On aliens and consciousness

It is probably safe to assume that ten thousand years ago, when humans hadn't yet developed any writing systems and, presumably, were not too philosophically sophisticated, concepts such as consciousness or mind hadn't even occurred to them. Imagine that at that time in human (pre-) history a group a highly evolved, super-intelligent, science-loving alien researchers had visited the Earth and studied all there was to study about humans. They cracked our genome and understood how it worked, not roughly as we currently do, but exactly, as a computer programmer knows how a program works. They did the same with brain function, to the extent that they could create accurate computer simulations of the activity of the brain. The aliens quickly learned the languages spoken by the human communities they were studying and enjoyed socialising with them and learning about their culture.

You get the picture, right? And now let's get to the point. The striking thing about this story is that when our extraterrestrial friends went back to their distant planet thinking that their understanding of humans was complete, they had missed something of the utmost importance: consciousness. The aliens hadn't realised that some of the brain activity of those endearing creatures generated subjective experience or, to use a more unequivocal term, qualia. This wasn't due to a careless mistake; nobody skipped the consciousness item in the checklist. There simply wasn't such an item. These aliens didn't have subjective experience themselves and had never heard about anything remotely similar. Why would they look for it? Moreover, there was nothing in the behaviour of humans that pointed to it, nothing unaccounted for. They already had a full and satisfactory explanation of all the phenomena they could observe in humans. And yet, consciousness not only exists, but is the most astonishing thing there is. Isn't it remarkable that these incredibly developed and knowledgeable aliens didn't have any reason to suspect its existence?

Let's now fast-forward several thousand years to the present time. The aliens decide to come back to our planet and find out how we're getting on. They're happy about our technological progress and are delighted that human culture has grown so varied and rich; that'll give them something to keep themselves entertained for a while. They devour all the information they can lay their hands on: all of Wikipedia, entire libraries, etc. They find some of our beliefs amusing, but they don't have any difficulty explaining them. They understand why people believe in gods, demons and homeopathy. They understand what we mean when we talk about beauty and morality. But there's an idea they're having a hard time with, which is, of course, consciousness. Not only do they struggle to explain why we believe in it; they don't even know what we mean by it! They talk to some philosophers that specialise in the field of consciousness and that only makes things worse. They have a coffee with David Chalmers, a philosophical hero of mine, who, failing miserably in trying to make them understand what consciousness means, concludes that these aliens must be philosophical zombies, i.e. they do not have subjective experience. The aliens then go on to meet with Daniel Dennet, Paul and Pat Churchland and Susan Blackmore, who are thrilled to talk to this enlightened beings who believe, as they do, that consciousness must be some kind of illusion, but their attempts to explain to the aliens what consciousness means are a complete failure.

The aliens, dejected, conclude that consciousness must be a bug in the software run by the human brain, although a unique one. They had previously explained superstition and religion as bugs, but at least they could understand what the concepts involved in them (luck, god, fate, morality, heaven, soul, etc.) meant. In the case of consciousness, however, they cannot even begin to understand the meaning of that alleged illusion, and nobody can explain it to them. The funny thing is that even people who, like Dan Dennet, believe that consciousness is an illusion and that the very concept of qualia doesn't make sense, know perfectly well what qualia are, yet they can't make our aliens understand it because they (qualia) don't exist. That is some serious bug.

As you might have gathered, I think that the existence of qualia is perfectly obvious, and that the only reason why some people are committed to the view that they must be an illusion (albeit one which nobody has a clue how to explain) is their having faith in a materialistic world view. But what I actually wanted to say in this blog post is not that consciousness exists; I'm taking that for granted. What fascinates me is the possibility that, in the same way these fictitious super-evolved aliens didn't detect consciousness when they first came to visit us, and couldn't understand it when they found out about it several thousand years later, there be other kinds of stuff (for lack of a better word) which, being as real and meaningful as consciousness, we are fundamentally unable to detect, let alone comprehend. We perhaps observe some of the effects that kind of stuff had on the kinds of stuff that we do know about, in the same way that the aliens eventually knew about consciousness only because humans told them about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not justifying wacky New Age beliefs. I'm just saying that it is plausible that there is much more to reality than what we are able to know. What that might be, I don't know — you figure that one out yourself — but I would hope it would somehow make the universe a better place, just as consciousness does.

