What do you feel when you visit (or even imagine) a place like this?
I feel something unspeakably profound in my heart. A connection to something impossibly beautiful. Why? What is that?
Something interesting happens when I try to explain it.
The modern story explains it in terms of photons, neurotransmitters, and evolution. And you might wonder: what's wrong with that? Well, nothing's wrong with it. But let me try to communicate what gets lost in the process.
To do that, I'll first have to remind you of a seemingly trivial point: you cannot be certain about the nature of reality. Solipsism might be true, or we might be in something like the Matrix but stranger (where the "outside world" does not have constructs like matter, energy, and time). No amount of empirical evidence can completely rule out such exotic possibilities.
The key word is "completely." Because you can invoke Occam's Razor and say "well, we can be 99.999% certain that reductive materialism is true," and I'd agree with you. So am I quibbling over an extremely small and strange possibility?
No. What I'm suggesting is more subtle. I'm saying that instead of merely taking our preferred philosophy as reasonable or practical, we go the extra mile and embed its certainty deep, deep within our minds, below our conscious threshold.
So what's the problem?
Well, we end up "clipping" or truncating reality.
We no longer have access to a profound beauty we once knew. Everything becomes "just" this and "only" that. Just photons. Only neurotransmitters.
Even as you read that paragraph, you're probably thinking "yeah, so what?" or maybe "well, those things are incredibly profound themselves." And I'm not denying that they are. Instead, I'm suggesting that we are turning this:
Into this:
This second image is incredibly profound, and yet it pales in comparison to the first. Something is definitely lost. And if you could measure it accurately enough, you'd discover that the amount lost is actually infinite.
Okay, so now you're probably wondering: am I so arrogant to think that I have a better view than yours?
No. I'm suggesting that it's incredibly worthwhile to learn to dig underneath one's philosophy of the world, and ultimately, to reside there. What awaits is a treasure so profound as to be unspeakable.
I invite you to venture there yourself and compare the view, and then decide for yourself how you'd rather live. And I'd like to give you some confidence that you won't lose your rational mind in the process, even if you'll have to transcend it on your way down.
The more time you spend there, the more you'll wonder why you ever settled for "justs" and "onlys."
What does nature have to do with any of this? I'm not sure. I just know that it seems to be particularly good at puncturing the story, if I allow it to.
It's like something is whispering: wake up, come home....
I feel something unspeakably profound in my heart. A connection to something impossibly beautiful. Why? What is that?
Something interesting happens when I try to explain it.
The modern story explains it in terms of photons, neurotransmitters, and evolution. And you might wonder: what's wrong with that? Well, nothing's wrong with it. But let me try to communicate what gets lost in the process.
To do that, I'll first have to remind you of a seemingly trivial point: you cannot be certain about the nature of reality. Solipsism might be true, or we might be in something like the Matrix but stranger (where the "outside world" does not have constructs like matter, energy, and time). No amount of empirical evidence can completely rule out such exotic possibilities.
The key word is "completely." Because you can invoke Occam's Razor and say "well, we can be 99.999% certain that reductive materialism is true," and I'd agree with you. So am I quibbling over an extremely small and strange possibility?
No. What I'm suggesting is more subtle. I'm saying that instead of merely taking our preferred philosophy as reasonable or practical, we go the extra mile and embed its certainty deep, deep within our minds, below our conscious threshold.
So what's the problem?
Well, we end up "clipping" or truncating reality.
We no longer have access to a profound beauty we once knew. Everything becomes "just" this and "only" that. Just photons. Only neurotransmitters.
Even as you read that paragraph, you're probably thinking "yeah, so what?" or maybe "well, those things are incredibly profound themselves." And I'm not denying that they are. Instead, I'm suggesting that we are turning this:
This second image is incredibly profound, and yet it pales in comparison to the first. Something is definitely lost. And if you could measure it accurately enough, you'd discover that the amount lost is actually infinite.
Okay, so now you're probably wondering: am I so arrogant to think that I have a better view than yours?
No. I'm suggesting that it's incredibly worthwhile to learn to dig underneath one's philosophy of the world, and ultimately, to reside there. What awaits is a treasure so profound as to be unspeakable.
I invite you to venture there yourself and compare the view, and then decide for yourself how you'd rather live. And I'd like to give you some confidence that you won't lose your rational mind in the process, even if you'll have to transcend it on your way down.
The more time you spend there, the more you'll wonder why you ever settled for "justs" and "onlys."
What does nature have to do with any of this? I'm not sure. I just know that it seems to be particularly good at puncturing the story, if I allow it to.
It's like something is whispering: wake up, come home....
No comments:
Post a Comment