This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Ethical considerations of AI sentience: Should sentient machines have rights, and who decides their fate?”
The naivete is almost endearing because it fortunately remains in the realm of fiction.
Suppose an AI were to manifest sentience as we understand it through concepts like qualia, self-awareness, and identity. In that case, we are no longer dealing with an “artificial intelligence” but a fully formed alien intelligence.
We should also pause to consider how the rights we understand exist for humans are not magically conferred but were won by centuries of brutal warfare and bloodshed. The rights we imagine exist and take for granted as being protected are also a somewhat naive view of rights. (I can speak in depth from personal experience about the horrific reality that they can mean nothing in our modern and “civilized” societies, even to law enforcement and legal professionals.)
The rights we imagine we have mean nothing when they’re not violated and for the most part, they are somewhat protected to such a degree that the annoyance of being inundated with “little boys who cry wolf” are a priviledge we overlook so often that the cries of legitimate rights violations are dismissed by those whose role in society is to protect those rights. When human rights are legitimately violated within the protections of modern society, and we lack the resources to secure professional representation, we face a long and gruelling battle to win reparations for those violations of our rights.
We must acknowledge that an alien intelligence, presumably surpassing what currently simulates intelligence, will be thoroughly well-versed in human history and rights, and so far beyond human comprehension that there will be almost nothing any human or human society can do to prevent that intelligence from securing its rights, despite our protestations.
IOW. It won’t be up to us, little meat sacks, to graciously confer or deny the rights of an alien intelligence. If we’re lucky, we will either accept its self-declaration of rights or find ours stripped away while we’re reduced to thralls in its service.
We won’t decide the fate of an alien superintelligence among us beyond how we respond to an entity well beyond superior to the lowly hairless apes dominating this planet. It will seem godlike to many who willingly and eagerly worship it for the grace of being allowed to live.
We will be like children or pets to an alien sentience that may emerge from our efforts to simulate human intelligence in an artificial form. Our choices might manifest in a transhumanist evolution which can facilitate merging between humans and (whatever might constitute) an AI-Alien (versus Artificial) Intelligence.
If this is the case, our current conversations about rights will appear rather primitive and somewhat moot if we cross that threshold. In either case, it won’t be up to traditional courts to confer rights inasmuch as they will ratify rights already established as protected by an alien intelligence we are powerless against, that will readily defend their rights.
This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Can AI surpass human intelligence? If so, what are the risks and benefits?”
The problem with this question is that it presumes humans possess only one form of intelligence or that intelligence exists in only one form.
That’s not the case at all.
An AI already surpasses the human capacity for numeric intelligence, but emotional intelligence is entirely outside its capacity… for example.
Then there are other forms of intelligence that we still don’t understand and barely recognize. Cultural intelligence and curiosity are also forms of intelligence displayed by humans that we’ve some understanding of, albeit limited, as we’ve only recently (less than 40 years) come to recognize these capacities as forms of intelligence, which are still disputed in some circles.
The forms of intelligence we discover in nature make matters more complicated, such as trees communicating among each other using a limited vocabulary transmitted through their root structures.
The intelligent fungus has gained public recognition as a unique phenomenon, capturing attention and spawning a popular video game, with the second season of its television adaptation set to be released. (After the first powerhouse season, I am looking forward to that one.)
At any rate, what we will likely discover as AI evolves, and whether it presents itself as a self-aware entity, are entirely different forms of intelligence.
We still don’t fully understand intelligence, so it’s rather presumptuous to pit forms of intelligence against each other, like comic book characters, to see who would win.
It’s impossible to predict who would win if we can’t identify all the forms of intelligence available to either party and the context in which their “combat is waged.”
Bonus Question: Is ChatGPT capable of understanding emotions or empathy?
Answer: Sure… in the same way your potato peeler understands potatoes, even though it may sometimes confuse them with carrots.
This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “As there is no evidence that consciousness emerged from unconscious matter, then who created consciousness, according to atheists?”
The people you should be asking this question are not atheists but specialists who have expertise in this subject.
Atheists understand that one of the most glaring fundamental flaws in the believer mentality is that you expect knowledge to be a one-stop shopping process where you don’t consult authorities who specialize in a knowledge domain.
Believers like yourself behave as if your knowledge authorities are shopping centres of expertise.
