Organized religion (Meaning 1.0) used to provide us with faith and comfort, but was largely founded on the elitist idea that only those who believed were saved. Modern liberalism (Meaning 2.0) is the antithesis to the thesis, the belief that everyone, everywhere through democracy, free markets and civil rights can experience the salvation of the thesis. Hierarchy and equality. But both alone cannot usher us through to the coming world and because both Meaning 1.0 and 2.0 have failed (when taken alone, meaning 1.0 results in fundamentalism and meaning 2.0 results in global inequality and nihilism) we’re being swarmed with Rapture Ideologies, ideologies that share four key beliefs: the world is broken, there will be an inflection point in the near future, everyone we value will be saved, and we need to get there as fast as possible. Whether it’s the absolution of Catholic confession, the ritual forgiveness of Jewish Yom Kippur, or the cathartic suffering of a Lakota Sun Dance ceremony, religion has always provided ways for us to mend and atone.

According to Kurt Vonnegut, you can trace any story by the rise and fall of the main character’s situation. Vonnegut noticed that the shape of the Cinderella story was particularly compelling. Jamie Wheal maps out a revolutionary new practice—Hedonic Engineering—that combines the best of neuroscience and optimal psychology. It’s an intensive program of breathing, movement, and sexuality that mends trauma, heightens inspiration and tightens connections—helping us wake up, grow up, and show up for a world that needs us all.

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The affair of the 40s” - when testosterone decreases and men seek a younger lover to restore testosterone levels The problem is, if you are a serious scholar, you know that all other serious scholars disagree about absolutely everything. This is why I always worry a little bit when I read big history books written by people who didn’t start off themselves in old-fashioned, traditional academic disciplines. If you haven't done that, you just don’t know the kind of knife fights that go on in the long grass over these tiny little details. If you don’t at least understand how the arguments have been waged, you’re not in a position to say, “OK, here I’ve got three world-famous experts disagreeing about X... Which am I going to believe? Whose story is more plausible?” You’re just not in a position to judge that, unless you at least know how the arguments get waged.”

There was a mashup of a lot of neuroscience and psychological principles that I’ve read about elsewhere, and while I enjoyed those sections I feel like he missed a key component: therapy. Be it CBT, dialectic, EMDR, whatever, I just felt that if he’s discussing how humans can find meaning and become better humans, there needs to be an archeological expedition into your own personal psychology. I expect that’s the role he’s given to substances, but I’m a bit skeptical that inhaling nitrous oxide is going to help you uncover the ways you’re a product of your social, cultural and familial environment and did you really consciously choose anything? Some things can only be realized through deep introspection and therapy. When will this second coming of Christ and our being gathered to him occur? The best answer we can give with any certainty is that it will be at the end of this age. In Matthew 24:3 Jesus’ disciples ask about Jesus coming and the end of the age. Jesus’ response to their question culminates with the passage mentioned above with Jesus’ return and our being gathered to him. In Recapture the Rapture, we’re taking radical research out of the extremes and applying it to the mainstream--to the broader social problem of healing, believing, and belonging. It’s providing answers to the questions we face: how to replace blind faith with direct experience, how to move from broken to whole, and how to cure isolation with connection. Said even more plainly, it shows us how to revitalize our bodies, boost our creativity, rekindle our relationships, and answer once and for all the questions of why we are here and what do we do know?

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Towards our “uniqueness”, dozens of animals mate for life. According to prof Robert Sapolsky, some monkeys physically mimic being fertile to don’t carry a child they don’t want (I couldn’t find the reference. It was in the Human Behavioral Biology course). Bonobos have about 75% of their sex for fun, not sometimes, as he mentions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOY3Q... Oxytocin is indeed the love drug, but few realize that this isn’t the whole story. Studies show that boosting oxytocin increases envy. It increases gloating. Oxytocin can bias people to favor their own group at the expense of outsiders. Harvard immunologist Katherine Wu says, “Oxytocin [also plays] a role in ethnocentrism, increasing our love for people in our already-established groups and making those unlike us seem more foreign.”

To recap: A viable candidate for Meaning 3.0 will need to fulfill the pro-social functions of traditional 1.0 Faith—Inspiration, Healing, and Connection. And, to stand a chance of helping the world, it needs to fulfill the inclusive promise of 2.0 Modernism, and be Open Source, Scalable, and Anti-fragile. In a world that needs the best of us from the rest of us, this is a book that shows us how to get it done. The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.”― Frank Zappa I was looking forward to this book when I heard Jamie Wheal and Jason Silva talking about it on a Clubhouse interview. Now that I've finished the book, I see it's about so much more than they covered on that long form interview, which was excellent and interesting. The Purist tends to prefer the “earned wisdom” of meditation, yoga, and prayer to the more volatile approaches. Wheatgrass and elixirs are their substances of choice. Their catchphrase is “my body is my temple.” Pride is their Achilles’ heel. Gas (to accelerate their growth) is their missing link.

All these features of human sexuality - long term sexual partnership, private sex, concealed ovulation, extended female receptivity, sex for fun… that render human sexuality so distinctive…” - citing a renowned anthropologist. Curious why if he researched when an ethologist would have to say about this. He is either not aware of or ignores it. An ethologist is a scientist who *interviews an animal in its own language*. E.g., dolphins don’t talk but can echolocate. Bats have poor vision but use echolocation too. To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.” ― Pema Chödrön The world lies at a crossroads, getting both exponentially better and exponentially worse; this would be a lot for any civilisation to handle, never mind one without any sense of meaning and one that seemingly everyone in believes to be coming to an end. So how can we collectively recapture the Rapture? In this book, Jamie argues that to do this we must recapture the lower case 'rapture', our access to peak states; experiences of extreme pleasure and joy, through which we can experience greater ecstasy, healing and connection to others. The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”― Ken Kesey

Biological imperative for procreation - woman’s ability to conceive with a new sexual partner is extended +/-3 days Substances – Humans, and most other animals, routinely seek to shift states as part of their learning, growing, and mending. The author goes on to point out the crumbling of the major structures that were holding us and our beliefs together so far:

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Ok. Do humans understand that they will get something positive before going into such an experience? Even without the substances, one may be delusional in that setting. Add psychedelics on top, and then you have your true answers. :) Embodiment – Our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems play a huge role in our health, wellbeing, and stress resilience. It’s vital that we regain control of the stories we’re telling because they are shaping the future we’re creating. To do that, we have to remember our deepest inspiration, heal our pain and apathy, and connect to each other like never before. If we can do that, we’ve got a shot at solving the big problems we face. And if we can’t? Well, the dustbin of history has swallowed civilizations older and fancier than ours. I believe we can use the power of ecstatic experiences, story-telling, and human connection to get through this.