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The Cognitive Science of Capitalist Realism

John Vervaeke

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Guest Introduction

In this conversation, John Vervaeke & I discuss:

  • The meaning crisis as a crisis of interiority
  • The religion that is not a religion
  • Socioeconomic policies as forms of psycho-technologies
  • The cognitive science of capitalist realism
  • The tension between wisdom and commodification

John is a professor of cognitive psychology and science at the University of Toronto. He recently completed a 50-episode lecture series on Youtube: Awakening From the Meaning Crisis.

The series is a wonderful integration of cognitive science and 'spirituality', for lack of a better term. He develops a framework for understanding what wisdom is, how to cultivate it, how central the cultivation of wisdom was to societies in the past, and how the usurpation of wisdom by knowledge leaves us adrift in a meaningless cosmos, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

One way of thinking about the meaning crisis is as a crisis of wisdom cultivation. The monasteries are gone, the commodification of schools is diluting what passes as 'education' to mere preparation for uncertain labor markets; where else do we go for wisdom?

Time Map

  • 5-30 min – Introduction and context-setting
  • 33 min – "The religion that is not a religion, the meta-crisis as a crisis of human development"
  • 40 min – Wisdom as an ecology of practices
  • 46 min – Structural responses to the meaning crisis
  • 52 min – Distributed cognition and social organization
  • 57:00 – "The cognitive science of capitalist realism" linking reciprocal narrowing and capitalist realism
  • 1:09:00 – Wisdom cultivation versus commodification
  • 1:11:00 – Adult play, flow versus fun-play distinctions

Links from the Conversation