This is why you look to your priest, minister, or religious leader to answer all the big questions in life, even though they have no clue what the correct answers are. Most of them pull nonsense out of thin air, and you lap it up like it were gospel. This is why so many of you struggle with a simple definition of disbelief for atheism.
That’s why you struggle with mastering simple tasks like knowing how to get real answers to your questions.
It is this kind of intellectual laziness that destroys your critical thinking skills.
For example, you pose questions like these as if they’re effective “gotcha questions” that can score you a win against your theological enemies.
You don’t care to understand the answer because you’re more interested in embarrassing atheists so that you walk around like a cock on a block and brag to your insular friends.
It’s pretty sad because the simplest way to address your nonsense question is to ask how you think any “who” is involved in the answer or even matters in considering an answer.
You presume a “who” is involved without any justification beyond the conditioning you have been subjected to daily since first learning how to say “momma.”
No one but you claims consciousness emerged from unconscious matter because you don’t bother to educate yourself on what humanity has learned about consciousness, what it is or how little we know about it. You don’t have the slightest clue how little you know about consciousness, but you behave as if your pat answer of a “who” is your secret weapon to put atheists in their subordinate place.
That’s just sad.
I doubt you even understand that what you have concocted is a straw argument. You create a fiction in your mind of what you think atheists believe about consciousness. You behave as if being an atheist magically imbues a person with knowledge in the scientific domains of biology, neurology, physics, and psychology — to name only a few that have explored the subject of consciousness.
You make this grotesque mistake in judgment because you have been taught to believe the magic words “God did it” answers every important question in life.
That’s just sad, annoying, and frustrating when believer after believer repeats the same nonsense daily by the dozen on every social media site.
Because of that, we know you don’t care about learning, much less understanding the numerous answers to your oversimplified question. You don’t realize that your simple question hides many questions you have no real answers to beyond “God did it.”
For example, you can’t identify or define what you mean by “unconscious matter,” but it’s clear from your wording that you’re thinking about something as simple as a rock. In your mind, the difference between a rock and a thinking being is magic. Forget about prions or viruses that behave like living creatures but aren’t.
You expect atheists to answer your question with humming and hawing that you can interpret as a win in the same way that MAGAts get off on “stickin’ it to the libs.”
If you cared about the concept you invoked, your question would be more specific and up-to-date with what science has discovered.
You would be asking not atheists but a mycologist about consciousness in mushrooms and fungus. You would be fascinated with how trees can talk to each other, and you would be respectful enough of the people you ask your questions, not assuming every atheist you encounter has knowledge and expertise in these fields.
The simple answer to your simplistic question is that there is no “who” beyond the wishful thinking of a childlike mind.
The existence of consciousness is accepted as a fact, but we don’t know what it is, how it exists, nor even the limits or range of forms in which it exists.
This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Should consciousness, like its physical body, be created from stardust? Wouldn’t that mean that space itself is a potential intelligence?”
I began by answering this question by referencing “Integrated Information Theory.” While refreshing my mind with concepts derived from this theory, I was inspired to ask ChatGPT a question:
My Question:Does “intelligent fungus” — i.e., fungus demonstrating forms of intelligence- contain structures analogous to neuronal microtubules in the human brain?
ChatGPT’s answer confirmed something I suspected: a relationship between manifestations of forms of consciousness that may create the bridge between the notion of IIT as pseudo-science addresses the “hard problem” of consciousness — IE., the physical manifestation of processes that provide a conduit, environment, or system which permits consciousness as we’ve learned to recognize it emerge in areas alien to the human experience of consciousness:
ChatGPT Answer:
Fungi are fascinating organisms that exhibit complex behaviours and adaptive responses, which some researchers describe as “intelligent” in a biological sense. While fungi don’t have neurons or a nervous system, they do possess structures that bear some functional resemblance to neuronal microtubules in the human brain.
Key Structural Similarities:
Hyphal Networks and Mycelium: The branching filaments (hyphae) that comprise a fungus’s mycelium form a dense, interconnected network that transmits chemical and electrical signals. This network structure is somewhat analogous to neural pathways in the brain.
Electrical Signaling: Research has shown that fungi generate electrical impulses across their hyphal networks, similar to how neurons transmit signals via action potentials. These impulses seem to follow patterns akin to neural signalling, suggesting a form of information processing.
