This post is going to be a continuation of yesterday's post about mind-body dualism, so you may want to start there if you haven't read it yet.
As I said yesterday, though part of me is swayed by the scientific proof of monism - the idea that everything is built out of one category of substance (atoms, molecules, chemicals, cells) - I am ultimately too enamored with the idea of dualism to suspend belief that there is a second, incorporeal substance also at play in nature. We are not just bodies, but bodies and minds (or souls, depending on how you want to label it).
I acknowledge that I am, to some extent, governed by my chemicals and hormones and neurons and all of the other building blocks that create and multiply and manipulate my cells, or communicate between them. I even understand that when I dream at night I am in actuality at the mercy of coincidences and firing neurons; that what I choose to interpret as a story, with colors and faces and emotions and conflict and resolution, is not created or influenced by a separate substance (my mind, my soul, my intuition, creativity, inspiration, a collective unconscious I'm tapping into, or anything spiritual like that) but by the same category that maintains my blood circulation and digestive tract: Atoms. Molecules. Things that science can observe and quantify and explain (or are working toward observing, quantifying, and explaining).
But I care about those stories I dream, or the stories I come up with in the daytime and attempt to put to paper, or the subjects I want to draw or paint - and to write or create art the way I want to, I feel like it diminishes it to think of it through the lens of monism.
Sure, I am able to see color because of the way my eyes work and the cells that make up my eyes; I am able to hold a paintbrush because of the cells in my hand; I am able to retain muscle memory and things I've practiced and learned in school for the best techniques to use because of the cells in my brain. And to some people - the scientifically minded, the monists - this is more than enough, and they can find excitement and inspiration in the idea that everything comes down to essentially one thing, or that everything is born from essentially one thing, and that any differences we see - at the molecular or macro level - are just different rearrangements of the same basic substance.
Good for them! I'm not knocking monism. It's just not how I think of things, and I don't see the value (and in fact see negative consequences) in retraining myself to think of the world that way. I could persuade myself if I really wanted to. I definitely see the reasoning and the merits. But I don't think it matters to my life, and because it is not my gut reaction, I fear that it would take away something of who I am to try to dissuade myself of my belief in dualism.
I am an artist, and a writer. I like looking at art, and reading books. I like writing poetry. I like listening to music. I like being creative. I like thinking of myself as a body and a soul, and other people as a body and a soul. I like imagining that there is this creativity or inspiration that ebbs and flows and visits us and abandons us and takes us on journeys and sets our hearts on fire. I like dreaming; I like trying to influence my dreams in the moment of the dreaming, and I like interpreting them after the fact. I like sitting around and thinking and philosophizing. I like asking 'what ifs'.
I like thinking of my emotions, my mood, my intuition, my dreams, my creativity, my art, my writing, as a separate entity. Something to conquer or challenge or accept or adore or avoid or manipulate or mold or cherish or abhor. Something that is unique to me, but also something that is similar to what everyone else has and experiences - a collective pool that we all dip our toes into once and awhile, and dive into even rarer still. Something that is sometimes out of our control - which is frustrating at times but beneficial at other times. Something that is separate from my physical body and will exist in some form after my body dies.
I don't think my soul will go to heaven or hell because I don't think those are actual places. But I am open the idea of reincarnation. I like the idea of the ancient goddess, where we are all birthed from the same womb, live physical lives, and then are returned to that sacred womb to be reborn into another life (with or without knowledge of previous lives). That doesn't mean I believe in a goddess, or a specific womb that exists. I just like the imagery of it. The Neo-Platonists had a similar idea - this Oneness that we all come from and return to. It's actually almost monist sounding, right? We are all essentially the same thing, born from the same substance, made of the same substance, and return to that substance when we return. But I think of it in a dualist way.
There's this spiritual substance (spirit, soul, mind, unconsciousness, etc.) - let's just call it Substance 1 for the sake of simplicity. And this substance is unquantifiable and unidentifiable and really hard to understand or know or label - because that's kind of the point of it. We can only feel it - in our guts, in our hearts, in our minds. We can't touch it with our hands, or see it or hear it or taste it or smell it or observe it in any way. It's extrasensory.
