What is reality? Where does one anchor one's sense of what is real? In other words, what is the true nature of the phenomenon of our experience? These questions contain many loaded terms, much-debated and discussed. As such, they can quickly become philosophical dynamite, the kind that could burst into flames by the tiniest spark of a misspoken word or an ill-pondered conjecture. Nonetheless, some deem these questions worth asking, to grab hold of that philosophical dynamite, to stroll through the cloud of metaphysical splinters, to brave the tumult of the raging epistemic tempest. All in the hope of reaching some imagined calm centre of understanding, enlightenment, deliverance, redemption, yada, yada, yada. Here is one such attempt.
Things and Stuff:
The fetish of materialism, as manifested today through consumer capitalism, is no stranger to anyone, anywhere, anymore. While it takes different forms in different places, the essence of the obsession is the same. On Wall Street it manifests as the greed of the high finance elites, fanatically taking billions in payout to buy that next mansion, the new yacht, that diamond crested toilet seat. While in rural India, where just a generation ago life moved to the beat of the rain, it appears as young men robbing their own parents, to splurge on "gadi, daroo, bandook (cars. liqour and guns)", living out some distorted caricature of life they saw on television. And then there are the rest of us in the middle, teeming masses of the perpetually dissatisfied, constantly looking for the next material fix, with the naive conviction that happiness is just around the corner with the new car, the next house, the latest iPhone, ad infinitum.
The malady is real and pervasive. But it did not emerge from nowhere. A cursory glance might lead one to the premature conclusion that our fetish for "things and stuff" is just a result of clever advertising; that the allure is simply in the packaging. But, on the contrary, the tendency to measure value exclusively through material objects is deeply ingrained in us, with or without the Mad Men on Madison Ave. In fact, the origin of our present material binge predates capitalism, emerging from the even older idea that the universe is wholly, and solely, made up of tiny particles called matter, which operate according to a set of interlocking and eternal laws. This perspective finds its roots in the formal philosophy of materialism, and manifested within our cultural consciousness over a millennium (maybe 2.5 if we trace back to Democritus, who first proposed the idea of the atom). As it gradually took hold of our collective consciousness, it reduced all descriptions of reality to be in terms of matter, like a tinted lens over our cultural spectacles through which we began to view all of existence. By the end of it, modern science became the reigning paradigm to articulate the boundaries of what we call "real", while we developed a total fealty to the materialistic philosophy. The culmination of this fealty is what manifests today as our addiction to material objects.
Killing God:
Many have pondered what Nietzsche meant when he famously said "God is dead. We have killed him." Among the postulations I have entertained myself, one of them finds Nietzsche pointing an accusatory finger at the unholy marriage between modern science and materialism, as being God's executioner. The irony here would be potent, because science actually began its journey with the intention of "understanding the mind of God". Killing God was not on the agenda. However, after a few centuries of success in the marketplace, explaining subtle material phenomenon and making neat tools out of them, there fossilized within the core of science the notion that matter is all there is that can be called "real". Consequently, all things that are not based on some detectable matter, do not actually exist. This idea placed under the axe not only God, but all manner of phenomenon like fairies, spirits, ghosts, sprites, trolls and souls. Today, the average citizen of any post industrial capitalist society (i.e. basically, the entire world) looks at these things as only playful fancies of the unsophisticated.
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| Friedrich Nietzsche |
In that sense, one could say that Galileo's ultimate revenge on church and God was absolutely total, orchestrated and executed posthumously by his intellectual successors. Indeed, such wholesome vengeance deserves credit. As do the many other achievements that science has made over the last 500 years. After all we eat better, live longer, travel further and connect more with each other than we ever have before, thanks to its technological innovations. Not to mention, we also have the ability to wrest out the energy that powers the sun, from the heart of matter itself. Whether we use that power to elevate or eradicate the species, is another discussion. But, nonetheless, not a bad feat for the descendants of shit-flinging monkeys!
The Fly in the Soup:
Unfortunately, however, even as we celebrate these achievements, there remains a fly in the soup. One that went unnoticed at first, but ultimately could neither be removed nor swallowed. And it is this: by categorically denying the existence of anything outside of matter, science essentially exiled away our entire mental universe, namely our thoughts, ideas, feelings, emotions, memories, dreams, and ultimately, our consciousness. So, although God may have been the target of its epistemic crusade, the sword of materialism also slayed our very own experience of reality. Because, after all, what type of matter are thoughts made of? What particles create our memories? What material basis is there to your conscious awareness? It would appear that the answer to all of them is that there is no detectable material basis for the content of our mental universe. What is measurable, so far, is the patterns of electrical responses in the brain that co-occur with "having a thought" (whatever that means in any operational way). But the question still remains, which came first - the thought or the brain pattern?
