8936a2e3c7
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>
28 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
28 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
# 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:**
|
|
|
|
- **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.
|
|
|
|
- **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).
|
|
|
|
- **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.
|
|
|
|
- **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.
|
|
|
|
- **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.
|