Precisely by postulating an extra, unnecessary theoretical entity that acted mechanically between bodies – that is, effluvium – researchers artificially constrained the degrees of freedom of nature: they could not accept electrostatic repulsion, only attraction. A failure of skepticism at the level of theory led directly to misplaced skepticism at the level of empirical phenomena. So much so that researchers would even refuse to see instances of electrostatic repulsion when it was right in front of their eyes. Electrostatic repulsion was turned into what Shermer would call an ‘anomaly.’
Shermer, as many of those engaged in militant skepticism, seems to conflate parsimony regarding theoretical entities with parsimony regarding the degrees of freedom of nature. Proper skeptical parsimony is not about declaring things to be impossible. It has nothing to do with pruning as many degrees of freedom off reality as conceivable. After all, reality remains what it is regardless of our theoretical abstractions. Proper skeptical parsimony is about making sense of reality with as few postulated theoretical entities as possible. The very concept of ‘anomaly’ is a reflection of this misunderstanding of parsimony: an anomaly, if true, is simply a phenomenon that doesn’t conform to our theoretical expectations. It doesn’t have a different ontological status than any other phenomenon in nature, for the same reason that electrostatic repulsion doesn’t have a different ontological status than electrostatic attraction. Both are equally normal and natural.
Today, the metaphysics of materialism postulates an extraordinarily complex theoretical entity: a whole universe fundamentally outside the only carrier of reality anyone can ever know for sure, which is consciousness itself. Materialists do this for exactly the same reason that researchers earlier postulated effluvium: it seems to be a reasonable inference that explains most aspects of reality (provided that you refuse to see the anomalies, of course). The problem is that it makes an implicit and fallacious assumption: that reality cannot be made sense of without the postulated world outside consciousness. If it can, then, based on the application of proper skeptical parsimony, it is as unnecessary to postulate a world outside consciousness as it is to postulate the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Indeed, I discuss in essays 2.1 and 2.2 how we can explain all of reality on the basis of excitations of consciousness alone.
Precisely by succeeding in explaining reality with less theoretical entities, we realize that what materialism considers anomalous is, in fact, entirely natural. When we dropped effluvium, electrostatic repulsion also became natural. What Shermer considered a shattering anomaly can, under this more parsimonious and skeptical metaphysics, be seen as ordinary. And that reality is allowed to have more degrees of freedom under this view does not, in any sense whatsoever, contradict the proper application of skeptical parsimony. Much to the contrary.
In conclusion, in order to make sense of anomalies what we need is more skepticism of the proper kind: skepticism about postulated theoretical entities like the Spaghetti Monster and a whole universe outside consciousness. More skepticism of the proper kind will allow us to see that nature has more degrees of freedom to operate than we could accept to be the case before. As we’ve seen, this won’t even be the first time in history that we make, and then correct, this kind of mistake. Michael Shermer has no reason to abandon skepticism. If anything, he now has an extra reason to embrace his skepticism more fully and in an internally consistent manner.
5. On culture and society
Human beings naturally long for wonder, transcendence, mental landscapes beyond the boundaries of ordinary life. Something in the human spirit shouts loudly that there is more to ourselves than the space-time confines of the body. This obfuscated part of our psyche demands lucid recognition of what it knows to be the true breadth and depth of our existence. Throughout much of our history as a species, we’ve given it its due recognition in the form of myths, mostly of a religious nature. Indeed, religious myths encode a form of trans-metaphorical truth that can’t be described or made sense of directly, in literal terms. Yet, it resonates intensely with the deepest obfuscated layer of our psyche, giving it its due voice in our lives.
Since the Enlightenment, however, our culture has come to reject all truths but the ones amenable to literal articulation. In doing so, it has withdrawn the tacit acknowledgement of the obfuscated psyche, creating an inner state of conflict. Our everyday sense of reality and self-identity, as outlined by our culture, is now in direct contradiction with what the deepest layer of the psyche knows to be true. This conflict creates an unstable situation. The gap left by the arbitrary denial of all trans-metaphorical truths demands to be filled in some way. It is this irresistible gravitational pull towards some form of transcendence, artificial and precarious as it may be, that lies at the root of the dangerous cultural and social ailments of our time. These ailments, and the specific dynamics that motivate and underlie them, are examined in this chapter.
Essay 5.1 argues that the spokespeople of contemporary science are attempting to replace priests as intermediaries between people and transcendence. The move is meant to invest them with inauthentic power previously reserved for ecclesiastic authorities. Essay 5.2 argues that our educational system has become almost entirely utilitarian, turning people into controllable tools, as opposed to equipping them to fully express themselves in the world. Essay 5.3 laments the ever-diminishing role of philosophy in laying down reasonable, coherent maps to transcendence, a responsibility many academic philosophers have tragically forfeited. Essay 5.4 discusses the dangerous cultural aberrations that arise out of our odd denial of the validity of myths. Essay 5.5 attempts to rekindle our sensitivity to the notion of enchantment, the loss of which – one of the greatest tragedies of the Enlightenment – has made our world small and claustrophobic. Essay 5.6 relates our current cultural dilemmas to some of our subtle psychological predispositions, attempting to raise awareness of their unexamined but far-reaching and detrimental effects. Essay 5.7 argues that a sane future for our culture and society can only be nurtured through a balanced integration of direct experience, philosophical inquiry and psychological awareness. Finally, essay 5.8 suggests that, because of the desperately unstable state of our culture and society today, significant change at all levels can be expected in the not-so-distant future. It also discusses the shape such changes may take.
