Mindful Perceptions

At a fundamental level, what and who we are is independent of what science tells us. Regardless of the fact that “the way it is, is the way it is”, scientific descriptions do matter. They matter because in this day and age we form some of our most elementary beliefs about the world based on scientific discoveries. What science tells us radically changes our perspective regarding our existence. As with religious institutions in the past which formed the basis for what people believed about the world, a great deal of responsibility lies with science regarding our future. Likewise, as with religious dogma in the past which caused much strife and suffering in the past, science can lead us toward a belief system about the world that acts in contrary to where we as humans want our evolution to go – that is towards greater peace, clarity, understanding, and fulfillment on both an individual and collective scale.

Scientific discoveries have created societal assumptions about our existence which have led us down a dangerous path ripe with hostility and desperation. The argument put forth claims that what science has told us about our existence has led to much of the alienation and separation we feel. Our current society is a society of anxiety, our default state is often one of disconnection, not only from the world and others around us, but also an estrangement from ourselves. This article will be the first of a series which attempts to first uncover, and then reconcile, the disconnect between science and the need for an empowering worldview.

Science cannot be entirely blamed for this state we find ourselves in, as it is not the mission of science to formulate discoveries around an empowering worldview, but instead to uncover knowledge of the world around us as objectively as possible. I do believe that science can help in reconciling our alienated existence however, and this can be done by interpreting and including scientific discoveries about ourselves and the world around us in a framework that lessens discomfort and suffering in the world, and feeds peace, confidence, understanding, and compassion towards ourselves, others, and the world and universe outside of ourselves.

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If you are thirsty, the river comes to you. If you are not thirsty, there is no river.

What is it that allows the mind to arrive at a breakthrough? All of us experience ideas which seem to pop into our head, ideas that are both completely novel and creative. We all have these breakthroughs at various points throughout our life, a sudden Eureka moment when the solution to a problem which had previously been a burden on our mind suddenly becomes crystal clear. A new way of looking at life, a sudden knowing of what our purpose is, the solution to a troubling business dilemma, or the realization of what it is we want out of life. These ideas always hit us with a bang, transforming our cluttered and unorganized mind into one that is pristine and focused, reinvigorating our entire being by paving a new path for us to walk down.

Marghanita Laski was an English journalist who published a groundbreaking paper outlining the necessary steps individuals throughout history have gone through prior to a great breakthrough, whether in the arts, sciences, literature, philosophy, or music. While her paper only focuses on “geniuses” whose ideas have impacted our culture, there are some parallels between these hefty discoveries, and the personal realizations which we all individually experience – ones that seem to matter only within our own individual life. By understanding the platform and steps through which great discoveries in history have been made, we can gain insight regarding how to utilize knowledge of this information in order to increase the prevalence of life altering breakthroughs we have in our own life.

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“A man engages in his own life, draws his own portrait, there is nothing more”
- Jean Paul Sartre

A common misconception is that philosophy only deals with questions which have no real meaning in our day to day life, and ones which essentially have no definite answer. Metaphysics, for example, tackles such problems as the relationship between mind and matter, the debate between determinism and free will, and the question regarding what is real. While very interesting, these fundamental dilemmas don’t really have any bearing on our day to day life. How would our life change, apart from a piqued interest, if we were told that the fundamental nature of our mind was material? We would still go about our day, make coffee in the morning, go to work, conceive of plans to get what we want, and so forth.

However, a lot of philosophy is actually concerned with describing the human condition in a way that can lead to insight regarding how to appropriately and effectively deal with a life we are thrown into unwillingly, one where we are pushed and pulled by forces outside our control, and ultimately one that will end whether we like it or not.

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What can I know? This, a basic question that has been asked since the dawn of self reflection, is one that deserves serious consideration. The question of knowledge in philosophy is termed epistemology. In short, epistemology is the study of knowledge and belief. How do I obtain knowledge of anything? What are the constraints and limits of my ability to know things about myself and the world?

The basis of our life is supported by things we have known for years, and things which in fact we don’t even realize we know. We get out of bed in the morning, make breakfast, brush our teeth and get ready for the day, during which time we never have to struggle with what we are doing. This type of knowledge is automatic, and often referred to as implicit knowledge. With it we are able to, without any conscious attention, go about our day leaving our thoughts to run their course in an endless stream of interpretation and representations.

