Depression, anxiety and the grip of metaphysics
Reading | Editorial
The editors | 2021-08-09
Metaphysical beliefs modulate our experience of all aspects of life. As such, explicitly assessing the metaphysics we internalize can be the difference between depression and contentment, anxiety and vibrant aliveness. In this brief editorial, we highlight the crucial importance of metaphysics to every facet of our lives.
Recently, one of us was talking to an acquaintance who has been battling stage-four colon cancer for almost five years. The person was struggling with the prospect of the end of life, mentally reliving and reviewing past actions, relationships, mistakes and unachieved dreams. At one point, he confessed to himself out loud: “I’m solely responsible for my loneliness. Socially awkward since childhood, graduating with honors transformed me into an insufferably arrogant over-achiever. I destroyed my engagement and career. Ultimately, cancer erased my hubris too late to mend bridges with family and friends.” That cancer had given him both the push and the time to mend himself—as evidenced by his very words—didn’t occur to him. And if it had occurred, he would still have dismissed it as irrelevant, for our private insights and inner maturity die with us; only what is ‘out there,’ outside our inner lives, counts. Or so we think.
At another point in the conversation, our acquaintance was reminiscing about what he did or failed to accomplish in the course of his life. He managed to find one thing he was proud of; a relatively minor technical achievement that constituted the thin thread of self-validation he was hanging on to. But, soon enough, it gave way: “I don’t feel worthy of the outrageous financial and expert resources expended in extending my life.” For him—as for the vast majority of us—only external accomplishments count as a measure of one’s life’s worth. Nothing that happens inside—insights, understandings, realizations—holds any meaning, for the mental is ephemeral and evanescent; only the material is concrete and substantial. Or so we think.
This person’s way of relating to himself, others and the world—the inner narrative setting the tone for his apprehension of meaning, worth and significance—is a direct implication of the physicalist metaphysics, according to which mind is an ephemeral and inconsequential side-effect of physical entities. Only the latter have true, standalone existence and endure—in different configurations—across time and space. In contrast, inner, mental events, for being destined to eventually vanish into oblivion, are ultimately pointless.
This is very important to realize, if one wants to avoid the fate of our acquaintance: belief in the metaphysics of physicalism is not merely conceptual; it’s not an abstract, academic thing; it is instead deeply internalized and, as such, orchestrates our emotional inner lives. Under most circumstances—not only terminal illness, but also many other aspects of life, such as career and relationship events—it determines whether we are content or dissatisfied, happy or depressed, comfortable or anxious, peaceful or restless, feel supported or lonely, and so on. Our emotional inner lives—our very happiness, contentment and sense of safety—are a direct function of our internalized metaphysical beliefs.
Clearly, thus, metaphysics is a matter of utmost importance. It is very personal, very close to us, very intimate, even if we think we are not ‘into it’ or ‘couldn’t care less.’ If asked, our cancer survivor acquaintance would deny having any affinity with metaphysical questions. Yet, his suffering is modulated by his unexamined metaphysical beliefs. Metaphysical questions are, arguably, the most important questions in life, for they determine whether any given life event will be experienced as positive or negative, constructive or destructive, meaningful or insignificant. We don’t experience objective events; we experience only our internalized apprehension of these events, as determined by the metaphysics we embody. Anyone who believes that what counts are the events themselves, not our embodied interpretation of them, has failed to cognize something vitally important about human nature.
As the material published by Essentia Foundation seeks to make clear, physicalism is not only just a hypothesis, but also a very problematic one at that, as far as coherence, explanatory power and empirical adequacy are concerned. The widespread belief that physicalism must be true—for most scientists and scholars seem to tacitly adopt it at an operational level—is not only unjustified by the facts but also dangerous, since it lies at the root of most existential suffering. It has made us blind to the numinous meaning, significance and immortality of our inner lives, to the universal service we render by achieving inner insight, and to the eternal light of inner growth. If this were understood by our cancer survivor acquaintance, his journey would be eased. To be sure, he would still suffer, but his suffering would be imbued with the grace of eternal meaning, for the mental is what truly has standalone existence. Objective events and external achievements are but means to an end, ephemeral representations without reality of their own.
