Here's some philosophy for you

This is a sort of "part two" of the previous blog post where I talked about Rob Burbea, the meditation teacher who means a lot to me (mainly for reasons other than meditation.)

By the way, even though it looks like I published this blog post in February 2019, I'm actually writing this in March 2021... I'm doing this for the sake of clarity. It just feels better to have this blog post come right after the earlier post I wrote about Rob.
..............................


Today I read some articles on Buddhism in Silicon Valley. Apparently, it's been a big thing there.

In that world, they use slightly weird euphemisms for meditation. Like "Neural Self-Hacking".

Here's a quote from a 2013 article in Wired:

"All the woo-woo mystical stuff, that's really retrograde. This is about training the brain and stirring up the chemical soup inside.”
- Kenneth Folk, a meditation teacher in San Francisco

I can't tell if that's the way Folk sees meditation, or if he's just parodying the mindset of the meditation circles in Silicon Valley. In any case, I find that quote interesting, for several reasons.

First of all: I feel like the “voice” Folk uses in that quote is a voice I’ve literally encountered thousands of times before.

Many people use “engineery” language even in really non-mechanical contexts. I’m increasingly interested in why people do that.

It’s a voice I've often used myself, ever since I was about 15 and noticed that I could. But now I feel like for the first time in my life, I’m aware of the fantasy operating behind that voice.

When one uses language that sounds sort of mechanical and scientific, it creates a mental state that’s comforting. It really makes me feel like the world is something that me and other rational people can understand and somehow rise above. It gives me a sense of control. In other words, it’s a fantasy that makes a person feel safe and calm, in the face of the terrifying complexity and unpredictability of the world.

And obviously, that can be really helpful. Sometimes that is the best way to approach things.

That “engineery voice” is also currently the dominant fantasy of what a smart and cool person sounds like. When you use that voice, you’re letting others know that you’re one of the Smart And Cool Ones.

This huge importance of fantasies is one of the most important things I've become aware of since I started listening to Rob Burbea. We have all these aesthetic ideas in our heads, about very abstract things. What intelligence sounds like. Or what passionate living or a successful life would look like.

The people that we admire glow in an almost supernatural way because they align with some fantasy that lives inside us. (I've also realized that this is a good way to find out what your fantasies are. Who glows? Who seems a bit more than human?) And when we admire someone, we start to imitate their ways of thinking and being, in very subtle ways.

Of course, all of this is sort of obvious. But usually stuff like this is only discussed as something inherently negative, or at least suspicious. Stop telling stories, you should live in the real world! or Those impressionable kids. And in a way, that makes sense, because many fantasies are harmful and even destructive. Every day, problematic fantasies do hurt the minds and souls of millions of impressionable kids and adults. But what really moves me about Rob's thinking is the understanding that fantasies are absolutely necessary.

Entering a totally fantasy-free realm of existence would literally be the same thing as depression. Fantasies are the things that guide us toward long-term goals and give our existence meaning. They help us become who we are. A human being cannot live without this dimension.

Something or somebody has to glow. Otherwise we’d just be bugs lost in the dark.

It's even impossible to totally separate ethics from aesthetics. We don’t pick our ethical and moral ideals simply because those ideals “make sense”, but because those ideals are beautiful to us. They resonate with something deep within us. Thinking about them makes us feel elevated. There are countless possible ways of being an OK person in this world – which ways speak to you? Who or what moves that warm, intuitive core? Gandhi? Malcolm X?

I don’t know if this sounds like annoyingly abstract philosophizing. But I think that this is actually important in a very practical sense. All fantasies invigorate some parts or possibilities of our humanity, and diminish us in other ways. That’s inevitable, so it’s good to pay attention to what's being invigorated and what's being diminished.

For example, how do the fantasies behind that Engineery Voice shape our way of being in the world? In some contexts, that way of talking about things can really be very helpful and good. But if that's how we approach nearly everything, all the time, could it blind us to some things worth noticing? Is there something that the self-hackers are missing out on?

I mean, there is nothing obvious or "objective" about perceiving the human mind as "chemical soup", and meditation as “self-hacking” that stirs that soup up. It’s just a way of looking. A way of talking.