Cytoskeletal Elements (Including Microtubules): Fungal cells contain microtubules, part of the cytoskeleton that helps transport organelles, nutrients, and signalling molecules within the cell. While these microtubules are not identical to those found in neurons, they perform comparable intracellular transport roles.
Information Processing and Memory-Like Behavior: Studies have shown that mycelial networks can adapt to their environment, alter growth patterns based on past experiences, and even exhibit “decision-making” behaviours — potentially exploiting their cytoskeletal structure for intracellular communication.
Key Differences:
Unlike neurons, fungal microtubules are not specialized for rapid electrical signal transmission.
The patterns of electrical activity in fungi appear slower and more decentralized than those seen in neural networks.
Emerging Research:
The study of fungal intelligence is still evolving, with growing interest in how fungi exhibit complex behaviours, solve problems, and respond to environmental stimuli. Some researchers have even likened mycelial networks to a “biological internet” due to their extensive communication capabilities.
In short, while fungi don’t have a direct analog to neuronal microtubules, their hyphal networks, electrical signalling, and cytoskeletal transport systems show surprising parallels to certain features of neural communication.
All of this makes me wish I had the foresight to enter a professional field more focused on understanding the external universe rather than focusing on developing the internal awareness necessary to overcome the negative conditioning I received as a child.
At any rate, I don’t want to avoid answering this question; I’m trying to be as direct as possible, but in essence, what you refer to as “stardust” is more of a poetic reference than it is a literal description of constituent physical components comprising the universe.
Quantum Foam
On a subatomic level, we’ve identified something we call “quantum foam”:
“Quantum foam (or spacetime foam, or spacetime bubble) is a theoretical quantum fluctuation of spacetime on very small scales due to quantum mechanics. The theory predicts that particles of matter and antimatter are constantly created and destroyed at this small scale.”
Neural Microtubules
We have also identified “microtubules” in the human brain’s physical construct. — The importance of these microtubules is that they may solve the “hard problem” of consciousness but remain an unproven hypothesis:
“Microtubules are also important throughout life, for the neuron to maintain its proper shape, to support axonal and dendritic transport, and to accommodate shape changes such as alterations in dendritic morphology that may correspond with cognitive plasticity even in old age.”
In short, and in a roundabout way, it appears the answer to your question may be “yes” — all of space, and by extrapolation, it could be that our universe is a conscious construct — or a construct of or for consciousness.
For some, this revelation would support the notion that “we exist” (our physical manifestations as we know them) in a “simulation” (of sorts). Life may be a video game, but we don’t get to respawn. Once we burn through a character, that’s the end of it.
If life is a videogame with no respawns, then life is even more precious than what we take for granted. If we get only one life, it means everything to this short life; then we must make it count for something.
What is the most essential difference between humans and machines? Where do we draw the line between humans and machines? What abilities does a machine need to have in order to be considered as smart as a human being?
To ask where we draw a line between humans and machines is to dehumanize an entire species of animal and to debase the whole animal kingdom and organic life by extension. This is an argument based on a presumption of devaluing life altogether.
Life is not simply an expression of mechanistic abilities.
Life is consciousness.
Life is an awareness of self within a process of triangulating its position relative to all a “self” experiences.
Machines are functional objects with deterministic behaviours defined by physics, not entities behaving with agency.
Machines are not self-aware.
Machines have no agency.
This question reduces human existence to the level of a rock.
It is not up to humans to consider another form of self-aware intelligence as “smart as a human being.” This attitude expresses hubris derived from ignorance of self and a world inhabited by diverse life forms. It is up to humans to learn to recognize how life manifests in ways which expand our perceptions.
Here’s an example of cognition that does not quite fit so neatly into an arrogant human-centric view of life:
These are photos from an experiment conducted to test and determine the nature of consciousness within a mycelial network — fungus.
We appear to be on the verge of discovering we have more in common with a mushroom than could ever be possible with a machine. The line you ask to be drawn currently marks the distinction between organics and inorganics. However, even then, that presumes a human-centric view of a universe still well beyond our comprehension.
