remember correct, 50 different roughly one hour lectures. Did you and you're like, as soon as you're like, okay, here we go. Or are you more like, I can't wait to hop on a podcast or I can't wait to X?

I like them all. I mean, I like doing the series, the long form video series, because I get. to really develop my thinking and share that with other people in a way that I'm told by them they find helpful. I like getting into dialogue with people, though. I like that too. But I like my work. I'm very, very, very lucky, privileged. I don't know what the right adjective is. I like everything. I do a lot other than, you know, the standard stuff that professors complain about. I don't like I don't like all the forms. I don't like all the marking, all the bureaucracy.

But other than that, I worked very long, long career to get where I am. And there was a lot of sacrifice in that. But I also feel very lucky to be where I am because I really do enjoy it all so very much. You know, it's funny. A podcaster, he doesn't like. all the paperwork either. I don't think anyone goes, I can't wait. Well, that's a lie. I have an accountant that seems to love paperwork numbers. So, you know, maybe there are those people out there. It certainly isn't me, so I feel your pain, John. You know, when I first stumbled on the awakening

from the meaning crisis, it seemed just so like opportune, maybe, like perfect timing. You know, I think if if I go back and I should have wrote it down, I don't know why it didn't I was looking at it this morning I but I was staring at when you first started that and it was 2019 it was four years ago I'm like what what timing of that because obviously you wouldn't have known what was coming in 2020 and what would have come along that entire road and you come back to awakening from the meaning crisis and it certainly feels like the last three years certainly spurred that on maybe on on steroids yeah I was curious your your thoughts on it because like you do this lexer series and then literally people are, you know, essentially dealing exactly

with that, the meaning crisis. I mean, I don't know if it could be better explained than those couple of words. So thank you for that. So it leads to a weird state for me. As a scientist, I'm very happy when predictions I make come true. And when COVID first started, I made a prediction that we would see a massive rise. in what's become known as conspirituality, and then their mental health tsunami

when we came out of the crisis, which is also happening right now. So all these predictions, as a scientist, I go, yay, look, I must be on the track of the truth because my predictions are coming true. And then as a human being, I go, oh, no, it's really bad that these predictions are coming true because it means a significant increase in suffering,

people feeling disoriented, approaching despair, are falling into various kinds of self-destructive, you know, addictive patterns, things like that. So, Sean, the answer to your question is it puts me in this divided state. Like, I want to, as a scientist and a researcher or a thinker, I want to be on the track of the truth, and I want evidence for that. But on the other hand, I don't want the suffering, which, I mean, and I mean, I did this series to try and ameliorate suffering. So that concern also rises up in me. Yeah, I don't think, I mean, what you just said, I don't think anyone wishes human suffering, right?

I think, you know, if anything, we want to, I think for the most part, help our fellow man and ease all that, you know. So I think, to me, I think it, honestly, more people should just know the tools there, whether or not they, they start listening to you, John, and go, oh, this is it. You know, for, I don't know, I don't know how many different types of people. Maybe you can enlighten me on this thought process. For some people, you know, let's just a routine, and maybe we all need a routine, but a routine just sets them straight. For another, it's going to be, you know, maybe they're an alcoholic,

and Alcoholics Anonymous sets them straight. And for another person, the Bible sets them straight. And for another person, I just ran into a cop who was dealing with severe PTSD. And he talked about, I didn't bring him on yet. So the audience wouldn't know anything about this conversation. But he was doing like a guided, I don't know, poisoning. I don't know, like tree frog stuff. And I was just like, oh, like this is.

And he talked about how it just helped like immediately. And all of a sudden he had had to confront a whole bunch of stuff. and you know, when you listen to Roganem Talk, they talk about ayahuasca and different things like that. So I put it in the category of a guided drug experience. And for some people that terrifies them for another, they're like, oh, yes. And I just put, and maybe I'm wrong on this, and maybe what you're talking about encapsulates all the different ways. But different people have different ways they cope with what they just went through, and some things can just speak to them and move them forward. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. I mean, different personality types, different needs for cognition. These are all measurable variables. One thing I can say is I am a cognitive scientist, you know, a world-class university, whatever that merits, but, you know, and I've been doing this work for three decades. So I do try to speak from the best science, using the best arguments and the best evidence.

And I think that should matter. It should make a difference when people make this. decisions, but to your point, I also try to, you know, and I, awakening for the meaning crisis is not a good example of this because it's sort of the first, but with each, you know, iteration, each time I go around this, especially working with the people at the Verbeki Foundation, I do a lot to try and address those different ways in which people on board into a transformational process. So, for example, after Socrates has a lot more, not just lecturing, there's I teach practices that you can do in order to bring about transformation.

I demonstrate practices. I exemplify them. I do not just talk on my own monologue. I do genuine dialogue with other people representing different perspectives. And so very much, in this part of the work I do with the people at the Verviki Foundation, trying to scale the material, not ever done down. It's scientific and rational and evidence to do. provenance, but, you know, make it multi-scale it, so it's multibly accessible to different

types of people, especially at different points in their, you know, their development, their age, their situation. And so I do think it's important to distinguish those two things. I think we should try to meet people in many different ways. Some people are much more practice-oriented, some people are much more theory-oriented, et cetera. But I do think we should advise people to try and seek sources of guidance that are well-vetted in some important way. There's a lot of, and I use this term in a technical sense, there's a lot of bullshit on social media, and cutting through that, well, that's part of what my work is about,

is to try and enable people to do that and to see more clearly. And one other thing we want to do is, you know, your comfort zone, your comfort zone, my comfort zone. I'm not speaking in a way that doesn't include me, is not the best guide that we often need. You know, you mentioned alcoholics anonymous. If you just go with your comfort zone, you'll stay an alcoholic. So you can't rely just on your intuitive comfort zone to guide you, but you can't just take what anybody says on social media as gospel truth. So you've got to try and split the difference. And I'm trying to find people and exemplify that sort of ethic so that, again, people get a sense of, well, who can I go for if I want some guidance or direction or some challenge?

When you say seek sources that are well vetted, what sources do you put in that category? So for my sources, I put in, well, I put in bona fide academics within disciplines in which I have relevant expertise to make a judgment. So I don't make judgments about people in economics or something like that because I don't have expertise. But as a cognitive scientist and psychologists, I have expertise in psychology, philosophy, AI. You know, there's a related set of disciplines. And of course, so there's academic sources. I also put, you know, if I've met people coming out of a bona fide traditional wisdom tradition, these are often religious traditions, but it doesn't have to be, you know, a Buddhist monk,

you know, an Eastern Orthodox monk, I've met both. people who are in traditions that generally I have some understanding about and I can make a judgment as to whether or not that legacy is a legacy of wisdom or a legacy of self-destructiveness or fundamental, some kind of fundamentalism or utopia. And then, of course, I also will accept the vetting of people who I have vetted. They'll say to me, well, I think this person is legit. This person comes at this with the requisite education expertise. But, Sean, it also depends on what we're talking about, right?

