Tuning into Meaning and Dropping Out of Crisis—Meaning What Exactly? Psychedelics and the Meaning Crisis

Global heating, brazen breakages of the Geneva convention, and what cognitive scientist and cultural philosopher John Vervaeke refers to as a “meaning crisis” haunt our global village. This meaning crisis is the personal-collective felt incongruence of fact and value. This article argues that psychedelic experiences and research respond to, emerge from, and provide practical solutions to the meaning crisis. While psychedelics are celebrated as addressing personal and social issues spanning from prison recidivism rates, experiences in religion, death-fear in hospices, adjuncts to therapy for treatment-resistant mental health issues, and problem solving, psychedelic experiences and research also suffer the same incongruences the meaning crisis diagnoses on these levels: self-articulation, functionalizations of religious experience, and the economics of chemical mysticism. Further, this article argues that when psychedelics are used in particular contexts with specific intentions, they can provide solutions to the meaning crisis, with three examples: “moral enhancement” and the discourse’s limits, and two case studies from peacebuilding in Israel–Palestine and ecological connectedness and animism.