I like to imagine that we are that substance, at our cores. If our bodies ever ceased to exist, or if we were in a transition state between bodies, we would still be Substance 1. It's our emotions, our collective unconscious, the stuff of dreams, our creativity, our childish sense of wonder, our pleasure, our pain, etc. When we are on earth it is encased in a body, which is a different substance (Substance 2). It has to be a different entity, because it can be observed with our physical senses. We can see and feel and taste it. We can study it under a microscope. It gets hurt or sick, and we watch it heal (or not heal). It is observable, in a real, quantifiable way. It can be categorized and labeled. It can (more or less) be understood.
So we start as Substance 1 and end as Substance 1 (if we do indeed end). We still have access to Substance 1 while we are encased in Substance 2 (our bodies), because we are always Substance 1, whether or not we are at the moment connected to Substance 2.
Of course, at any given moment we can understand, we are connected to Substance 2, because that's the only way we can understand or acknowledge or interpret or observe things at all. I have no proof that Substance 1 exists before/after/outside Substance 2 at all. Perhaps it doesn't. I like to think it does, but it hardly matters (to me) if it actually does or not. I would not act differently in this life if I knew for certain that my soul would or would not extend past by body's life, so it makes no difference.
The point is, that I am drawn to thinking of myself this way, for better or worse. It is so engrained in me to believe that there is some essence to me that is more than just the sum of my bodily parts that I have to think it is a belief I would hold dear regardless of whether or not I had been brought up Christian and taught to believe that we all have souls and which go to Heaven or Hell when our bodies die. I was drawn to color and art from a young age. I loved stories and reading. I have always been drawn to fantasy. I have always put more significance on my mind than my body. It didn't matter what was happening in "the real world" if I had another world I could escape to in my mind.
And I think that, is essentially, why I would really have to talk myself into monism. Because I like Substance 1 better; I could never discard it in favor of Substance 2. And it doesn't make sense to me believe there isn't a Substance 2 - indeed, I would be way too scared to pretend Substance 1 is the only substance. While I like Substance 1, I also often keep my distance from it. It's unreliable. It's mysterious. To believe only in Substance 1 (and thus ignore the "real" physical world) would be to lose all control, lose anything tangible to grab onto, and, essentially, to go insane.
So Substance 2 must exist - it is the rock in the flowing stream of Substance 1, the tangible, sturdy, steady thing to grab onto. And I want Substance 1 to exist - because it's the flowing stream, and more interesting. And so I am a dualist.
But I also call myself an "atheist."
Being an "atheist" doesn't mean I'm not spiritual, in my own way. It doesn't mean I don't like sitting around philosophizing. It doesn't mean I don't believe in something by faith alone. The "something" that I believe in through faith alone, however, is not capital-G God, nor any other god or gods of any organized religion on this planet. There is no Creator. There is no Destiny. There is the Human Experience, and the Soul, and the Collective Unconscious, or something along those lines - but I vacillate between whether or not I think this other Force, whatever it is, has any sort of semblance of control over me and my actions, or even any understanding of me, or anyone else, or itself. Perhaps it is just Nature, going through its cycles as it does; and I am just a part of it, a cog in its incognizant machine.
I even (as you can see with these last two blog posts), debate with myself on the issue of my dualism. Do I actually believe there are two substances - mind and body - or do I just really want there to be two substances, because it's a more interesting story, and one that I am immediately drawn to?
So I call myself an atheist because I do not align with any modern religion or its beliefs, and I do not one anyone to get the impression that I do, or that I could be persuaded to. Calling myself an agnostic, I think, is not strong enough to get this point across. But really I would identify myself more as an apatheist - because not only do I not believe in god, but it really doesn't matter to my daily life if god does or does not exist - or even if there are one or two categories of substances in the world.
I like thinking about such things in the abstract, but have no real motivation to come to any sort of concrete conclusion. I'm fine with sitting in the corner and imagining the world I want to imagine, with its mind and body separation. It suits me. It doesn't really matter if it's "real" or "true" or not, because it's true to me. And even if someone could prove to me that God exists (or doesn't exist), or that everything I hold dear about my "essence" is really just nothing more than neurons firing in my brain or the chemicals and hormones in my body fluctuating their levels to influence my emotions or mood - it wouldn't matter. I would still make art. I would still feel things. I would still write. I would still go on pretending that what is in my mind is important and real - because that's what makes me feel like me, and I think it's what makes me good at the art and writing I do.
