How and why modernity failed. All systems of meaning—religious, political, artistic, psychological—began to fall apart. Nihilism seemed the only alternative.| Meaningness
A reading list is a great idea—thanks! It would be a lot of work… but fun! For now, some books chosen without great care. The first three are the largest influences on Meaningness, but are quite difficult. There are some easier and more fun books later, plus one extremely fun movie at the end!| meaningness.com
Fluidity addresses the atomization of culture, society, and self with ships that sail the sea of meaning: collaborative, improvised, intimate, and playful.| Meaningness
The 1960s-80s countercultures abandoned rationality because they believed it negated all meaning. They were wrong.| Meaningness
The hippies and the Moral Majority both tried to rescue systematic eternalism—and failed. We live amongst their wreckage.| Meaningness
Available ethical theories are either eternalist or nihilist; both are useless. We must recognize that ethics are both nebulous and meaningful.| Meaningness
Confusions about meaning can be resolved using a method for looking at ways nebulosity affects the subject matter.| Meaningness
Great confusions about meaningness stem from the mistaken assumption that there must be some sort of eternal ordering principle.| Meaningness
The hippie counterculture was structurally and functionally similar to the Moral Majority Christian Right counterculture a decade later.| Meaningness
Joseph Goldstein’s One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism is a manifesto of Consensus Buddhism.| Vividness
Ultimate is a word that can be legitimately used in discussions of meaning. Often, though, it is advertising hype, or a weasel-word.| Meaningness
A positive and realistic vision for the future of society, culture, and self, drawing lessons from recent history.| Meaningness
Over the past century, systems of meaning gradually disintegrated, and a series of new modes of meaningness developed.| Meaningness
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A bridge from systematic rationality to fluid meta-rational understanding may be necessary to prevent civilizational collapse.| Meta-rationality
Wistful certainty is a ploy for reinforcing eternalism based on the thought that there must exist whatever it takes to make eternalism seem to work.| Meaningness
Your post on the different stances mostly focused on ideation, regarding what goes on individually in relation to meaningness. I imagine that, for most of us, this cognitive process is habitual and out of awareness. That led me to think about the stances’ effect on behaviour, how that propels our flip-flopping from one to another - and how it might be a key to recognising our own underlying stances. This could be confusing: behaviours derived from a stance often appear to mean, and are r...| meaningness.com
Robert Kegan’s model of adult development has profoundly influenced my understanding of ethics, relationships, society, and thought. This page summarizes his theory.| Vividness