You know, if somebody, like, if there's a psychiatrist who says, look, I want to talk to you about a particular kind of thing that keeps showing up in my cases, then if they talk about that, then they're vetted in that domain. Or I'll sometimes have people on who are artists. and they're trying to wrestle with the meaning crisis, and they show me the work, and they show me their practice. And then what I'll do is I'll typically do participant observation. I'll go and do their workshop and judge it from, right,

both, you know, external scientific merit and then internal existential merit. Like last summer, I went and did Rafe Kelly's return of the source, which I found deeply transformative. Now, Rafe's not an academic or he doesn't have any of these credentials, but I come to know him deeply. And I also did that. I did that very transformative ecology of practices. It's not a retreat.

It's more like an intensive. And so because I did it and I went through it and then I did some scientific questioning, then I'll vet it that way as well. I try to always speak from an area in which I have relevant expertise and experience. I have to ask then. You know, you mentioned Eastern Orthoferiors. Monk and a Buddhist monk, correct?

I got those two rules. Yeah, yeah, those are just examples. It wasn't exhausted. Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious. What sticks out to you about coming from a guy who's never talked to a monk? Yes. What was it about that experience that popped first to mind?

I find that intriguing, I guess. Good. Excellent question. And let's talk to what I did most recently, because that will pop most readily to mine. I just got back from the Aetna Monastery in northern California, just near the border of Oregon. And I was there at that monastery. It's linked to a seminary with students, and it's also linked to a nunnery. And then my friend, Bishop Maximus, was there.

We recorded like nine hours of content. I can tell you how that worked. I mean, Bishop Maximus reached out to me, and he said, you're doing a lot of work, John, on neoplatonism and trying to integrate neoplatanism with a scientific worldview, especially what's called 4E Cogsai. And of course, the Eastern Orthodox tradition is the tradition that I think can legitimately claim,

the Christian tradition that can legitimately claim to have kept most of the Neoplatonic tradition alive within it, transfigured it, as Maximus, Bishop Maximus would like to say. And then we did, we recorded three discussions. And I released it to my audience. I thought the discussions were great, and my audience agreed. And so then an opportunity came to go and be there to participate as much as I can. I mean, I can't take the Eucharist because I'm not a Christian and stuff like that.

But, you know, participate in as much of the life there as I can, talk to the people in good faith dialogue. So what popped out? for me was somebody reaching out with a tradition. He, you know, he teaches on science and philosophy. He teaches on philosophy and religion at the seminary. He's clearly well-educated. He also, he's clearly well-educated in neoplatonism and neoplatonic Christian thinkers like Maximus, St. Maximus, the confessor.

And so that stood out to me. This is a person who wasn't just, for me, I mean, this is somewhat of a slogan. I'd say, don't tell me what you believe, tell me what you practice. And so here's somebody who's committed himself to a very deep set of practices for a very long time that appeal to human beings on many different cognitive and perceptual, attentional faculties. And it's a longstanding, transformative tradition, a dedicated community. And I want to know how that works and how that shows up and how that interacts with a philosophical framework like Neoplatonism and a religious framework.

like Christianity. Can you, you know, this is where folks, I feel like I live in a rock from time to time. Neo-Platanism, can you please give a little bit of a brief or quick or whatever you want to do, John? I just go, if I don't understand it, a few more are going to not understand it. Please, I think that's very important. So neoplatanism, I mean, it has to do with platonism, but neoplatonism is, it's kind of, you know how a scientist, or see searching for the grand unified field theory that will unify. So in sort of the religious philosophical spirituality of the ancient world, neoplatonism was the grand unified theory. It integrated the work of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, and it created a comprehensive way of

comprehensive ecology of practices, a way of life designed to cultivate wise self-transcendence. in a sense. So it integrated things that we normally think of as deeply sort of separate or even opposed to each other. Like if you're reading Plotinus, you're reading a very, you know, very sophisticated conceptual argumentation, but you're also going through a spiritual exercise, and you're also being pointed to potential mystical experience. And it's all being set within sort of the best scientific framework that was available at the time. So, Neal Platonism, it basically posits the idea that reality is leveled in some important fashion, that there are levels of reality.

And we're coming around to considering, like, there's the quantum level and there's the material level and so on and so forth. and then the idea is by coming into right relationship with these different levels of reality, you find corresponding levels of the self, and then when they get put into that right relationship, you properly educate them, tutor them. So there's a physical aspect of you. So you should be doing something embodied and learn about like the sets of skills that are involved. There's a level that is disclosed to us by what's derivable by the natural sciences,

and you should learn that knowledge and understand at it and try and shape your sense of yourself accordingly. But there's also a level of what's presupposed by the natural sciences, how the universe is intelligible, how it's ultimately, somehow it's ultimately one, but that one that is the ground of any sense we can make is not something we can know because it's that in terms of which we know everything and you come into a relation with that you might have a mystical or transformative experience and then you try and integrate that spiritual that rational that embodied physical so they all are properly proportioned so you are properly proportioned in how you connect to reality and how you connect to yourself and when you do that you'll you'll learn how to reduce self-deception and you'll learn how to

increase a sense of meaning in life because meaning in life is about being as connected as you can to yourself and to other people in the world. And Neoplatonism, like it becomes the, like, the spiritual backbone of the whole Abrahamic West. So it goes into Christianity, and it's deeply, deeply interwoven with Christianity. It goes into Islam and becomes Sufism. It goes into Judaism, and becomes Kabbalah. And it eventually is found all along the Silk Road that joined Europe to Asia. And it was like a lingua philosophica, a lingua, Franca, that all these different religions and philosophies could, they could use this common language, conceptual language, to talk to each other and not only trade goods, but trade ideas.

So that's as quickly as I can. That's what Neoplatonism is. I may simplify this way too much, and you may go, that's not right. So I'm going to try and see if I'm hearing what you're saying right. You got all these religions across the Silk Road, or just in easy terms across the world. The legal legacy religions, yeah. And neoplatonism is kind of a way to tie them together so they can talk to one another. Yes, yes. If you understand that as not just a conceptual or political project,

but also one that can be deeply personally transformative for you as well. Yes, that's good. I like that, Sean. That's good. Let me ask then, you know, out here in the West, this is what I've seen in my own journey and I've seen in a lot of people. Across the course of the journey of COVID, more and more people looked around and what they thought they knew, they didn't know. That's right.

And we got pushed into where we basically didn't talk to any of our neighbors, which was self-isolation, and we kept getting worse. and worse and worse, and they kept getting darker and darker and darker. And then, you know, I told you before, you know, then Ottawa happens. And this transformative experience happens for a lot of people. And since Ottawa, I feel like more and more people are turning back to, I don't know, traditional ways, old ways, or just in general, the Bible for the Western culture. I can't speak to the rest of the world.

