JAMIE WHEAL MEANING 3.0
Occupation:
Social philosopher
Interviewer:
Berry Liberman
Location:
Austin, Texas, USA
Date:
May 2022
I had four pages of questions prepared for Jamie Wheal and asked almost none of them. Make of it what you will. This conversation follows a thread of all of the conversations I'm having right now. It's about facing this moment from our deepest humanity, our simplest version of ourselves, alive and alone in the universe. It's hard to put your finger on it - there is no Hollywood ending - which totally sucks. In his latest book, when talking about psychedelic inspirations, there is a haunting quote that strikes at the heart of my own queries: “Can we ever, transform our passing illuminations into abiding light?”
I am still hunting for my neat idea or concept - the medicine that will heal us all, in the nick of time. Apparently there is no such thing. No magic bullet or idea. We are flawed as we are. We have tried for our entire evolutionary history to be better. Sometimes we've succeeded and sometimes we have failed. We have everything we need to thrive and always have, but somehow we keep missing the point. Which is exquisitely simple I get the feeling. Spiritual teachers have taught us that it is love, connection, presence, embodiment. “Easier said than done,” we said. Is it? Jamie's book Recapture the Rapture is essential reading if you want a map for what he refers to as Meaning 3.0 which I call making meaning in the meta crisis.
Jamie is founder of the Flow Genome Project and an expert in the neurophysiology of human performance. With a background in wilderness medicine, expeditionary education and surf rescue, he combines his practical talents with an inquiring mind that's asking the big questions. And the best bit is he posits a solution for us all.
Our conversation verged off course from what I had prepared because I'm still soaking in the ideas, still processing all that I don't know, all that I long for, all that I can do. It's the question he poses at the end that is the most important: “What is my role that is timeless and mine to do?”
Berry Liberman: I have many, many questions.
Jamie Wheal: I've talked about this book, mapped and modelled it a thousand ways to Sunday. Now that you've been sitting in some of the ideas and some of the frames, what's top of mind, bottom of heart?
I was both embarrassed and really excited about your work. 'Cause I was leaning into it and wanting to understand what Meaning 3.0 could look like, and can we get there? And then I'm like, “Come on. This process is ancient and we haven't gotten there yet.”
Without slagging off modem techno-industrial society completely, I think it is fair to say that there have been all sorts of times in human civilisation and cultures that have had a functional working relationship with the sacred and the mundane. And if we just think of basically A, 90,000 years of us doing the Homo sapiens and
