🌀 Why Reclaiming Value is Essential for Humanity's Survival
The problems of post-modernity, why consciousness and value are fundamental, the insanity of techno-optimists, and creating a universal grammar of value.
We live in a world where truth and value have lost their meaning.
The deconstruction of reality has left us adrift in a void, where any attempt to find solid ground is seen as a power play.
As the wisdom of the great traditions is overshadowed by fundamentalist dogma, many turn to science, technology, and capitalism as pathways toward the good life.
From their ivory towers, the techno-optimists urge us not to despair, yet their innovations provide only a fleeting escape from the deep-seated meaning crisis we feel in our bones.
Ironically, as the world becomes more intertwined, we grow increasingly divided.
As much as our hyper-individualism hates to admit, the future of humanity requires a shared reality.
To explore how we might navigate this postmodern predicament, I sat down with Zak Stein for our third conversation.
Zak is a writer, educator, futurist, and co-author of "First Principles and First Values," a book that lays out a path toward a universal grammar of value.
As always, Zak brings a wealth of wisdom, weaving intricate perspectives on the meta-crisis and existential risk.
Click the video below to tune into our wide-ranging conversation where we discuss the problems of post-modernity, why value & consciousness are fundamental aspects of reality, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, evolving perennialism, global intimacy disorder, the problem of evil, the most powerful and dangerous religion in the world today and so much more.
Memorable Quotes 🗣️
The problem of Post-Modernity:
“Postmodernism says there's no one right way to do things. There may not be a right way to do things at all, meaning that any claim that one view is more true, that one way of life is more valuable, there's no non-arbitrary way to resolve that conversation.”
Why Consciousness & Value are Fundamental:
"You are living value; you participate in a field of value. Therefore, your perceptual apparatus is actually more about perceiving value than it is about perceiving space-time.
"The burden of proof is actually on those who claim that value and consciousness are not intrinsic.”
On Transhumanism & Techno-optimism:
“The transhumanist would say the human is here actually to pump and dump the earth to get off of it, to basically replace biological life with silicon life and then go into an immortal intergalactic adventure.”
“Why are the ones giving us advice, the leaders of the academy and techno-scientific complex, holding worldviews that from a psychoanalytical perspective are demonstrative of deep psychopathology?”
On-Cosmo-Erotic Humanism:
“Cosmo-erotic humanism is an attempt to begin this reconstructive project... to grapple with the truths of both modernism and these religious traditions.”
“Eros value, which transforms complexity, gives form to emergence and directionality for cosmic evolution.”
Evolving Perrenialism:
"The downfall of the early perennialists was that they just had this unchanging truth through all of human history. And we're saying, no, it's precisely that the same kind of values have been evolving, becoming more complex, differentiating.”
"The existence of variation in the manifestation of a value does not therefore undermine the universality of the value. You just behold that tension between the two.”
Dive Deeper 🤿
Listen to my first conversation with Zak on the Education Crisis
Listen to my second conversation with Zak on his approach to human development
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