A salutary reminder of why I had stopped posting on the philosophyforum. It’s plain that my interests have drifted a long way from those of others here, I shall bid adieu and return to my writing project.

There's lots of interesting criticism to chew on in the OP: however, i think the conversion of the natural world into quantities began long before galileo. Once you start creating number systems (as simple as 1, 2, 3, even...) you begin a process where people no longer see each thing individually, when you have a quantity, each thing you count becomes identical (at least temporarily). Let's use money as an example: having 20 dollars is better than having 5 dollars, and in each case, you don't care about "which dollar", because each one is the same to you.

Even the best laid plans...

I am sorry to hear you put it that way.

I figured you were prompting a conversation that is usually covered up by other themes.

I started out writing this OP as a kind of valedictory, as it is really one of the main themes I’ve been exploring through all these conversations. I’m nonplussed that it was received with such hostility when I think it is pretty well established theme in the history of ideas. I’m also getting tired of having the same arguments about the same things with the same people. It becomes a bit of a hamster wheel.

Nevertheless, the ‘book of nature is written in mathematics’ (Galileo) was a radically new view of the Universe, although that is more a matter of history than philosophy as such.

I think its interesting to note how much the lack of a higher meaning has impacted in the world, specially in the youth. What are your toughts on this? Im thinking mostly -due to my environment- that a lot of people began to put pleasure and by extension themselves over other because they had no meaning. I've also tought about how that creates a sort of loop where people dont think because it takes a lot of effort and in our current times pleasure and happiness is so much easier, which distracts people from thinking even more, which in turn makes them more miserable and that makes them want to pursue even more pleasure and so on.

Im eager to hear more ideas though.

Hey I’d agree with you! I’ve noticed that on philosophy forums, there is a lot of hostility towards any idea of there being ‘higher truth’. It’s like, higher according to whom? What would they know? What do you know? So there’s a lot of resistance to that.

And also our economic system thrives on the creation of artificial wants - getting people to want things, driving up demand, and then being the lucky guy who just happens to be have the supply. OK, I’m being a bit cynical there, but it’s something that definitely happens.

Higher cultures of other times and places put much more value on virtue, truth, and beauty. Nowadays economic activity tends to focus more on economies of scale against the backdrop of a utilitarian ethos.

So yes, overall in agreement with what you’re saying.

Oh that utilitarianism of us... Whilst i think happiness is important, i dont think its necessarily good. Ive had this question lately, why does happiness feel "good"? What sort of brain paths or whatever do we take to correlate something to feel plasurable? I mean, sadness does feel bad but it clearly isnt intrinsically bad, or so i think.

Also, i didnt know about that resistance, but thats very interesting. Im not sure -rather, im inclined to say no- wether there is or not a higher truth, but from what i know, the search for a universal ruler of sorts was indees mostly prominent in old philosophies, mostly under the name of substance (please, correct me if im wrong) and every so often it ended up involving some sort of god. Now, im an atheist but i still think its noteworthy how prevalent the god figure is in humans.

Tell me more about your toughts on meaning, do you perhaps think that meaning is not truly subjective? Why do you feel that it is or isnt?

I started out writing this OP as a kind of valedictory, as it is really one of the main themes I’ve been exploring through all these conversations. I’m nonplussed that it was received with such hostility when I think it is pretty well established theme in the history of ideas. I’m also getting tired of having the same arguments about the same things with the same people. It becomes a bit of a hamster wheel. — Wayfarer

I’d be disappointed if you left. As you know, I greatly value your contributions. My pushback wasn’t meant to be hostile, and I apologise if that’s how it came across.

One interesting thing about this site is that we rarely see anyone change their mind about fundamental questions of meaning. It happens, but it’s rare. I wonder if that tells us something about the nature of human sense-making?

While I haven’t read them, I’ve watched quite a bit of Vervaeke and McGilchrist. I still hold some skepticism about the nature of the problem they describe, though their proposed solutions may well be useful. We could probably “save the world” and restore a shared sense of purpose if everyone became Muslims, Sikhs, or Quakers; the method matters less than achieving widespread adherence.