This is maybe the most important thing Rob has helped me understand: the way you look at the world determines what kind of world you live in at any given moment. For the most part, you don't live in a world that's "objectively" this or that; you live in a world of perception, and perception is malleable. The way you look at the world, or talk about the world, changes your world. Again and again and again. In theory, there are an unlimited number of possible ways of looking at anything, and all of them have power in either limiting and constraining or deepening and opening up our experience of the world and ourselves.

“Scientific materialism” – i.e., the popular tendency to see reality as strictly physical – is a valid perspective. But whether it’s the best perspective totally depends on the situation.

For instance, let’s imagine a person who’s going through a severe existential crisis. They go to a therapist and sit there endlessly talking about the physical, biochemical processes taking place in their brain. Most of us would agree that that would be quite irrational, since it probably wouldn’t take them anywhere. They're going through an existential crisis after all. Sometimes, conceptualizing your inner life as a “soul” is much more helpful – and therefore much more rational – than conceptualizing it as “biochemistry”, “hormones” and “neurons”.

Similarly, one can talk about love in terms of chemicals, and that’s not wrong. But most people understand that that way of looking doesn’t necessarily say anything meaningful about the lived reality of love. That's not the only truth about what love is. "Chemicals" is not the only valid way of looking. There's infinitely more to it than that.

If we really go into the "emptiness" teachings of Buddhism (as explained by Rob Burbea), things get even more complex and mystical.... The big divide between "subjective" inner reality and "objective" outer reality may start to seem a lot more vague than we've gotten used to thinking. There's nothing factually wrong about saying that the mind is something created by the material world – however, the material world, as we experience it, is also created by the mind. Maybe nothing exists "independently of the mind"... Which doesn't mean that things don't exist; it just means that maybe there needs to be perception for anything to exist in any particular form.

Everybody who's read Yuval Noah Harari knows that nations are imaginary: "Finland" doesn't exist objectively, it's just an agreement between people who need to believe in a shared reality in order to cooperate. But what Harari doesn't mention is that this applies to everything, all concepts, even "physical" ones. "Chairs" and "trees" and "atoms" are just our ways of making sense of this reality that we inhabit, and they're only valid in the sense that they're helpful. "Chairs" and "atoms" are concepts, the mind's way of giving form to something that doesn't "objectively" exist in any particular form. Depending on our needs, we could also conceptualize everything totally differently.

BUT that opens the door to an area where things eventually start to fly over my head... and there's a lot of room for absurd and potentially harmful misunderstandings. I don't even know whether pondering such metaphysics is useful for anyone who isn't interested in reaching Buddhist awakening. I don't think I'm particularly interested in that. (At the moment, at least.) I just love the sense of mystery I feel when Rob talks about these things.

In any case, it's a revolutionary thing to understand how our reality is always shaped and created by our ways of looking at and talking about reality. You see: "wisdom" is a matter of finding ways of looking that are skilful. And soulful. And ethical. And liberating. As opposed to ways of looking that create unnecessary suffering, or reduce the world or you or other beings in ways that make you (or others) miss out on beautiful things that this life has to offer.

A quote from Maya Angelou feels relevant here:

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

...

So... If I were a bit more pretentious, I might say that we're swimming in "post-postmodern" waters right now. Which means: it’s a valuable thing to learn to ”deconstruct” reality, but you can never escape the fact that any sense of reality is always constructed. So it makes sense to learn to construct wisely.

Does that sound "too philosophical" for you?

That is the problem here. All of this is so fucking essential, and yet, it's so different from the kinds of "ways of looking" we've gotten used to that when you try to talk about it, it can sound much more complicated and eccentric and abstract than it actually is.

Even if you don't get any of this right now, maybe you can spend a few moments thinking about this:

You don't need to become "religious" or totally "irrational" and abandon your analytical skills in order to experience this life as deeply meaningful and magical and wondrous. On the contrary, using your analytical skills can actually help you enter a way of experiencing reality that is deeply enchanted.

I'm not saying that I expect that to be simple... But at least there's some joy in realizing that "everything is shit and meaningless" is not the only intellectually justifiable way of looking at existence.