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[3078.66 --> 3085.28] have lost the sense to make sense of the world.
[3086.44 --> 3087.40] Now, here's what I mean, right?
[3087.40 --> 3089.94] And you can experience this all over social media,
[3090.16 --> 3091.84] in Discord servers, on YouTube,
[3092.34 --> 3094.58] in your coffee shops, and around.
[3094.72 --> 3097.90] People are trying to make sense of the world.
[3098.88 --> 3098.96] Right?
[3099.10 --> 3102.18] Sense-making and sense and meaning-making
[3102.18 --> 3103.30] are two terms,
[3103.70 --> 3106.52] for those of you who are interested in this sort of thing,
[3106.84 --> 3109.40] two terms that have skyrocketed
[3109.94 --> 3112.58] in their use in SEO key terms.
[3112.90 --> 3115.60] For those of you who know internet sleuthing,
[3115.60 --> 3119.36] SEO key terms are things that you put sort of behind the main page.
[3119.44 --> 3122.02] You write it into the code of your website
[3122.02 --> 3123.80] so that when people are searching terms,
[3123.94 --> 3125.10] yours comes up on top.
[3125.66 --> 3127.38] Sense-making and meaning-making are terms
[3127.38 --> 3130.42] that have been coded into SEO algorithms
[3130.42 --> 3133.12] in order to drive traffic to these conversations
[3133.12 --> 3134.98] because this is what people are talking about.
[3136.56 --> 3138.54] Now, this idea of sense-making,
[3139.02 --> 3141.18] I've been doing a bit of a deep dive into this,
[3141.18 --> 3146.04] originally comes in the 60s in organizational psychology,
[3146.04 --> 3150.44] and it's come to mean something of the development
[3150.44 --> 3154.30] of plausible images and structures and stories
[3154.30 --> 3157.06] to explain, to make sense of,
[3157.56 --> 3161.76] what people do and how we exist in the world.
[3161.76 --> 3167.30] Now, I trust that many of you have experienced
[3167.30 --> 3172.42] that over the last 50, 30, and 10 years,
[3172.82 --> 3177.14] we've seen a shift in how people make sense of the world.
[3178.48 --> 3179.60] In the past,
[3179.78 --> 3182.08] and some of us still see the world this way,
[3182.94 --> 3184.18] but in the past,
[3184.30 --> 3186.76] making sense of the world required measurements,
[3187.60 --> 3189.82] it required reason and observation,
[3189.82 --> 3191.20] and nothing else.
[3191.88 --> 3195.08] What is real is what can be sensed
[3195.08 --> 3196.32] through our five senses,
[3196.48 --> 3198.14] through the material sense.
[3198.46 --> 3199.32] I have to touch it,
[3199.36 --> 3200.04] I have to taste it,
[3200.06 --> 3200.66] I have to see it,
[3200.68 --> 3201.34] I have to smell it,
[3201.48 --> 3202.46] I have to hear it.
[3203.70 --> 3206.52] And that ended up creating this gap,
[3206.68 --> 3208.68] this missing room.
[3208.82 --> 3211.44] There was no room left for transcendence
[3211.44 --> 3213.92] or for mystery or for enchantment.
[3215.06 --> 3216.30] In that frame,
[3216.30 --> 3219.28] religion became the nonsense
[3219.28 --> 3221.82] of secular rationalism.
[3222.46 --> 3225.42] And the goal of this sort of secular frame
[3225.42 --> 3227.78] was to disenchant the world.
[3228.74 --> 3230.74] The Enlightenment project aimed
[3230.74 --> 3232.00] to make sense of the world
[3232.00 --> 3233.48] by demystifying it.
[3234.34 --> 3235.44] And in so doing,
[3235.56 --> 3238.96] it made certain kinds of sense-making impossible.
[3240.34 --> 3240.98] Now again,
[3241.04 --> 3242.24] we've seen shifts, right?
[3242.24 --> 3242.98] In large part,
[3242.98 --> 3245.40] in reaction to the extremes of that.
[3245.80 --> 3246.54] In large part,
[3246.64 --> 3248.86] recognition of the anemic void
[3248.86 --> 3250.06] that that left behind
[3250.06 --> 3251.90] when half of what it means to be human,
[3252.00 --> 3252.90] because as humans,
[3253.04 --> 3254.88] we are both body and soul,
[3255.08 --> 3257.74] we are material and spiritual,
[3258.14 --> 3259.78] and when half of that is cut off
[3259.78 --> 3260.84] from being real,
[3261.18 --> 3261.98] there's a reaction.
[3262.42 --> 3263.90] And so postmodernism
[3263.90 --> 3266.12] sort of deconstructs the notion
[3266.12 --> 3268.76] of a unified and objective sense
[3268.76 --> 3270.36] of the world.
[3271.16 --> 3272.30] And in that move,
[3272.74 --> 3272.90] right,
[3273.00 --> 3274.68] grand narratives collapse
[3274.68 --> 3278.16] and now exists multiple truths,
[3278.40 --> 3280.00] each a sort of sense
[3280.00 --> 3281.82] from within a community
[3281.82 --> 3283.18] or within a story.
[3284.32 --> 3285.56] But this too
[3285.56 --> 3287.82] has kind of led to an exhaustion.
[3289.52 --> 3289.70] Right?
[3289.80 --> 3291.86] If everything is interpretation,
[3292.36 --> 3293.46] which is what the French
[3293.46 --> 3294.74] postmodern philosopher
[3294.74 --> 3296.00] Jacques Derrida said,
[3296.00 --> 3297.88] if everything is interpretation,
[3298.32 --> 3299.40] can anything be true?
[3301.60 --> 3302.80] Turns out,
[3303.12 --> 3304.86] postmodernism didn't kill truth.
[3305.32 --> 3306.54] It just revealed to us
[3306.54 --> 3307.44] how much we need it.
[3308.72 --> 3309.88] But now,
[3310.06 --> 3311.24] we're living in this
[3311.24 --> 3312.48] new,