This is why Essentia Foundation exists: not to engage in a merely abstract, conceptual game, but to change lives in all ways that truly count. Understanding and internalizing metaphysical idealism is literally life-changing: it opens a window to light and fresh air in the dark, moldy and claustrophobic room of physicalism. And so, we invite you to join us in this expansive journey towards true meaning; a journey through vast inner landscapes.
Essentia Foundation communicates, in an accessible but rigorous manner, the latest results in science and philosophy that point to the mental nature of reality. We are committed to strict, academic-level curation of the material we publish.
Recently published
|
Arthur Haswell invites us to pay attention to and, once again, like our ancestors once did, hear the rhyme and rhythm with which the world worlds. Reality, he maintains, unfolds according to a form of music that, in ages past, humans were matter-of-factly sensitive to. Granted that, if we could sense it again, we could find the codas of the modern world to be excessively depressing, frightening, and bleak. For this reason, perhaps subconsciously, we may not wish to hear them. But, he suspects, we could also find in them much beauty and harmony that enrich our lives. This is a profoundly edifying essay.
|
Prof. Dr. Caslav Brukner, Prof. Dr. Renato Renner and Dr. Eric Cavalcanti just won the Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations. Their different no-go theorems make us reconsider the fundamental nature of reality. Bell’s theorem in quantum mechanics already confronted us with the fact that locality and ‘physical realism,’ in the sense that particles have predetermined physical properties prior to measurement, cannot both be true. But in certain variations of the Wigner’s Friend thought experiment an additional metaphysical assumption is now also put in question: the absoluteness of facts. In different words: can we safely assume that a measurement outcome for one observer is a measurement for all observers?
From the archives
|
Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra visited Vienna to attend a conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and interview physicists on the metaphysical implications of quantum mechanics. In this essay, he argues that what is called ‘experimental metaphysics’ might be at the heart of future progress in physics, and that philosophy and physics are moving closer together.
|
Once an enthusiastic Idealist in the tradition of Arthur Schopenhauer, the later Friedrich Nietzsche broke from Schopenhauer’s philosophy with a vengeance. Adebambo Adedire argues that this shift had more to do with Nietzsche’s later rejection of the metaphysical project itself, than with the particulars of Schopenhauer’s Idealism. For Nietzsche was to eventually consider the goal of understanding the nature of reality both impossible and inherently demeaning to the human condition. Yet, we ask, can a thinking human being ever stop wondering about what reality, and the self within it, ultimately are? Even if we, as primates, cannot arrive at the ultimate metaphysical answers, aren’t we correct in aspiring to overcome our own metaphysical mistakes and delusions?
|
Mainstream science still tends to dismiss extrasensory phenomena (ESP). However, these so-called ‘anomalous phenomena’ are key to understanding the nature of reality, claims Dr. Julia Mossbridge: “We are beginning to change the way we think as science enters the ‘maybe we got it all wrong’ phase.” In this interview, Natalia Vorontsova talks to Julia about her research in fields ranging from neuroscience and psychology to physiology and physics, tackling questions of free will, the nature of time, the mind-body problem, and key metaphysical implications.