Ive had this question lately, why does happiness feel "good"? — Oppida

Hmm. Glad to see “good” in quotes. Some people feel happy doing bad things to others; why does that feel “good”? Or is it simply that when people have their needs met (whatever those needs are), there’s a satisfying emotional payoff?

I did change my mind about suspending myself again, but some of these debates do feel repetitive. In my view, this link between Galileo’s science, which, don’t forget, was the fulcrum of the Scientific Revolution, and Descartes’ mind/body dualism, are essential to what Vervaeke calls ‘the grammar of modernity’ and the sense that the world is basically meaningless. So many of the debates here, especially those about the hard problem, actually revolve around this very point. It seems clear as crystal to me.

I haven’t taken the time with McGilchrist yet, but I’ve invested a bit listening to Vervaeke. He is trying to stay within the bounds of what is scientifically credible, but also address the existential problems which modernity induces. I’ve noticed, since I discovered his lectures (in 2022), that he’s moved more towards theology, in that he has a lot of talks with scholarly theologians and exponents of philosophical spirituality. But I don’t think it’s a matter of becoming ‘Muslims or quakers’ or members of a movement. Anything of value in any religion, is only because it points to some reality which is more than just a matter of belief or personal conviction. But I shrink from saying ‘objectively true’, at the same time. That’s part of the dilemma.

im inclined to say no- wether there is or not a higher truth, but from what i know, the search for a universal ruler — Oppida

Interesting, that you so easily move from ‘truth’ to ‘ruler’. That says something, don’t you think?

As to whether truth is subjective, my point is that scientific method wishes to ‘bracket out’ the subjective element, so as to arrive a view which is accurate for everyone - the so-called ‘view from nowhere’. But this is associated with the idea that humans are kind of epiphenomenal, the accidental outcome of undirected processes, whose being is really irrelevant to the way things truly are. My attitude, on the contrary, is that truth, as such, always has a subjective pole or aspect, because it must mean something, and for it to mean something, there must be an observer to whom it means something. Hence that there are no truly ‘mind-independent’ facts, in that specific sense.

So many of the debates here, especially those about the hard problem, actually revolve around this very point. It seems clear as crystal to me. — Wayfarer

Fair enough. What do you think is going on for those who don't see this?

the sense that the world is basically meaningless. — Wayfarer

Do you think this is a direct belief, or more of a practical outcome of other beliefs, a kind of implicit assumption?

But I don’t think it’s a matter of becoming ‘Muslims or quakers’ or members of a movement. Anything of value in any religion, is only because it points to some reality which is more than just a matter of belief or personal conviction. — Wayfarer

Yes, that’s kind of what I was trying to convey. But wouldn’t the meaning crisis, strictly speaking, be resolved if everyone became, say, a Muslim? I’m not claiming that this particular manifestation of faith is inherently valuable, but the reality is that the issues Vervaeke highlights: meaning, relevance realization, transcendent purpose, insight practices, enchantment, ritual, and awakening of attention, would all be addressed.

I’m nonplussed that it was received with such hostility when I think it is pretty well established theme in the history of ideas. I’m also getting tired of having the same arguments about the same things with the same people. It becomes a bit of a hamster wheel. — Wayfarer

Why must you see disagreement as hostility? Also, why would you not expect the same arguments against your position if you keep presenting the same arguments over and over yourself? I don't believe that your narrowly focused conclusions about the actual documented history of ideas are "well-established" at all. If they were everyone would be agreeing with you. Do you have any openness to (radically?) changing your views? It certainly doesn't seem that way.

What do you think is going on for those who don't see this? — Tom Storm

I don't think the objections are coming to terms with the argument. Again, the argument is, that since the Scientific Revolution, modern culture tends to see the world (or universe) in terms of a domain of objective forces which have no meaning or moral dimension, in which human life is kind of a fortuitous outcome of chance events. Prior to that, the Universe was imbued with symbolic and real meaning, in which the individual, no matter how lowly their station, was a participant. I mean, there's been enormous literature and commentary on this fact. I attempted in the OP to try and distill it the essentials of it. Those books I cited in the OP are among the examples, but there are many more.

