A Thought Experiment That Demolishes Materialism

One of the great philosophical debates is between materialists and idealists. The materialists consider their opponents to be mentally ill dreamers, while the idealists consider theirs to be literal-minded children. This essay expounds a thought experiment that shows that materialism is not tenable.

Materialists believe that the consciousness is generated by the brain. The most popular materialist theory is that consciousness is an “emergent property” of the combination of the various senses. Consciousness has evolved as a kind of supervisor of this sensory input, presumably for the purpose of making decisions or similar.

Therefore, materialists believe that the individual’s awareness of the outside world resides in the physical brain. It is the brain itself that is aware of the outside world through the impressions it receives from the various sensory organs. It follows from this that when the brain dies, consciousness also ends.

A simple thought experiment shows that this position is not tenable.

When a person goes to bed and dreams at night, they habitually find themselves exploring alien worlds. They do this while occupying a body that seems very similar to the bodies we occupy here on Earth. This body can see, seemingly through eyes about five or six feet off the ground, and it can also hear, seemingly through ears. In the dream world, these eyes and ears observe other bodies much like the bodies on Earth.

In this dream world, one’s surroundings seem very real. It’s rare for a dreamer to become aware that they’re dreaming – if they do, they usually wake up. While dreaming, it’s no more common for the consciousness to question the reality of the sensory impressions it receives than it is for a consciousness awake on Earth to do so. It seems very much like a real world.

The question that exposes the weakness of materialism is this. When you are dreaming, which brain generates consciousness? Is it the brain of your body here on Earth that generates the consciousness that observes the dream world, or is it the brain of your body in the dream world?

From a materialist perspective, one of those two things must be true – but both put the lie to materialism itself.

If the brain in your body here on Earth generates the consciousness that observes the dream world, then a brain on Earth is not necessary to observe Earth. This is because, if the dream world is being observed by a consciousness that is generated by a brain in a different reality, then the consciousness that observes Earth may be also generated by a brain in a different reality. Or perhaps not even generated by a brain.

This means that it’s possible that the consciousness that observes Earth is generated by a brain somewhere else, perhaps in a reality outside of, or more fundamental than, the one in which Earth resides. In such a case, we have no more reason to think that the death of our body on Earth should be the end of consciousness than we do to think that the death of our body in the dream world should be the end of consciousness.

On the other hand, if it is the brain in the dream world that generates consciousness – perhaps on account of that it is connected to the eyes and ears of the dream world and therefore receives sensory input from the dream world – then a material brain is not necessary in order to observe a world. The brain in the dream world cannot be definitely said to exist, because there is no evidence of the true existence of the dream world (at least none that can be produced on Earth).

But if it is the brain in your body in the dream world that generates consciousness, then there’s no reason to assume that the death of one’s body here on Earth ought to result in the end of that consciousness. If the brain in your body in the dream world generates consciousness, then consciousness cannot be “tied” or “fixed” to a brain. If a brain in a dream world can generate it, then so could many other things, such as other brains in other dream worlds.

The simple fact that it’s possible to be conscious in a dream world while dreaming makes it impossible to state that the brain on Earth generates consciousness. The fact that one is conscious in the dream world must mean that either a brain is unnecessary to generate consciousness, or that there are multiple brains in multiple levels of reality that consciousness can move between.

In either case, materialism is untenable.

This apparent paradox can be resolved in an instant, simply by realising that it is consciousness that is the prima material and fundamental basis of reality. You are not your body, you are consciousness – and, as consciousness, you can travel between worlds. In fact, all worlds are merely dreams, just patterns of perception – as the Buddhists have long known.

Because of all this, there’s no reason to think that the death of the physical body on Earth ought to affect one’s individual consciousness. It’s possible for consciousness to travel between worlds without being bound to a body – dreams are proof of this. Therefore, materialism is untenable, and the fundamental materialist fear – that the death of one’s Earthly body means the extinguishing of one’s consciousness – is unfounded.

