🤔AIP 109 A Primer For After Socrates—Make Coherence, Build Mattering, And Find Purpose In The World.

Many of us can name wise exemplars if we tried: Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Socrates.

A more difficult question is how we pursue whatever it is these people have that we don’t. We'd like to answer this question, but the solution appears vague compared to other life problems. And yet, intuitively we know answering it seems like the meta-solution to all our problems: our career aspirations, relationship issues, the disquietude in our soul from a lack of meaning, or is that hunger?

This is the quest of After Socrates, the follow-up lecture series by John Vervaeke to the sensational Awakening From The Meaning Crisis (AFMC).

Whereas AFMC explains why we are experiencing a meaning crisis, After Socrates explores how to respond to it. While you can venture into After Socrates without having seen (AFMC) I recommend you (watch my primer to Awakening From The Meaning Crisis if you haven’t explored it already to give you the best background when venturing into After Socrates).

I’ve made my way through half of After Socrates alongside my friend John Mavrick over the last three months, and it’s been life-changing. I feel more embodied, have better relationships, and am more purposeful. Unlike other books or lecture series that give you propositional knowledge, After Socrates seeks to change your relationship with existence itself. The series aims to use Socrates as an imaginal figure—a symbol we aspire to become like a gym bro to Arnold Swartznegger.

That’s why it’s called after Socrates. It’s about tracking down and embodying Socrates in our very way of being.

After Socrates isn’t a lecture-heavy, one size fits all, University course; there is no one path, for each person's journey is unique. The way that can be spoken isn’t the true way. After Socrates provides scaffolding for finding your own path.

In this article, I’ll give a primer to the series by exploring what Socrates symbolized and how we can track him down through understanding the four types of knowing, building an ecology of practices, and learning the value of dialogue. Mostly to help you and myself understand the series, but also because I need something to validate the 100s of hours I’ve spent on both series away from making money to afford my starving existence in NYC this summer.

Anyways… After Socrates starts with the question: what does Socrates symbolize?

How To Make Everyone In Your City Wise (And Hate You): The Socrates Method

Socrates was famous for walking up to people in Athens and asking why they were doing what they were doing.

This would have been normal if he only asked once. But he kept asking…

This would have been normal if he only asked once. But he kept asking…

Why are you at the market?

So I can buy fashionable clothes.

Why do you want those fashionable clothes?

So I can give a good image to others.

Why do you want to give a good image to others?

So they will respect me.

Why would wearing good clothes make people respect you?

At this point, the Athenians would remember the fashion of the time was wearing your bathrobes, outside of the bath and would respond: Uhhhh...

This dumbstruck state is called Aporia, an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in one’s reasoning.

By putting people into Aporia, Socrates showed people’s ignorance to the very level of their relating to the world. He hoped to make people adopt a state of learned ignorance, the ingraining to one’s very being that one will never fully know themselves, others, or the world.

This doesn't mean you can’t know things—I know my mom’s credit card information for, reasons… It means they know you can never FULLY know something. New information can come or your way of relating to old information may change. That's what Socrates meant by, "the one thing I know is I know nothing", not the common misconception that he literally knew nothing.

I experienced Aporia myself in my content creation. I believed the only way I could make a full-time passive income and live the life of my dreams was through creating content. When I asked myself why this was over and over, I realized it’s not the content creation I crave—it’s the feeling of autonomy, competence, and relatedness I get in my content creation. Those are things I can get outside content.

The people of Athens didn’t appreciate Aporia like I did, so they responded kindly and understandingly by sentencing Socrates to death.

Think about that. Socrates believed so hard in the importance of learned ignorance he was willing to die for it. Remember that the next time your friend forgets your birthday.

This still begs the question: what's the usefulness of making people confront their ignorance?

Congratulations! You Know Nothing… But Why Would We Want That?

Learned ignorance opens us up to wonder, when we call to question our relationship with self and world so growth can happen. And when growth can happen, true change can occur.

Changes like bettering human rights, making new scientific discoveries, changing our legal system, becoming more empathetic and kind towards others, and so so much more. We know by looking at history that things aren’t even close to what they used to be. Yet, we tend to underappreciate how different the future will be because we veil our eyes with sunglasses, which is called the “status quo.”

Wonder opens us up to transframing—to see the faulty glasses we are using to frame the world and to switch them out with another pair. All of this allows us to change our Recursive Relevance Realization (RRR). Recursive Relevance Realization is the ongoing (recursive) process we use to hone our attention (finding relevance) and act (realize) in a dynamical, interdependent fashion.

For example, ever since I started driving a car, my RRR process has been fundamentally different even while not driving. At a stop sign or traffic light, I’m able to put myself in the shoes of the drivers and see what they would find relevant. This makes it even more satisfying when I inevitably jaywalk and know just how annoyed those sorry losers are.

