Metaphysic Storm

Dualism is an ectoplasmic orgasm. In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the belief that mind and body are two distinct separate things. It’s the belief that the mind is not dependent on the brain for it’s existence. It’s difficult for even me, a die hard sci-fi fan, to imagine my “essence” being downloaded into a computer main frame so my mind can continue it’s existence. For those who think that their dreams are real and they have a reservation in almighties kingdom, it’s easy to imagine their mind as a mystical blue uploadable aura. Go Go Ghost busters!

I don’t quite understand the “need” to believe in the spirit. There certainly isn’t any empirical reason to do so. It’s one of those leap of faith things. The belief can easily be seen as a natural extension of the desire of self preservation programmed into every thinking animal. All it takes is the capacity for imagination and sky castles, virgin orgies and infinite family reunions could cause a person to actually anticipate the closing of the curtains. But for a realist such as myself, thinking about the curtain call reduces the amount of thinking time I know I have on stage. Why squander my life on promises from people who’s greatest wisdom is, “because I said he said so in my head, now get ready for your dunk, we’re gonna take away your mediocrity and make you born again, special like… Booga Booga.”

The antithesis of body and mind dualism is materialistic monism, the belief that there is only one type of stuff. There seems to be a great deal of word play in this mole arena, because stuff automatically references matter. Energy, in the E=MC2 sense, is certainly “stuff”. I assume thinkers who parade the monists title are well aware of this and conclude that there is one type of stuff that can be chopped into two substuffs and those substuffs come in a variety of flavors. I’ll digest that with great satisfaction because there is plenty of empirical evidence for that universal conclusion. I, in that sense, am a Natural materialist. But strict Monist materialism is a few bricks short of a shit house.

Numbers and Words are the first things that pop in my mind which violate the monist materialistic belief. Both of these things are not the symbols or sounds that form them but the association they have to the materialistic, abstract or obtuse things they represent. Granted they only symbolize elements, actions, objects, qualities and quantities of such, relations in time, quantities or qualities of subjectivities or arbitrary defined actions. Not to mention non representational communications that many works of art assume. At any rate or mass, there are things that aren’t made out of stuff. The reductionist could demand we reduce those metathings to the thing they are dependent on. The empirical end of this is the atom or photon. Obviously reducing our existence to a single atom or neuron firing is just as ludicrous as widdling our self down to a non existent soul. I’m not arguing against that the self is dependent on the mind or that the mind is dependent on the brain. What I argue is that We make what is, far more than what can be seen under an electron microscope.

The materialists demand that we are nothing more than a collection of atoms and a string of firing neurons. While that certainly is what we are physically composed of, self awareness is far more than “simple” consciousness or a brain state. Patters are analogous to what we are in the fact that they don’t have a “body” of their own and don’t exist until rendered and continue to exist as fact even after they’re dissolved even into the abyss of total chaos. Unlike a tick-tax-toe rendering of a pattern made out of apples or oranges, who’s existence is not dependent on the substrate, we are dependent on the molecules individual uniqueness for our patterns. While every healthy human is born with the capacity for self awareness, it is not something that is automatically fully manifested and quite frankly, it’s truth can be corrupted with delusion.

I don’t actually believe there is an explanation of self awareness. And the “feedback loop” of the materialists is so sterile it’s analogy kills the mystical beauty of the god like quality. I’ve been thinking of a way to describe “it” with a metaphor all day and the maestro and hu’s orchestra seems to be the best as of yet:

At conception our parents build the walls of the concert hall. As we grow we populate the hall with carpet, chairs, ceiling fans and lighting but still are an empty shell of a thing. When the first brain wave is initiated the maestro pops into existence naked sitting in the pit. The moment of the second brain wave pulses and the hall is flooded with air enabling sound. The first mental cry the maestro points in the pit and creates an instrument section. When we’re born the auditorium is filled with an audience, not other maestros, but rather the external world. As the maestro instructs the instrument sections what to do, the audience responds, most typically producing milk. As the maestro grows hu adds more and more sections until finally hu has a bono-fide orchestra. Then something truly magical happens, the maestro polishes hu’s sheet music enough to see hu’s image. Hu passes the mirror around to his orchestra and observes, making judgments about the sheet music and develops intention on future music. At this point hu can hear other music coming from adjacent halls with their own maestros. An other miraculous thing happens when hu becomes skilled enough with hu’s mirror. The walls of the hall collapse and reveal millions of other orchestras. Unfortunately their are billions of halls built up concealing wonderfully unique tunes. The orchestra gets intrigued and the maestro stage dives and is virtually carried into the private halls of others to see why the walls are still up in so many halls. Inside the walled halls a horrific state is discovered. The mirrors of these poor saps is painted over, concealing the beautifulness of self reflection. Some of the paintings are childish renditions of other maestros, but the vast majority are of something even more hideous. They are paintings of atonal viruses, most notably Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad.

But of course we’re just atoms. I just had an ectoplasmic orgasm boo yeah!

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