Appendix

Two alternative outcomes of the research programme conducted by the aliens:

1. On their first visit to planet Earth they notice that some of the neural activity in the brain of humans doesn't quite conform to physical laws and they hypothesise the existence of some hitherto unknown kind of "stuff" which they can only infer by its effects on the workings of the human brain. Seeking to gain some insight into the problem, they try discussing it with the most intelligent humans they could find, but to no avail, as the latter, being completely incapable of grasping the concept of "physical laws" with their prehistoric minds, can't even begin to understand what the aliens are talking about. In their second visit they learn about consciousness and, although not being able to understand what it means, they recognise that it probably is what's causing the abnormalities they'd observed in the neural activity of the brain.

2. The aliens are conscious, understand consciousness, and have the means to detect it, as they indeed do on their first visit. On their second visit they congratulate David Chalmers for being on the right track and reveal to him what consciousness is and how it works. Chalmers, clever as he is, can't get to grips with some of the fundamental concepts the aliens use in order to explain consciousness, so he officially declares the cognitive closure of the human mind on the hard problem of consciousness, sets off for India and becomes a famous mystic poet, a kind of Australian Rumi.

Ana

Ana was my friend Bea's cousin and one of her best friends. A twenty-four-year-old bright and beautiful girl. An only child. A blood clot in her brain sent her into a coma, and then, refusing to respond to drugs and being inaccessible through surgical means, killed her just a few hours ago. I'd never met her, but Bea had told me countless stories about her. She loved her with all her heart, of which she is now left to pick up the pieces and glue them back together. I'd also seen many pictures of her; one of them, a photobooth shot of the two of them together, smiling innocently, always displayed in Bea's purse. She was very keen that we should meet — we would like each other and get along. We never had the chance. Well, we did eventually, yesterday, but all I could meet was her dead body behind a window.

When I learnt that she'd died, after my share of pillow punching I opened my bedroom window and leaned out looking at the few stars that were visible in the urban sky. I tried saying "God". Awkward. Fairy tale. Still, the question came to my lips, "God, should I be grateful?" I tried it in Spanish too: "Dios, ¿debería estar agradecido?" Even though I doubt the existence of the addressee, the question was genuine: if this is what things are like, if best friends die when you need them, if parents can lose their only child, if a young girl can one day be busy thinking about her studies, friends, plans for the future, boyfriends, and be in an irreversible coma the next day, should I still be grateful for life?

I spent some time in the funeral parlour looking at her, mentally repeating her name, recalling all those endearing things Bea had told me about her and how pretty she looked in the photographs I'd seen, wondering what kind of friendship we could have had if we'd been given the chance. That was the most sacred thing I could think of doing, and the situation called for something sacred. Even though her parents are not believers, there was a crucifix standing at the head of the coffin. Would I be able to remember the Lord's Prayer or the Hail Mary? Would it be comforting to recite them? Yes, I was able to remember them. No, it wasn't comforting. I can try to suspend my disbelief for a while, I can look for solace in a heavenly father and a virgin mother. I'm not, however, willing to call myself or anyone else a sinner and beg for mercy. If God exists I'm sure he wouldn't want me to do that.