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Orderworkers And Chaosworkers

There are many different ways of making an elementary magical division among the people of the world. Some say that there are black magicians and white magicians, others say there are lightworkers and shadow-workers. This essay divides the world’s magicians into two basic types on their relation to order: orderworkers and chaosworkers.

The essential distinction is that orderworkers cause change to the world by applying order to chaos, whereas chaosworkers cause change to the world by applying chaos to order. In theory, an orderworker will impose order upon a harmful chaos, whereas a chaosworker will impose chaos upon a harmful order, although this need not always be the case.

An example of an orderworker would be a doctor who prescribes a medicine that gets rid of a disease. Such a person would recognise that the physical body before them is in a state of disorder, and their diagnosis and prescription is an attempt to apply order to reduce the suffering that the disorder was causing the patient.

A cleaner is another example of an orderworker. They take something that has become disorderly on account of use, and apply order to to it to make reusable for other people. They apply order with mops and vacuums in much the same way that a surgeon does with a scalpel – perhaps with less precision, but the action is the same on a metaphysical level.

Another example would be a Police officer or security guard. Their remit is to keep the peace or to prevent things from being stolen, which means that they have to impose order upon the various criminal elements out there. They apply order in the form of preventing outside elements from disrupting the status quo.

It can be seen from this that being an orderworker does not imply any moral superiority to a chaosworker or even any higher social rank, as order and chaos are on an entirely separate axis to good and evil. It’s simply a descriptor of someone who applies order to achieving their goals.

Chaosworkers introduce chaos into order. This requires some elaboration because many people automatically assume that order is a good thing and that chaos is a bad thing, and that anyone fitting the label “chaosworker” must be a destructive and malevolent force. This is true to an extent, but there are major ways in which it is not true at all.

An excess of order can be suffocating. It’s easy to imagine order as a straight line – in this sense, an excess of order could be like a prison cell that confined a person to a limited space.

An excess of order can also be sterile. A fertile ground for growth requires a variety of components that can interact with each other as necessary. An excess of order will produce a desert; such an environment requires the addition of chaos in the form of water before it can become fertile.

A chaosworker, then, is someone who releases someone else from bonds that imprison them, or who provides a form of novelty that serves to fertilise the mind of those who encounter it.

The most common examples of chaosworkers are the bartenders and musicians that one would encounter in a city’s entertainment area. After a hard day of work, most people have built up an excess of order in their minds. They have become excessively conditioned, and as such risk becoming entrapped by their thoughts. These people have a need to unwind.

Such an excessively conditioned person is at risk of becoming aggressive if they cannot get a chaosworker to help them relax. Bartenders and musicians are here in the same category as cannabis dealers, sportsmen and comedians. In applying chaos to people’s minds, these people break down harmful order and help them find joy and contentment.

Prostitutes are also chaosworkers, because they take a powerful instinct and work to dissipate it into something harmless. This chaos work serves to prevent rapes, suicides and other expressions of sexual frustration. Soldiers are another kind of chaosworker, in that they work to blow things up and to kill people. They break down the harmful order that is the enemy command and control structure.

The orderworker/chaosworker distinction explains why there is a distinction between jobs such as Police (whose warrant is to keep the peace) and the Army (whose remit is to fuck things up). It’s a similar distinction to how non fiction exists to to inform, while fiction exists to remove ignorance.

Note that neither implies moral superiority. Although it’s certainly true that an orderworker will feel a kind of disgust at an excess of chaos, so too will a chaosworker feel disgust at an excess of order. As far as everyone else is concerned, the best of the two is whoever can best help with the current problem. A man with a broken arm needs an orderworker; a man with a neurotic obsession needs a chaosworker.

Orderworkers and chaosworkers are just as valuable as each other, because the transitory nature of all Earthly phenomena mean that sometimes it’s the yin that is ascendant, and sometimes the yang. This means that sometimes it’s chaos that is the greater problem (which requires an orderworker) and sometimes it’s order (which requires a chaosworker). The same person might even have to do both.

