A Critique of John Vervaeke

Does the coiner of the term 'meaning crisis' have any serious answers to it?

John Vervaeke talking about “synoptic integration” with Jordan Peterson on YouTube.

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Ecclesiastes 1:14

“This video says I am in trouble. It did not even suggest how to fix it.”
YouTube Comment under a John Vervaeke talk.

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Well, it seems I am beholden to complete the trinity bingo of the Petersonsphere, so this week I am going to look at the work of cognitive scientist and philosopher John Vervaeke, friend of Peterson and Pageau and someone who was, like Pageau, brought to most people’s popular attention in the orbit of religio-culture war giant Jordan Peterson.

I would say at the outset, if you are hoping for an acerbic takedown, this is not it. Weirdly, I think John Vervaeke represents something of how Peterson could and probably should have ended up had he not been sucked into the culture war tumble-drier. In my looking into his work I have yet to come across his views on Trump, transgenderism or net zero, I haven’t had to roll my eyes at angry tweets, he’s not giving talks about saving the world at the ARC conference and he’s still happily teaching courses at a university. In considering his ideas, I’m not presented with the same issue I am with Peterson in which simultaneously brash, direct but somehow also ambiguous claims are sold to large audiences. I can, you’ll be pleased to know, just consider his ideas for the sheer interest in considering whether he has answers to the problem of our time that he himself coined: the meaning crisis.

I have still called this article ‘a critique John Vervaeke,’ because although I find his ideas kind of interesting, and find him in his public appearances very genuine, open, thoughtful and transparent, I find ultimately something is lacking that fails to address the fundamental issue of the “crisis” that afflicts our culture. I think Vervaeke tries to provide an intellectual basis for a lot of spiritual ideas, to mixed success, but to me something essential goes unaddressed and solutions are lost in his style. Whether or not we arrive at an intellectually grounded rehabilitation of spiritual traditions or have-your-cake-and-eat-it secular spirituality with a large helping of over complicated restatements of the problem is for you to decide.