. But wouldn’t the meaning crisis, strictly speaking, be resolved if everyone became, say, a Muslim? — Tom Storm

Pluralism, religious and otherwise, is a fact of modernity, it's part of the dynamic. The traditional religions did address existential dilemmas, but then, they didn't arise in today's interconnected global world with all its diversities and the massive increase of scientific knowledge. The problem is, trying to retrieve or preserve the valuable insights that they arrived at. That's why I think a kind of interfaith approach is an essential part of the solution, something which Vervaeke does in his dialogues. I think religious representatives of good will are able to see beyond sectarianism without devolving into outright relativism.

But overall, the crisis of modernity is a really difficult challenge to deal with. I don't feel as though I've dealt with it at all successfully, although at least I recognise that there is a challenge.

Another of the excellent books I would recommend is by a University of Queensland scholar, Dr. Paul Tyson, 'Defragmenting Modernity'. The cover description:

We live in a strangely fragmented lifeworld. On the one hand, abstract constructions of our own imagination--such as money, "mere" facts, and mathematical models--are treated by us as important objective facts. On the other hand, our understanding of the concrete realities of meaning and value in which our daily lives are actually embedded--love, significance, purpose, wonder--are treated as arbitrary and optional subjective beliefs. This is because, to us, only quantitative and instrumentally useful things are considered to be accessible to the domain of knowledge. Our lifeworld is designed to dis-integrate knowledge from belief, facts from meanings, immanence from transcendence, quality from quantity, and "mere" reality from the mystery of being. This book explores two questions: why should we, and how can we, reintegrate being, knowing, and believing?

All very important questions in my view and central to philosophy, or should be.

For the premier poster of original material, and actual philosophical material at that, even if beyond my personal interest, to excuse himself, would adversely affect the forum as a whole.

There’s so much dumb shit on here…..well, everywhere, actually.

Take the light when it comes around, I say.

For the premier poster of original material, even if beyond my personal interest, to excuse himself, would adversely affect the forum as a whole. [...] Take the light when it comes around, I say. — Mww

:up:

There’s so much dumb shit on here…..well, everywhere, actually. — Mww

And probably more dumb shit from me.

The traditional religions did address existential dilemmas, but then, they didn't arise in today's interconnected global world with all its diversities and the massive increase of scientific knowledge. The problem is, trying to retrieve or preserve the valuable insights that they arrived at. That's why I think a kind of interfaith approach is an essential part of the solution, something which Vervaeke does in his dialogues. — Wayfarer

Good. I would have to agree with much of this. But it sounds virtually impossible, these things can only happen gradually, not by design, I would think.

But overall, the crisis of modernity is a really difficult challenge to deal with. I don't feel as though I've dealt with it at all successfully, although at least I recognise that there is a challenge. — Wayfarer

There's two issues here; describing the problem and suggesting remedies.

I think you describe the problem well enough, but I find it hard to relate to as a concept, probably because I don’t perceive a lack of meaning in my own life, and I can’t speak for the West as a whole. To me, the West seems to be grappling more with pluralism than with a lack of meaning. No one knows who should be in charge anymore, and culture no longer rests on a set of shared values.

...since the Scientific Revolution, modern culture tends to see the world (or universe) in terms of a domain of objective forces which have no meaning or moral dimension, in which human life is kind of a fortuitous outcome of chance events. Prior to that, the Universe was imbued with symbolic and real meaning, in which the individual, no matter how lowly their station, was a participant. — Wayfarer

I know this is a prevailing narrative. I’m not certain that this is how the West actually sees reality. Figures for atheism around the world remain relatively low: Pew says 10% across 42 Western countries. Perhaps 24% self-describe as no religion. I don't think this suggests burgeoning nihilism.

Does Vervaeke's view romanticise pre-modern culture? Wasn’t it an era of imposed hierarchies, powerlessness, and widespread pain and brutality? Was it really qualitatively better? Was it not spiritually bereft in other equally detrimental ways?