I've rambled on about all this long enough. I'll end here with a favorite quote by J.K. Rowling:
As I said yesterday, though part of me is swayed by the scientific proof of monism - the idea that everything is built out of one category of substance (atoms, molecules, chemicals, cells) - I am ultimately too enamored with the idea of dualism to suspend belief that there is a second, incorporeal substance also at play in nature. We are not just bodies, but bodies and minds (or souls, depending on how you want to label it).
I acknowledge that I am, to some extent, governed by my chemicals and hormones and neurons and all of the other building blocks that create and multiply and manipulate my cells, or communicate between them. I even understand that when I dream at night I am in actuality at the mercy of coincidences and firing neurons; that what I choose to interpret as a story, with colors and faces and emotions and conflict and resolution, is not created or influenced by a separate substance (my mind, my soul, my intuition, creativity, inspiration, a collective unconscious I'm tapping into, or anything spiritual like that) but by the same category that maintains my blood circulation and digestive tract: Atoms. Molecules. Things that science can observe and quantify and explain (or are working toward observing, quantifying, and explaining).
But I care about those stories I dream, or the stories I come up with in the daytime and attempt to put to paper, or the subjects I want to draw or paint - and to write or create art the way I want to, I feel like it diminishes it to think of it through the lens of monism.
Sure, I am able to see color because of the way my eyes work and the cells that make up my eyes; I am able to hold a paintbrush because of the cells in my hand; I am able to retain muscle memory and things I've practiced and learned in school for the best techniques to use because of the cells in my brain. And to some people - the scientifically minded, the monists - this is more than enough, and they can find excitement and inspiration in the idea that everything comes down to essentially one thing, or that everything is born from essentially one thing, and that any differences we see - at the molecular or macro level - are just different rearrangements of the same basic substance.
Good for them! I'm not knocking monism. It's just not how I think of things, and I don't see the value (and in fact see negative consequences) in retraining myself to think of the world that way. I could persuade myself if I really wanted to. I definitely see the reasoning and the merits. But I don't think it matters to my life, and because it is not my gut reaction, I fear that it would take away something of who I am to try to dissuade myself of my belief in dualism.
I am an artist, and a writer. I like looking at art, and reading books. I like writing poetry. I like listening to music. I like being creative. I like thinking of myself as a body and a soul, and other people as a body and a soul. I like imagining that there is this creativity or inspiration that ebbs and flows and visits us and abandons us and takes us on journeys and sets our hearts on fire. I like dreaming; I like trying to influence my dreams in the moment of the dreaming, and I like interpreting them after the fact. I like sitting around and thinking and philosophizing. I like asking 'what ifs'.
I like thinking of my emotions, my mood, my intuition, my dreams, my creativity, my art, my writing, as a separate entity. Something to conquer or challenge or accept or adore or avoid or manipulate or mold or cherish or abhor. Something that is unique to me, but also something that is similar to what everyone else has and experiences - a collective pool that we all dip our toes into once and awhile, and dive into even rarer still. Something that is sometimes out of our control - which is frustrating at times but beneficial at other times. Something that is separate from my physical body and will exist in some form after my body dies.
I don't think my soul will go to heaven or hell because I don't think those are actual places. But I am open the idea of reincarnation. I like the idea of the ancient goddess, where we are all birthed from the same womb, live physical lives, and then are returned to that sacred womb to be reborn into another life (with or without knowledge of previous lives). That doesn't mean I believe in a goddess, or a specific womb that exists. I just like the imagery of it. The Neo-Platonists had a similar idea - this Oneness that we all come from and return to. It's actually almost monist sounding, right? We are all essentially the same thing, born from the same substance, made of the same substance, and return to that substance when we return. But I think of it in a dualist way.
There's this spiritual substance (spirit, soul, mind, unconsciousness, etc.) - let's just call it Substance 1 for the sake of simplicity. And this substance is unquantifiable and unidentifiable and really hard to understand or know or label - because that's kind of the point of it. We can only feel it - in our guts, in our hearts, in our minds. We can't touch it with our hands, or see it or hear it or taste it or smell it or observe it in any way. It's extrasensory.