While awake, our thoughts dominate our conscious awareness. This may very well be a natural part of what it means to be human, and intertwined with our advanced capacity relative to other life here on earth. Through thought we gain access to valuable information. We are able to rationally interpret any situation that becomes conscious, and logically (ideally, although we often don’t exercise logic) work out a problem or situation in our mind. This ability is in a large part responsible for our ability to rise above our “animal” nature into our own shared world as a species. Our ability to think, is one that is powerful with a capacity and potential which is unknown. This ability, however, along with its potential, brings its fair share of drawbacks.

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One Indian myth tells a tale of two brothers, Ganesha, an elephant headed god, and his brother Kartikey, who decide to go on a race to see who can go around the world three times the quickest. Kartikeya gets on his peacock and flies over the mountains and oceans, making it around the world three times in lightning speed. Ganesha, on the other hand, simply gets up and walks around his parents three times, sits back down and tells his brother that he won. Kartikeya is stunned and asks his brother how he could be so foolish. Ganesha replies “you went around the world, I went around my world, what matters more?”. This myth plays on one of the more troubling philosophical and scientific dilemmas, that being the relationship or nature between the objective and subjective, but it also offers some valuable insight in our own life.

There are fundamental differences between the world and my world, or in other words, the objective and the subjective. The objective world is one that is logical, factual, scientific, and rational. The subjective world is one that is emotional, personal, and laden with perceptions, thoughts, hopes and dreams. The objective world is one that science claims to understand, as through the scientific method we have come to gain knowledge of how things happen. We are learning how the brain develops, how galaxies and stars form, and how the cells and organs in our body function to keep us alive. The subjective world, or my world, is one where an attempt is made to understand why things happen. Why am I here? Why does life exist at all?

Every culture arrives at unique answers to the “why” questions regarding our existence. These cultures express these beliefs through stories and symbols, and once in place these are passed on from generation to generation, infiltrating the mind of every person subjected to the cultural forces, thereby sustaining these beliefs within that culture.

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As humans, each of us is made of approximately $5 worth of air, water, coal, chalk, and minute traces of iron, zinc, phosphorus, and sulfur. Somehow these simple elements come together to produce us in all our complexity and robustness. This is truly remarkable when you think about it, and it brings about the realization that at the basis of everything a simpleness pervades and gives rise to the intricacy inherent in life and the universe around us.

Chaos theory, which emerged in the latter half of the 20th century, completely transformed the way we think about life and the universe, and offers an explanation as to how simpleness can give rise to complexity. Chaos theory has its roots in several famous minds of the 20th century. Alan Turing, one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived, and whose ideas underpinned the creation of computers, intuitively believed the natural world was a code that could be decrypted through mathematical equations. His dream was to uncover a mathematical basis for biological processes, and even intelligence itself.

Turing accomplished part of his dream, as his paper titled “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” outlined equations, normally used in physics and astronomy, which described the differentiation of uniform embryonic cells into the vast diversity of cells which make up an organism. What was amazing about this discovery is that this process, which was previously believed by biologists to be a hugely complicated endeavor, was modeled by Turing using simple equations. With this discovery, the brilliant mind of Turing went on to discover equations which spontaneously modeled patterned spots similar to those found on animals. He was on to something big, as he grasped that the wonders of the universe were derived from the simplest of rules, and with his ideas he paved the way for a new kind of science. Unfortunately, Turing never lived long enough to reach the full potential of his groundbreaking research. He had an affair with a man, and when things turned sour the man robbed his house. When Turing called the police his was arrested as well, and the court argued that Turing was a manipulative academic who had led the innocent man astray. The judge offered him the choice to go to prison or sign up for hormone injections to “cure” him. He chose the injections, which sent him into a spiraling depression, and he killed himself at the age of 41 by injecting cyanide into an apple.

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“Culture is a body of knowledge concerning survival in a hostile world, inherited and passed on from generation to generation”.