Did the Scientific Revolution strip the world of meaning? Could it not be said that it freed humans from superstition and arbitrary authority, allowing us to explore reality, exercise agency, and create purpose through reason, creativity, and shared endeavour?

Does it follow that we've become decadent and hollow and lacking in connective spiritual values? Is there something inherently wrong with our time? I couldn’t tell you. Maybe that’s why I struggle to get on board.

I do think that our old problems are more urgent because the impact of technology is so powerful today. But this isn't a new problem, just a new power.

We live in a strangely fragmented lifeworld. On the one hand, abstract constructions of our own imagination--such as money, "mere" facts, and mathematical models--are treated by us as important objective facts. On the other hand, our understanding of the concrete realities of meaning and value in which our daily lives are actually embedded--love, significance, purpose, wonder--are treated as arbitrary and optional subjective beliefs. This is because, to us, only quantitative and instrumentally useful things are considered to be accessible to the domain of knowledge. Our lifeworld is designed to dis-integrate knowledge from belief, facts from meanings, immanence from transcendence, quality from quantity, and "mere" reality from the mystery of being. This book explores two questions: why should we, and how can we, reintegrate being, knowing, and believing? — Wayfarer

I don’t think this passage resonates. Most people are deeply immersed in meaning: love, relationships, work, friends, goals, children, hobbies, future planning, concern for the environment. We are filled with purpose, engagement and transformative experiences.

Can you give me two concrete examples of how dis-integrated knowledge is causing problems.

@Wayfarer

I was continuing the conversation with Claude 4.5 Sonnet that I PM’d you about and that's closely tied to your OP. We wandered into the usefulness of distinguishing the particular/universal from the specific/general distinction (from David Wiggins). Sonnet put its finger on why I’d been confused: I was committing a kind of dimensional collapse—trying to line those two distinctions up on a single axis—whereas it’s much clearer if we define two orthogonal axes. That, in turn, makes it much easier to see Aristotle’s theoretical and practical sciences as different employments of the same rational capacity within a shared space of reasons.

Still thinking about your OP, I looked up Wikipedia’s page on Disenchantment, which quotes Ernest Gellner on “re-enchantment creeds” (psychoanalysis, Marxism, Wittgensteinianism, phenomenology, ethnomethodology). Gellner would have none of it. That nudged me (with some help from GPT-5) to Charles Taylor’s thought that we now live within an immanent frame that can be inhabited in two ways: closed (nothing beyond nature) or open (room for transcendence).

Here’s the interesting bit. On Taylor’s picture, my own neo-Aristotelian view, which is the one Gellner would likely dismiss as an irrational “creed,” still inhabits the immanent frame in a closed way (naturalist), and yet it isn’t therefore disenchanted. Thinking otherwise would be another instance of the dimensional collapse mentioned earlier. Because it accounts for "strong evaluations" (see note below), a virtue-ethical orientation to eudaimonia, and for intrinsically meaningful forms of life, it amounts to a re-enchantment without transcendence.

So, for Taylor, disenchantment vs. re-enchantment doesn’t line up with naturalism vs. transcendence. That’s a two-dimensional space. And within it, three live stances stand out:

Naturalist-Disenchanted (e.g., hard reductionism/Cartesiannism),

Naturalist-Re-enchanted (neo-Aristotelian naturalism about substantial forms and teleology),

Transcendent-Re-enchanted (Taylor’s own theistic take).

The fourth corner, Transcendent-Disenchanted, seems to be occupied by a rare creed!


On edit: "A key feature of human agency, [Taylor] shows, is that it is constituted only within frameworks of strong evaluation – whether these are traditional notions of the primacy of honour, Platonic accounts of the virtues of reason and self-mastery, modern understandings of the expressive power of inner selves or the virtues of counting everyone’s interests equally."

Do you think that full reflection is possible for a person who is inside a paradigm?

