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Problems (7): PR-00001–PR-00007 — Meaning Crisis, Illegitimate Domination, Performance Society Exhaustion, Fascization, Epistemic Power Concentration, Platform Feudalism, Knowledge Isolation Models (5): Han, Fisher, Foucault, Vervaeke, Graeber/Anarchism Values (6): Epistemic Sovereignty, Authority Requires Justification, Exhaustion Is Structural, Mutual Aid Over Market, Digital Autonomy Is Political, Deep Reflection As Practice Arguments (3): Platform Feudalism → Democracy, PKM as Epistemic Strategy, Algorithmic Rationality Erodes Autonomy Organizations (5): IndieWeb, Wikimedia Deutschland, Reporter ohne Grenzen, Mehr Demokratie e.V., netzpolitik.org Plans (1): de-plan1-sven.md — Germany plan with 6 challenges, 5 strategies Data (1): DE-Democracy-Metrics — V-Dem, RSF, EIU, ARD-DeutschlandTREND, Bundeswahlleiter, More in Common Cross-linking: KNOWLEDGE-GRAPH.md + entities.json index Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Model: Meaning Crisis (John Vervaeke)
Author: John Vervaeke (Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher, b. 1961)
Core Thesis: The Western modern world is in a meaning crisis — the failure of collective and individual meaning-making frameworks, without new ones arising. This is not a cultural mood but a cognitive-structural problem traceable to specific historical ruptures and addressable through specific practices.
Key Concepts:
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Four Types of Knowing:
- Propositional: What you know (facts, beliefs, that-knowledge)
- Procedural: How to do something (skills, know-how)
- Perspectival: How you see the world (worldview, standpoint)
- Participatory: Who you are in relation to the world (identity, belonging, co-knowing)
The meaning crisis is specifically the loss of perspectival and participatory knowing — the types that ground identity and belonging.
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Relevance Realization: Cognition is always selective. Meaning arises through what is perceived as relevant. This process is affectively saturated — not purely rational. When relevance realization breaks down, everything becomes either equally important (anxiety) or equally unimportant (depression).
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Psychotechnology: Practices like meditation, journaling, philosophy, and ritual are cognitive technologies that shape perception and meaning-making. They are not mere comfort — they are functional tools for restoring relevance realization.
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Gnosis vs. Mathesis: Ancient traditions distinguished transformative knowing (gnosis — knowing that changes you) from propositional knowledge (mathesis). Modern education collapsed the distinction, keeping only mathesis. The meaning crisis is partly the consequence.
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The Turning Point (historical): The Scientific Revolution + the Reformation produced the crisis: the cosmos was disenchanted (Desenchantment), the Church's monopoly on meaning was broken, but no secular replacement with equivalent depth emerged.
Problems Addressed: PR-00001 (Meaning Crisis), PR-00007 (Knowledge Isolation — participatory knowing as the missing layer)
Application: When something feels empty, the question is not "what is missing?" but "what practices would generate relevance?" Meaning is not found — it is enacted through participatory engagement.