Recapture the Rapture

Well this was a trip. I saw a random 5 minute video and thought “I want to hear more from this guy.” He definitely wins the award for most fascinating conversationalist at parties.

However, it's a hard book to review. It's like if you put Tim Ferris, a religious studies professor, a neuroscientist and a horny yoga instructor in the same room and told them they had 24 hours to come up with a blueprint for getting the most out of life.

He talks about the end of religion as a source of meaning (which he calls Meaning 1.0). And how secularism has failed as a replacement (Meaning 2.0). He then proposes his idea of Meaning 3.0, which must consist of non-dogmatic, low-barrier technologies, namely Respiration, Embodiment, Sexuality, Substances and Music.

There was a mashup of a lot of neuroscience and psychological principles that I've read about elsewhere, and while I enjoyed those sections I feel like he missed a key component: therapy. Be it CBT, dialectic, EMDR, whatever, I just felt that if he's discussing how humans can find meaning and become better humans, there needs to be an archeological expedition into your own personal psychology. I expect that's the role he's given to substances, but I'm a bit skeptical that inhaling nitrous oxide is going to help you uncover the ways you're a product of your social, cultural and familial environment and did you really consciously choose anything? Some things can only be realized through deep introspection and therapy.

Basically this book married a ton of different fascinating concepts and ideas into a smorgasbord of suggested life principles. Or something like that. If you're into that kind of thing you might enjoy it. It felt a bit much but I think that's just because it's the kind of random pondering I might engage in after having read books about psychology, neuroscience, religion, politics, cults, THE WORLD IS ENDING OHMYGOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE, psychedelics, tribalism and how everything is broken. I just haven't written a book about it.