Do you think that full reflection is possible for a person who is inside a paradigm? — Astorre

Well, Vervaeke argues that there is a burgeoning obsession with people looking to find meaning outside of the paradigm, so the answer must be yes. But that doesn’t mean they are right. :wink:

The salient question is what makes an argument convincing to some and not to others? The answer may not be located in paradigms so much as shared beliefs and subcultures.

Horkheimer argues that in this transformation, reason has been stripped of its substantive and ethical content; it has become a tool for calculation, efficiency, and control. This marks the “eclipse” of reason—the point at which rationality itself becomes irrational, serving domination rather than enlightenment, and leaving modern civilization powerful in its techniques but impoverished in meaning and purpose.

This later becomes one of the main themes of Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of the Enlightenment. — Wayfarer

Kant and Hegel took the split between a mechanistic world and a representing subject and united the two on the basis of rational freedom of the Will. Schelling went further by eliminating mechanism from nature. But he retained the metaphysical unity of the willing subject. It seems that Horkheimer and Adorno do the same in grounding meaning in rational thought and rational thought in dialectical materialism. The metaphysical unity of reason doesn’t come into question until the irrational, the unconscious and the historical are given equal billing with rationality in the work of Kierkegaard, the hermeneuticists, phenomenologists and Nietzschean poststructuralists. Meaning as affect becomes the ground for meaning as reason. Kierkegaard is where that metaphysical project breaks down. He refuses the reconciliation between reason and the irrational, faith and knowledge, the finite and the infinite.

Do you think that full reflection is possible for a person who is inside a paradigm? — Astorre

The same processes that embed individuals within social paradigms shape the nature and direction of ‘reflection’. The split between the purely private and inner (reflection) and the socially constructed (paradigm) is artificial.

Yeah, i guess it proves your point of current world thinking being very scientific because of the divide you mentioned.

Do you like Aristotle's metaphysics?, because it does work with that subjectivity trough the "accident" part, which as i understand it accepted a universe that wasnt entirely subjective -concepts were well defined trough "essence"- but that had a central, universal truth which was something about movement or god, i dont remember.

Also, what truth do you mean? do you mean a universal one or some other truth? and how does the fact that said truth, being subjective, has to have a meaning? and what kind of meaning?

Indeed i was talking about the emotional payoff kind of good. For now, lets say that an emotion feeling "good" is an emotion that feels pleasuable. I imagine a lot of people feeling good from hugs, but also a lot of people feeling good from commiting atrocities. Why is that? is it learned?

Fifty hour lecture series. Is there anything he doesn't cover? :grin:

At a glance, the funny thing that comes to mind is that pretty much only religious people–those within a particular religious tradition–would be resistant to what Vervaeke proposes, and does that essentially mean that secularism is required to move forward? I suppose that questions like this are covered in the series.

Welcome back!



Those are certainly major turning points in the genesis of modernity. I wonder though if today's secularity tends to obscure how much of the modern ethos is theological in origin. So for instance:

The rise of liberal individualism followed naturally: each person became the arbiter of value within an indifferent universe. — Wayfarer

Historically, such a view of man seems to flow from voluntarist idealizations of freedom and power that first crop up in theology, not secular philosophy. That was originally the whole impetus for attempting to uproot the old metaphysics, and for the resurrection of empiricism itself; absolute divine will can brook no "natures" as a challenge to its freedom in willing.

Modern thought has not so much moved beyond this idea as simply cut God out of the picture and raised man into his place. Sometimes this happens with man as an individual (e.g., some existentialists), but the liberal solution is often instead to democratize this new role for man (e.g., the "language community" makes things what they are by "stipulation," or "we" do, collectively and pragmatically), whereas the *post-modern" response to the grandiosity of making man into God has been to dissolve man into a sort of panpsychic, universal will sea, variously composed on language, social systems, etc., but this "sea" is still ultimately the ground of all being and intelligibility. (I don't even think this is "post" modern because it still seems very much caught up if Reformation dialectics).