Reading
Essays
|
As any essay on free will, the present one is bound to be polemic. We believe the debate on free will is important and the present essay meaningfully contributes to it. Nonetheless, we feel bound to clarify our editorial position here: as a foundation dedicated to promoting objective formulations of metaphysical idealism, we endorse the existence of a reality beyond the seemingly personal self, which behaves in a predictable, lawful manner. An implication of this view is the impossibility of libertarian free will: we do make our own choices, but our choices are determined by that which we, and the universe around us, are. Yet we believe that there is a very important sense in which free will does exist: under idealism, the universe is constituted by the excitations of one, universal field of subjectivity. The impetus towards self-excitation that characterizes this field of subjectivity is free will, for it depends on nothing else. The entire dance of universal unfolding is a dance of universal free will. This is the sense in which, for example, Federico Faggin and our own Bernardo Kastrup defend the fundamental existence of free will in nature. This understanding of free will is entirely compatible with the understanding that our choices are determined but that which we truly are. Finally, objective formulations of metaphysical idealism deny, just as the author of the present essay does, the fundamental existence of a personal self. Instead, the latter is regarded as a transient, reducible configuration of the underlying field of subjectivity. As such, there cannot be such a thing as personal, egoic free will, for the personal self itself isn’t a fundamental construct.
|
Could it be a coincidence that two founding fathers of modern day computing, independently from each other, are both coming with theories of consciousness that are idealist in nature? Or does a deep understanding of what computation is—and what it is not—inevitably lead away from physicalist ideas on consciousness?
|
Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra visited Vienna to attend a conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and interview physicists on the metaphysical implications of quantum mechanics. In this essay, he argues that what is called ‘experimental metaphysics’ might be at the heart of future progress in physics, and that philosophy and physics are moving closer together.
|
Once an enthusiastic Idealist in the tradition of Arthur Schopenhauer, the later Friedrich Nietzsche broke from Schopenhauer’s philosophy with a vengeance. Adebambo Adedire argues that this shift had more to do with Nietzsche’s later rejection of the metaphysical project itself, than with the particulars of Schopenhauer’s Idealism. For Nietzsche was to eventually consider the goal of understanding the nature of reality both impossible and inherently demeaning to the human condition. Yet, we ask, can a thinking human being ever stop wondering about what reality, and the self within it, ultimately are? Even if we, as primates, cannot arrive at the ultimate metaphysical answers, aren’t we correct in aspiring to overcome our own metaphysical mistakes and delusions?
|
Mainstream science still tends to dismiss extrasensory phenomena (ESP). However, these so-called ‘anomalous phenomena’ are key to understanding the nature of reality, claims Dr. Julia Mossbridge: “We are beginning to change the way we think as science enters the ‘maybe we got it all wrong’ phase.” In this interview, Natalia Vorontsova talks to Julia about her research in fields ranging from neuroscience and psychology to physiology and physics, tackling questions of free will, the nature of time, the mind-body problem, and key metaphysical implications.
Seeing
Videos
|
Jonathan Dinsmore proposes applying the same cautious inferential reasoning used in the scientific method to developing metaphysical beliefs based on first-person experience. This may open the door to a form of spirituality that, although still grounded in personal insight and, therefore, not objective in a strict scientific sense, is nonetheless based on the form of disciplined thinking that has made science so successful.
|
Hans Busstra sat down with John Vervaeke to discuss the meaning crisis, the Zombie myth we’re in, and how it all relates to what Vervaeke calls “rabbit hole metaphysics”: the conspiratorial, outlandish and often absurd ideas people start believing in, in search of meaning. A characteristic of rabbit hole types of metaphysics is that they have a ‘thick’ description of reality: a constellation of ungrounded assumptions build up to a ‘once you get this, there’s no way back’ narrative, which repeats itself in online echo-chambers.
|
The structures of our language, which function as directly accessible carriers of meaning, reveal remarkable parallels to physical systems—particularly quantum systems—which can therefore be regarded as carriers of meaning as well. This profound interconnectedness of language, thought and reality challenge our conventional understanding of what is going on, argues Dr. Sachs. His insightful observations reveal surprising ways to make sense of the paradoxes of quantum mechanics along linguistic—and therefore thought-like—lines. Though involved, we highly recommend that you give this essay a careful read, as it is surely worth the effort.
Let us build the future of our culture together
Essentia Foundation is a registered non-profit committed to making its content as accessible as possible and without advertisements. Therefore, we depend on contributions from people like you to continue to do our work. There are many ways to contribute.
