👁️ Top Insights #132 - Human Transformation in a Time of Meta-Crisis, Critical Realism, Grief, Ritual and Singing to the Sacred.
A transformational conference at Harvard, A better philosophy of science, Insights on grief & ritual, Consciousness debate, Big picture thinking & What to do when all else fails.
“Top Insights” is a monthly newsletter that shares mind-expanding podcasts, transformational frameworks, and insightful links that help you go beyond conventional development.
Welcome to the May 2025 edition of Top Insights 🌸
As May's warmth coaxes blossoms from their buds, may you inhale the fresh air of possibility and exhale into the bloom of becoming.
Human Transformation in a Time of Meta-Crisis 🤯
By the time you read this, I will likely be en route to the Human Transformation in a Time of Meta-Crisis conference at Harvard.
I’m especially excited for this event as it’ll be my first time meeting many of my liminal space collaborators in person.
Past Elevating Consciousness podcast guests Zak Stein, Bonnitta Roy, and Brendan Graham Dempsey will be hosting sessions, alongside a wide range of other leading-edge thinkers, speakers, and facilitators
Some of the questions we will be exploring at the conference include:
What is the metacrisis and the paradigm shift towards ‘inner’ system-change skills?
What inner capacities are essential to potentiate our activism and system-change efforts in education?
How do we develop qualities of “being” in education?
How does this look on the ground in education and our communities? We will explore a number of approaches, including the arts, academic research, contemplative, and justice-centered approaches.
What are the practical implications of a flourishing approach to education at an individual, community, and systemic level?
These aren’t questions with fixed answers, but I’m hopeful they’ll spark generative conversations that lead to grounded, actionable insights.
If you’re planning to attend, please do say hello—I should be easy to spot as I’ll likely be the only person walking with a cane.
If you’re not attending, no worries. I’ll be sharing highlights and reflections from the conference in next month’s newsletter.
And in the meantime, if you're curious about the meta-crisis, I’ll leave you with this in-depth synthesis from my friend Kyle Kowalski.
Critical Realism 🧐🌎
Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy that explores the foundations, methods, and implications of science. It asks deep questions about how science works, what counts as scientific knowledge, and what makes science reliable—or not.
In today’s world, we might argue this is one of the most important branches of philosophy, because scientific knowledge plays a disproportionate role in shaping what we accept as truth—in medicine, policy, education, and beyond.
For much of modern history, the dominant view in the philosophy of science was positivism. This view holds that the only real knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that real science is based solely on what can be directly observed, measured, and verified through our senses or experiments.
While many academic philosophers have moved beyond strict positivism, in everyday scientific practice, a kind of “tacit positivism” still shapes how science is done. It shows up in how we value data, frame research questions, and interpret evidence.
In varying degrees, this view assumes:
There is a single, objective reality “out there” that exists independently of observers, and we can discover it through observation and measurement.
Only what can be seen, measured, or quantified counts as real knowledge.
The more data we gather, the closer we get to truth.
If A always leads to B, then A causes B.
Science is a neutral tool, and the scientist is a detached observer who doesn’t influence the outcomes.
A statement is only meaningful if it can be empirically verified.
Critical Realism is a philosophy of science perspective that pushes back on these assumptions and offers a more layered, realistic, and human view of science.
From a Critical Realist lens:
Yes, objective reality exists, but our knowledge of it is always incomplete, fallible, and influenced by our social and historical context.
Much of what is real can’t be directly observed, like gravity, psychological trauma, unconscious bias, or systemic inequality. These structures and mechanisms are real because they have effects—even if we can't see them.
Data doesn’t speak for itself—it’s always interpreted through a theory, lens, or worldview.
The idea that "A always causes B" only holds in closed systems, like laboratories. In the real world, causes are tendencies, not guarantees—they're shaped by context, complexity, and interaction with other forces.
Science isn’t neutral—it’s shaped by human choices, values, institutions, and power dynamics.
Many scientific breakthroughs come from theories that go beyond current observation—insights often emerge from deep explanation, not just measurement.
Critical Realism gives us a way to honor the power of science without being naive about its limitations. It helps us see that truth isn't always obvious, measurable, or immediate, and that real progress comes from looking deeper—into systems, causes, and structures that aren't always on the surface.
In everyday life, we can apply Critical Realism by learning to ask not just what's happening, but what's making it happen. Whether we’re exploring mental health, social injustice, or human transformation, CR invites us to look beyond appearances—to trace effects back to their underlying causes, and to hold space for both empirical facts and invisible forces that shape our world.
If you’d like to learn more about CR, Critical Realism: Basics and Beyond is a highly accessible and well-written introduction.
Elevating Consciousness Podcast 🎙
In case you missed them, below are the podcast episodes I released last month.
Flourishing With a Buddhism that Actually Works in Real Life with Seth Zuihō Segall - Seth Zuihō Segall is a Zen Buddhist priest, clinical psychologist, and writer. In this episode, we explore Seth’s unique journey into Buddhism as well as his pragmatic and naturalistic understanding of it, the relationship between virtue, wisdom and pluralism, the foundations of flourishing, navigating political polarization, ethical ideals and the myth of the perfect person, better ways of thinking about enlightenment and why Seth became a Zen priest.
