Meaning from the internet in the time of coronavirus? I recently discovered this youtube series and I'd love to know if this has penetrated clinical psychology and the ACT community specificially. Discovering this series reminded me of reading the first few pages of the first edition of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, 1999 that so cogently and poignantly described the mental traps of modernity.
Here's the quick intro: https://youtu.be/ncd6q9uIEdw
Here's the full series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLND1JCRq8Vuh3f0P5qjrSdb5eC1ZfZwWJ
In the series John Vervaeke at University of Toronto traces our current mental health crisis back to its roots in earliest Western civilization and the scaffolding of psychotechnologies we've used to survive and make meaning of our existence. His incredibly broad and deep lectures (from a cognitive science perspective) address what Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Jesus, psychedelics, mindfulness, flow and shamanism have to reveal about our meaning crisis and how we might transcend it. I'm so excited about this series that I'm sharing it here even though I'm only on episode 22 of 50 or so. Its incredibly rich intellectually and I'm curious what others think about how his ideas fit with ACT. It shares a lot with Ken Wilber's integral theory in contextualizing human life across individual, collective, internal and external frameworks. When life requires that we recede in these strange time, its good to have more media nourishment than netflix. Enjoy.