Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Jeremy Lent about his latest book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe...

Jim has a wide-ranging talk with Jeremy Lent about his latest book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe. They discuss the dominant worldview in today's advanced economies, its lack of scientific basis, how worldviews shape the direction of history, myths of selfishness & separation, how viewing nature as resource leads to self-reinforcing feedback loops, money-on-money return, origins of capitalism & colonialism, the extractive mindset as a European development, a complex-systems approach to spirituality, "natural attractors" as spirits, discovering Taoism, wu wei & yu wei, animate vs conceptual consciousness, integrated consciousness, yu wei as multipolar trap, problems with using GDP as a metric, improving the relationship between I & self, a democracy of consciousness, contemplative & embodied practices as a way of moving the brain toward new attractors, false ideas about evolution e.g. the selfish gene, how cells began cooperating, how humans might do the same, changing our social operating system, stepping off the hedonic treadmill, fixing transnational corporations, and much more.

Episode Transcript

The Web of Meaning (website)

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning, by Jeremy Lent

Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, by Janet L. Abu-Lughod

JRS EP148 - Antonio Damasio on Feeling and Knowing

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, by Jill Bolte Taylor

Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff & Mark Johnson

Neural Darwinism (Wikipedia)

Selfish gene (Wikipedia)

JRS EP116 - Doug Erwin on the Cambrian Explosion

B corporation (Wikipedia)

JRS - EP107 Tristan Harris on Our Social Dilemma

Jeremy Lent is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilization’s existential crisis and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. Born in London, England, Lent received a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and was a former internet company CEO. He is founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the Earth. He lives with his partner in Berkeley, California. Lent also writes topical articles exploring the deeper patterns of political and cultural developments at Patterns of Meaning.