I have no idea. I literally have no idea. But what I see from the audience and from people that I'm talking to, and the way I rationale it, and maybe I'm wrong in this, is I go, I've lost trust in pretty much every institution out there. I'm realizing I'm being lied to by so many people. Media is trying to dictate how I think, everything else. What's one thing you can find that could be the rock, the foundation, and you start reading something like the Bible, which, in general is what our civilizations have been founded on, not all of them by any stretch, John, you know that. But at the same sense, it's like, oh, okay, and I feel like there's a whole turn to go back to that. In your mind, when I say that entire journey,

what, you know, I'm curious your thoughts. So, yes, two things are happening. Both are, and my work touches on both groups. One of the things that I get from people is, and I get it from many religions, is they'll say that my work helped them return back to a religious home or to find a religious home. Other people have turned not to sort of current religions, but have returned to some of these ancient philosophies. Stoicism is going through a huge thing right now.

I predict that neoplatonism will be the next one that people sort of start to wake it up to. Of course, I'm confounding that prediction because I'm trying to bring it about. I think a post-nominalist sort of post-scientific revolution version of neoplatonism is strongly, you can make a very strong argument for today. I've got a couple videos up around that. So people are turning to a lot. and what's interesting is one of the fastest growing returns or finding a new place is people going into Eastern Orthodox Christianity. I'm not advocating for it. I'm not here. I'm not proselytizing. I'm just reporting.

I don't think you have to worry about anyone thinking you're advocating for anything. I'm exploring the bloody topic on my show, right? It's trying to understand, John, what is going on? Because so many of us can see it. It's like, and if you listen to this show, you can really see it or hear it or whatever. So I don't think you have to worry about preaching at all. If anybody's got to worry, it's this guy. So let's return.

Why Eastern Orthodoxy? Because Christianity isn't, and I'm saying this with respect, and I think many branches of Christianity would agree with this. I know there will be those that don't. Christianity, if you study it historically, and you see how it culminates on, let's say, two figures Aquinas in the West and Maximus in the East, Christianity is not just built on the Bible. Christianity is built on integrating the Bible with Neoplatonism. That's the historical reality. So think of an important church father, Augustine, St. Augustine, the Confessions, right?

He's converted to Christianity via Neoplatonism. He has a neoplatonic mystical experience that enables him to go back into Christianity, taught him how to think in a way that made Christianity vital. So one of the reasons I think way people turn to Eastern Orthodoxy, and then this is, sorry, I'm going to use this to segue into a bigger point. They're not just looking, they are, they are looking for a religious home. I just gave a talk at the conference, the quest for a spiritual home. They are doing that. I'm not denying that. But many of them in conjunction with that, which I think is actually healthy, they're looking for wisdom.

And let me just take a moment and what I mean by that. They're not looking for knowledge, at least not theoretical knowledge. Knowledge helps you overcome ignorance. But people are aware of all the bullshit within and without all the self-deception and all the deception in the world. And they're looking for a way to ameliorate, cut through their own self-deception. And by the way, and if anybody's manipulating you, it's not just on them. They manipulate you because to some degree they are hijacking machinery of self-deception within you. Right?

They make use the algorithms on, well, the algorithm to manipulate us. Yes, they do, but they do because we have, we fall prey to cognitive bias, right? And they hijacked that. You have to learn about the processes of the self-deception. You have to overcome it. So knowledge gets rid of ignorance. We have too much knowledge in some sense. But wisdom overcomes foolishness.

And that's a different project. And when, like, so for example, Sean, I'll ask my students where to go for information? They hold up their phones in like two nanoseconds, right? Well, where do you go for knowledge? They're a little bit more hesitant. They'll say the university. They don't say the media anymore, by the way. And then I'll say, well, where do you go for wisdom?

And there's a silence. And maybe one person puts up their hand and they belong to a religious community. they'll say I go to my religious committee. Some of them will say, well, I belong to religious community, and I'm not even finding the cultivation of wisdom there. So a lot of people, that's why stoicism and Buddhism, right, there's a wisdom famine, and they're trying to address that. I would say I cultivate wisdom through podcasts, through YouTube channels,

you know, that, well, I go back to the first one. Well, and I'll laugh as I say this. It was this guy we know as Dr. Jordan Peterson when he first came about and you started listening to some of the things. You know, and he talked in his early talks about how there was guys sitting in his talks and they were like nodding their head going along with it. I got to see him very early on. Well, not very early on. I don't know. Like 2018.

I don't know how early on that is. But it was earlier than, you know, a lot of people and later than some. And I was one of those guys sitting there with two young kids at the time going, oh, this. makes sense and so once you start to find those streams of wisdom you know certainly books have a lot of the ability to give you some knowledge but if you don't and I don't know if this is right that once again I'm you know you're the the guy that can shoot holes in all my theories and I that's what I look forward to John you know if you read a book it's one thing to read it and go

oh yeah that's a great idea it's another entirety to take said idea and implement it in your life and take drawing Peterson take yourself all these grand ideas if all you do is just read them listen to them and go oh that's a good idea and even just talk about them a little bit but do nothing with it you don't get the full effect of what you're actually talking about and so wisdom is certainly I would think one is is certainly like finding it which I would go to podcasts and YouTube channels although I have my my thoughts on YouTube but nobody needs to hear that today

and and then I don't know if I'm writing this, but I would say, but if you even do that and then never enacted, I don't know if you have wisdom at all. That just might be a bit of knowledge. So let me respond to both points. Sure. First of all, I mean, I know Jordan personally,

we're colleagues at UFT, and, you know, we keep in contact. I've been on his show multiple times. Well, and I should point out to the listener, you've been on a lot of shows, right? Like, Friedman was, you know, that's a story for a different day because I'm kind of curious.

about that man but anyways that's that's beside the point so um yeah uh let but let's respond to the second point first about so this is actually work i do and it's not just my own work it's i'm culling this from a lot of work done in uh what's called four e cognitive science and you know especially work done with my colleague uh good friend uh dan shappi but let's talk about four kinds of knowing, right? And there, it goes directly to your point. So we tend to emphasize the first kind, which is propositional knowing. This is knowing that, and then you state a proposition. This is knowing that cats are mammals, right? And this is stored in a particular kind of memory you have. It's called semantic memory. For example, can I ask you, did you know that cats are mammals? And you'll

go, yes, I know that. All right, I assume. Now, if I say to you, when did you, what's the specific day in which you learned that. You'll go, I don't know. You don't, it's stored as a fact. We used to have a book, John, of mammals as kids. It was like yay thick. And I believe we got it from National Geographic that had all the mammals and then all the, well, I don't know.

There was what, four. Yes. Anyways, you do, anyways, that's up. I remember as a kid reading up on all the different animals. But do you remember the specific event? Hmm, probably not. Right. Okay.

So you, but notice what you have, you have a sense of convincing. you're convinced that it's true. Now notice how that's different from procedural knowing. This is knowing how to do something. This is knowing how to catch a book ball, how to kiss somebody appropriately, knowing how to swim. Now notice that that doesn't result in beliefs like propositional knowledge. It results in skills. And skills aren't true or false, the way beliefs are true or false. They either apply or they don't. You're not using your swimming skill right now, right? Because it doesn't plot. And its sense of realness isn't

truth. Its sense of realness is power. Your skills empower you. They enable you to interact with the world. And it's stored in a different kind of memory, called procedural memory. You can lose, so you can lose semantic memory. So you can like, you know, like

you can learn, you can lose a lot of your knowledge of facts and yet your ability to play the piano fluently doesn't go away. Things like that. So that's procedural knowing. Now there's prospectival knowing. This is knowing what it's like to be you

in your particular state of mind in the particular situation you're in. So this is knowing by noticing. What are you noticing right now? What's standing out for you? What is your attention drawn to? What are you ignoring? What are you backgrounding? What are you disregarding as relatively trivial?