Culture is a natural product of evolution, a mechanism that increases our ability to survive in this world. In some ways our culture has accomplished this. We have made our way out of the wild, no longer living in jungles, desolate plains, or mountainous plateaus, instead finding ourselves in cities and towns, sharing resources and commodities with those around us. Through culture we have harnessed the power of the environment and used it for our benefit. We have heated houses, negating seasonal hardships in which staying warm and finding enough food was the sole priority. We have cars and planes that improve the ease of travel. We have supermarkets where we can buy food, no longer making it a requirement in life to hunt and scavenge food for ourself. For the most part, our basic survival needs are satisfied, and it is the culture which has evolved around us for thousands of years which we can thank for this. However, this culture we live in has taken on a life of its own, creating ways of living which embed us in a conditioned state of fear, creating the harsh reality which defines our human world.

In Joseph Peace’s illuminating book titled “The Biology of Transcendence“, which he wrote at the ripe age of 80, he outlines in a no nonsense manner how our culture inherently determines who we become and how we live. Most of the ideas here are his apart from some of my own commentary. I can’t take credit for such lofty and insightful thoughts, yet I think they are important enough that they need to be shared. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the culture that now exists is leading us down a dark and potentially devastating road, and as ugly as it is, a denial of this fact will only ensure that we continue down this path.

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Universal questions, common to all humans, are built into our life here on earth whether we think about these questions or not. What is the meaning of life? How should we live our life, and does it even matter? What is the meaning of death, if there is any? Questions of this nature are an inescapable part of our existence, and how we answer them (and ignoring them is an answer in its own right) determines to a large degree how we create our reality. Victor Frankl, in his first person account of being held in a concentration camp during the holocaust, told in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, explains how we do not ask these fundamental questions about existence, but instead life throws them at us through our futile, challenging, beautiful, and short existence here in the universe.

Although questions surrounding the meaning of life are innate to our existence, we have the freedom to decide how to approach questions of this sort. On the one hand, we can believe that asking what is the meaning of life is ridiculous, as if we have to ask then certainly no response will be ultimately satisfying, and we will end up searching in vain until the end of our days. Instead of asking questions which merely heighten the struggle of life, why not accept life and live in it peacefully?

On the other side of the argument lies the notion that it is in our commitment to questioning that we can find fulfillment. It is not in the answers to these questions that we will find fulfillment, as we will never derive a satisfying explanation. Instead, it is in the open ended nature of the questions themselves where we can find meaning to our existence. It is in our constant reformulation of beliefs that we can arrive at insights and forever dig to new depths of meaning, understanding, and wisdom. One could argue that the entire sum of humanity’s knowledge lies in our questioning, for to accept life with faith would diminish the very skepticism and curiosity which created and continues to sustain our desire for knowledge and insight.

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What does it mean to be alive? I don’t know if there is a single answer to this question, not one that could be formulated in a way that every human throughout history would agree with. It seems more likely that an answer to this question changes with the times. What it means to be a human today is very different than what it meant five hundred, one hundred, or even twenty years ago.

Even so, if you asked every single person today the question as to what it means to be a human, without a doubt everyone would have a different answer. Each unique life we all live molds our beliefs in a way never done before. That being said, I think there are commonalities that can be outlined.

I think to lay the groundwork for this proposal it is important to recognize that our environment around us exerts a massive influence on what we believe and how we live our life. The philosophies of the Ancient Greeks were nothing less than extraordinary in their own right, however their ideas don’t really speak to us on the same level as they would if we actually lived back in that time period. Today, we are living within an ever growing “global” technologically based society, advancing extremely rapidly from an evolutionary perspective. The world changes today faster than it ever has, and this is one of the defining features of living on planet earth right now.

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When you think about it, the entire history of modern physics has essentially been a search for a theory which unifies everything in the universe. This story of the unification of physics is actually a story of what we want in our understanding of the physical world. Naturally we seek out connections, both within our minds and outside in the world around us, and an understanding of the universe which connects everything is the holy grail of science.

The search for a theory of everything has quite a bit of history. Ancient Greek philosophers were in fact great unifiers. Aristotle unified a mathematical theory of the planets and the moon, postulating that everything in the celestial sky moves around on 55 giant crystal spheres, all of which obeyed the same physical laws.

The Greeks also attempted to unite life here on earth, claiming that everything was made of 4 elements: earth, air, water, and fire, each of which obeyed certain tendencies (fire always rises and water always seeks the lowest ground, for example). The Greeks however, did not attempt to unify the celestial with the terrestrial, instead believing that what was on earth did not obey the same laws as what was in the sky.

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