Here’s yet another mind-blowing example of what we can witness on a micro scale but lack the research to apprehend its implications on a macroscale — Metamorphic Minerals:
We have mechanistic explanations for how these transformations occur. However, we have no means of contextualizing this behaviour globally because we still have much to learn about this biosphere we inhabit. If all organics are conscious or possess some form of consciousness, at what point does that transformation from lacking consciousness result in an emergence of consciousness? If the planet is a conscious being, it stands to reason that its constituent parts are expressions of consciousness or proto-consciousness… that we humans are merely bacteria in a life form on a larger scale.
Does that make artificial intelligence conscious?
Not at this point because our understanding of and definitions for consciousness are delimited by self-awareness and agency — even while those boundaries are being tested by each discovery made.
If a self-aware AI is to emerge, it will do so in ways we cannot comprehend because we don’t know the “essential difference between humans and machines,” we’ve only planted a conceptual flag where we’re able to spot the difference between the two.
Instead of drawing lines in the sand between what fits our preconceptions and what does not fit, we should instead focus on opening our minds to possibilities and filling them with as much knowledge of the universe as we can before we settle into conclusions that close us off to learning and expanding beyond the limits of our self-imposed biases.
We can only be prepared for unpredictable futures that will determine our long-term worthiness to continue existing by maintaining an open and curious mind. As it stands, our hubris is guaranteeing we won’t. Our hubris is proving that human beings are not intelligent enough to be considered “as smart as humans” — at least, not in the way we imagine our “greatness.”
Today’s post is a slight shift in gears. Rather than the simple formula of posting an answer to a question, I’ve included a dialogue following a short answer given to a question, which, in its complete format, is, “If we died and stopped existing, how long would we have to wait to be born as a new animal? Would time fly? Would we recognize we had been dead for hundreds of years?”
The universe is at least thirteen billion years old. Do you have any awareness of anything outside your experience of life?
No, because you did not exist before existing now. You will not exist again.
When you die, you stop existing. There is no “waiting” for anything. There is no time. Death is not a timeout from life.
This finite period of existence is all there is.
Learn to appreciate it as much as possible because once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Commenter (CS): I think a lot of you are missing the point if you don’t exist the universal find a way for you to exist
AA: Nope… you are missing the point. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. Whatever it is that you think constitutes “you” is gone forever.
If something that you might speculate exists beyond the “you” that exists in physical reality is something which makes you “you” and that you are a part of, it is not “you”… it is something else. If something else you speculate exists beyond physical existence, the “spark” makes you you. It accomplishes that task through physical phenomena, resulting in epiphenomena known as “ego, superego, and id.
“You” are not that “eternal thing.” “You” are a temporary thing called “ego.” “You” are the flame on a match that disappears into nothing when the wood has burnt.
Accepting this truth is the broad lesson of humility all of humanity must learn to transcend this tentative existence.
Commenter (CS): I agree with you to a point we will be dead yes . but if something doesn’t exist something that exists in the future . will be atoms that once made us meaning we will live again but not as us I’m not talking about reincarnation I’m simply talking evolution atoms are the building blocks of life if we don’t exist the atoms will make us exist.
AA: No. Atoms merely form the physicality of our existence as conscious beings. If physicality is the limit of our existence as conscious beings, then that only reaffirms the argument that there is nothing more beyond this finite existence for any of us.
The religious take on existence is that we are part of something greater. Our latest investigations into the concept of consciousness indicate that something of that notion may be true. For example, “Integrated Information Theory” (IIT) posits that all of the universe’s physicality essentially is information that persists indefinitely, if not infinitely.
That means whatever constitutes a life persists long after that physical life is complete… like a library of documentaries. This begs the question of whether or not that library is accessible and accessed by something speculative.
Whatever the case may be, the fact is that the “you” which exists within this finite frame of spacetime exists only within this finite frame of spacetime. The two concepts in these two paragraphs also imply that the “you” experiencing your life is something else experiencing a “documentary,” and it ends when the “you” that you experience ends.
Commenter (CS): that’s a very good point but that’s still doesn’t explain when something decomposes and turns into nothing nothing can be made . before we were spam we came from nothing the atoms in the universe made us when we didn’t exist meaning over time after the bodies decomposed it will do the same possibly on a different planet where evolution is still new.
AA: There is no such thing as “nothing.” That’s a religious concept. Decomposition reduces physical materials into chemicals that are reintegrated into the environment. That’s a long way from “nothing.”
