Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Shamanism, Flow State, and the Power of Metaphor

🔑 Shamanism in the upper paleolithic transition led to a change in cognition, enhancing meaning-making abilities and altered states of consciousness.

🤔 The shaman employed disruptive strategies to alter their framing of reality and gain insight into hunting and healthcare, improving survival.

🌟 The flow state, achieved through various practices including video games, jazz, martial arts, and rock climbing, is deeply connected to meaning in life and enhances well-being.

🤝 In the flow state, there is a sense of connectedness and oneness with the task at hand.

⏱️ Time seems to pass differently and self-consciousness disappears in the flow state.

🌟 The flow state is highly salient and intense, resulting in optimal performance and motivation.

🔑 Implicit learning allows us to pick up on complex patterns in our environment without conscious awareness.

⚡ Intuition is the result of implicit learning, where we detect patterns without knowing how we do it.

⚠️ Implicit learning can lead to bias and prejudice when we confuse correlation with causation.

Implicit learning focuses on picking up on causal patterns rather than correlational patterns.

Setting up the right context enhances intuition and implicit learning.

Flow state and insight cascade reinforce each other for enhanced cognition and meaning-making.

🔑 Metaphor is a powerful tool in cognition, as it helps make creative connections between ideas.

🌌 Enhancing altered states of consciousness through psycho technologies, such as shamanic practices, leads to increased insight and intuition.

🌍 The Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic Revolutions played significant roles in the development of meaning-making machinery and human connection to the world.

📚 The Bronze Age civilizations are not widely read or relevant, unlike the Bible, Plato, and other influential thinkers from the axial age.

💥 The Bronze Age collapse is the most significant collapse in civilization, resulting in the end of empires, loss of literacy, and trade collapse.

🔍 The Dark Age following the collapse prompted the invention of new psycho technologies and the emergence of small-scale societies and new forms of social organization.

🌍 Alphabetic literacy was invented in Canaan and became a powerful psycho technology that enhanced cognition and had a significant impact on Western civilization.

Literacy expands the number of people who can be literate and improves self-awareness and critical thinking.

Alphabetic literacy leads to second-order thinking and enhances metacognition.

The invention of coinage and the use of abstract symbolic systems train logical and mathematical thinking.

Increased self-correction and self-deception awareness lead to changes in sense of self and personal responsibility.

Self-transcendence through self-correction and self-transcendence reduces violence and suffering.