5.1. The idolatry of a new priesthood
In the summer of 2014, a contentious public exchange broke out between Deepak Chopra, a well-known physician and author, and Brian Cox, a physicist and TV personality who is famous for his science documentaries on UK television. The exchange was rather tendentiously covered in an article published in the New Statesman.138 Below, I want to discuss what it seems to reveal about the appalling state of our culture.
The exchange began when Chopra publicly stated that no scientific cause could be ascribed to the primary event that created the universe. He did it in support of his contention that all reality is in a form of transpersonal consciousness that he calls ‘cosmic consciousness,’ a legitimate term already used by psychiatrist Dr. Richard Bucke at the turn of the 20th century.139 Cox then proceeded to publicly deride Chopra’s statements.
The particular details of the exchange are unimportant for the purposes of this essay. What is important is this: Chopra may not have articulated his position with the rigor that Cox might have preferred, but he said nothing whose essence couldn’t be substantiated with hard science. For instance, we know from the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem140 that there has to have been a primary creation event that gave birth to the universe – or multiverse – and, for being primary, such an event could not have had a scientific cause.141 Moreover, there is plenty of experimental data suggesting strongly that reality, after all, can’t be outside consciousness.142 Whether the spirit of Chopra’s claims proves to be ultimately right or wrong, there was simply no scientific reason for scorning them.
I suspect that this contentious exchange was merely a small symptom of a much broader and concerning cult
ural trend. Because our operational knowledge of nature in many fields is growing exponentially, the specialists who hold much of this knowledge feel that only they are qualified to interpret reality for the rest of us. This subtly frames them as a kind of neopriesthood, as Amir Aczel forcefully put it.143 No longer are we, mere mortals, able to develop a direct relationship with truth, but should instead subject ourselves to the benevolent intermediation of specialized elites. This is disturbingly similar to how priests were supposed to act as intermediaries in our relationship with divinity.
Instead of vicars and ministers, we now have highly-trained and often extraordinarily narrow-minded specialists, not uncommonly disconnected from their own humanity. Despite efforts to come across as no-nonsense skeptics, what they preach is often as belief-based as what the older priesthoods did. For instance, instead of heaven and hell, we now hear about uncountable – and unprovable – parallel universes with alternative versions of you and me. Again like the older priesthoods, their discourse seems designed to bewilder and draw stupefied admiration and respect. We, average people, are supposed to recognize that we need the neo-priesthood in order to maintain a crucial link with what is really going on, for we, poor dears, can’t interpret the world on our own. How dare Chopra bypass the priesthood and attempt to develop a direct relationship with truth?
Because our culture mistakenly takes technological success for evidence of a deep understanding of the underlying nature of reality (see essay 4.2), we are all guilty, at least by omission, of allowing the neo-priesthood of science to appoint themselves arbiters of truth. This is as insane as appointing a five-year-old kid, who happens to break records playing computer games, chief architect at a major computer company. Does the kid’s game-playing prowess necessarily imply deep understanding of the underlying computer engineering? The fact that one has figured out, through expensive trial and error, how to play the game of technology does not imply any deep understanding of what’s actually going on. Our failure as a culture to truly grasp this has allowed the appointment of five-year-olds to the role of civilization’s guides.
Our growing cynicism has long ago driven out true wisdom. We have given up on the idea of elders: those who, irrespective of formal education, are firmly in touch with the full spectrum of their humanity and its intimate connection to the universe at large. We have given up on our poets, artists, healers and philosophers as guides. But the archetypal human need to receive guidance and reassurance from an external source remains intact. We naturally need to place our projections of wisdom and superior knowledge onto something or someone else. The gap left had to be filled. And in our technology-obsessed culture, we tragically filled the gap with the spokespeople of science. Having done so, we now find ourselves in the position of expecting wisdom and guidance from intellectual specialists who can solve abstract mathematical puzzles but are often largely disconnected from life. No teenager would make this mistake among his or her own circle of friends, as a visit to any schoolyard will show you. Yet we, as a culture, do it all the time.
Why do we behave like this? What are we getting from these foolish projections of wisdom? An interesting analysis by James Sheils may help shed some light on the question. Sheils argues that ‘Cox’s science documentaries stupefy the public into remembering disconnected and obscure ideas they do not understand.’144 Yet, the public is fascinated by these documentaries because the obscure mysteries they hint at instigate a misplaced sense of ‘amazement and awe.’