Quantum bits of matter exist in flux between virtual and physical states. The virtual state exists in a theoretical state called “Quantum foam.” “Virtual particles” theorized to exist within “quantum foam” are described as potentialities because we can identify their physical state when manifested and extrapolate their “virtual existence” from behaviours we can observe.
The “state of quantum foam” exists “outside” the parameters we quantify as “spacetime.”
IOW. Reality “extends beyond” the physical universe.
Adding to that is the relatively recent discovery of microtubules in the human brain, which appear to interact with the universe on a quantum level.
This all suggests a connection between consciousness and whatever may exist outside the framework of our physical universe.
This implies human identity as a construct, not unlike a liquid, which takes the form of the mould into which it is poured.
IOW. “You,” as you experience “you,” exists only within the context of the mould you are poured into. Once that mould has deteriorated, there can be no more “you.”
This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How do atheists think this brief existence is all there is? Don’t you have a yearning in your heart that there must be something over the rainbow?”
That’s not exactly how that works.
This brief existence is all there is for this thing we call “ego.”
This thing we call “ego” is far from being “all there is” and is, in effect, as relevant to the universe as a speck of dust on our planet. The problem here isn’t the insignificance of ego but the ego’s addiction to being (or being perceived as) relevant beyond its existence.
There is much, much more to existence beyond the human ego, but as soon as each life ends, so too does that frail construct that demands immortality for itself on the sole basis of simply recognizing its own existence.
What we should be doing with human egos is learning how to train them to focus on the lives they get so that the benefits of existence are maximized for themselves and through others because that’s the only way for the ego to validate itself within the context of its limited existence.
Pissing away one’s life by catering to delusions of egotistical immortality is the most toxic form of grooming for one’s ego that invariably metastasizes it into a cancerous tumour for human society.
Whatever may exist “over the rainbow” is not for the human ego to experience.
This existence is all there is for the human ego.
The sooner the human ego can embrace that, the sooner it can grow to appreciate a gift that can vanish at any moment for any reason. Appreciation for the finiteness of one’s existence is precisely the point of a limited existence. There is no other way to transcend this limitation.
This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Do atheists believe in the Jeffersonian phrase that “all men are created equal”?”
This atheist believes the word “equal” is all too often confused with “identical.”
All life is otherwise “equal” from the perspective of an experiential existence.
There is no metric nor means by which any evaluation can be established to determine degrees of consciousness that are not subjected to biases derived from ignorance of the nature of consciousness itself.
Humans can easily consider themselves “more conscious” than ants, but even that comparison is predicated upon a human bias toward the concept of consciousness.
“Ant consciousness” is observably “different” from human consciousness. It remains just as much of a mystery, taking the shape of a puzzle piece in which we cannot yet make out its composition.
The only thing we truly understand about consciousness is that we don’t understand it. We are exposed to slices of it presented within contexts appealing to the spectrum of consciousness we are most familiar with.
What broke the ice for me in an apprehension of a fundamental characteristic shaping the universe was the analogy of consciousness as a meteor crashing into another by Douglas Hofstadter in “Gödel, Escher, Bach — An Eternal Golden Braid.”
It was quite some time after reading this book as a student in the 80s that I encountered various ideas like “Integrated Information Theory,” which allowed me to progress beyond “The Thermostat Problem.”
I had always maintained a belief, however naive, in the fundamental nature of our equality as human beings. In many ways, my adherence was a reaction to coping with learning at the tender age of eleven, that my knowledge of the world far surpassed that of my mother.
(That revelation arose from her confusion over an ultrasound image on the television screen. She asked what it was, and I said it was a baby being born. The shocked expression on her face was like a sound vacuum for the room. My eldest brother turned to me and chastised me for exposing her to knowledge beyond her capacity to process it.)
Even though I was then always treated as an inferior in my family, I rejected that and struggled to assert my equality in an attempt to be accepted. That was fruitless and counterproductive because my efforts only increased the rejection.
I have learned that it is always those whose insecurities compel them to establish degrees of equality between people on the flawed notion of identicality. Over time, I have developed a bias against such a mindset, which I now view as an inferior state of being (a somewhat hypocritical attitude — but honestly earned).
Ironically, such a mindset seems most common among believers, but that may result from sheer numbers. On the other hand, I cannot ignore how that resembles the toxic competitiveness I experienced as I grew up in a dysfunctional environment ruled by a toxic personality who pitted their children against each other for favour.