Ultimately, learned ignorance, wonder, transframing, altering one’s Recursive Relevance Realization is all toward the goal of one thing: pursuing Sophrosyne.

Sophrosyne is a word that has no English equivalent (perhaps the best one is wisdom) and it's not even defined very clearly in the series because of its vagueness. So here's a definition I came up with to describe it as best I can integrating aspects of After Socrates and my own perceptions of what Sophrosyne would be. Sophrosyne is best described as proper valuing, prioritizing, and acting, balancing differing views and contexts for the common human good. One never ”attains” Sophrosyne. Sophrosyne is like walking through a woodland path with an array of glasses. Each different pair of glasses or path taken shapes the way we see the woods, which shapes how we see ourselves, which shapes how we see the woods, which shapes how (this sentence could go on forever, but I have a date with procrastination)…

You might say, how does this relate to the meaning crisis?

As I talk about in my primer to the meaning crisis, Vervaeke argues the meaning crisis has in large part come about from three main things:

• Lack of Coherence: a feeling our lives don’t make sense.
• Lack of Mattering: a feeling we aren’t important to others or the Universe at large.
• Lack of Purpose: a feeling our existence isn’t in support of some greater reason for being.

Sophrysne addresses all of these issues.

Pursuing Sophryosne includes open-mindedness and curiosity, which pushes us to make more coherence in the world. Pursuing Sophrysne pushes us to open our minds to the complexity of others and the Universe, addressing mattering because much of our lack of it comes from feeling psychologically distant from both people and the world. Finally, pursuing Sophrysne pushes us to search for purpose by finding something we are good at, passionate about, and help others.

One central question you might have is: Sophrosyne seems more abstract than my girlfriend (sound of soft tears on keyboard). Why not just state clearly how to pursue Sophrosyne?

This Section Contains Wisdom That Won’t Actually Make You Wise

We know plenty of facts that would let us live a better life. Buying lottery tickets is unlikely to lead to a win. That doesn’t mean I can’t dream.

If life were as easy as telling someone to do X, or be more compassionate, or hardworking, or blah blah blah, the world would be a much better place. But people don’t change simply through propositional statements, nor are propositional statements adequate for describing ourselves, others, or the world in full.

Socrates, Plato, Antisthenes, and many other philosophers grasped this idea, stating that propositional knowing is not the only form of knowing—in fact, it’s the lowest. According to Vervaeke, we have four different ways of knowing. Let’s analyze each through the lens of Socrates and then bring it back to our concept of Sophrosyne.

Propositional Knowing:

• This is knowing about things. It's expressed in declarative sentences and involves assertions that can be true or false. For example, Socrates was not the most attractive bloke. Don’t believe me, look it up. 
  

Procedural Knowing:

• This is knowing how to do things. It involves skills and procedures and is often tacit, meaning it can be hard to explain verbally, but it is evident in action. For example, Socrates knows how to get people into Aporia through questioning, or Socrates knows how to walk.
  

Perspectival Knowing:

• This is knowing about what it's like to exist from a certain perspective. It is context-dependent, knowing which changes depending upon one's environment, the people you're with, what's happening around you, and how you fit into that scenario. For example, what does it feel like to be Socrates as he’s going about his questioning ritual in the market?
  

Participatory Knowing:

• This is the most fundamental foundational type of knowing. This is knowing how to be in a certain context. This form of knowledge is pre-conceptual, not describable, and relates to the fit between the agent (the person) and the arena (the environment or context they are in). It's about the attunement of the individual to their surroundings. For example, what is it like to be Socrates not only in the market but also in the context of his life as a whole, all his experiences combined, his goals, his genetics, etc., and how they influence his relationship with the world?

The problem with propositional knowing is it very rarely creates meaningful change in one’s perspectival or participatory knowing, the primordial levels most related to our sense of coherence, mattering, and purpose in the world. It’s often the stepping stone toward changing those levels, but too often it’s the most prioritized in our society because it’s the most tangible and easy to describe.

This is funny, considering propositional knowing is completely inadequate for fully describing our world. Whenever we perceive a whole we’re really taking in some aspects and making a “cognitive jump” to reach the whole—its ”Ge-StALT” if you’re feeling German.

That’s why we can see multiple things in a single image depending on the aspects we find relevant. The moment we make an aspect shift, we can perceive something else.

For example, look at this rabbit duck illusion:

Depending on the aspects we focus on, we can see a rabbit or a duck, but never both.

We can get a sense of the whole—the rabbit or the duck—but it’s not a propositional definition. It’s something we know to our innermost knowings by finding the through line, that which ties all the possible aspects together.

As Buddhists say in Buddhism X ≠ X (I promise I was in sixth grade advanced math, let me explain). In other words, the label we give for something doesn’t equal that thing because no fundamental essence composes it. The sum of all aspects that make something a something would be infinite. And that something is perceived differently depending on the relationship we or another being has with it. I don’t think a rabbit thinks of itself as a “rabbit.”

