Metacrisis? What Metacrisis?

Beard Force Three

The estimable Ket Patel brought this video to my attention shortly after Christmas. It’s taken me a while to finish.

There are. So. Many. Beards. And it’s over 3 hours long. That’s longer than Dune 2. And the fight scenes between John Vervaeke, Iain McGilchrist, and Daniel Schmachtenberger are not a patch on the intricate battle choreography of Denis Villeneuve. Admittedly both Dune 2 and The Psychological Drivers of the Metacrisis both feature a relative dearth of knob gags*, a plethora of plotlines that I find difficult to follow, as well as a great deal of portentous dialogue.

Lets set the scene. Iain McGilchrist is famous for writing the Master and Commander series featuring tales of daring-do during the Napoleonic Wars. John Vervaeke directed Starship Troopers and Showgirls - both of which were based on the classic texts of Theravada Buddhism. I think Daniel Schmachtenberger operates a craft brewery in Red Hook. Some of the preceding facts may be incorrect. I may not have done any background research beyond watching the video.

Let me make some wholly uninformed comments.

• The Metacrisis apparently covers everything. Climate change, nuclear war, AI, anxiety, the loss of the sacred, a focus on utility, me accidentally washing my favorite socks at too high a temperature last Thursday, etc. Unsurprisingly, this is all very depressing. I despair for the future of humanity. And my favorite socks no longer fit.

• The tone is very serious and high-modernist. Every sentence seems packed with Abstract Nouns with Capital Letters (e.g. Meaning, Anxiety, Purpose, Logos, Religio, The Sacred, Geist, My Arse, etc).

• “The world can’t be absurd, right?” - Well, we’re going to have to disagree on that John. I think the world is fundamentally absurd. That’s pretty much the premise of everything I write here.

• “I believe it’s 43” - 42, Iain, 42. You're doing that just to troll me, aren’t you?

• “We need to find a way out of this that involves restraint” - Iain, you’re on a 3 hour 21 minute video. I think it’s a bit late to be calling for restraint.

• “If we convince 3% of the world’s influential people” - So we are merely one Davos talk away from solving The Metacrisis, Iain?

• I’m not sure Meaning Starvation is a thing, John.

• “It is generally the case that the people who are at the top of the power hierarchies are people who are both attracted to and good at power games.” - Schmachtenberger shoots and he scores! Will he take it to the next level?

• “How do we have a proliferation of the Sacred?” No, he won’t.

• “I'm not suggesting that we just sit back” - YOU’RE LITERALLY SITTING BACK IN A CHAIR, IAIN!!!

• “But if the student is in fact basically psychopathic” - Quick cross-promotion here.

• The next bit seems to be philosopher bingo. “Two Fat Ladies - Immanuel Kant!”

• “A polar bear can’t make nukes” - But what if it could? FINALLY some out of the box thinking.

• “Our predative capacity increased rapidly faster than any of the rest of the environment, increased its resilience or relative capacity.” Schmachtenberger seems on the verge of another breakthrough. Will he squander it by trying to be too clever?

• “So I would put the origin of the metacrisis not with evolutionary processes, but with the beginning of stone tools.” - Yes. He surely will. I do expect some of the Bronze Age Pervert types to chime in with: “Things were already f-ed by the Bronze Age. The Stone Age even. We need to return to times before human had mastered tools. And were just shredded. With protein powder and Nietzsche”.

• “Can we imagine a humanity that has the  wisdom to steward that power reasonably well?” - I’m going with a “no” for this. Have you met humanity? But I am also stupid enough to believe that we might fail to destroy ourselves if only because we fail at a lot of things. Although I’m about 2 hours in here. And at this point I am beginning to view the destruction of humanity as a positive.