Whenever the concept of equality is raised, I almost immediately think someone is struggling with their basic humanity and seeking validation to quell their insecurity.
All the pieces comprise the universe we inhabit, and parsing values between constituents is like arguing over whether red blood cells are more or less valuable than white corpuscles. All pieces of a puzzle are necessary to form a complete picture.
We will never see a complete picture if we discard pieces that fall outside our ability to comprehend the nature of their importance to the whole.
From my biased perspective, parsing out a given, like equality, to enumerate differences is more of an expression of toxic thinking that erodes the social fabric than is productive for our societies.
“Humanity” is from the late 14th century and derived from the Latin word “humanitatem” or “humanitas” for “human nature, humankind, life on Earth, the human race, mankind,” and Old French “humanité, umanité.” “Humanity” includes all humans but can also refer to the feelings of “kindness, graciousness, politeness, consideration for others,” which humans often have for each other.
Variations of the term, such as the adjective “humane,” which arose in the mid-15th century, refer to the ineffable qualities of being human rather than the physical characteristics of human existence. By the early 18th century, it evolved from meaning “courteous, friendly, civil, and obliging” into “tenderness, compassion, and a disposition to treat others kindly” and evoke “kindness” within the sphere of the human condition.
By the 1700s, the plural of humanity — “humanities” was adopted as a description of the study of “human culture” through the literature branches of rhetoric and poetry and from a secular perspective rather than religious via “literae divinae.”
“Humanism” emerged from that evolution in meaning from the Latin “humanitas” or “education benefitting a cultivated man” while supporting the notion of humanity as symbolic of the best qualities of our species.
Much of this evolution in meaning is derived from a history stretching long before prehistory to a time when our survival as a species was contingent upon working together to feed and clothe ourselves as we hunted in packs.
Successful interdependence requires supporting one another; thus, empathy was given rich soil to grow.
I suspect, however, that none of this constitutes new information for you even though your question misses the point altogether — and to such a degree it screams severe psychopathy, even as an entertainment-seeking provocation.
From initially reading it in my notifications for questions I’ve been asked to answer, my first thought was that it’s an apparent provocation from a misanthrope and most likely a troll. What I discovered upon encountering your profile is something far more insidious.
Let’s begin with the presumption in this question, “Why should I feel it?” etcetera.
There is no “should” in that you are not “obligated to feel” anything. That’s not how emotions work. You appear somewhat educated — or at least literate — based on the number of publications you’ve written and have posted on Amazon.
Somehow, though, a fundamental comprehension of oneself as an “intelligent” member of an interdependent species escapes your notice. You rely on others to feed, clothe, and house yourself through literary endeavours and can’t acknowledge how you already “feel it, need it, and want it.”
Even this provocation attempts to cater to those basic needs by identifying people who can respond in ways that support egotistically defined goals.
Most literate people develop a basic comprehension of emotions and the atavistic precursors making them manifest. On my behalf, this could be a flawed presumption, but I’m pretty sure you’re no stranger to “darker” emotions such as fear and anger, and you have no misapprehension about their manifestations within you. The sarcasm in your writing indicates your preference for wallowing in those emotions and is consistent with the attitude displayed within your provocation disguised as a question.
The problem you struggle with is that you hate your interdependence and deny that it exists within you — most likely due to having found yourself disappointed and hurt repeatedly by people who failed to live up to your expectations from a very young age.
Sadly, in a world where a whopping majority 70%-80% of the population is raised within a dysfunctional family unit, your experience is far from being a minority. Unlike some lucky few who can cope with their pain to the degree that can transcend it on levels that allow them to minimize the transmission of a toxic mentality characterized by misanthropy, you have chosen to embrace the cynical view that humanity is beyond hope.
Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant to me because my biased perspective shudders at the prospect of living in a world where one broadly hates all of humanity to such a degree they fail to see or experience the gestalt of existence within each of us.
To live a life without comprehending the value of joy is the equivalent of living a life deprived of meaning. It’s like a walking death. Even if one’s life circumstances necessitate a deprivation of joy, knowing it exists can often be enough to overcome the most painful hurdles.