Anyhow, those theological concerns, and the aesthetics of freedom as power come to drive the modern view of "science," although a preference for the "abstract" and "non-personal" then developed out of that same "new science," which sort of cuts against the theological and philosophical volantarism. I think this is why modern thought is almost bipolar, and this is most obvious in its anthropology where it can be seen oscillating between the pure freedom of a Kant or Sartre and man as pure mechanism, as in the eliminativists.

The second factor I've sort of puzzled about is how notions of reason become wholly discursive, such that by Hume and Kant's day they can basically just write-off most of past thought (Eastern as well as Western) by asserting this fact about reason definitionally (i.e., dogmatically) and no one calls them out on it. The role for co-natural and contemplative knowledge, and of the cultivation of this knowledge through praxis and doxastic virtue essentially vanishes—and this shift too seems to have originally had a theological motivation (e.g., the emptying of the monasteries and convents, often paired with the massacre of their inhabitants, as dangerous alternative sources of authority beside the new princes-made-popes-in-their-own-land).

In the classical and pre-modern worldview, reason was understood as objective—it reflected an intelligible order inherent in reality itself. To act rationally was to conform to this cosmic or moral order, in which reason provided not only the means for action but also the standards by which ends were judged. — Wayfarer

Yes, and even to participate in divine Logos. There is an erotic and ecstatic element here.



Taylor provides an excellent framework for these issues and a solid deconstruction of the epistemic and metaphysical assumptions of the "closed-world system" (that reason is wholly discursive and instrumental often being one of its axiomatic assumptions).

It's funny you mention Aristotle here because I've been doing a project that compares modern character education (which is almost always justified using an "Aristotlian" paradigm), particularly in the realm of outdoor adventure education (OAE), with late-antique Christian and Platonist philosophical pedagogy. In doing this, I actually came across an article by Kristján Kristjánsson, who writes a lot on Aristotle and character education, who claims that Aristotle is himself advancing a "disenchanted" view that is "too sterile" to motivate robust character education efforts.

More broadly, I've noticed that the "Aristotle" of the antique Greeks and that of modern "virtue ethics" might we well be two different philosophers. The modern version allows some sort of "telos" for man, in that certain things are "good for him" because of "the sort of thing he is," but seems to have a much greater difficulty making any sort of argument for some desires being "higher" versus "lower," or securing the notion that the rational soul must lead, train, and unify the sensible soul and vegetative soul (logos ruling over and shaping thymos and epithumia). But as far as I can tell this radically destabilizes virtue ethics, since now man is merely loosely ordered (on average) to an irreducible plurality of goods which "diminish when shared."

This seems to me to stem from epistemic and metaphysical assumptions brought to Aristotle in the later context. In particular, the idea of a telos as a sort of "emergent physical property" is often quite unclear and squishy (because "strong emergence" normally is in general).

I don't mean to suggest these issues crop up for all modern versions of Aristotle, or even those committed to "physicalism," but it's just an issue I noticed with the sort of Aristotle that is popular in character education (which of course is tailoring itself to suit the precepts of contemporary liberal education as well, which seems to cause significant tensions with having any positive content for moral education outside a few key areas like racism, sexism, etc.).

I’m not convinced that the idea that the world is meaningless is really the problem we face. One can hardly accuse MAGA of this, or China. Surely it is the wrong kind of meaning that ends up causing harm. — Tom Storm

A big part of what has defined MAGA as against the W. Bush coalition is the outsized role played by the post-religious, post-modern "nu-right" or "alt-right." They tend to recognize something like a "meaning crisis" but are often themselves nihilists, hence the naked embrace of "might makes right" ideologies. Everything is just a sort of natural selection, etc. Hence, accelerationism coming into vogue among them.

There is a pretty close linkage here to the Manosphere. The hyperfixation of seeking validation through sexual conquests, wealth, status, and above all the implicit capacity for violence, and so the obsession with warrior archtypes and societies, seems to me to be a direct result of a lack of any other meaningful thymotic outlets for young men. Which is pretty much what others have been saying.

Anyhow, I don't think this group represents a huge bloc of voters (although it also isn't marginal among younger Republican voters). However, it has played an outsized role in radical organizations, and increasingly in the second term, in policy.