This evening I drove Bea and a cousin of hers to the crematorium, which, for some reason, was in a small town some forty miles away. It was closed when we got there an hour before the scheduled time. It was dark, it had rained, it was in the middle of nowhere, and we had to drive several miles to find a place where we could have a coffee to kill some time and keep ourselves warm. That gives you an idea of the mood before what we expected would be some kind of ceremony. We then got back to the crematorium and, after being introduced to her parents and Bea's mum, I realised that I was going to be one of the only six people that would be with Ana in her last moments of bodily existence. I felt slightly inadequate and hoped her parents wouldn't mind me being there. We were ushered from the hall into a small room with two benches that were just about big enough for the six of us. Through a window — again, glass between the dead and the living — we saw two men open the coffin so that we could have a last glimpse of Ana. It was then literally a matter of seconds before the coffin was inside the oven and the curtains were drawn inviting us to leave. No prayers, no speeches. Not a single word. The whole process since we got to the crematorium didn't take more than three minutes. It isn't difficult to see why Bea felt cheated. Both Bea and Ana deserved better than that. I'm not sure what, but anything would've been better. The whole thing was so dreary. Dreary as death I suppose.

I didn't mention it to Bea and her cousin, but as we drove back home in silence I couldn't help but comparing Ana's sterile farewell to the cremations in the burning ghats by the Ganges in Varanasi — wood, fire, smoke, crowds of people, ashes, water, boats, garlands, floating oil lamps — and of burials in small villages in Spain — a small procession, hymns, old women dressed in black, the village priest, people chatting outside the cemetery, flowers, prayers, incense, quiet weeping. Not being a Hindu or a Christian, I'd much rather mourn someone's departure in any those ways. Anyway, does it matter?

...

I'm still constantly thinking of Ana, that friend I never met, and I dare to hope that she knows.

The present moment

This is what best-selling author Eckhart Tolle has to say about the "present moment", starting with the more ordinary claims and building up to full-blown mysticism:

Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do.

The Power of Now, page 20

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

ibid, page 35

The present moment holds the key to liberation.

ibid, page 23

As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggledissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out of present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of
quality, care, and love — even the most simple action.

ibid, page 68

When you dissolve psychological time through intense present-moment awareness, you become conscious of the Unmanifested both directly and indirectly.

ibid, pages 133-4

And it's not just Eckhart Tolle. "Being in the present moment" is held by most spiritual schools and teachers as one of the most important principles of spiritual development. And I just don't get it. Well, I do and I don't.

First of all, what do they mean when they say "being in the present moment"? I mean, how could I live in any other moment? I lived in the past, but that was the present moment when it happened, and and will hopefully live in the future for yet a few more decades, but I'll have to wait for the future to become present for me to actually live in it. Whatever you do, you do it in the present moment. Are these spiritual teachers asking me to do what I, by virtue of existing in this universe and being subject to its physical laws, cannot help doing anyway? They might well be; that would be more sensible than hundreds of other things spiritual teachers have asked people to do. But what else could they mean by "being in the present moment"?

We are told to bring our awareness to the present moment, but when they tell us how to do that we realise that, generally speaking, what they are asking us to do is to pay attention to mental phenomena as they arise in the present moment. Once again, how could we possibly bring our attention to mental phenomena that arise in the past or the future? If we can pay attention to them, it is because they are happening, and things can only be happening now. So it seems that what they want us to do is simply pay attention to mental phenomena, to whatever arises in our consciousness. But what else could we pay attention to? Doesn't everything we focus our attention on present itself to us as a content of consciousness? I cannot focus my attention on the book lying on my desk in itself, only on my perception of it. They seem to be asking us to just pay attention, but one cannot just pay attention. We have to decide what to pay attention to. Sounds? Physical sensations? Emotions? The song stuck in your head? The feeling of wanting to scratch your thigh? Random thoughts? Mantras? Sexual fantasies? The unexpected memories of a trip you went on many years ago? The next post you're going to write on your blog? The geometry of the room? When spiritual teachers ask us to stay in the present moment, at least when they are talking about meditation, usually what they are really asking us to do is to, of all the mental phenomena we could pay attention to, stick to those which don't have any clear relation to the past or the future. If you pay attention to the itch in your nose, you're on the fast track to liberation. You can also pay attention to feelings and thoughts, but the moment they are about something that happened in the past of in the future — which is to say, the moment they are connected with things that are important in one's life, which always involve past and/or future — they cease to be an appropriate object of meditation. They distract us from the glorious, eternal, all-encompassing, non-dual present moment, in which there's only room for non-conceptual, spontaneous, impermanent, immediately felt, i.e. meaningless, events, like the transcendent itch in your nose.

