John Vervaeke on Ecologies of Practice

The following quotes are from the Metaphysics and the Matter with Things: Thinking with Iain McGilchrist conference in March 2024. John Vervaeke said (my emphasis in italics):

I have been arguing extensively for the fact that we’re in a meaning crisis, that we have a worldview…in which we do not belong. And when your worldview eradicates you, you are hungry for connectedness… And most of that connectedness…is being generated at the procedural level, at the perspectival level, at the participatory level. …you need practices. I often tell people, don’t tell me what you believe, tell me what you practice. …we used to have something that…honed a worldview that legitimated complex living ecologies of practices…and it was called religion. I’m not here to advocate for any religion… But when we threw out the bathwater, we threw out a lot of the baby. And so we’re hungry.

—John Vervaeke, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things – Thinking With Iain McGilchrist, Session 4 – Spirituality & the Sacred

I have a concern that we think the answer is to come up with the better beliefs. And what we need to do is get the right beliefs. And that’s a performative contradiction. If you take seriously the idea that most of the dynamical coupling that constitutes meaning in life is going on procedurally and prospectively and participatory, then altering your beliefs is not the primary thing you need to be doing. You need to be engaging in practices that are radically transforming your skills, your procedural knowing, your sensibility, your perspectival knowing, and your identity, your participatory knowing. …we have to seriously take into our consideration that we have to engage in deeply long-term committed transformative practices of our skills, our sensibilities, and ourselves on our own and with other people if we have any chance of addressing this crisis.

—John Vervaeke, Metaphysics and the Matter With Things – Thinking With Iain McGilchrist, Session 4.1 – Sunday Responses & Integration

Well, my concern is that practices will not help us address this crisis either. It’s not a small thing John Vervaeke requests practices to fulfill. There are two main reasons why I don’t share Vervaeke’s belief in practices:

1. I have first hand experience of religious practices. I grew up in a religious home. My parents were missionaries and I am a preacher’s son. Religious practices can be an expression of a loving heart, but they can just as well be performed mechanically, or for some other reason. It’s, for example, common that parents baptize their children, even though they don’t believe in God, because it is a tradition.
2. I have also worked for 40 years. This means I have extensive experience of various business practices. A common belief is that quality, productivity, or whatever, can be achieved by the use of defined processes. What people usually forget is that it’s an assumption which only is valid for very simple repetitive tasks. I have much experience of statistical process control. It doesn’t work for cognitively heavy tasks.

So, what I am saying is that no practice will help unless it is performed with the right attitude. Like it or not, but our deeply held beliefs and values influence the ways in which we perceive the world and act.

I’d suggest that our “only chance of addressing this crisis” is to start acting with compassion, because it will not only change society but also ourselves: who we are, how we view the world, and the values we support.

John Vervaeke has a tendency to spin through theory space a little too much!

Updated 2024-09-24:
Link and related post added.

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