Death, pseudoscience tomfoolery and surrogate activities
I've recently learned that Blaise Pascal's Pensées were a collection of his thoughts which he planned to put back in a coherent order before his death, allegedly, but he was never able to, resulting in several editors and readers disagreeing about the correct one.
I mention this because these monthly posts are much the same: mostly just whatever I feel is worth writing about, in an order which tries to be coherent but is ultimately largely arbitrary.
I believe that much of the history of non-fiction writing and thinking in general were this way, which is greatly emphasized by the fact that thinkers didn't specialize anywhere near as much as they do now. It seems to me that this is when the best ideas come: when one isn't too concerned about achieving a certain goal or whatnot, and simply interested in perceiving whatever is happening with honesty.
There is something incredibly satisfying about a new month lining up on a Monday, something about a new start. Though this means that this month, Easter Monday happens on April Fools. It's somewhat fitting then that the state of religion has fallen down to that of a joke on many parts of the internet, something that people tolerate but deep down "know" that is fake, or simply not a serious examination of reality.
Speaking of which.
My firm belief as to why God and spirituality make no sense to modern people is because we are now completely sheltered from matters of life and death. Death is no longer a reality that one faces regularly, instead it's an abstraction. 1 And suffering is no longer dealt with consciously, rather it's numbed away so as to pretend that it doesn't really exist.
On the other hand, the fact that organized religions were exposed for what they are - dogmatic, corrupt and abusive institutions - was likely inevitable, and probably a good thing. My problem is more so with the fact that with religion gone, so were the important matters that individual spirituality tackles.
Ironically, the expression "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" says far more about the state of academia in our day and age than religion, which at least has the decency to ask the really important questions in life: what does it mean to live well? what happens after death? how should one act in face of adversity? what is the point of my life?
You might not agree with the answers given by the various religions of our time, but I think we can all agree that these are far and beyond more important than anything being discussed in the mainstream, including scientific communities.
On the subject of matters of life and death, it's always interesting to witness that people seem rather jovial when gossiping about other people's death, or at least rather nonchalant.
My explanation is that this is a very base coping mechanism against something so overwhelming - one's mortality - that one does not even try to engage with it seriously and simply laughs.
This however has nothing to do with the way a Zen master would laugh when facing difficult situations. Whereas the wise laugh by softening themselves and their body, reminding themselves of how little the ego can control the situations it has to deal with, the cowards laugh by tensing, such that the wise laugh is pleasant and subtle, whereas the coward's laugh is tense, crude and loud.
It's similar to the pre/trans fallacy, where both sides looks similar on the surface, that is to say without discernment, but in fact couldn't be more different from one another.
I recall hearing a child describe on a bus how to make an omelette, and they insisted that the eggs had to whisked in a gray bowl. It couldn't be white, blue or transparent, it had to be gray.
It's very intriguing how children see the world. I wish I could get a glimpse of that from time to time.
It's always struck me as incredibly weird and distorted how people constantly judge everything according to their own yardstick, yet are completely blind to this process.
It’s like if you saw a triangle judging a square for not being "triangle enough". I am not implying that every worldview is equally valid - for there are massive gaps in consciousness and living in accordance with reality rather than ego - but that it's astounding the extent to which mere differences are treated as bugs.
For instance, judging something as not being "rational" or "scientific" is perfectly acceptable, yet the yardstick of "science" is never examined itself. The fact that “science” is a term that essentially means nothing these days 2 shows that it is closer to a signifier of conformity than any underlying value. Moreover, there is also the aspect that many systems or practices aren't even intended to be scientific or rational, yet are judged on that ground alone.
Saying that astrology or the chakra system are pseudoscience is simply not true, because 1) those systems do not work within the same metaphysics as materialistic science and 2) do not have the same goals of modeling the world as science does.
My understanding of those systems is that they are maps to help us make conscious decisions, but their purpose isn't to remove the latter. The fact that astrology, and more broadly speaking divination, requires human interpretation is not a bug but a key feature. It is not meant to be some type of mechanical oracle that you can blindly listen to and predict the future, but rather a tool that can hone and broaden your perception of reality, thereby affecting how you live your life.
