30. Rebuilding Meaning (w/ Ellie Hain)

Social imaginarian Ellie Hain joins me to talk about her new project, Rebuilding Meaning, a multi-layered endeavor to rethink meaning, value, and the sacred in a way that can help bring color and vibrancy back to existence and cut through the proliferation of bullshit in modern life. We talk about moving from paradigm thinking to the crafting of ideology, the nature and reality of the meaning crisis, what is meant by "the sacred," the idea of "the void," social norms vs. emergent value, and what it looks like to architect new cultural realities for the future. 0:00 Introduction 0:58 From Mapping Social Imaginaries to Articulating Ideologies 7:36 New Myths 10:30 Is There Actually a Meaning Crisis? 17:01 The Sacred, the Profane, and the Meaningful 22:46 The Void: Chaos and Possibility 28:34 Rigid Social Norms vs. Emergent Autonomy 35:10 Creating New Systems 41:37 Follow-Through 46:32 Imagining a Beautiful Future 55:25 A Values-Driven Pluralism