The Joe Shmoe explains why you’re wrong about everything!
Human Ideas
Humans are absolutely terrible at understanding non-human things. They project their humanity onto them and imagine, on some primitive level, that everything is human. Consider dogs – a lot of decidedly human qualities like abstract reasoning are ludicrously applied to them. Even inanimate objects are often anthropomorphized, assigned human feelings and human mind. So strong is their attachment to humanity that some claim existence is fundamentally human, thinking human qualities are fundamental properties of reality. We can see this in many religions and philosophical systems. In Christianity, “God” is simply existence anthropomorphized – given human qualities.
Yet despite the fact that humanity has this habit, we also know that dogs have dog-ness, that chairs do not have feelings, and God is an imaginary friend. Our consciousness was simply constructed around human concerns – eating, sleeping, loving, fighting. Most people never raise their gaze higher than the clouds and never consider that reality is fundamentally non-human.
In order to learn about non-human things, you have to think in a non-human way. Is it possible that aliens in another galaxy have a completely different conception of the universe that nevertheless works just as well as all our explanations? In that case, how can we say we’ve discovered true reality? We can say we’ve modeled it in a human way – in a way that appeals to our human perception and conception of reality. But we can’t say that we know reality in itself.
Human thinking is erroneous thinking. It cannot lead us to an absolute truth about anything. Yet there is such a thing as an absolute truth. How do we get there? By transcending humanity and thinking non-human thoughts. This reality can give rise to human thoughts, but it is not defined by them. Humanity is simply a tiny facet of the universal, a mere piece of the puzzle.
Even when scientists obtain objective, non-human data, they always ruin it by adding their human interpretations to it. Scientific data is never neutral – it’s always put into the context of existing systems and always interpreted with human thoughts. If you are interested in absolute truth, you have to transcend humanness and become more universal. You have to become less involved in human things and more involved in universal things.
It is said that “You shouldn’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” The problem is that shoes are too human. You can’t understand anything through human shoes except human things. If you walk in a man’s shoes, you’ll understand everything the man does – but nothing more.
Ultimately, the question is this: how much do reality and humans have in common? If the answer is anywhere close to nothing, then you can never consider any human “truths” as real. And if you don’t know how to think non-humanly, you’re in big trouble. You’re limited to human truths, human thoughts, human beliefs.
Karma, Godly justice, resurrection – these are ideas that exist explicitly to appeal to humans and their morals, views, opinions, ideals, and thoughts. They are not “neutral” concepts; they are decidedly human-centric. Therefore, they cannot be absolute, and therefore, they cannot be true, at least not in the form we know them as. All human concepts are flawed.
So, how do you think in a non-human way? You have to comprehend raw information. Information is energy’s intelligible aspect. In the physical world, energy is sensible, i.e., detectable by the senses. In the mental world, energy (information) is intelligible, i.e., detectable by the mind. Normally, the information in our minds is organized in a very human-centric way, and this allows us to operate properly in the real world. But information, on its own, is not human-centric.
If you wanted to communicate with aliens, you’d use raw information. You wouldn’t use human information. If human information were universally true, then aliens would be able to understand it. But clearly, they wouldn’t.
Which means that none of what I just said is an absolute truth. No, I’m simply representing it in terms you can understand. It’s a human truth, a relative truth, a subjective truth, a truth that’s contingent on human understanding.
Nietzsche wrote, “Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying ‘there are only facts,’ I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.”
Everything is subject to interpretation. There’s no such thing in the human sphere as raw, bare, unmarred, unaltered, unspoiled truth. Why? Because we always have to fit any new knowledge or data into a human context, and by doing so, we rob it of its proper, non-human context. On a personal level, when you learn something new, you always consider it in relation to what you already know, and this relation aids in molding your understanding of the thing itself. Useful for human purposes, sure, but destructive of truth.
Trumpism of the Day
“I’m not a politician, thank goodness.” – Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), February 27, 2015
In his mind, Trump is the exception. Such a self-characterization is typical of narcissists. A narcissist cannot cope with being considered equal to others. They must be exceptional in everything, and everyone must treat them as such. They lack all group discipline.
It’s a compulsive need to be recognized as the best that drives Donald Trump. This is called narcissistic supply – the stuff that feeds a narcissist’s delusions. Trump seeks supply from the whole country, so extensive is his narcissism.
To a narcissist, other people are supplies. Their function is to reinforce the narcissist’s grandiose sense of self. For Trump, his supporters are his supplies. He can’t do without them. He needs them to tell him how great he is and cheer for his every pronouncement.
You could probably get an untrained bot to write everything this guy says and tweets – he never says anything smart or unexpected. The “essence” of everything he says is always predictable and always the same.
In Somno
Penny for your thoughts?
In ancient Greek mythology, Charon, the ferryman who took dead people across the Styx to Hades, required a coin from each passenger – an obol. What about the ferryman of sleep who takes hypnagogic people to the realm of dreams? Does he require something of us? If we don’t pay him, we cannot dream actively. People who never remember their dreams don’t pay the ferryman his dues.
What about the ferryman who takes hypnopompic people from sleep back to the waking world? We can wake up only if we can find him. Do some people never find him?
Dream Children
It’s said that Somnus, the god of sleep, has multitudes of shape-shifting children (the Somnia) who appear in dreams. Is pleasing Somnus the path to having good dreams? Do we have nightmares when we displease him? Or, worse, are we struck with insomnia – are we robbed of the gift of sleep?
Every night, we descend to his realm, yet we hardly give him any thought. People take dreams for granted. They seem irrelevant to our mundane waking lives. Are dreams in fact messages from the non-human Universal? Is that why they are so strange? People think dreams are nonsensical, but do they actually follow a non-human logic?
Dead Sleep
Why do many people die while sleeping? The ancient Greeks called sleep the brother of death. Just as there are sleep dreams, are there also death dreams? Some people who have had near-death experiences claim to have seen mysterious figures, sometimes angelic, sometimes Jesus or God. Others claim to have experienced profound feelings of peace. Are these the dreams of death?
False Awakenings
What is a false awakening? It’s when you dream about waking up. You may falsely believe you are awake and perform your morning routine – until you wake up for real. Somnus can be tricky! You must learn to distinguish dreams from reality – and that’s not the easy distinction you think it is when you’re awake.
Dream Creatives
Many creative people throughout history were highly in tune with their dreams. They would purposefully induce hypnagogic states without ever fully falling asleep, which enabled them to tap into the extraordinary creative power of dreams. Creatives love to “daydream”. Many fiction authors at one point or another create a story based on a dream they had. Are dreams the source of all creativity?