But the dogma of our time cannot allow that kind of differences, since 1) consciousness is an inherent threat to any dominant organization and 2) anything meaningfully different to the system, i.e. outside of the triviality of consumerism and obedience, must be homogenized as a defect to correct, since the compliance to a set of protocols is the basis of the power of the collectives that dominate us.
Apparently 'GMO Skepticism' counts as "pseudocience" in this wikipedia article. To distrust the large companies which operate in foreign countries, armed with a suit of lawyers ready to defend their shady schemes, and which have next to no incentives to actually care about the health effects of the food they're involved in producing because they maximize for profits is considered pseudoscience?
Okay then. I'm really curious as to what counts as "science" then. Trusting corrupt authorities and companies blindly based on "peer-reviewed" papers which have been funded by the same authorities and companies?
Image of a cloudbuster
The cloudbuster is a device designed by Wilhelm Reich - the same one after whom Reichian therapy is named - which can supposedly gather orgone energy present in the atmosphere, and focus it in order to create clouds.
Think whatever you want of that, you have to admit it looks and sounds really cool. Science is really lacking in the aesthetic department, no wonder that so many people are more interested in astrology than astronomy.
There is a frustrating that happens when you ask a teacher, or in general someone more experienced than you a question. Which is that you come from a place of seeking what I would call prior understanding, that is to say, that which allows you to understand something you don’t grasp at all. The teacher on the other hand often answers with pieces of posterior understanding, which are insights that allow you to deepen you understanding after you’ve already acquired a decent grasp of the concept.
It’s like when a kid asks “why is a negative times a negative equal to a positive?” and a teacher answers “well, when you remove debt, you have more money”. The latter sentence makes sense to someone who already gets double negatives, because they first understand the idea of debt very well. But to a child learning about negative numbers, even the idea of debt itself is confusing, such that this explanation of double negatives will probably not make much sense for them.
This gap in understanding, and even deeper, experience, is very frustrating because 1) most people are incredibly bad at explaining because they’re bad at putting themselves in the shoes of someone. I don’t blame them for that because it’s really difficult, but most teachers I’ve come across do not even bother trying. And 2) because as far as I’m aware, there is no way through but to simply familiarize yourself as much as you can with metaphors that make sense to you, and if that doesn’t work, simply give it enough time until something clicks.
Understanding is very frustrating because it doesn’t happen predictably, which is probably why schools don’t even bother. They teach knowledge or following procedures, but very rarely understanding. The latter two can be transferred mechanically, while understanding cannot, it is a process that inherently requires consciousness in order to perceive something you didn’t before, and perception/attention is something that requires consciousness, because it is the ability to direct it.
The modern tragedy is that so many people are restless, constantly planning, worrying, dissociating, fantasizing, ruminating, or in general thinking about whatever caught their attention in that moment.
But then those same people are also really bad at thinking.
The truth is that thinking is fairly uncommon, rather what you find is mentation. Genuine, conscious thinking is much more calm and self-aware. It would pay attention to the frames that one is using to examine the world, and realize that a great deal of those are inherited, not derived rationally as so many claim. Mentation on the other hand is automatic: one thought after another, seemingly at random, except that they all lead back to the activities that society benefits one, i.e. activities that don’t require consciousness, such as consumption, distraction, etc. What a strange coincidence.
I’ve come to see that if you don't do real things in life, you start becoming crazy and start worrying about petty bullshit, gossiping about other people's lives instead of paying attention to your own, etc.
That's why remembering your eventual death is so important: it cuts through all the bullshit in life and allows you to focus on what matters.
Real things must be contrasted with dealing with inner complication, i.e. bureaucracy, i.e. bullshit work. Painting a portrait is real, working on a powerpoint presentation for your office job is bureaucratic. Building a house and maintaining it are real, signing paperwork is bureaucratic. Cooking food is real, taking care of your health is real, spending time with a loved one is real.
Then you have activities that are bordering on both. For instance, driving a car is in many ways real, but it's also incredibly unreal because of much it tends to promote dissociation, how it reinforces your place in life as an incredibly dependent consumer who is totally helpless when it comes to providing for your own needs.
So I guess the more important distinction has to do with agency. Working on things that matter to you - as opposed to obeying orders from someone else on what you should do - and approaching them in a way as to directly impact the world, in a way that is felt and not just abstracted.