Likewise, the Chinese elite's obsession with making a mark on history through dominance can be seen through a similar lens. Bereft of any ordering logos, and faced with becoming Nietzsche's "Last Men," people see becoming "great men of history," or conquerors as a bid for meaning.

The point of the "meaning crisis," as I've normally seen it presented, isn't that everyone becomes a depressed nihilist (although some do), but that people flounder about looking for meaning and recognition anywhere they can find it, which can lead towards pathological outlets.

The hardwired notion that God gave us dominion over the Earth and its animals seems to have something to do with our environmental issues.

As opposed to places where Islam and Christianity are more marginal, like China, India, or the Soviet Union?

Genesis has also been used to call for stewardship over ownership. It seems to me more that the logic of industrialization simply has been successful in bending local cultural/religious norms to it ends, dressing it up in whatever garb is needed to make it more palatable. At the very least, explicitly athiest regimes have had no problem generating ecological disasters of truly titanic scale, such as the Aral Sea.

---

Anyhow, I wouldn't say the "crisis of meaning" comes down to "too many choices," or "too much freedom," in the minds of critics at least, but rather something like: "all the myriad choices are bad, and I'd rather have fewer and good choices than an ever increasing menu of the inadequate," and "this is an ersatz freedom that simply amounts to freedom to become a bovine Last Man—when AI learns to mindlessly consume I'll have no purpose left," or something like that. To reduce it to anxiety over modernity is to ignore the strong positive thrust that often comes alongside it.

The traditional religions did address existential dilemmas, but then, they didn't arise in today's interconnected global world with all its diversities and the massive increase of scientific knowledge. — Wayfarer

Can you give an example of a religion in the pre-scientific era addressing existential dilemmas? Did religions really address the needs of the common folk or was it mostly the needs of the elites? I would like to see you at least attempt to address such serious questions instead of viewing them, on account of their difficulty for your thesis, as hostile.

In the modern era, wherein religious tolerance has greatly increased it would seem that the primary existential need religions have served is the need for community.

Of course, there are still tensions if not outright conflicts between different religious communities.

Can you give an example of a religion in the pre-scientific era addressing existential dilemmas? — Janus

Most all religions not only address what the point of life is but also why one ought to live life ethically. I say it would be nice to address these same topics without all the religiosity traditionally implied. And to my tastes, the best philosophies do just this in manners devoid of dogma and the bs, such as in presuming to know how existence came about to begin with. And, while it is true that some adults couldn’t give a shoot about these issues—the point of life and how to best navigate an ethical life—most humans do, a group in which I include both non-voting adolescents and far younger children (who readily ask questions such as, “but then how was God created”).

Did religions really address the needs of the common folk or was it mostly the needs of the elites? — Janus

Though here posed as if mutually exclusive, they in fact are quite amiable to being readily converged: most anything out there can be warped for the sake of authoritarian purposes. A problematic and bad aspect of societal life, most definitely. As just one example, far too often righteous people are perjured and spun into being perceived as the exact opposite for the purposes of maintaining the stability of corrupt status quos, this, most always, for the benefits of some authoritarian elites. But in all of this is implied the very issues: what’s the point of it all and what is it that is in fact right (righteous)?

And in today’s world, save for traditional religions, what else speaks to these same issues with any sort of authority (not specific to “authoritarian authority” but also applicable to things such as the authority of reason)?

Decrying these two issues as being either in fact unresolvable or else as being utterly unimportant in either personal or communal endeavors, in many a way, only serves to lead most people into authoritarian religious dogmas wherein they at least are force-fed the belief that the resolution of these two issues is already satisfactorily obtained, this as per the religions' often authoritative dogmas. Which only drives societies into being more authoritarian in their governance due to the preferences of the governed, pivotally in relation to the two existential questions just specified: the purpose/meaning of life and the means of best living life well given the first.