After this cynical outburst I must admit that I can see the logic in restricting our attentional efforts while meditating to simple events like physical sensations, though not because they are more in the present moment — and therefore more valuable than any other contents of consciousness — but because it's easier that way. What I see much more nonsensical problematic is the extrapolation of the anti-past and future philosophy to life in general. The usual rhetoric goes something like this:

The past is already gone, gone for good, so there's no point in clinging to it. The future is not here yet, and you don't even know whether it will ever come — every moment could be you last. Past and future are illusory. There's no point in fretting about them. Only the present exists, and you should give your full attention to it. Live in the here and now, and you'll live creative and spontaneously. The present moment is perfect in itself, it doesn't need the past or the future to be completely fulfilling.

That is all very well, and I acknowledge that that way of thinking can be helpful sometimes. There are people whose concern about the future (being afraid of it, making plans, etc.) or about the past (missing it, brooding over it) can prevent them from ejoying life. They could do with some here-and-now awareness. The problem comes when living in the here and now is regarded as the single most important principle of spiritual life, the key to enlightenment, as it often is. I've had people literally gape at me in absolute disbelief when I dared to question that present moment awareness was all one needed in order to lead an authentic and fulfulling life. It is considered by many to be the most evident of self-evident truths, and I honestly don't get it.

We exist in time. Any particular moment of our precious human existence only makes sense if we see it as stemming from the past and projecting into the future. Spiritual teachers will encourage you to stay in the present moment by paying full attention to whatever you are doing: walking, eating, thinking, etc., but any of those things only make sense in time. For instance, walking down the stairs is what connects being upstairs — the past — with being downstairs — the future. If, to take another example, you are breathing consciously, you have to be aware, at least implicitly, of what moment of the inhale-pause-exhale-pause cycle you're at. If you inhale for too long, you explode; if you pause for too long, you go blue in the face. The very act of meditation has a beginning and an end in time, which you or somebody else must keep track of, and it is something you do because you've decided it and learnt how to do it — past — and because you expect to obtain some sort of benefit from it — future — although some would say that you don't, that you do it just because, but even they know that that's not true.

Going to a retreat with a beginning and an end date and scheduled meditation sessions; reading a book on enlightenment that lasts for however many pages, in the accurately timed slot between underground stations A and B, on weekdays only; commiting to a lifelong (or even many-lives-long, according to some) spiritual path. It seems paradoxical, to say the least, that one might do all these necessarily time-bound things in order to learn how to forget about past and future and focus solely on the present moment. Fortunately, our brains, evolved over millions of years to enable us to deal with the real world, will keep bringing us back to our goal and future-oriented mundane concerns, no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves that the future is some kind of distracting illusion.

And you know what? Despite all I've said so far, I actually think that being as fully as you can in the here and now, unconcerned with past or future, even completely losing all sense of time, can be a liberating, inspiring, mystical, comforting, or simply enjoyable thing to experience from time to time, even daily if you're really into it. But turning that into an absolute, into the highest spiritual good, the key to liberation? I'm sorry, I must be very thick, but I don't get it.

I'm back. Or am I?

It's been seven months since my last post. I'm not quite sure why all of a sudden I didn't feel like writing any more. Was it because of my meagre readership? Did I run out of things to say? A bit of both, I suppose, but there is a more personally meaningful reason. In the last months there have been quite a few topics I thought I could write about, but always thought, "Why keep writing about this stuff?" Perhaps "sceptical spirituality" is not something I identify with so much any more. It feels somehow wrong to describe myself as a sceptic. I'm just reasonable. I'm sceptical only in relation to unreasonable beliefs, but I'm not sceptical as a person. (That's an awkward way of expressing it, but you get my point.)

