In the first part of ‘Awakening from the meaning crisis’ Vervaeke unfolds that in the scientific worldview no meaning story is told about life. It seems that science is just a description. He also argues that with the protestant reformation everyone could start to interpret/make their own meaning story about life, making meaning cultivation an individual task.
Looking back at growing up in a secular environment, it feels like I lacked guidance of my inner world.
It went something like this for me:
Go to kindergarten, primary school. In high school, chose your course and then learn all the information we provide, no question asked! Go to university, choose a course and study this for 3 years. But, what do I want? What am I interested in? What am I supposed to do here? What makes me happy? Aporia
It feels like I always followed the road till university and then started to ask the hard questions about life, guiding me to the inner world.
Following Vervaeke’s arguments:
- Only descriptions were told in my school. (Scientific worldview)
- Meaning I had to figure out with the help of my friend Youtube and John Vervaeke. (+ I had some knowledge from my Christian background I still find rationaly confusing) (Protestant reformation => Enlightenment)
That brings me to my questions for today:
Was there more societal guidance of the inner world in a pre-secular world?
Are we free now from fixed meaning structures, but still need to figure out how to give societal guidance towards more connected practices and stories?
A quote to end:
“The day I start learning, is the day I start living”
In a word, yes.
My experience in school was somewhat similar, but not all the way. First of all, in retrospect, I was always a natural intuitive and daydreamer and school utterly failed to talk me out of that. Emotional and imaginative education was available through literature and history, which allow for the fantasy projection of oneself into other worlds of experience. I took full advantage of that in my youth and still do.
Where may education failed me was in not providing a theory and vocabulary for fantasy and emotion. (A left-brained account for why the right-brain needs to do its business). I had to retrofit emotional vocabulary and intentional practice as a young adult in therapy, because surprise, surprise - I had trouble situating myself in human relationships. (Unguided, I had done things like reading Dostoevsky novels and acting like a Dostoevsky character - not recommended!)
Math was my main strength. My mother was an effective math teacher for young children, so she gave me a major boost in STEM directions. But I remember her sharing that she preferred math in school, because objectively correct answers were available and grades were never a matter of opinion. Also, you knew when the homework was truly done and there was no more left to study. In retrospect, that was a bit of a poisoned pill. My advice to students today is quite different. I invite my adult STEM students to plunge into ambiguity, emotion, intuition, chaos, mystery, and incompleteness. Groping in the dark is the very best survival skill for 2025. I had to learn that the hard way - by doing a lot of groping in the dark.