Summary of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis by John Vervaeke, Chapter 25: The Clash

One of Hegel’s great projects was his work on the “mythology of reason” in Geist, the ever evolving patterns of intelligibility that constitute the fabric of reality. Hegel’s idea of the dialectic was criticized by none other than Karl Marx, who viewed reality as driven not primarily by dialogues between philosophical ideas but conflicts between socioeconomic classes. Marx’s ideas shifted the focus of history from moral conflict to political conflict, with religious commitments replaced by fervent nationalism.

Germany in particular went through a deep spiritual crisis following its defeat in the First World War. It was this combination of nationalist fervor and spiritual vacuum that ultimately gave rise to Nazism, which is perhaps best understood as a pseudo-religious ideology spun around Hitler’s interpretation of the Gnostic nightmare. The struggle of ideologies that ensued was profound in both scale and devastation.

The catastrophes of the 20th century incontrovertibly demonstrated the danger of trying to supplant religion with secular ideologies. This leaves us with a meta-crisis of simultaneously wanting to rediscover religion, yet unable to find a viable alternative compatible with our post-religious worldview outside of various autodidactic spiritual systems. In Vervaeke’s words, we seem to need a religion that is no religion at all.

The first half of this series has focused on the historical genealogy of the meaning crisis. The second half of the series will focus on the cognitive scientific foundations of the meaning crisis. Cognitive science is a complex interdisciplinary field combining psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and anthropology, with the aim of promoting holistic insight into the mind and avoiding equivocation between otherwise isolated disciplines.