A few weeks ago I met a girl that claimed to be a medium. She also believed that everything was vibration, and that the table across which she kept casually brushing against me was made up of consciousness. You could say I was sceptical about her beliefs — which is a polite way of saying I thought it was all a load of BS — but that's not because "I am a sceptic", but because she's a nutcase. You see what I mean? I don't want to define myself around the fact that other people believe in strange things. It is them who are gullible, not me who is "a sceptic".

And then comes the "spirituality" bit of "sceptical spirituality". Do I still believe in spirituality? Does it mean anything real at all? As I see it, once you discard unfounded assumptions, appeals to authority, revealed truths, wishful thinking, false centainties, fairy-tale cosmologies and all the whacky stuff, spirituality is reduced to becomes existentialism. (Provisional definition of existentialism: You, the world, life, death, meaning, absurdity, hope, despair. Now deal with that.)

Despite what I've just said, I'm still attracted to spirituality and religion, even if I don't believe a word of it; and I'm very much inspired by the sceptical / secular humanist movement. So perhaps "Scepticual Spirituality" should remain the name of this blog after all. A different matter is whether I will write any more posts. We will see.

This mess is here to stay

There are times — which, for some reason, tend to occur when I'm lying in bed and it's dark, particularly between 5 and 9 in the afternoon — when the possibility of ceasing to exist — i.e. dying and there not being an afterlife — comes to my mind in a particularly vivid and persistent manner, not surprisingly making me rather gloomy and distressed. I call it a "possibility" partly because I don't want to give up hope, and partly because, even from a strictly scientific viewpoint, nobody can be sure that death is the end. The other "possibility", however, seems less and less plausible.

I'm not one of those lucky people that say they don't care that they won't exist any more after they die. "Once you've died you won't be there to be depressed about it, so what's there to worry about?" As if not suffering was all there is to it. The problem is precisely "not being there"! How could I ever be okay with that? It somehow seems that we're expected to be "mature" and have come to terms with it, but I can't help but think of death — if it really is the end — as the greatest unjustice, the cruelest joke.

The other day I was on my lunch break at work, looking forward to a quiet twenty minutes eating my meal and browsing through some of the free newspapers that were lying around. In fact I had decided to take my lunch break earlier than usual so that I could be on my own. Less than five minutes into the break I was sharing my table with a group of five of six people that I know only vaguely with whom I was supposed to have some sort of interaction. That was bad in itself, but then one of them took centre stage when he began recounting ready-made anecdotes selected from the last edition of the Darwin Awards, which are given to people that die for their own misjudgement or incompetence in a stupid and supposedly comical way. "They died when they fell off the roof of a house after having made love on top of it. Hehehe! And then this other woman had her head crushed by a lift when she was peering through the shaft. Hahaha!" I wasn't in a position to speak my mind, but I was positively despising this guy and the moron that answered back with equally tasteful and witty jokes. I don't want to become a self-righteous prig — I must confess that I smiled when I read some of things in the Wikipedia entry on the Darwin Awards — but, I'm sorry, death is not funny. At least not the real death of a real person.

The kind of angst I was talking about resembles the feeling I get with some nightmares. "How the hell did I get into this mess? Something isn't quite right here." Sometimes that strange unease resolves into the realisation that I was only dreaming, whether or not I then wake up. And then I get a feeling that says, "Phew! That was too absurd to be true. Thank God for real life, so realiable and so normal." But there are other times when that feeling is stickier and lingers on even after I've woken up. Knowing as I do that it is harmless, temporary and probably meaningless, it is an interesting thing to experience and observe. By contrast, the I-don't-want-to-die angst is all too meaningful, and it really is no fun. It'll go away — and come back at some point —, of course it will, but not because I realise the mess I was in was only a dream. This mess is here to stay.