Does Vervaeke's view romanticise pre-modern culture? Wasn’t it an era of imposed hierarchies, powerlessness, and widespread pain and brutality? Was it really qualitatively better? Was it not spiritually bereft in other equally detrimental ways? — Tom Storm

I recommend having a listen. Since discovering Vervaeke’s lectures in 2022 I’ve taken most of the series in, often while working out or driving. Vervaeke’s grounding discipline is cognitive science, augmented by philosophy, psychology and a fair amount of anthropology. I don’t think he romantizes the past. His approach is very much in line with the academic discipline 'history of ideas', which is a sub-set of comparative religion.

The episodes that most directly address the topic of the OP are Death of the Universe, Martin Luther and Descartes, and Descartes vs Hobbes.

Most people are deeply immersed in meaning: love, relationships, work, friends, goals, children, hobbies, future planning, concern for the environment. We are filled with purpose, engagement and transformative experiences. — Tom Storm

In which case, they will probably have no interest in this kind of discussion.

You can see Vervaeke kind of wrestling with religious questions - he's upfront about having been born into a fairly dysfunctional fundamentalist family and his rejection of that. But he dialogues with philosophers of religion and theologians - William Desmond, D C Schindler, many others. In his quest to articulate the meaning of 'wisdom' he does grapple with religious ideas, but from many different perspectives and traditions.

Also, what truth do you mean? do you mean a universal one or some other truth? and how does the fact that said truth, being subjective, has to have a meaning? and what kind of meaning? — Oppida

I admire Aristotle's Metaphysics, but understanding Aristotle properly is a difficult task. But there are some key ideas from Aristotle that are important to understand, as they are woven into our culture. I think anyone with an interest in philosophy has to have some familiarity with Plato and Aristotle.

As far as 'what truth I mean' - that is the big question! The general drift of the OP, is that modernity is exclusively oriented to objective facts, where objectivity is seen as the primary criterion of truth. What is objective is said to be truly so, regardless of anyone's opinion. But while that is certainly true for many subjects, it is not necessarily true for the philosophical questions of meaning, purpose and value. Modern thought tends to treat such questions as subjective or private matters, up to the individual. But then, this becomes the very divide that the OP is about - a domain of objective facts, on the one side, which exists independently of the individual, and the domain of purposes, meaning and values, which is said to be an individual matter! So there can be no consensus except as regards objective facts, or so it is said.

Perhaps have a look at an earlier thread, The Mind Created World, which tries to address this issue.

A big part of what has defined MAGA as against the W. Bush coalition is the outsized role played by the post-religious, post-modern "nu-right" or "alt-right." They tend to recognize something like a "meaning crisis" but are often themselves nihilists, hence the naked embrace of "might makes right" ideologies. Everything is just a sort of natural selection, etc. Hence, accelerationism coming into vogue among — Count Timothy von Icarus

You’re seriously going to try and pin MAGA on ‘post-modernism’? If by this term you’re just referring to a historical era that we all inhabit, then I suppose that’s innocuous enough, but it also doesn’t say anything about the wide variety of viewpoints that belong to our post
modern condition. If on the other hand you’re referring specifically to postmodernist philosophy, I’d make two points. First, about 99.99% of MAGA adherents are philosophical traditionalists and hew socially conservative. They not only would not consider themselves postmodernists but are vehemently opposed to anything they see as even tangentially connected with it (marxism, wokism, intersectionality, post-colonialism, gender and queer theory, relativism, critical theory). Second, theorists such as Nick Land, and movements such as accelerationism, have been tagged with the label ‘postmodern’ simply because some of them studied or mentioned in their work postmodern figures like Deleuze and Foucault. This does not mean that their own work is in any sense postmodern from a philosophical perspective. Ive read Nick Land. His own philosophical orientation is anti-postmodern and rooted in older, more reactionary traditions of thought. He reads postmodern writers like Nietzsche and Deleuze in ways which are directly opposed to a postmodern reading.

Most people are deeply immersed in meaning: love, relationships, work, friends, goals, children, hobbies, future planning, concern for the environment. We are filled with purpose, engagement and transformative experiences.
— Tom Storm

In which case, they will probably have no interest in this kind of discussion. — Wayfarer

And rightly so, I would have thought.