Volunteer Sign-up

The Vervaeke Foundation is aiming to build a team that can index John Vervaeke’s work in a way that makes it accessible to a diverse range of audiences across disciplines, demographics, and diasporas. It is our hope that this team could come together in a fellowship that is meaningful and developmental to both the Vervaeke Foundation as well as each individual.

Writing Volunteer

To get a better sense of your interests and capabilities, we’ve prepared a few tasks listed below that we’d like to invite you to complete. You can do as many as you like, although we’d request that you complete at least one that you feel most aligns with your expectations of how you’d like to contribute.

Task 1

Can you watch 1 episode of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and collate all the books mentioned incl. timestamps?

E.g., 00:31:12 – Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved by Matt Rossano

Can you identify a set of keywords for each book?

E.g., Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved by Matt Rossano
Evolution, Religion, Ritual

Can you summarize the key idea in short (3 sentences) of how this book is relevant to John’s work?

E.g., Rituals formed the basis for the skill of taking a perspective other than one’s own. This afforded social coherence across large networks of cognition and enhanced the capability of mindsight (See Mindsight by Daniel Siegel).

Can you find a link to buy the book which would be accessible to the public (if possible)?

E.g., https://www.amazon.com/Supernatural-Selection-How-Religion-Evolved/dp/0195385810

Task 2

Can you watch an episode of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and draw up a “Table of Contents” of the key arguments laid out in the episode with timestamps?

E.g., In Awakening from the Meaning Crisis Ep 1:
00:00:00 – 00:10:15
Rise of Interest in Wisdom vs. Prevalence of the Meaning Crisis

Can you identify the key concepts introduced in the episode?

E.g., De-centering, Exaptation, Shamanism

How would you explain these concepts to an academic or a Ph.D. student who has no prior knowledge of 4E cognitive science?

E.g., De-centering is the ability to take on a non-egocentric perspective, sometimes in relation to a group.

How would you summarize each of those concepts into short sentences that can be understood by an undergraduate student?

E.g., De-centering refers to the capacity to adopt a viewpoint that isn’t solely focused on oneself, often in the context of or alongside a group.

How would you explain this to an “everyman” you met at the gym or a colleague who has never studied philosophy or the sciences?

E.g., De-centering is taking a step back and looking at things from a different angle, like when you consider what’s best for your family, instead of just yourself. It’s about being in touch with other people’s feelings and needs.

How would you explain each of those concepts to a 10-year-old?

E.g., De-centering is like using your imagination to see things from someone else’s point of view, just like when you pretend to be a character in your favorite story. It helps you understand how they feel and think, not just how you do.

Task 3

Pick an episode of Awakening From The Meaning Crisis and identify one key concept (E.g., Opponent Processing, Agent-Arena Relationship, Transjectivity).

Propose a (series of) graphic(s) that can represent this concept in a clear and concise fashion. It does not have to be a final product.

We are more interested in your process at this point, rather than the precision of the outcome. To that end, can you include work-in-progress iterations of it with a few short lines about why/what changes are being made?

Design Volunteer

We are looking for someone with graphic design experience to volunteer to help us to make a series of graphic images that will accompany concept entries within the Codex.

These graphics will visually and mnemonically encourage the learning of each concept.

A good understanding of the concepts (or the ability to quickly grasp the main points on reviewing the relevant lecture) and a solid imaginal, image-making ability is a requirement. As is experience with Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, Canva or similar.

Visual cues may be taken from any of the three levels of definition that accompany each entry (technical, conversational and examples – see below) – or in some cases an original metaphoric, symbolic or abstract motif may be conceived.

Levels of definition:
A technical definition, which:
– answers the question: “What is this, exactly?”
– serves the role of being precise, 
– appeals to the intellect;

A conversational definition, which:
– answers the follow-up question: “What the hell does that mean?”;
– serves the role of being engaging;
– appeals to experience;
– focuses on relevance; and
– should sound as if a popular podcaster were explaining it to their audience.

One or more examples, which:
– answer the further follow-up question: “I get it but I don’t get it; can you give me an example?”;
– serves the role of being evocative;
– appeals to the imagination;
– focuses on a single, specific, real-world illustration of the Concept; and
– should sound as if you were speaking simply but non-patronisingly to someone with universal life experiences, a keenness to understand, but no prior knowledge of the Concept.

Task

Please provide samples of your work based on the following 2 concepts:

Exaptation: 

Technical – The evolutionary process by which an organ or function that originally evolved for one purpose is repurposed to achieve a new kind of goal that is advantageous to the organism. For example, the tongue originally evolved for poison detection and moving food around in the mouth, but it has been exapted in human beings for speech.

Conversational – Exaptation is an idea from biology. It’s taking a capacity or ability that evolved for one purpose, and repurposing it for another. For example, the voice box, lips, and tongue all evolved for other purposes, but humans exapted them for speech. Canines evolved tails for balance; dogs use them to express playfulness. “Exaptation” has itself been “exapted” by cognitive scientists to describe the way your brain has exapted a capacity for abstract thinking for “meta” thinking about how you think.

Insight:

Technical – Insight happens when you replace a bad problem-framing with a good problem-framing that helps you to zero in on the more important or relevant information.

Conversational – Insight is commonly associated with a ‘breakthrough’. You solve a problem, often suddenly, not by working methodically through a series of steps, but by seeing the whole problem in a different way. A way that makes the solution pop out for you. Insight happens when you ‘reframe’ a problem, when you ‘break the frame’ through which you were looking at it previously. The new frame affords a less ‘narrow’ view which allows you to incorporate more information relevant to solving the problem.

Please make use of 2D digital illustration, vector shapes, gradients, textures and  text where appropriate, utilizing a limited colour palette as possible (2  to ~4 colours).

See examples below for salience landscaping, and distributed cognition.