A Solution to the Meaning Crisis

If you’re thinking and feeling like it’s practically impossible to change the course our world is on, you are not alone. In a world where common ground is so hard to find, one of the few things almost everyone agrees on is that the situation seems intractable. 

At the core of this state of affairs is a dynamic that has been referred to as the ‘Meaning Crisis’. The idea is that the reason we can’t seem to work together to create a more equitable and peaceful society is  because collectively, we don’t have any fundamental beliefs to serve as a foundation upon which to build a common framework. 

Only within a common framework developed by consensus, can we reliably establish axioms with true authenticity and authority. And only around such axioms can we arrange the particulars of our lives and engagement with others’, so as to solve and resolve virtually any challenge/opportunity we encounter.

But, it must start at the beginning. From the most simple, pure, elementary Truths.

Not that we don’t have core beliefs, individually or as groups. Most people base their mental pictures of reality on a set of beliefs that seem fundamental to them. 

The problem is that those various fundamental beliefs don’t mesh with each other.

Spiritual beliefs range from the abstract religions of the East such as Buddhism and Taoism to the very personal and literal versions of Christianity and Islam in the west. These approaches to spirituality are as different as night and day, and yet their adherents consider them to be the source of Absolute Truth. 

Others take a more secular approach in their quest to understand the ultimate nature of reality. Their orientation might lean toward science or technology or finance or politics, but either way, they are studying their discipline for fundamental patterns that they can recognize and apply to all other aspects of their world. 

There is certainly no shortage of friction between the secular and spiritual types. 

As if there were only two types. 

Between religion, politics, race, nationality, gender, profession, geography, income, and countless other axes, everyone has their own unique mix of primary beliefs that are similar to the beliefs of the people close to them, but otherwise only loosely related to any form of Objective, Consensus-based Reality.

How deep is this Meaning Crisis? 

Consider the concept of Duality. 

Most people have an innate sense that the concepts of Duality and Polarity are fundamental to the nature of Reality. How could we not? It’s woven into the fabric of our everyday lives, and has been as long as we’ve existed. We can easily list many profound examples of duality and/or polarity:

• Life/Death
• Male/Female 
• Mind/Body
• Right Brain/Left Brain
• Day/Night
• Hot/Cold
• Energy/Matter
• Etc/Etc

These are not trivial concepts. Duality is about as fundamental as it gets. 

Not surprisingly, Duality forms the basis or is deeply incorporated into virtually every major religion. Whether it is God and the Devil, Yin and Yang, or Feminine and Masculine, Duality inevitably provides a baseline structure for understanding Creation. 

Whether we are aware of it or not, we are imbued with the sense that Duality is fundamental. 

So, how do we collectively define this most basic of concepts? 

We don’t. 

How you define the Ultimate Duality, (if you think about it at all), probably stems from the religion you inherited and the social environment you inhabit. Or it’s some vague notions woven together in your mind from myriad life experiences. For most people, it’s an amalgam of prevailing wisdom, personal experience and intuition. 

So in terms of this most profound construct imaginable — the ultimate Duality that defines Creation — we don’t have a shared concept of what that is. After all these millenia of civilization, Humanity has yet to develop a shared model of the Prime Duality.

Think about that. 

Is there any wonder that our world is so full of confusion and conflict? We can’t even agree on the simplest, most elementary concept. 

And it only gets more complicated from there. 

Imagine what we could accomplish as a global society if we had a clear, shared concept of the Prime Duality. 

By way of analogy, think about the digital technology infrastructure that serves as the nervous system of our civilization. It is ultimately based on binary numbers — a variation on duality. We have produced a miraculous reality based on this elementary concept because people who understood the concept were able to agree on the meaning of 1s and 0s, and how they related to a hexadecimal number system, and how hexadecimal numbers related to ASCII, and so on. 

The power of our digitally driven technology substrate is just a glimpse of what is possible if we can apply the same power of Duality to the full breadth of Human affairs.

John Vervaeke has spoken often about a ‘religion that isn’t a religion’ as a solution to the Meaning Crisis.  He envisions it as a kind of framework that fulfills the functional roles of traditional religions — such as providing community, practices for self-transcendence, and pathways to wisdom — without being tied to established religious doctrines or dogmas.

What I have to reveal to you now is along those lines. 

In my next article, I am going to present a model for a Prime Duality that we, as a society, can adopt and develop into an operating system for an entirely new and vastly improved civilization. 

Civilization 2.0, if you will. 

See you there.