Like the shaman, we must reunite roles that have become estranged across time and disabuse ourselves of many modern conceits: the idea that knowing is separate from virtue, that a naturalistic worldview cannot include sacredness, that myths and symbols are set apart from reality. To do this, we need to venture outside the imagined frame that keeps

is important not to understand the shaman’s pretense of magical ability as a form of charlatanism. This would be an anachronistic mistake. The shamans are not trying to pretend at knowledge they do not possess. They are engaging in a process of realization: playing with meaning, recasting perspective, enacting a role to access insights that were

The shaman does not simply mete out advice but induces changes in your participatory, perspectival, and procedural knowing. Their presence can therefore enhance your ability to trigger your own placebo effect.⁠25 All

We are all susceptible to this behavior when we confront, or are confronted by, the dark features of our existence: life’s finite nature, the presence of fatalism, the constancy of change, the erosion of life by time, and the tension between our lofty aspiration and life’s unpredictable fatalities.

The loss of these relationships, inward and outward, somehow seems connected to the loss of our relationship to reality itself, our ability to resist the blandishments of bullshit, and to keep in touch with some more ultimate value.⁠9

not be fully conscious. In other words, the bullshitter has no love or relationship with reality, only with appearance. For him, man is the measure of all things. His goal is to overpower you with the force of subjective conviction.⁠7 We already see plenty of evidence for this kind of relativism in the public media of course, but it also afflicts

Bullshit, unlike lying, works by making you unconcerned with whether speech is true or false. The bullshitter, like the sophists of antiquity, does not appeal to any measure of truth outside of the needs of the moment. Instead, he tries to capture your attention with the catchiness of his claim and how much it provokes something inside of you: some

More and more often, in both individuals and groups, we encounter expressions of nihilism and cynicism as well as deep frustration and futility. We no longer trust in our public institutions. We have completely lost faith in our political and judicial systems. Religious affiliation is receding consistently, and participation in community

As a cognitive scientist, I think this is a doomed strategy; overwhelming evidence says mind and consciousness are emergent from your brain and dependent on it.