Conversations with God

(18/06/09 Note: I've sometimes felt uncomfortable remembering the spiteful tone of this post, but for honesty's sake I've decided to leave it as it is. It would be great to be all-loving and compassionate — or would it? — but I'm not. So, ladies and gentemen, this is me, pissed off.)

A few years ago I bought Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsh, read the first few chapters and didn't find it particularly inspiring, so, as I often do, I literally shelved it. Some weeks ago I decided to give it another go — it is often regarded as a modern spiritual classic after all — but this time in audio-book format. I listened to the whole book and also to books two and three. My verdict? An outrageous pile of crap.

If you're not familiar with it, the book is written, as it name implies, as a conversation between the author and God. That is one of the first problems I have with it: the guy really thinks he was taking dictation from God. That in itself would be enough to chuck the book in the bin, but audio-books demand so little effort on the part of the listener that I carried on anyway. It really isn't worth going into in much detail, but let me just present some of the most pathetic highlights of the book.

On page 44 of the first book God says that believing in him produces "unlimited potential". After some discussion the author mentions "the question of the feeble, the infirm, the handicapped, those who are limited", to which God retorts:

Do you think they are limited, as you put it, not of their choice? Do you imagine that a human soul encounters life challenges -- whatever they may be -- by accident? Is this your imagining?

ibid, page 45

You think that is outrageous? You haven't heard anything yet. (The author's words are in red.)

All illness is created first in the mind.

How can that be? What of conditions contracted from another? Colds -- or, for that matter, AIDS?

Nothing occurs in your life — nothing — which is not first a thought. Thoughts are like magnets, drawing effects to you. The thought may not always be obvious, and thus clearly causative, as in, "I'm going to contract a terrible disease." The thought may be (and usually is) far more subtle that that. ("I am not worthy to live.") ("My life is always a mess.") ("I am a loser.") ("God is going to punish me.") ("I am sick and tired of my life!") [The repetitive use of parentheses is in the original.]

ibid, page 188

So now you know. People suffering from AIDS were infected because they thought they weren't worthy to live. Can you stomach some more of this crap?

And if you've ever taken alcohol into your body, you have very little will to live.

I drink very moderately.

The body was not meant to intake alcohol. It impairs the mind.

[...]

But even some medicines contain alcohol!

I have no control over what you call medicine. I'll stay with my statement.

ibid, pages 191-192

Driking implies having very little will to live. Thinking that you're tired of life is the sort of thing that makes you get AIDS. I suppose beer must, therefore, cause AIDS.

Your life work is a statement of Who You Are. If it is not, then why are you doing it?

Do you imagine that you have to?

You don't have to do anything.

[...]

If "woman who works at job [sic] she hates in order to meet responsibilities as she sees them" is Who You Are, then love, love, love your job, for it totally supports your Self image, your Self concept.

[...]

No one does anything he doesnt't want to do.

ibid, page 186

OK, you tell that to the millions of families for whom scavenging their local rubbish dump constitutes their only means of subsistence. What planet does this moron come from? But it can always get worse:

Hitler did nothing wrong. Hitler simply did what he did. [...] The mistakes Hitler made did no harm or damage to those whose deaths he caused. Those souls were released from their earthly bondage, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon.

Conversation with God, Book Two, page 42

Hitler was created by you. He arose out of your Collective Consciousness. [...] The consciousness of separation, segregation, superiority — of "we" versus "they," of "us" and "them" — is what creates the Hitler Experience.

ibid, page 55

Not to put too fine a point on it, what a fucking prick.

Less outrageous highlights include the revelation that "the US Constitution was God inspired. The same balance of powers should be built in to the new world constitution" (ibid, somewhere between pages 204 and 208) and the unqualified endorsement of psychics and healers of any kind.

