Lost Ways of Knowing

We have been lost for some time now. Many of the guests we’ve had on Rebel Wisdom see this lostness as inextricably linked to our inability to find a meaningful narrative with which to make sense of reality. J ohn Vervaeke has called this ‘the meaning crisis’ — a loss of connection to our own psychological roots and historical trajectory that has s... See more

Wisdom is our capacity for understanding, and understanding is our ability to grasp the significance and to realise the relevance of what we know. Knowledge is important, but without the wisdom to use it in the right way, it is lifeless.

There is much disagreement between memetic tribes, but one thing they share is a penchant for constructing maps of reality, and convincing others that these maps show the world how it truly is. Often these maps become realities in themselves, and trap us in rigid, narrow ways of perceiving that keep us lost.

Our most meaningful ways of knowing do not spring from ‘knowing that’. Rather, the propositional knowing we use to build our maps springs from the embodied experience of being an active agent in the world, from a deep sense of attunement with our environment.

I believe we also make maps because we are desperately, primally afraid of being lost. The tighter we cling to them the more we confuse them for something real. And when we do that, they stop showing us where to go and start leading us in ever-decreasing circles. If we can hold them lightly, however, they can open our perspective and contextualise ... See more

A significant effect of the meaning crisis is our increasing polarisation into ideological tribes. The old simplicities of left vs right are gone. Instead, culture is now a battleground for what Peter Limberg has called the ‘Memetic Tribes’. Warring factions, each with a competing value system, morality or religious certainty to shout into the din.

We can seek to control the world by reducing it to component parts we feel safe with, relying on our propositional knowledge and outdated assumptions about the nature of rationality. Or, we can let go of control and draw on the liminal perception of the right hemisphere, embracing a participatory knowing the extends beyond ourselves and into the wo... See more