What are you holding as central? Listen to some of the words, important. You're taking it into you, right? importing it in. So this is your prospectival knowing. It's knowing what it's like to be you in the state of mind in the situation.

We talk about your ability to take a perspective. And this is stored in your episodic memory. So let's compare that to your semantic memory. So I can ask you, do you remember what happened on your last birthday?

Do you want an answer? Well, yes. Not really. No. Okay. That's too far back. Can you remember? I remember this week.

Oh, yeah. Okay. It's been an interesting week. Well, can you remember a really important thing that happened to you yesterday, or at least the most interesting thing that happened to you yesterday? Yesterday, yes, playing with my three kids in the backyard and trying to be in the moment, even though I was tired and I did not, you know, at times you wanted to just go lay on the couch.

This is an excellent example. First of all, your eyes looked up. What were you doing when your eyes looked up? Recalling it. Yeah. Actually, like going back to the moment and kind of feeling it. And you put yourself in it, right? You resituated yourself in it, in your imagination.

And notice the language you're using. You're trying to, the memory is about something that prospectival knowing actually gives you, which is a sense of being in the situation, being present. That's its sense of realness. And you were worried about actually not being present with your kids at that time. And so that's episodic memory, perspectiveal knowing, its sense of, of realness is a sense of presence. Notice how these are all different ways of knowing.

And then at the bottom is a kind of knowing that's called participatory knowing. This is your knowing by being. So, for example, because you and the room you're in were both shaped by physics and culture, there are a whole bunch of affordances for you. So I assume there's a floor that's walkable for you. Right?

Yes. So you belong. to it. You fit together. You have both been shaped to fit each other and all these affordances open up. So here's how we can track it. The participatory knowing, which is knowing, right, by being and belonging, gives you affordances. The prospectival knowing picks out certain affordances and makes them obvious to you by putting you into a situation. That tells you which skills you should engage, which is the procedural knowing. And once you're interacting with the world, then you can tap into the beliefs that are needed to complete your fittingness to the situation.

That's your propositional knowing. So there are many different kinds of knowing. So now back to your question. If you just read in a book, all it does is go into propositional knowing and semantic memory. All the other non-propositional knowing, the skills, the perspectives, the traits of character, none of those have been transformed or addressed. And when you're not doing that, you're not cultivating wisdom. Hmm, that's a, well, that's an experience for the audience to go along while you're talking, you know, if you rewinded that, I'm just, I'm throwing out a hypothetical to everybody listening.

If you rewinded it and every time John asks, you try and play along, that's an experience right there, you know, because I, I think, you know, at the end of that, when you talk about cultivating wisdom, I just, I just think, like, I've read so many things, I've listened to so many people. and if you don't put it into your life to create a bit of a habit, so you start to actually learn what the words actually mean and start to participate in the experience, you know? And take the perspective that is being offered and cultivate the skills that are needed in order to enact it. Then you will realize wisdom. Do you believe in God, John?

So it depends what that means. And this, of course, is something that's happening right now. the world. And one way, one way is we can just fall into contesting it, or one way is we can fall into, or be drawn into genuine dialogue about it. So I do, because I think there's something fundamentally right about neoplatonism, I do think there is what in neoplatonism is called the one, which was often equated with God, both within neoplatonism and outside. The one, So think about this. Sorry, I have to do something rather...

No, no, no. Yeah, I just gave you a giant question. You'll take all the time you need. Let's, first of all, first point, our judgment of how real something is is about how intelligible it is, how much it helps us to understand. This is why you judge your life more real

than your dreams, because you can, right, the dreams don't fit the bigger pattern of intelligibility of understanding of your daily life. So you say they don't fit into that bigger network of understanding, and so they're less real. So we judge realness in terms of understanding. There's a more complex argument in there, but I'm just going to put it at that sort of gisty level.

But what is it to understand something? To understand something is to take two things that are disparate and find something that integrates them. Oh, look, here's electricity, here's magnetism, but underneath it is electromagnetism. Or here's how all these different things move. Oh, I can explain that all with force equals mass times acceleration. So what I do is of a disparate number of things, I find something that we can turn the word around, something that stands under them. This is a neoclatonic turn, a hypostasis. Right?

Now, let's just, I grouped all of this bunch together. And then I've grouped up. And then I find something that is underneath them. This is why physics is trying to find what integrates. relativity and quantum mechanics. Because to the degree to which they're not integrated, we don't understand, and to which we don't understand,

we're not, right, close, we're distanced from reality. Now, just take that and just keep going. You're going to get to an ultimate source of understanding, that which integrates everything, but it's not just how things are known, it's also how they are real and how they are realizable. But that's not something that it's,

can be known. Because in order to know it, I'd have to get behind it or beneath it. But it is the ultimate source of understanding and realness. That's called the One. And now, in that sense, and to be fair to me, you can find many people in all the Abrahamic religions, and you can find a lot of analogs in Vedanta and Taoism, and Taoism, Brahmin and Vedanta, that's often called God.

Maximus, Dionysus, Aquinasus, they saw that that neoplatonic articulation, philosophical articulation, was the most appropriate. So, and then the, and that, again, that's a member, it's, it's not just propositional. As I enter into connectedness with moving, up that ascent to what is most real, most one. I also become more real, more one, more integrated with myself, with the world, more fully realized in terms of my capacities for understanding. Again, not just propositional understanding, procedural, perspectival, participatory,

which means I'm fundamentally changing myself. So that one is also something that is radically good in that it affords human self-transcendence, the cultivation of wisdom, enhanced connectedness, meaning in life. So it is ultimately, it is not just in a moral sense. It's good in an ontological sense, having to do with like the structures of reality. And so I call that when I want to talk about it in a more, I'm going to use a word, and I don't use this word pejoratively, in a more mythos sense, mythological. The term for that is God.

So this is often called a non-theistic or a classical theistic version of God, in contrast to a common theistic understanding of God, which is that God is the supreme being, one of the biggest or most powerful being that there is. And then you can enter into a sort of direct personal relationship with him. So I believe in the first. Believe is not the right word. I am called into it in a way that perpetually transforms me.

There's an inexhaustible fount of intelligibility, insight, transformation that is constantly available to me, afforded to me, and that is also available to other people. And so in that sense, I believe in God. Sorry, I can't give you a simple answer to that. No, it's, you know, I didn't have that on the sheet as one of the questions I was going to ask. It just kind of spurred it out if you would because I'm like, I'm just curious. You're a man who, from what I can see, has done a lot of digging, right?