I like to imagine that we are that substance, at our cores. If our bodies ever ceased to exist, or if we were in a transition state between bodies, we would still be Substance 1. It's our emotions, our collective unconscious, the stuff of dreams, our creativity, our childish sense of wonder, our pleasure, our pain, etc. When we are on earth it is encased in a body, which is a different substance (Substance 2). It has to be a different entity, because it can be observed with our physical senses. We can see and feel and taste it. We can study it under a microscope. It gets hurt or sick, and we watch it heal (or not heal). It is observable, in a real, quantifiable way. It can be categorized and labeled. It can (more or less) be understood.
So we start as Substance 1 and end as Substance 1 (if we do indeed end). We still have access to Substance 1 while we are encased in Substance 2 (our bodies), because we are always Substance 1, whether or not we are at the moment connected to Substance 2.
Of course, at any given moment we can understand, we are connected to Substance 2, because that's the only way we can understand or acknowledge or interpret or observe things at all. I have no proof that Substance 1 exists before/after/outside Substance 2 at all. Perhaps it doesn't. I like to think it does, but it hardly matters (to me) if it actually does or not. I would not act differently in this life if I knew for certain that my soul would or would not extend past by body's life, so it makes no difference.
The point is, that I am drawn to thinking of myself this way, for better or worse. It is so engrained in me to believe that there is some essence to me that is more than just the sum of my bodily parts that I have to think it is a belief I would hold dear regardless of whether or not I had been brought up Christian and taught to believe that we all have souls and which go to Heaven or Hell when our bodies die. I was drawn to color and art from a young age. I loved stories and reading. I have always been drawn to fantasy. I have always put more significance on my mind than my body. It didn't matter what was happening in "the real world" if I had another world I could escape to in my mind.
And I think that, is essentially, why I would really have to talk myself into monism. Because I like Substance 1 better; I could never discard it in favor of Substance 2. And it doesn't make sense to me believe there isn't a Substance 2 - indeed, I would be way too scared to pretend Substance 1 is the only substance. While I like Substance 1, I also often keep my distance from it. It's unreliable. It's mysterious. To believe only in Substance 1 (and thus ignore the "real" physical world) would be to lose all control, lose anything tangible to grab onto, and, essentially, to go insane.
So Substance 2 must exist - it is the rock in the flowing stream of Substance 1, the tangible, sturdy, steady thing to grab onto. And I want Substance 1 to exist - because it's the flowing stream, and more interesting. And so I am a dualist.
But I also call myself an "atheist."
Being an "atheist" doesn't mean I'm not spiritual, in my own way. It doesn't mean I don't like sitting around philosophizing. It doesn't mean I don't believe in something by faith alone. The "something" that I believe in through faith alone, however, is not capital-G God, nor any other god or gods of any organized religion on this planet. There is no Creator. There is no Destiny. There is the Human Experience, and the Soul, and the Collective Unconscious, or something along those lines - but I vacillate between whether or not I think this other Force, whatever it is, has any sort of semblance of control over me and my actions, or even any understanding of me, or anyone else, or itself. Perhaps it is just Nature, going through its cycles as it does; and I am just a part of it, a cog in its incognizant machine.
I even (as you can see with these last two blog posts), debate with myself on the issue of my dualism. Do I actually believe there are two substances - mind and body - or do I just really want there to be two substances, because it's a more interesting story, and one that I am immediately drawn to?
So I call myself an atheist because I do not align with any modern religion or its beliefs, and I do not one anyone to get the impression that I do, or that I could be persuaded to. Calling myself an agnostic, I think, is not strong enough to get this point across. But really I would identify myself more as an apatheist - because not only do I not believe in god, but it really doesn't matter to my daily life if god does or does not exist - or even if there are one or two categories of substances in the world.
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| From the Wikipedia article, Apatheism |
I like thinking about such things in the abstract, but have no real motivation to come to any sort of concrete conclusion. I'm fine with sitting in the corner and imagining the world I want to imagine, with its mind and body separation. It suits me. It doesn't really matter if it's "real" or "true" or not, because it's true to me. And even if someone could prove to me that God exists (or doesn't exist), or that everything I hold dear about my "essence" is really just nothing more than neurons firing in my brain or the chemicals and hormones in my body fluctuating their levels to influence my emotions or mood - it wouldn't matter. I would still make art. I would still feel things. I would still write. I would still go on pretending that what is in my mind is important and real - because that's what makes me feel like me, and I think it's what makes me good at the art and writing I do.
I've rambled on about all this long enough. I'll end here with a favorite quote by J.K. Rowling:
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