• “So I'm asking for better thoughts on, what would it take to develop wisdom at the scale necessary to actually have a continuing human presence on the planet that doesn't destroy itself or totally suck?” - Schmachtenberger has another chance on an open goal here. Will he take it? Oh no, he’s passing it to Vervaeke…

• “We need to basically co-opt and exapt the machinery of religion” What?!? “And I'm not proposing that I'm going to start a religion, because that's a ridiculous proposal.” OK… “There's an algorithm.” Oh. F-. Well that didn’t end well.

• We want a religion and we don’t want a religion, apparently. This is feeling a little Deus Ex Machina.

• “I'm not saying  I'm going to make this.” - Of course not, John. When are you going to get the time?

• “But I think there's a third possibility, which is McGilchrist’s Wager” - What odds will Sportsbet give me on that? I genuinely do not get Iain’s point here.

• It then goes very metaphysical. F-, I need some mushrooms. I think the best I have is some particularly piquant licorice.

• “If there's a future for us, we must generate it locally” - OK. We’re getting grounded again!

• “This brings up a place where I was wanting to go, which has to do with more local religion.” - Oh, no we’re not. My get out here is that my local environment is pretty much all cafes and breweries. I know what my chosen sacraments will be.

• “But we're not necessarily taking people through a practice that is inducing the

  kinds of states, the right-hemispheric state where the numinous is there, right?” - Daniel, I think you do yourself a disservice. Over 2 hours and 40 minutes in, s-t is definitely getting numinous. Where is that licorice…

• “How big is the uniqueness of your wife? …This is not a sensible question” - Iain, on this we are agreed. It is a question that will only lead to pain and suffering.

• “Let’s do a concrete example.” - John, on what planet are your following words a concrete example of anything?

• “I think we stopped educating children about forty, fifty years ago.” - Iain, not everyone’s school experience was winning a scholarship to Winchester College. My father failed the 11-plus and went to a secondary modern school in Birmingham where he barely learned anything. I presume you are not talking about turning back the clock to his school experience? If you want to offer every child in the world the experience of Winchester College in the 60s then: sure, we can talk.

• “That would mean freeing up teachers from a dead weight of bureaucracy.” F- it, McGilchrist, you have just redeemed yourself.

• “a living system of teaching institutions” - So an academic is suggesting we can solve everything with more academics? Colour me shocked.

• McGilchrist hearts Generalists. I don’t hate that. Although as regular readers will know, I frown on the mixing of disciplines. Ideas must be chaperoned. Like they are young Victorian gentlewomen going to a local dance.

• “I’d go to my death to defend the opposite point of  view” - Don’t tempt me, Iain. And I’m not actually sure you would. You are, after all, still here.

• “So I think we've done the best we can.” Well, we’re all f-ed then.

• “Don’t despair”. Wise words. I’m not convinced this experience has assisted in achieving that state of affairs. I refer you to my previous point.

Amongst all this there are many valid points. But I don’t think they matter. If the metacrisis is as bad as all three men say it is, then the solutions they offer feel woefully inadequate. They have no better ideas to resolve our predicaments than I do.

Now I don’t want to crap on people for reading books and sharing what they’ve read. I absolutely do not want to stop these three men from getting together and having their very earnest conversation. I am also glad that I am able to watch this conversation on x2 speed but I would absolutely petition YouTube for a x3 or x4 option.

I remain firmly of the belief that learning should not be worn like an ermine cloak but rather like a cashmere scarf. And there was too much ermine and not enough cashmere here.

This conversation only reinforces to me that ideas matter less than we think. Quoting Heidigger may be hella fun but I’m not sure it makes the world less screwed up. Heidigger was, after all, pretty screwed up himself. At their best, ideas can provoke new actions within us. Or more likely legitimate what we were going to do anyway. But the action is the thing. Perhaps if we try to fix everything then we will end up fixing nothing. Perhaps we should just try to change one small thing first.

Who knows. In future years, this YouTube video may be cited as the trigger for a massive societal transformation. Frankly I think that’s more likely to be a 14 year old on TikTok.

But then I know nothing.

*Sandworms excepted.