And has done a lot of research and has like, you know, had conversations that very, very few people on this planet get to have. And so I go, I'm just kind of curious. And this could be wrong. But once again, to me, if I were to summarize what you just said, and this is probably wrong, this is just the way my ears hurt, and you can tell me what I'm getting wrong. But I find it interesting. If I, you would call yourself a scientist, yes? Yes, I'm a cognitive scientist.

I think of myself. I run experiments. Right. I publish in peer-referute journals. I do all the stuff. All the credentials stuff, yep. Sorry, it's just a, I want to make sure that I'm, to me, It's interesting to watch a scientist's mind answer that question because what I heard, and maybe this is wrong.

So here's what I heard. I heard you have to keep digging. The problem with such a large question of God is like, so when do you actually hit the bottom or the top? Either way, I didn't mean to, you know, to me, I think of digging a hole and you hit gold. Anyways, that's just my way of visualizing it. And the thing is with science, you said it perfectly. How does a car run? It's like, well, what answer do you want? And when will you just be okay? This is how it runs. Well, you turn the key and it goes. Okay, well, that's right. You need fuel and the fuel.

And you can see how, and you can go deep and deep and deep and deep and tell at what point, though, until you're pulling different things out of the earth and having it form the actual car? And what answer would you eventually give? And I find scientists very fascinating. because I see how your brain works on it and I see how my brain works on it because I just I guess I don't know

mine's more I don't know what mine is just that I don't know if I have to go near as deep to be like hmm I I agree and I can move on and I find your answer very thought-provoking John and I hope I get that right

yes I mean there'd be much more to talk about sure right you know we should be most cautious when we're talking about things ultimate. But let's, let's, like, like, one way of thinking about it is, you know. Why, why cautious when talking about something, when talking about the ultimate? Because, uh, are, we are most, we are moving most away from our familiar and most comfortable

way of thinking. And so, for example, um, we, we, we, we think in thingy terms, we think about, you know, physical objects as, you know, as sort of what reality is made out of. But many things don't fall into that category well. So a physical object, for example, as a specific spatial temporal location, right, and I can interact with it by bumping into it, bumpation, right? Bump, causation by bump. Okay, E equals MC squared is a reality. Where is it?

It doesn't have a location. When is it? It doesn't have a time. How can I bump into it? I can't, but it's real. But if I try to think of it as a thing, right, I'm going to misframe it. I'm going to misrepresent it in a fundamental way.

And I'm tempted to do that because this is a normal, everyday, comfortable way of thinking. But it's inappropriate. And that's just a scientific law. God, the one ultimate reality, would be the source of all laws and how the laws are all bound together. Because they were at one point. There was an absolute singularity that everything came from, right?

And that's not science fiction. And there's still entanglement at the quantum level. This one is like it. So when you, even calling it the one is a mistake. It's not one like the number one. It's supposed to point. You can point to it. But we have to be really careful because we have deeply ingrained because they're so

successful in our everyday lives. We have deeply ingrained familiar, comfortable ways of. thinking that will steer us directly wrong when we think about or we not think isn't even the right word when we try to come into right relationship with the ultimate this is use the Bible this is the constant concern with idolatry idolatry is to try and think or relate to the ultimate the one the ultimate reality right as if it's a thing and that's a profound that's considered you know the greatest of sins because there And what you're supposed to do, even in the Bible, right?

You're supposed to exercise great care about the relationship you're taking, how you're comporting yourself towards God, because thinking or relating to God or the one or what's ultimate, ultimate reality, in the way we think or relate to our everyday lives is very, we're constantly tempted. I'll use biblical language here because maybe that'll land. We're constantly tempted to idolatry. And idolatry isn't, you know, bowing down in front of, you know, a golden calf. Idolatry is whatever you're giving your ultimate concern to that is not an ultimate reality.

That's idolatry. That's till it. And I think that's deeply right. What do you mean by ultimate reality? And I'm sorry if I'm circling the way again at all. I love playing in this sandbox. This is a wonderful place to be. what I mean by ultimate reality is that in terms of which everything else's reality depends

but upon which but it itself and even calling it it is a mistake it depends on nothing so for example the reality shadows are real but their reality is completely dependent on the things that the shadows of right is that right yeah sorry yeah yeah yeah sorry I'm I'm I'm trying to for the listener it John's sitting there nodding his head like I'm supposed to be nodding, but I'm trying to listen to everything he says. Anyway, sorry, yes. So there's asymmetric dependence. What that means is the shadow depends for its reality on, let's say it's a shadow of me, on me.

But I can exist without the shadow, right? So the reality is the dependence is only one way. That's asymmetric dependence, right? And so it's the same way. All these interactions in the universe depend, right? You know, for example, on scientific laws, but the laws perhaps don't depend on those specific reactions because there's all kinds of other reactions that could happen that never happened, et cetera. And so what you do is you try and you try and this is what you do in Neal Claytonism.

You try and very carefully what are all the relationships of asymmetric dependence. And as I trace them, I get deeper understanding because that's that integration. And how do I trace until I get to where the integration gets at its apex, that upon which everything else, everything else's realness depends, but which itself is not. dependent on anything else, that's ultimate reality. I'm going to rewind this just a little bit and try and bring it back down to Sean's easy nomenclature. Please.

Please. Two years ago, Sean would have said the only thing in this world is what sits around him, the table, you know, sitting across from a person, you know, you get the point. Nice and simple, nothing else much to the world. over the course of two years, well, I'll just say it aloud, I truly believe there is a spiritual world that we cannot see. And my interaction with the world has formulated that quite like black and white. There's just no question in my mind that there are things going on that I cannot see.

And that's slowly drawing me to your, you know, when you talk about all these things coming together and you eventually hit, You know, I'm formulating a point, I guess, folks, with my hands for those who aren't watching. And I don't know where I am on the journey of that, folks. Just that, just that to me, it was a big realization of just a whole bunch of experiences just over and over and over and over and over again that wouldn't, you know, and then you're just like, okay, I thought I had the world kind of case. It turns out Sean doesn't know Jack Squat.

Yes. And I don't know. I don't know where I'm going with this point, John. other than when I hear you talk about getting to hear, I go, yeah, that makes actually a lot of sense. Each person has their own journey in that, I think. Well, I know. Yeah, and I think, I mean, most of the wisdom traditions, religious and philosophical, and they can also be religious, philosophical, or philosophical religious, religious, they try to awaken that.

So, you know what, perceptual depth perception, as you can see into the depths. Sure. So I'm going to use this term ontological. Ontological means having to do with the structure of reality. That's exactly what you're invoking. You get, what they do is they awaken a kind of ontological depth perception. You start to see the reality is deeper than you thought it was. Religions do this?

They can. They can. Sorry, okay. And so I don't want to play the silly game of comparing the best science to the worst religion or the best religion to the worst science, which a lot of the debates or pseudo debates do. Let's talk. If we're going to talk about this, let's talk about the very best science and the very best religion, the very best philosophy. Okay. And I think all of those in different ways, emphasizing different kinds of knowing, awaken that seeing into depth.

Look, and I want to show you how this is not just an intellectual exercise. So I do this with my students. I'll say, how many of you are in satisfying romantic relationships? Because our culture is trying to turn romantic relationships into the God equivalent. They're going to bear all of the meaning in life. And they can't bear that. And that's why they're under so much strain. But anyways, so you've got, right?