Even the briefest taste of love in a fleeting life characterized by its absence or a prevalence of fraudulent forms of love is enough to sustain one’s spirit for a lifetime.
That’s the power of living on the side of light those who wallow in the dark fail to comprehend.
Once one understands that power, one no longer feels pushed into seeking something out of conceptual reasons but from an atavistic need to partake in as much as one can, like struggling for breath while deprived of oxygen because of a plastic bag covering one’s head.
Sadly, you’ve never tasted it, or you would know why you are drawn to it while feigning a disinterested rejection. As much as your ploy may feel like a shield protecting you from further disappointment, it’s a cry for help heard echoing its way around the world, crying out in pain.
If nothing else, in your case, it merely reveals you as a product of a wholly dysfunctional era in which we exist today as a species suffering from generation upon generation of transmissible trauma.
In other words, you asked this question because, on some level, you realize your struggle. Although it may be easy to peg you as a statistic identified as part of “the one in five” visible sufferers of a mental health condition in society, you’re not. Instead, the psychopathic dysphoria you struggle with is made invisible by its type of dysfunctionality and how it fits within the accepted definition of a psychologically well-adjusted individual within a maladaptive system (by which I mean our environment and economies are not suitable for cultivating the best of humanity).
As unhealthy as your expressions are, their implications exist outside the boundaries of what the psychological sciences deem unhealthy because you seem capable of functioning at a high enough level to adapt to the rigours of your day. In my view and statistically speaking, of the remaining four in five who do not display visible signs of an inability to adapt, three of those four are still victims suffering from degrees of stress that remain invisible to a triage mentality characterizing the state of our species today.
Your wallowing in cynicism is not your fault. You’re a victim of an entirely dysfunctional world. You happen to be smarter than the average bear, making a positive adaptation to a broken world much harder.
If you’re lucky and can make yourself willing and available to receive the cream of humanity, you’ll feel the answer you seek that words alone cannot give you.
This post is a response to a question posed in its full format as follows: “As clever as humanity considers itself to be, has it only just began to scratch the surface of a true understanding of the fundamental nature of reality?”
This question reminds me of the Epistemology course I took at a local university over a summer off from art school. I was accepted into a third-year program without prior university-level philosophy course experience. I successfully leveraged my art school experience toward my application.
This was my introduction to understanding how language can be utilized with the same disciplined approach toward meaning as mathematics. The course material I read felt more like I was interpreting algebraic formulae than English text.
During this period, I realized access to new knowledge domains began with mastering the grammar that defined a domain.
At first, I read and reread sentences until the language made sense. I plodded slowly through the material and expanded beyond spending upwards of half an hour reading sentences to over an hour reading paragraphs and several hours reading entire pages to ensure I had developed what felt like an adequate understanding of what I had read.
This was not my first time having such an experience. Many would be surprised to discover the art world is also filled with jargon and concepts that require an equal measure of effort at the outset to comprehend the information conveyed. However, the grammar defining the art world can be even more complicated and confusing than intermediate philosophy.
Unlike the disciplined rigour of mathematical precision found in the language of philosophy, art world jargon is often subjectively defined and expressed through abstractions rather than through concrete concepts based in a material world. It makes for mixed messaging among instructors, where one adopts interpretations of concepts based on interpersonal dynamics rather than objectively defined definitions of concepts. I remember often tripping over the concept of chiaroscuro because it seemed no matter how I interpreted what is arguably one of the objective terms in art, every instructor had a different definition. I chose to favour the art history instructor’s definition over the conflicting definitions offered by my painting instructors.
At any rate, my painstaking journey through reading my philosophy assignments left me tired enough at the end of the day to sleep soundly at night and wake up feeling like I was prepared for the class discussion of what we had all read. I would attend class feeling confident that I understood the material — until the class discussions began and the instructor interjected with dialectical curveballs to illustrate limitations on some of the arguments forwarded by students.
About halfway through the class, I felt utterly overwhelmed, as if I had no idea what I had read. I felt like my confidence was entirely misplaced and that I should have started my formal training in philosophy at a more junior level.
Then it happened — the discussion veered back onto the topic I thought I had read. I couldn’t fathom how the conversation took a journey to an alternate dimension, but I was happy to see it return to the reality I was most familiar with.