Material science has taken the stance that the brain patterns come first, and they are responsible for generating the contents of our minds. This claim, however, does not appear to be backed by any robust evidence and is accepted almost as a matter of faith (the irony of which makes God chuckle from beyond the grave). It exists as an intellectual placeholder, in the absence of any known material basis for our mental contents. A placeholder that keeps at bay the otherwise inevitable and logical conclusion of philosophical materialism - because our thoughts, memories and consciousness are not based in matter, they do not actually exist. This would indeed be an indefensible position for science to take, simply because every single one of us know what it means to have a thought. The fact that they exist cannot be dismissed.
In response to this conundrum science has initiated a deep dive into the material structure of the brain, with the belief that someday we will locate memories stored within brain tissue, or "see" a thought form in the folds of grey matter, or identify some particulate structure of the brain that generates consciousness. However, this may be seen as akin to breaking open a television and expecting to find little people inside. Until now, no satisfactory evidence has emerged, making these pursuits seem like red herrings. Meanwhile, the basic experience of our consciousness, remains unaccounted for within the materialistic scientific paradigm. Facing a potential dead end, many scientists say that the question of consciousness is not meant to be explored by science at all, and are happy to pass it along to religion and philosophy.
Yet, to be fair to the scientific impulse, it has not all been a mad dash in the wrong direction. Ironically, a corrective breakthrough came from physics itself - the paradigmatic science, the original science of matter, the "scienciest" of all the sciences. As it pushed the limits of the materialistic models of the universe, it eventually gave rise to quantum physics, where it was ultimately discovered that the universe is entirely mental and immaterial. This conclusion deserves pause, to really allow it to sink in, as it is a major shift in perspective that shatters the very foundations of not only the materialistic scientific enterprise, but also tears apart our comfortably accepted notion of what reality is. As such, it requires a major paradigm shift to truly fathom. This is why the news is yet to trickle down to the other sciences, as it risks invalidating the entire edifice of modern science and its institutions. Yet, it is most in need to be heard, especially by the sciences of mind, which still have a chance of integrating this knowledge, by virtue of being very new fields. Unfortunately, however, in attempts to be accepted within the greater scientific clubhouse, the mind sciences are still busy pretending to be like the rest of them, presenting materially focused, rationalistically biased, reductionist, and therefore incomplete, models of mind and reality.
The Totality of Truth:
Despite the major gap in its model, science still remains the reigning champion among paradigms, and offers us the following materialistic account of an existential nihilism (disguised as "scientific realism"):
You are a collection of body parts, made up of atoms and molecules, sustained in living form by biochemical processes; you exist within a socio-biological ecosystem, along with 8 billion other humans, and trillions and trillions of other living creatures; you are tiny part of a big world; the world you inhabit is itself a tiny planet in a vast solar system, that is tucked away in a corner of the small Milky Way galaxy, in a gigantic universe stretching across astronomical distances; there is no meaning or purpose to your existence; you have no control over what happens, as the dynamics of the material universe are random and chaotic; your existence is a matter of chance; and the fact that one of the billions of asteroids speeding about have not collided with the Earth and wiped out all life, statistically speaking, is simply a matter time; as such, your life is so small and inconsequential that there is no number small enough to signify your insignificance.
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Matter as Primary (© Farhan Ahmed, 2023) |
It is this bleakness that is inherent in the materialist version of reality, that gives the impression that truth is meant to be "cold" and "hard". Yet, a different perspective of mind and reality has been available, much longer than science has been around. It informs a number of eastern philosophical traditions that place consciousness, not matter, as the basis of reality, a concept that also aligns with the conclusions coming from the most advanced quantum physics today. The materialist scientist, however, most likely dismisses it as spiritual nonsense. Yet, if we are to accept the materialistic nihilism as part of the truth, existential wholeness demands that we articulate the totality of truth as well. This will, of course, generate a paradox, a "coincidencia oppositorum". But, that is okay, as long as we can accept that the nature of the totality is not that of a conclusion, unlike our rationally biased intellect expects. Instead, the totality of the truth stands as an eternal living mystery, not to be held, but only to behold. As such, the opposite of the materialist wrap is also true:
You are a consciousness, that inhabits a corporeal body in the form of a human being; the canvas of your conscious experience holds your ego and identity, giving you the appearance of a personality in this world; you experience the existence of both the material universe (of objects, forms and matter) and the mental universe (of thoughts, ideas and dreams); yet the only thing that you can be sure of about all that you perceive, is not their actual existence, but that they manifest within your consciousness; as such, your consciousness is where the entire universe, the totality of all reality, comes to be; the purpose of your conscious existence is to revel in the manifestation of all forms within your awareness; you have the power to mold reality, by altering the nature of your mental contents; your consciousness is inseparably linked to the that of the universe, from which all existence manifests; and as you behold the entire universe within your consciousness, it resides within you; as such, your existence matters; you are significant and consequential to the very bedrock of reality.
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| Consciousness as Primary © Farhan Ahmed, 2023 |
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