Is that why they're under so much strain? Sorry, I don't mean to distract us from where you're going. We're trying to make them do what religion and philosophy and culture used to do. Culture in the sense of long-standing tradition used to do from us. We're severed from religion. Philosophy has largely become for most people something that's only academic and therefore largely irrelevant. And culture has become very ephemeral, the sense of giving us a tradition. so we try to make our romantic relationships bear all of that. This person will be the unending

source of profound meaning in life. They will help me to become my very best, and they will be my ultimate home. At the deepest... Certainly when you put it that way, I agree with a bunch of it, but it's interesting, John. I look at marriage or just a significant other romantic. relationship, the way our society to my eyes, maybe I'm wrong on this, but the way my eyes see it is the encouragement from the establishment that, you know, you must do what's best for you, meaning divorce if things get tough, and divorce again if things get tough again, and, you know, you have to do what is best for you at all times. That's what I see. Okay, let me respond to that, because I think that's actually the point. So what is being,

what is actually underneath this is what the romantic tradition has always argued for and why it was once a grand philosophical framework and it basically decayed into just being about our noticed of adjective romantic relationships right

but that ideal was no no tradition and commitment aren't what decide right a now a romantic relationship it's passion and

a sense of profound completion in the other person. And so the romantic tradition of fact arose as a challenge to marriage and traditional ways in which marriage was understood. And therefore,

it's actually undermining of it, which is why it does this weird thing. It only always talks about infatuation. Do a romantic comedy. 99% of them are always about the infatuation stage. They don't deal with the long-term

commitment of love. Yeah, you're bang on there. Like, I mean, I've been married now. Geez, folks, what is it going on nine years? And been with my wife for, I guess it'll be going on 16 years. And one thing that you, what I will try and impart on my children is, you know, there are a lot of ups and downs in relationships. Yes.

And the honeymoon phase is in fact there, and it doesn't last. So don't base your relationship on materialistic things. Don't base it on looks. And don't get me wrong. Looks are important. It's all an equation in there in my mind, right? Like you need to be attracted to the other person. You ain't doing that.

Like, I mean, you're in for a rough time too. But attraction comes more deeply when you can communicate and talk and push one another and everything else. and to me when we look at but once again you were using romantic relationships and my brain immediately equates that to marriage

and I look at what society is doing to marriage and I go should somebody never get divorced I don't know John's not here to debate that I just go on the overall thing I don't think we should popularize it

so that our divorce rate is through the roof you got single parenting you got all these crazy things go on and it's like what's the offshoot of that probably, you know, more of what we started off talking about, which is the meaning crisis, because you don't have the structure in place in front of the kids and everything else. I agree. I don't have any. I think, I mean, we proposed as a culture that romantic romance was the way we would get into our relationships as opposed to arranged marriages, because,

there were their problems. But what we have now found out is that romantic, the romance route, also has significant problems that were not found in arranged marriages. I'm not saying go back to arranged marriages. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get what you're saying. Arranged marriages had its problems. Yeah. But so does romantic going about it that causes new problems. That's right. And part of the problem, I would argue, is how, well, now kids have something that I never had to worry about. You know, like the ability to just go live a different life online was never there. Or it was there, but not quite to the extent that it is now. And so, you know, when I was growing up, they popularized, you know, like the supermodel.

You need to, she needs to be good looking. That is the ultimate thing you need to be searching for. You need to have the arm candy on your side, and that's going to give you happiness for the rest of time. And there's a whole bunch of things that get said about that thought process that I don't need to utter here, other than it's pretty shallow. It's pretty dumb. And if you're actually into find someone to be with you the rest of your life, you're going to learn that pretty quick, right? Because it doesn't take long, and you're like, I don't think I can, you know, you get to some of the big questions, and you're like, I don't think we're getting past, you know, date number four. So notice a word you invoked.

and then allow me to segue back to what we were. Yeah, absolutely, John. That's pretty superficial, which means there's no ontological depth perception in that way of framing a relationship. It stays on the surface. So when I go back and I ask my students, how many of you are in satisfying romantic relationships?

And now we've articulated the value that this series, right? They put a certain number put up their hands. And I say, of you that put up your hand, how many would want to know if your partner was, cheating on you, even if that meant the destruction of the relationship. 95% of the people that put up, had their hands up, keep their hands up. They're willing to have this satisfying relationship destroyed. And I asked them, why do you want this?

It's giving you all this meaning. And they, here's these hard bit in the cynical. Here's what they say, because it's not real. Because it's not real. This is so important. This is one of Plato's greatest insights. We desire not, we have a meta desire. We not only desire something, right, the things that will satisfy our desires.

We have this super desire, like a meta desire, that whatever satisfies our desires is real, not fraud, not simulation. And of course, the virtual world is messing up with that. But I bring this around because I'm trying to show you that your relationship to realness is not just, you know, I believe it's true. you have a longing to be in contact with what is real. And that means you have a longing to be in contact with what is most real, which means you have, and this is TILX idea and other,

it's ultimately Plato, you have an ultimate longing to be in contact with what is ultimately real. Could I just, I guess if I was one of your students and I had my hand up, I would have kept it up as well. But the immediate thought that came to mind wasn't that it wasn't real, is that it's based on a lie. Same thing. Same thing?

Well, what does, okay, what does false city mean? Like, you can't, here's seven grams of falsity. What does it mean when you say something's false? You mean it's not actually the case. You can't find it in reality. You're just saying it's not real. That's what false means. And lie is a way of saying everything, what the appearances are doing, right, is they're actually

deceiving me. Now, what you want is the opposite. And this is what I presume you have with your partner. So that's the hermeneutics of suspicion, the idea that appearances deceive us and distort us and mislead us. And our culture is rife with that kind of cynicism. The problem with that is that actually, that's asymmetrically dependent on something else being real. You can only say something is a lie if you can point to what's real. You can only say that's a fraud if here's the real thing.

So there has to be situations in which appearances are not distracting you or distorting you. distorting the underlying reality, they're disclosing it, they're manifesting it. That's beauty. And again, I don't mean the beauty of the hot model, which is just super salience. I mean the sense of, I'm seeing into the depths of something. And that's how you can realize the beauty of your spouse or your long-term partner as something other than just their superficial, right, attractiveness. When that attractiveness is an alignment with, yes, you get attracted to them. So they stand out for you. And as you said, that shouldn't ever completely disappear or you're in trouble. But initially, right, that gives you a potential of being in the right stance.

And love is not a feeling or an emotion. It's a stance. It's an orientation. It puts you into the right orientation so that you start to get the person's soul, the depths of who they are and the mystery of that disclosed to you. And they become beautiful in that way. and you get that so beauty is often an invitation to ontological depth perception now like everything else it can be hacked it can be hijacked it can be perverted that's like that's like a

bloody poem right there john wow okay well i mean you know you're you're saying love is very deep right you have to see past the surface level and and there's so many layers and i might add in that the longer you're with a person that you can do that with, you see deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. Or you should, I guess that's what I'm hoping happens. You know, the longer I'm with my wife. They see more and more deeply into you. You see more and more deeply into them in a way in which both of you are opened up and opened up in a way that makes you more resilient and responsive to reality. That's, you know, people who are in satisfying, like long-term satisfying relationship generally are doing better with respect to their lives than people who are single.