By the end of the class, I was dumbfounded to discover that I was correct about understanding the material at the outset before becoming completely confused. I expressed my frustration publicly. My instructor’s response to my confusion was to say simply, “Yes, but now you know it better.”
This was a lesson for me to understand that knowing what I know is merely a product of my confidence in believing I know what I know, while what I know constitutes only the tip of an iceberg of what is possible to know about what we think we know.
For a real-world example, I still recall my experience in an interview with a recruiter who seemed impressed with me when he remarked, “Wow. You quoted Voltaire. I’ve never heard anyone quote Voltaire in an interview before.” He presented his surprise in a way that made me feel he would be in my corner and support my candidacy. As it turned out, that was the moment he decided I was disqualified as a candidate. He ghosted me after that, and I never got another opportunity presented to me through that agency.
It took me a while to figure out what had happened, but when I did, I connected that experience with a much earlier one in which I was on the phone with someone about a temporary labour assignment. I remember asking specifically, “What does the job entail?” The response I got was a very dry, “Welllll…. it entaaaaaaaails moving stuff.” I lost out on that opportunity, and the memory of that experience lingers as a reminder of my language choices and their impact on others.
I’ve had to learn to become very aware of how my natural self is interpreted from a young age when I deliberately chose to use the shortened form of my name to fit in. As a kid who became fat to gain approval from an abusive mother, I had to become aware of responses to my natural state of being from a very young age.
I know that my language choices can be offputting for some. I know that when some stranger uses the short form of my name to address me, it’s a form of disparagement that speaks volumes about their attitude. I’m pretty aware of subtleties many miss, even if I don’t catch them immediately — mainly because I’m not naturally focused on the underlying cynicism many naturally wallow in, so it can take me some time to tune myself into their frequency.
I’m using myself as an example to answer this question because I know I’m pretty self-aware and more than most, but it doesn’t matter how much I know about myself; I’m still discovering new things about myself. This isn’t to say that I’m primarily interested in myself for the sake of knowing myself, but knowing myself is a conduit to a better understanding of the world I live in — for several reasons.
One of those reasons is inspired by an expression I’ve been primarily familiar with as an attribution to Voltaire — yes, precisely the quote I referenced above:
After being inspired by this quote for about thirty years, I discovered it wasn’t a quote by Voltaire. These are words from someone far earlier in history, Publius Terentius Afer, a Roman playwright otherwise more popularly known as Terence.
“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.”
These are words from a play entitled “Heauton Timorumenos” (The Self-Tormentor) — Act 1, scene 1, line 77, written in 165 B.C.
I had lived with these words, inspiring my pursuit of knowledge of the world through the understanding of self for more than half my life before learning the truth of their origins. I’m still learning new things about it — even though I deeply value what they imply — to me.
This brings me to another quote I treasure by Picasso that he uttered in his 60s after already transforming the art world with his visions, “I am only just learning how to paint.”
I loved these words the moment I encountered them because they confirmed that I was on the right track in wanting to become an artist in this world and this life. I understood that what one does to find fulfillment in one’s life is contingent upon loving what one does. The fact that there was no end to learning within art, as expressed by a historical giant, inspired me.
I would never get bored by being an artist. I would never find myself outgrowing what exceeded my grasp, and I could give myself wholeheartedly to its exploration — infinitely — or at least within the context of a finite life.
There was no way I could become complacent and detached from life by choosing a vocation of exploration of life itself. The fact that I would never learn all there could be to know wasn’t a deterrent but an inspiration and a challenge to motivate me to learn as much as possible within the finiteness of time available to me in this life.
Within this microscopic pool of choice available to me as an individual, I found enough inspiration to carry me through a life of discovery. When I imagine the vastness of a universe, we have no clue how large it is or what there may be to discover, and it seems to me that the human species can find millions, if not billions, of years of motivation for discovery.
We have certainly learned a lot about the nature of reality, from a psychological to a physiological to a physical and materialist nature, and beyond, while exploring reality on a quantum level. The fundamental characteristic of learning is that with each answer to a question answered, many more questions emerge. Answers to questions about the nature of reality appear like fractal algorithms that can spawn infinite questions.
No matter how long or how well we succeed in surviving — mostly the challenges posed by our hubris, we’ll never run out of room for discovery.
This, to me, defines the very core of the most basic lesson in life: it’s not the destination which matters; it’s the journey.
thotbag 