The Loss Of Meaning
Jamie Wheal is the Executive Director of The Flow Genome Project and leading expert in the neurophysiology of human performance. His work combines a background in expeditionary education, wilderness medicine, and surf rescue, with over a decade of advising high-growth companies on strategy, execution, and leadershipIn the face of multiple existential threats, and a pervasive crisis of meaning, he writes and speaks about how we can reconnect to our deepest purpose and what techniques and practices can help us reboot. He tells us that we have lost meaning and need Cultural Architecture to build something new. That hopefully does not repeat the mistakes of the past. The following is paraphrased from a talk with Tom Bilyeu on YouTube: Everything has gone exponential. But the thing in the middle about how we make sense of all that is exponential isn’t keeping up. According to Harvard Biologist, Edward O. Wilson, we have paleolithic emotions we’ve got medieval institutions, and we’ve got god-like technology. Things are getting better and things are getting worse. Predictions from people with authority are supposed to help us make sense of all this. But we are seeing a collapse of the most pervasive institutions—benign secular authority (the scientists; the academics; and the politicians). And we have also seen a collapse of divine authority (organized religion). This has led to a giant crisis in the middle that amounts to a meaning crisis. The Pew Research Organization has recently found that of all the denominations in America, the fastest growing is the ‘Nones’ (none of the listed ones). And at the same time we are seeing a collapse of Modern Liberalism (nation-states, democracy, civil rights, and private property). For thousands of years organized religions offered salvation, and also excluded non-believers. After the religious wars of Europe, the French Enlightenment offered inclusion. They said, in effect, “lets take salvation off the table, because it is super problematic.” Liberty, Equality, Fraternity became the legacy of the Age of Enlightenment—life, liberty and equality regardless of race, color or creed. We are seeing the collapse of all that which leaves us in a tight spot. There are complex, intersecting, over-lapping, and reinforcing meta-crises. So it is not just a single thing. These problems have no geographic boundaries. So for the first time ever we have to expand our awareness beyond tribe, clan, faith, and even beyond nation-states, to a global perspective. This has never been done before. Conditions are getting tighter. The apocalyptic fantasy has been around for a long time, but this is different. This kind of destabilization invites aggression. |
Thursday, June 17, 2021
Jamie Wheal