Now, the opposite, like when you're into a disastrous long-term relationship, you then fall below, right? Right. Right. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not trying, I guess, you know, for the listener, I always, you know, it's like it's not, if you're in a terrible relationship, I'm not, you know, but I would also argue, you know, be careful because what are you doing? You know, like what, take a look at yourself first because certainly in my relationship with my wife and I have a very loving wife of fantastic family and at times I haven't held up my end of the bargain and she's pulled more of the weight and now I you know when you come to realize that you're like oh I got to do better and then you you know and then you try and do better and you start to enact things that

normally you know a younger more I don't know if it's just a young Sean or what but you know, just silly things done where you don't understand the consequences of some of your actions or even your thoughts, right? Yeah, we're foolish. But, you know, you and I both, right? So let's put, let me now say, neoplatonism is learning how to wake up to beauty in this deep sense so that you fall in love with the depths of reality. Can you say that one more time? Neoplatonism is, right, learning how to wake up to beauty. in this way that we've been talking about beauty

so that you are able to fall in love with the depths of reality. The depths of reality of a person, of a tree, of the world, of being itself. And that feels like it would just cause world peace right there. Well, it did something, not on that scale, but it did something on significant scale, and, you know, the Silk Road from the East and the West. You know, when we first chatted, and it's funny how time goes and where I was thinking when I first reached out to you, I was doing a lot of digging on Ottawa, you know, and I told you about that

experience. And I mean, we got a little bit of time left. I don't want to race through it by any stretch, John, but I was very curious your thoughts of Ottawa. And I don't, I assume you didn't go to the streets of Ottawa during the protest. Yeah, I didn't. I mean, so I want to be very careful here because, and this is not because I'm just trying to dodge a responsibility to your legitimate question. I have, for philosophical reasons, I have what I call a metapolitical stance that I think the political arena is largely broken because it's locked in the ideological level, which is the claim that our propositions are all we have to pay attention to, a propositional

tyranny, and we don't give, we've given up that ability to call each other out and we've turned it into adversarial destroy. The other side is evil. So I strongly resist trying to be drawn into. I'm not claiming you're doing anything. I'm just stating my position. I try to resist being drawn into that. Well, I guess I'm not worried about the political side of it whatsoever.

I'm not worried about what your thoughts on Ottawa, right? It actually happening and what it stood for. Take that. I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about, or I guess I'm curious from, you know, a cognitive scientist. when you're there, the level of emotion was something I've, you know, I put it to this way. It was either the greatest rock concert you've ever been to or every NHL team in Canada winning

the cup simultaneously. You just get the level of happiness, emotion that was there. Yeah, and I want to talk about that with you. I just wanted to be clarified what I'm not. I'm really curious your thoughts on like the mental frame. that goes into this especially you tack on you know just different the groups of people that ended up there were very philosophical spiritual in nature I'm not saying all of them I don't want to label them all no but you tack in you tack in the

level of emotion the stakes the stress of it all going across a country having that journey yes getting there meeting you know like you know there's this this this I have these beautiful memories of like Quebec and Alberta standing beside each other and we're supposed to hate each other and there you are hugging and you know the Florida Leafs flying and the Alberta flags flying and you're like this is cool. Strange as all get up but it's like this is pretty cool you know. Okay I want to reply to that in because there's a lot going on. I just rattled off a whole bunch. No no and that's good and that's exactly the level at which I'm happy to talk about this event. So a couple of things. First of all there's the journey. aspect. So I'm going to give you a Greek word, Theoria. It's where we get a word theory from, and a theory allows us to see more deeply into reality. That's what a good theory is, like a scientific

theory, like atomic theory, right? But that's not the original meaning of Theoria. It has to do with that seeing deeply into reality, but the original meaning is you go on a journey to see something that is going to sort of startle you and waking you up to a deeper level of reality. So first of all, And so the usual translation for the word theory is actually contemplation, not in the sense of considering, but in that sense of undergoing a transformative vision. And, you know, and transform it, not vision in a lucinary sense, but like seeing things that you hadn't seen before that are transforming you. So that's there. By the way, that's in the Neoplatonic tradition, too, just to keep showing people how much it shows up without you realizing it. Now, let's subhold that philosophical idea, and now let's talk about a couple things.

Let's talk about distributed cognition. Okay, so one of the E's of four E cognitive science is extended cognition. Now, here's the idea. I'll give you a metaphor, and I'm going to ask people to trust me that there's a, and I've got a lot of argument and evident out there. But long before the Internet, right, integrated, webbed people, people, webbed computers together to release the power of distributed cognition. Because the internet can do things that you can get, that are not just the addition of all of the different servers.

Right? You have all this power, computational power release. Long before that, culture integrated individual cognition into collective intelligence. And now this is something that is now experimentally, you know, in many ways, you have evidence for it. There's mathematical argumentation for it. Let me give you one simple example. I won't go into the details.

You take a standard reasoning task called the waste and selection task. Very easy to do. Very easy to explain, I should mean. You give it to the brightest people like psychology undergrad students. And only 10% of them get it right. So this is from 1966 on, reliably robust. It looks like human beings are incredibly irrational. Why can't they solve this simple reasoning task?

It looks like all they do is fall prey to confirmation by us. you take that task and you replace the one person with four people, no extra time, you allow the four people to talk amongst themselves, and the success rate goes from 10% to 80%. Reliably. Because we actually evolved to network together and act as checks and balances on each other's right, so that we get a hole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. And many of the problems we solve are not solvable by individual, cognition. You and I are talking right now, and that means electricity has to be generated,

a network has to be maintained, right? There has to be shelter. There has to be all these technology invented. I can't do it. You can't do it. All of that has to be the case for us to have this conversation. So what happens is when people get together and they get into a right stance towards each other, they can release the power of the collective intelligence of distributed cognition and feel it guiding them. And I think this is part of what, like, for example, when I do workshops with people and they're doing dialectic into diologos, they will get this collective flow state and they will start, regardless of their background, they'll start using religious language to talk about what's taking shape and what's moving them. You experience

that. So you've got the journey, which is like the quest motif, and then you go and a spirit, right, is being presence. You are participating in it. It's not just propositions. You're in there with the prospectival presence. You're in there with the participatory identification. It's a transformative thing. And there are rituals being performed that tap into the human imagination that tap into. Look at me. I'm gesturing. I'm using metaphors. It taps into all that machinery engages it activates it strengthens what's going on this is powerful and so in a very real way you're at a religious event remember the word religio means to bind together you were at a religious event in which a particular spirit that was being disclosed and what was what was that

being disclosed that collective intelligence could give show you a way to integration a oneing that gets you closer to the reality of how human beings should live. It's going to be a religious phenomenon for you. That's going to be, now, they're danger with that. That's all the positive. The danger with that is all that machinery can work regardless to some degree of the propositional content. That gives its power, but it gives its peril,

because you can get the same thing in the Nuremberg rallies, well, the Nazis are in Germany. People travel, there's all these drama, there's all these rituals going on, they're getting a tremendous sense of a group spirit, and it's guiding them and giving them a vision of how they could be and what could be. So, and I'm not, you know, I'm not saying that. No, no, no.