It's sort of crazy that we have to talk about the importance of doing real things, yet it's incredibly clear to me that it is a rare thing for someone to arrange their life around. Because work has never been bullshit than in our times. Speaking of which.
For Ted Kaczynski, as written in his manifesto Industrial society and its future, a surrogate activity is one that is concerned with artificial goals, as opposed to biological needs. I think this definition is a bit extreme though it touches on an incredibly important reality in the modern world. It is extreme because it would lump everything to do with creativity and spirituality under an artificial goal, even though they help and inspire human beings to live more consciously, thereby contributing to collectives that can rise above the conquer-and-dominate paradigms that have shaped our history.
But it is an incredibly important concept because it shines light on the fact that essentially all activities in the modern world, including much of what we call work, have become surrogate activities. It is rather clear with essentially all forms of entertainment that we are no longer concerned with primary needs, but what about work? Why can it be called a surrogate activity if one does it to survive within the system?
The thing is that work has become a long chain of proxies in order to get food in one's plate. One "works" by being obedient in a bureaucratic environment and being subordinate to its “values”, which affords money - another proxy - which allows one to take one’s car - another proxy - to go to shops - more proxies - to then buy food, which has likely been produced incredibly far from where one lives, such that any health issues stop being the problem of those who are involved in producing it.
The fact then that work has become so abstract and untethered from survival matters is the direct reason for why it feels so meaningless: one works by contributing to the system that one lives, not by attending to one's needs. This is a huge difference because the system itself has no need for meaning: it grows because this is what allows it to be the most powerful collective and thus the one that covers the entire globe, not because it provides something valuable to human beings. Thus at the end of the day, work has become a meaningless surrogate activity which helps the growth of the system, and which affords us more surrogate activities, in the form of 'entertainment'.
On top of that, this long chain of proxies significantly reduces the freedom for humans to live as they want. We are "free" to choose what type of entertainment we engage in, but we certainly aren't free in deciding how much we work on and on what, what our food is sprayed with, whether we can even afford a house or not, whether we can get what we want within walking distances, how culture shapes people's lives and beliefs, etc. We have choice within the things that are utterly harmless or even beneficial to the system, but not freedom to live as we want, unless one is willing to make radical choices that will be looked down by the vast majority of people.
There is nothing wrong with doing that of course, but it is worth acknowledging the very real difficulty of striving for freedom in a society that is less and less free as it becomes more and more powerful.
The most terrifying thing as a modern person is dealing with the real possibility that you might be close to a gorilla, yet cannot see them because they have learned to camouflage themselves in plain sight, using people's selective attention, as is showcased in this video.
That is why I systematically refuse invitations to watch sports games. Who knows if a gorilla were to sneak in the middle of the game? Who would know? And even worse, who would be able to do anything?
I also propose that the saying "elephant in the room" to be replaced by "gorilla in the basketball game" to reflect the new horrors that we have to deal with.
I feel tired quite regularly. A lot of people also seem to feel that way. What's going on? It's almost like screens suck out our energy, like the Dementor kiss from Harry Potter, or the age-old myth of the vampire.
And not just energy, but time - oh my god it's already 9PM - and attention too - I can't focus on anything I swear!
The concept of demonic possession actually makes a great deal of sense in modern and depraved contexts: porn and casinos for instance. People involved in those activities simply aren't present. They are staring into the void, moving mechanically alongside their most base desires which have been hijacked by an external system.
The best way out is to not engage with those things in the first place, just like one does not bother listening to the contents of a demon’s whisper.
I decided to go on the wikipedia page for "cats" for some reason, and lo and behold, there isn't a single usage of the word "cute" or "adorable". There are 4 instances of the word "acute" but that's it. How very sad. How can you look at this adorable ball of fur and not want to squeeze it?
I know that Wikipedia is supposed to be “objective”, whatever that word means, but isn’t it objective to say that people get cats as pets because they find them cute? Isn’t it incredibly irrational to ignore all the ways in which we do things just because we feel a certain way about them?
1 See my essay on triviality, especially the part on death
2 See also the concept of ‘free-floating signifier’ explained here by James Ellis
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2024-04-13