Why is this kind of crap even published? How does it become a bestseller? This idiot really makes me angry. If I don't mend my ways I'm going to bring some fatal disease upon myself, and then, in a bout of insanity, I'll go and choke him for suggesting that it's all been the consequence of my having negative thoughts, but that won't be wrong anyway, because I will only have liberated him from his earthly bondage.

The hard facts

Spirituality can be regarded, among other things, as a quest for truth. Even in the case of, say, a Roman Catholic that happens to have reached the same conclusions on any matter of importance -- from abortion to homosexuality -- as the Vatican, we can still make out a desire to find the truth. Our RC friends are only working under the inexplicable assumption that what the Church says has to be right, and then think "backwards" to explain why. They got the method wrong, but still what they seek is the truth.

Not every truth (or every piece of nonsense) is relevant from a spiritual perspective. For instance, I have yet to understand why the integrity of the Virgin Mary's hymen before, after and during birth was ever considered of theological significance. Incidentally, it was in order to have that most relevant of truths explained to me by a teacher at school that, at the age of thirteen, I learned about the existence of such a thing as the hymen. It now strikes me as kind of kinky that that poor old sod of a teacher (an Opus Dei numerary, i.e. celibate and tormented) should be concerning himself with the intimate anatomy of no less than the virginal mother of God.

It seems bizarre that so many believers would hold such fairy-tale dogmas dear and attach so much significance to them, and then disregard what science has to say about life, us, the mind, the universe. It is true that some of the most significant aspects of our existence fall beyond the reach of science, but, if truth is what you're after, it makes sense to at least begin with science, which will provide you with the "hardest" facts available. Regardless of what would be desirable, comforting, beautiful, or coherent with any one religion, science will push ahead uncovering the truest truth that we have so far been able to discover.

If I care about science it's not because it makes me feel all good and spiritual, "look at the universe, isn't it amazing" kind of thing. If anything it makes me feel depressed and existential. The hard facts can be hard indeed. It makes me depressed to dwell on the very real possibility that we owe our existence only the combination of blind chance and natural selection. It makes me depressed to realise how utterly insignificant we are in relation to the spatiotemporal scale of the universe. 13.7±0.2 billion years old, at least 93 billion light years across, at least 70 sextillion (7×10^22) stars in the observable universe. In a way that shouldn't mean anything, and it often doesn't, but when it catches you on a gloomy day, believe me, it isn't an uplifting thought.

It also makes me depressed to think of myself as matter, to realise how fragile our bodies are. Nature, that most idealised of concepts, makes no distinction between us and, say, Mycobacterium leprae. We are both living organisms, evolved by mutation and natural selection, that do what we are "programmed" to do. From this point of view health isn't any more "natural" than disease, normal cell reproduction isn't more natural than cancer. Nature doesn't care. The universe doesn't care. It sprouts galaxies, stars and planets, and some of those planets sprout intelligent, conscious, self-aware beings, some of which sprout existential thoughts like these. But the universe doesn't care. Again, not very uplifting.

This is one of the many "spiritual moods" I can be in. Scientificly-inspired nihilism. Some people like it. The other day I heard Susan Blackmore, a renowned sceptic and zen practitioner, in an interview say that she takes comfort in reminding herself that existence is pointless, or something to that effect. Good for her, I thought, but what do the rest of us do? Feel stupid because pointlessness seems a ghastly possibility to us? I was going to say that it'd be nice if she gave us an insight into how pointlessness, meaninglessness, or whatever her actual words were, can be liberating in any way, but then I thought that, whatever the answer, I've probably heard it a million times already, and it hasn't worked for me.

My position is not to believe in whatever appears to give meaning to existence. Of course not. I want to be honest with myself. I'm interested in the truth. If the truth is that the universe is meaningless, just a set of physical laws and heaps of matter and energy, I want to face that reality, not delude myself. I am open to that possibility at least as much as I am open to the contrary. I just don't think I'll ever find it reassuring. By the way, did you know that mildly depressive people have been shown to be more realistic in their self-appraisals than the rest of the people? Corollary: the truth will make you miserable.