Yeah. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just showing you that I think you tap into the power of, you know, a religious event, and that is amazing and important, and you will be, I will be, you will be, we will be, inherently attracted to that because that's our power individually like think about us as individual animals we're pathetic we're pathetic but you get a bunch of us to cooperate together with some pointy sticks and some dogs that have also joined our group and we can kill anything on the planet right that's

our great strength is that ability to do that but it's also our greatest peril you know in the word that kept coming up when you talk about the journey or the you know the yeah is pilgrimage right Yes. That's exactly what it is. To me, it's, you know, and I don't know why the alchemist keeps coming to mind,

but that, that's, he does this long journey to a foreign land. And I mean, if you aren't from Canada, the other side of Canada in the dead of winter is kind of a foreign land, you know,

it's just, it is a long, perilous journey that takes time and dedication and, and, you know, all these different things. And,

you know, when I think back to it, it, that was, like, honestly, the best part of that entire thing was the road to Ottawa. The road to Ottawa was something that, you know, I wish every Canadian or everyone could experience. And I wonder if that isn't similar to, you know, the pilgrimage to Mecca, if you would, where people take their journey and leave for, you know, however many days it is. I can't remember, is it five or six? And they take what they own and they go and they're off.

and it's a small group in a larger context because there's a whole bunch of people all pilgrimaging at the same time. Yeah. There's the, I forget what it's called. The pilgrimage and starts just inside of France and northern Spain, and you end up in the cathedral of St. James, I believe it is.

People walk that every year, and I've talked to people that have walked it. Or think about journeying on the Silk Road. My next series is going to be called walking the philosophical Silk Road for exactly bringing in the journey, the quest, the pilgrimage aspect of theoria. We often need to do these journeys horizontally through time so we can also get that theoria, that vertical contemplation into the depths and the heights of reality.

Actually, that's a really good way of putting it. Yeah. You know, my brother and I and one of the, one of the, of his, well, a girl that was one of his best friend's sister. We biked Canada when I was 19th. We went from Newfoundland and biked across Canada and it's this journey. And what that did for a person was added a lot of depth. And I don't mean that I walked around, I hated, I got to the point where I hated talk

about it because I didn't want to make it sound like I was bragging. I'm not, I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, regalia of stories. But it taught me some very, very, very valuable lessons about what one person is capable love. And honestly, uh, some of the, the, what's the word I'm looking for here? Some of the, the kindness that was shown to us while we went across is hard to erase. Like you just can't, you know, I still think, you know, in all these conversations, when the east, first west is going at it and we're supposed to hate Toronto and Toronto's supposed to hate the west and everything else. I, I still think, but one of the nicest people ever met was in Ottawa. Like, how does that add up?

Like that, you know, they're selling us something that isn't there. And when you talk about the journey, giving you horizontal, like, I'm like, yes, bingo, that nails it 100%. You go out and do something that is a journey into the unknown, where you're going to test yourself. And I'm not suggesting that you go out and do that without contemplating and preparing for it. But even if you prepare for it, you can't know all the things that are going to come. And when you go do said journey, you're going to add depth to yourself. Yeah, it's going to call to the depths of your soul and the heights of your spirit in a way that you can't do for yourself. Exactly.

And not vertical dimension, right? But it's like, you have to go through the horizontal to get the calling that calls to the depths and calls to the heights. Yes, for sure. And that, like, that, when something, when something calls to you that way, that's how you are afforded genuine self-transcendence. And you just, you can't, like, it's like having an insight. You can't, I need an insight right now. just going to have one. You can't make it happen. But you participate it when it happens. You have to set the conditions right, but the spark has to jump. And it's the same thing with this. You can't

say, I'm going to self-transcend right now. A lot of people think that's what they can do. But it's not like that. Self-transcendence is like an insight. You have to, you have to create conditions and that so something properly calls to you. And there's often an aspect of beauty. And remember, beauty can be terrible. Remember, when Galadriel says, I will be, I will be beautiful and terrifying like the sea, right? Beauty can, like, and Rilke talks about how beauty is a sense of something so real that it could almost kill us, but it deigns not to, things like that. But those moments, they can be tremendously beautiful.

But again, not in, not in like the smooth, cloying way that we've reduced beauty to. Hans' book on Saving Beauty has got the excellent critique of how we've reduced beauty to what is pleasurably comfortable and easily consumable bias. He calls it the smooth. And we've lost so much. But when you're on the pilgrimage, you don't get beauty in the smooth sense. You get beauty in the thing that can... That moves you.

Moves you. It absolutely moves you. Yeah, but it can move you in a precipitous manner, right? It can move you to the precipice of where you are and what you feel comfortable with. And you're looking over into something that initially can seem like a void or an abyss. And you've got to like, and there's like, I got to keep going. And those moments... I don't know enough about black holes and everything else.

just pop culture, if you would, John. But I thought many a time it was like the event horizon. Like you're peaking, you're so close to the sun and you understand how dangerous it is. And yet you're like, but I'm like so close to something that I'm trying to understand. It's like right there. And you just want to peek behind the curtain or whatever have you,

you know, the different terminology to explain what I'm trying to get across. Well, Plato does that right? in the Republic in his great parable of the cave. People are in their lock, they're chained into a cave and all they can, and so they can't move and they, all they see are shadows, the wall and echoes,

but somebody gets free and they slowly has to make this perilous journey up. It's perilous because every time he steps more into the light and gets at what's more real, he's also blinded, right? And there's, right? And he's blinded by the light. Plato said it way before Manfred Man and Bruce Springstay. Right?

And then you get up and then they, And then he tries to, and all he can do is glimpse the sun. But you see, the sun is the platonic metaphor for the one. You can only glimpse it. You can only realize it's the source of light and life, but you can't stare at it because it will destroy you. I've really enjoyed this chat, John. I appreciate you, you know, entering into some dialogue today.

Before I let you go, we've got to do the final question, brought to you by Crudemaster Transport. It's, if you're going to stand behind a cause, stand behind it absolutely. What's one thing John stands behind? John stands behind bringing a scientifically respectable life of wisdom back into the world so that the meaning crisis can be significantly ameliorated before it exacerbates all the other horrible metacrisis things we're facing. Well, I appreciate you doing this, John.

I've certainly enjoyed it. And, well, I tell you what, if people want to find you, where do they go? The best thing is probably my YouTube channel and just start watching some of the series, Awakening from the Meeting Crisis, after Socrates, or watch some of the discussions I have on Voices with Ravaki. If they're more into the Cognom Science, watch the Cognoscience show. If you're really academically oriented, you can look up my published work, et cetera. Well, thanks again. Thanks so much, Sean. I really enjoyed this a lot.