Knowing the faultiness of propositions, After Socrates seeks to change us to our perspectival and participatory knowing. Understanding this, let’s return to how we can pursue Sophrosyne.

Pursuing Sophroysne With A Philosophical Cross-Fit Routine—Your Ecology Of Practices

If we can’t simply be told how to practice Sophrosyne, how do we do it?

Vervaeke’s solution is to build an ecology of practices—a set of practices that check and balance each other to change our Recursive Relevance Realization for pursuing Sophrosyne. Some of these practices include a humble wondering, contemplation, Lexio Divina, walking meditation, and more.

My own practice routine involves a ten-minute Internal Family Systems session in the morning, followed by a ten-minute walking meditation. I do a ten-minute humble wonders practice in the afternoon, which mainly consists of wondering how I once accidentally put a picture of my actual credit card on my blog to highlight how to do the memory palace technique. Finally, I end the day with ten minutes of mindfulness meditation. I like to take a thirty-minute or so walk during the day as well, where I don’t consume anything.

Explaining each practice Vervaeke recommends is beyond the scope of this article. Instead, I recommend you watch the series after this and follow the practices he includes at the end of each episode.

However, I will recommend one of my favorite vertical dialogue practices mentioned in the series: Internal Family Systems. This is a psychotherapy meant to help one’s relationship with their myriad of parts, understand, heal, and integrate them to create a more holistic, purposeful self. You can read my beginner’s article on IFS to get into it.

There is one practice above all the other practices that Vervaeke touts as the most important. He builds a large section of the series off of it, building each lecture toward explaining how we can finally engage in it. Drum roll please...

Dialogue.

Converting Your Inner Debate Lord Into A Dialogue Whisperer

Dialogue embodies many of the values in After Socrates mentioned earlier. Essentially, however, we must move from dialectic into dialogos (essentially dialogue but more philosophical).

Dialectic is putting arguments in conflict and seeing which one comes out on top. Very useful in many circumstances, but it remains trapped in the propositional form of knowing. Dialogue, in contrast, delves into the perspectival and participatory.

In dialogue, there are no winners or losers, just the people participating. You aren’t just arguing over propositions but the relationship you and everyone else have with those propositions. You are seeing deeper into yourself and others, which lets you see deeper into yourself, which lets you…

It’s for this reason practicing effective dialogue requires a lot of skill—horizontal and vertical.

Horizontal Dialogue Skills

These skills pertain to the quality of interpersonal communication—the dialogical interaction between individuals in a shared conversation. Key aspects include:

1. Mutual Understanding: Active listening and genuine attempts to understand the other's perspective through questions. In other words, what you tell your partner you’re doing when you’re really daydreaming.
2. Reciprocity: A balanced exchange where participants contribute and receive in turn, creating a flow of ideas.
3. Coordination of Perspectives: The ability to integrate differing views and generate shared meaning.
4. Non-coerciveness: Ensuring dialogue remains exploratory rather than argumentative or manipulative—so just the opposite of family dinner.

Vertical Dialogue Skills

These involve the individual's internal dialogue, focusing on self-reflection and insight. They aim to cultivate depth and alignment with higher-order values. Key features include:

1. Inner Resonance: Developing a connection to one's core beliefs, intuitions, and emerging patterns of thought.
2. Cultivation of Virtue: Aligning actions, thoughts, and feelings with aspirational qualities like wisdom, learned ignorance, and Sophrosyne.
3. Self-Transcendence: Moving beyond egoic concerns to connect with broader, more universal principles or truths—like the meaning of life is 42.
4. Non-monadic: Seeing the self as inherently duplicitous comprised of many parts interacting together to influence an organism.

I won’t explain exactly how to do a dialogue, firstly because it’s never concretely explained on purpose, but also because the first dialogue is done in episode 11 of the series, so I think you should explore it for yourself.

However, I can tout the power of an effective dialogue. While talking Intergroup Dialogue at Cornell I engaged in a dialogue reflecting on the way our social identities had affected our lives. I realized more than ever before how privileged I was as an English-speaking, white male with U.S. nationality. One could say I was put face to face with my own ignorance of the difficulties other social identities face in the world. Ever since that dialogue, I’ve been much more empathetic and compassionate toward those with disadvantaged social identities.

Venture Forth, And Get Lost!

The map has been laid before you: Dialogue, Sophrosyne, and the four types of knowing. But remember, reading this article will do nothing to help you track Socrates down. Not even the chills you feel down your spine from this last sentence will spark any meaningful change.

You’ve got to change your very being itself.

Maybe, just maybe, somewhere in another dimension where Athens still exists, there’s an old man smirking, knowing you're about to annoy everyone with your endless questions.

Go forth and get wise. Or at least, realize how far away from wisdom you are and then cry about it.

Check out the first episode of the series here.