That's the spirit

I followed this link from the comments on someone's blog (I'm not saying whose for fear of being labelled her shill) because I'm interested in the idea that consciousness directs reality. This is a possible reading of the quantum theory, one that, once I've written the book about the Asperger's guy, is going to power another novel ("Wow, Zen, with all these fucking good ideas, isn't it amazing how you never write a word these days?" "Well, yes, but... erm... *kof*"). That novel is also going to include a weird story I read one time about a guy who video'd his wife sleeping and used the vids as jerking matter (I am not kidding -- well, it was something like that; I think she found out and killed him).

Two things struck me. Amazon.com gives you a "badge" if you use your "real name". That old chestnut! What I'd like to know is how they know. If I wrote reviews under the name "Jacob Pegg", they'd doubtless hand me the badge. But because I'm Dr Zen, no way. And yet, Dr Zen is more my "real" name than any number of "real-sounding" yet completely bogus names.

And why does it matter? Is the lead of "Rob Anderson"'s views on books transmuted into pure critical gold because he doesn't use a nym? I've always been of the belief that it's what you say that matters: you're right, wrong or somewhere inbetween regardless who you are.

The other is that "spirituality", which you might take to be a sense of what transcends humanity, so often boils down to nothing more than anthropocentrism writ large. The gods we worship are like us: petty, jealous, judgemental and vindictive. The universe in this guy's conception is "conscious" but this is conceived of as being self-aware in the same way we are.

Consciousness is an emergent property of the workings of our neurons, and probably nothing more than that. Of course the same property could emerge from the spinning, whizzing, crashing particles of the universe. After all, it's made of the same materials we are, more or less (well, mostly a lot less). But this is hardly "spiritual". It's simply seeing us as being it.

Maybe we are. Maybe consciousness is prime and creates the universe. It's an interesting metaphysical question to chew on (although even the greats never raised it much above a glorified version of "if a tree falls in the middle of a forest...") But because we do not know how it works, it would mean nothing and matter not at all. That is the exact province of the spiritual. It makes no material difference whether there is a God, whether the universe was created or just happens to be. These are just diversions, passing fancies, idle speculations that we can use to fill our time as we live our lives, which happen to us regardless which answers it occurs to us are true.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:20 pm