Shiels may be on to something here. Our progressive abandonment of our relationship with the mysteries of transcendence since the Enlightenment has left a gaping hole in the human psyche. Our culture is desperate to get intellectual permission to believe something else instead, to peek into some new and obscure mystery, so long as it inspires the same amazement and awe previously reserved for transcendence. The neo-priesthood of science sensed an opportunity and rushed to fill the gap.
It is we, as a culture, who project onto the spokespeople of science maturity, authority and wisdom they’ve often never had. And, as any psychologist will tell you, those who receive such projections begin to believe them themselves, in a process sometimes called ‘inflation.’ They then take their preferred methods, values and particular way of thinking to be the only valid ones, snubbing all others. As a consequence, true intuition, imagination and direct experiential knowledge are disregarded today in favor of purely conceptual exercises in abstraction. Our projections have given narrow human beings the power to impose their idiosyncratic values and dominant psychic functions onto the rest of us. This has been costing our culture more than we dare imagine.
But if we have been enablers of this situation, we can also reverse it by withdrawing our projections. Let’s take the members of the neo-priesthood for what they truly are: confused human beings like you and me, potentially beset by hubris, narrowmindedness, prejudices, agendas, circular reasoning, projections, hidden insecurities, neuroses, lack of self-reflection and the entire gamut of human limitations. In doing so, we may lose some of the anchors that ground our lives: we may feel lost in the jungle, without guides. But those anchors were illusory to begin with. We need wisdom, not narrow intellectual prowess. We need guides, not puzzle-solvers. We need people who are self-reflectively aware of, and in touch with, their humanity, in all its horror and beauty.
5.2. Education and the meaning of life
Education is universally recognized as a key prerequisite for a healthy, vibrant, viable society. Hardly anyone would dispute that. Yet, there doesn’t seem to be a broad consensus on what one should be educated for. Although there certainly are many more facets to this question, I will limit myself here to contrasting two of them, which I consider most relevant to our present time: utilitarian education versus philosophical education.
A utilitarian education aims to equip one for the performance of practical tasks that have a direct and relatively short-term function in a society. Electricians fix power distribution networks; engineers build dams, computers and all kinds of handy apparatuses; physicians fix our bodies; diplomats avoid wars by resolving conflicts. The value and importance of these practical tasks to our society is unquestionable: through them, we can live longer, physically more healthily and perform our own tasks more effectively. But they ignore bigger questions: why do we live in the first place? How can we express our full potential in the world? What should we know and understand in order to live meaningful, fulfilling lives?
This is where a philosophical education comes in; an education that equips us to look critically and thoughtfully at the world around and inside us; an education that helps us understand nature, history and the dynamics of the human mind; an education that helps us take the lead in driving our lives to meaningful goals, as opposed to falling reflexively into the role of mindless consumers who only in their deathbeds come around to asking, ‘What has all this been about anyway?’ A philosophical education equips us to make something truly meaningful out of our lives.
We live in an age that – especially after the 1960s – turned so drastically towards pragmatism that we’ve nearly forgotten to ask why we live in the first place. Utilitarian advancements are important in that they extend and optimize our lives at a practical level, but leaving it at that is akin to restoring and turbo-charging your car so you can leave it in the garage. We’re so focused on living longer, optimizing the performance of necessary tasks, communicating faster and more frequently with one another, accumulating wealth and, most visibly, consuming and entertaining our way to depression that we’ve almost entirely forgotten to ask what this is all about. Why do we live? What is love all about? What is art all about? What have philosophers and poets alike been trying to say for the past few thousand years? What is going on?
It’s legitimate to optimize our lives at a practical level, but obviously not at the cost of failing to explore what life is about in the first place. Failing to provide a philosophical education that foments the growth and expression
of thoughtful and sensitive human beings, attuned to their own place in nature, cannot possibly be a healthy way forward. Yet, the educational system in most modern societies today is almost entirely focused on utilitarian aspects. Why is this so? It doesn’t take much imagination to understand: a purely utilitarian education tends to turn people into controllable tools; cogs in the machine. Unequipped to even conceive coherently of the higher questions of existence, we’re left with no option but to blindly leverage our utilitarian skills day in and day out, contributing to economic output and wealth generation. From the point of view of entrenched power structures – which stand to gain most from this wealth generation – the benefits may seem to outweigh the risks: not only does the current educational approach favor production, it may be seen to increase social stability, reduce unrest and, perhaps most importantly, ensure the preservation of the power structures. The more unquestioningly one performs one’s tasks in the system, the less commotion and disturbances are to be expected.
Of course this isn’t natural. Human beings aren’t tools. We’re here to express ourselves – what else? – not to be cogs in a mechanism. A civilization of stupefied drones going blindly about their practical tasks is constantly flirting with collapse. But the power structures may believe that this can be managed through the right combination of alcohol, tobacco, television, pornography, commoditized shopping culture and, in more severe cases, cognitive behavioral therapy145 and dependencycreating psychiatric drugs.146 The mainstream metaphysics of materialism enables this by rendering culturally legitimate the outrageous notion that unhappy people are simply malfunctioning biological robots.
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