Rethinking Religion at The Edge of Collapse with Jordan Hall - Jordan Hall is a tech entrepreneur, philosopher, and meta-systemic thinker who, over a year ago, announced that he had converted to Christianity. This conversation was recorded live during Limicon, a digital conference for those in the liminal, metamodern, and game B spaces. In it, we explored Jordan’s early experiences with religion and spirituality, what ultimately drew him to Christianity, and what Christianity might afford that Eastern traditions do not. We touched on discerning divine calling from the egoic mind, confronting fundamentalist forms of Christianity, and the shift from propositional to participatory forms of knowing. We also examined the role religion may play in ameliorating some of the negative trends in society and the meta-crisis at large.
Insightful Links 🔗
Is Consciousness Primary? Debate between Bernardo Kastrup & Jay Garfield - I enjoyed this debate between idealist philosopher Bernardo Kastrup and Buddhist philosopher Jay Garfield. I’m well acquainted with Bernardo’s view, but this was my first time listening to Jay Garfield, and I’m impressed. If you get a chance to watch/listen, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on who had a more compelling argument.
Big Picture Mind: Seeing through small thinking - This insightful talk (broken up into digestible videos) from meta-systemic thinker Robb explores how we can find consensus in these hyper-fragmented times. You can follow it up with his paper “A Sociology of Big Pictures: Network Strategy for a 21st Century Worldview” for a deeper dive into these ideas.
On Singing to the Beloved in Times of Crisis - When I find myself getting stuck in left-brain processing, I flip on The Emerald podcast to rebalance perception. In this beautiful episode, host Josh Schrei invites us to loosen our grip on the need to make sense of everything — and instead, sing to the sacred.
Resonant Read 📕
The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller offers a soulful re-visioning of grief—not as a singular event, but as an ongoing apprenticeship that deepens our humanity and connects us to soul, community, and the living world. Drawing from ritual, psychology, ancestral wisdom, and poetic insight, Weller outlines “Five Gates of Grief,” each revealing the many ways loss permeates our lives—from personal heartbreak to the sorrows of the world and the wounds of our ancestors. He argues that unacknowledged grief hardens us, whereas tending to it through presence, ritual, silence, and communal witnessing becomes a path of healing, transformation, and mature love. Through this sacred work, grief becomes not just an emotion to survive but a teacher that helps us live more fully, love more deeply, and walk with greater reverence in a broken yet beautiful world.
Here are my top 21 insights & quotes from the book:
We often think of Grief as an event or a temporary period of mourning, but it can be an ongoing conversation that deepens our relationship with life.
We can't grow or mature without some familiarity with grief.
“Grief is felt, sensed in the viscera of our bellies, the inner walls of our chests, the curve of our shoulders, the heaviness in our thighs. Grief is registered in our sinews and muscles. It feels labored, as though a great weight has settled on our chest or a heaviness has entered our bones.”
“The territory of grief is heavy. Even the word carries weight. Grief comes from the Latin word gravis, meaning “heavy,” from which we also get grave, gravity, and gravid. We use the word gravitas to speak of a quality in some people who are able to carry the weight of the world with a dignified bearing. And so it is, when we learn to carry our grief with dignity.”
“Grief both acknowledges what has been lost and ensures that we don’t forget what must be remembered.”
“Some losses, such as cultures that have been forever silenced, species that have disappeared, and traumatic events that affect whole communities and cultures, should be kept present in our communal memory. The experience of grieving in these situations is “not intended to finish with the past and return to ‘normal life,’ but rather to keep the past from slipping away in a present that continues to deny it.”
“It is important to remember that grief does not appear solely through tears; it is also expressed through our anger and outrage. Through acknowledging our grief, we begin the process of being made whole again.”
“Grieving, by its very nature, confirms worth. I am worth crying over; my losses matter.”.
“Trauma always carries grief, though not every grief carries trauma. “Therefore, grief work is a primary ingredient in the resolution of trauma.”
“ It is easy to dismiss our grief when we compare it to circumstances we consider to be much worse than our own. But the grief is ours, and we must treat it as worthy of attention.”
“Imagine the feeling of relief that would flood our whole being if we knew that when we were in the grip of sorrow or illness, our village would respond to our need. ”
“Ritual is any gesture done with emotion and intention by an individual or a group that attempts to connect the individual or the community with transpersonal energies for the purposes of healing and transformation.”
“Ritual offers us the two things required to fully let go of the grief we carry: containment and release.”
“Grief has never been private; it has always been communal. Subconsciously, we are awaiting the presence of others, before we can feel safe enough to drop to our knees on the holy ground of sorrow.”
“It is in the sacred space of ritual that we are most able to acknowledge the weight of the grief we carry. We have, in modern culture, little understanding of the ways ritual works or how it can move us into a space capable of fully releasing our long-held sorrows.”
“Ritual also evokes a feeling of reverence, a sense of the sacred. Not every loss requires a ritual, though every grief we carry is worthy of the sustained attention that is offered by ritual.”
What is often diagnosed as depression is unprocessed grief, shame, and despair.
In the West, we are dominated by the hero archetype, which makes us believe that we shouldn’t need help and can overcome our struggles on our own.
We need both solitude and community to do the difficult work of metabolizing grief.
We can deny grief, but we can also get lost in it. Gratitude is an antidote for not getting consumed by our sorrow.
Grief and Joy are two sides of the same coin. When we exile our grief, we rob ourselves of joy.
Happy grieving!
Quintessential Quote ✍️
"When I sing, I pray. When I pray, I sing. This is the highest form of thought."
- Kahlil Gibran
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Appreciate the shoutout, Artem. Keep up the good work!