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When The Last Boomer Dies, God Will Return To Earth

The Boomer is an utterly Godless creature. Having completely forsaken divine guidance and surrendered to ego, it lives a life of pure narcissism, driven only by instinct, lurching from one impulse-fuelled drama to the next. However, there is always a resurgent spark of yang everytime yin appears triumphant. When the last Boomer perishes, God will return to Earth.

The Boomers are a deeply damaged generation, in two major ways.

Men who spend several years in mortal combat, as the parents of the Boomers did, almost inevitably end up with warped attitudes to violence, abuse and mental health. This isn’t to blame that generation – this is simply pointing out a psychological fact by way of explanation. When you add large amounts of alcohol to this mix, in lieu of an actual mental health system, you end up with a parenting style that doesn’t lead to healthy offspring.

Many returning veterans became alcoholics to deal with the trauma of surviving combat and the deprivations of war. Many others became emotionally distant. A great number found that a screaming child brought them straight back to the screams of the wounded on the battlefield, and this brought with it bursts of adrenaline – hardly the right mindset to be raising children with.

For Boomer children, it was common to only see one’s father when completely pissed after work. When they did interact with fathers, it was often with damaged, broken men who behaved unpredictably. Coming to one’s parent with a problem was often met with a “Fucking harden up!”, and causing problems frequently led to the bash. What the Boomers learned from this was to put themselves first, always, because the world was a terrible and dangerous place.

However, World Wars One and Two did a lot more damage than merely causing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to millions of veterans who would then go on to neglect and abuse their children. It also demolished their belief in God.

In the lead up to, and during, World War One, people on all sides were told that their nation’s participation in the war was the Will of God, and that God wanted them to go and fight in Europe. This severely weakened the belief that most Westerners had in God. World War Two destroyed it. By the end of World War Two it was widely believed that the very idea of God was for weaklings, and was just a trick to sucker people into doing the priest’s bidding.

Consequently, the Boomers were raised in an unprecedented absence of spirituality and spiritual sentiment.

This combination of self-centredness and godlessness led to a narcissism that had never previously been seen. This monstrous egotism has pushed the world into an extremely precarious state, with numerous dangers that pose existential risks to the human species. Not only is the environmental and military situation precarious, but the ideological climate is conducive to fanaticism.

Generation X is aware that the selfishness of the Boomers is far from normal. We’ve seen our grandparents’ generation, who were entirely different. Despite the hardships they themselves had endured, they were kind, thoughtful, other-focused: the anti-Boomers. Some of us can even remember our grandparents saying that there was something wrong with the whole Boomer generation, that they must have been spoiled or left in front of the television too long.

Generation X, as described in Fight Club, has faced a different dilemma. With a parental generation so self-centred as to be all but absent, and a grandparental generation mostly shuffled off this plane of existence, our Great War is a spiritual war. We have problems such as finding gratitude for what we have when we know that our parents had it so much better. We must look for meaning in a dying culture.

Many people like to act as if God was an unnecessary thing altogether, and that an absence of belief in God had no meaningful effect on a person’s behaviour. The reality is that, absent a belief in God, an individual will inevitably behave as if they were an animal, driven only by biological concerns for resource acquisition, social dominance, shitting, pissing and sex. This causes tremendous suffering to all.

The first Boomers were born in the mid-40s, and the last ones in the early 1960s. This means that the oldest Boomers are already in their mid-70s, and that means that they’re about to start dying off in droves. Right now, Boomers are in complete control of the political, economic and cultural agenda, but their impending mass retirement means that they will cede all of this to their offspring over the next fifteen years.

The death of the last Boomer will be as the bursting of a great dam, one that held back the flood of a new spiritual age. With no more Boomers to trash the planet in search of an ever-comfier retirement, Generation X and the Millennials will be able to build a world that focused on the cessation of suffering. This we shall achieve through a great spiritual renaissance.

Category: shamanism