In this quest to move past dualism, it may be useful to examine a few key revolutions that corrected erroneous and sometimes damaging perspectives in the past. I hope to cast dualism in a similar mold: eventually to be abandoned as an embarrassing, destructive, and self-centered phase of adolescent excess.
We’ll consider common elements of past beliefs (flat earth, geocentric, creationist) that most eventually moved beyond, and see that dualism shares many of the same traits of anthropocentrism and missing context.
Past Prevailing Paradigms
We’ll start with Flat Earth beliefs, as touched on in the previous post. In all likelihood, more than one human over the hundreds of thousands of years prior to the agricultural period imagined the sun and moon to be spheres (illumination of lunar phases as a pertinent clue), and assumed the same to be true for Earth. The Greeks convinced themselves that Earth was round, and even estimated its circumference based on shadow lengths at the summer solstice. Astute sailors knew something fishy was afloat well before the voyage of Columbus, based on how ships and land reliably sink below the horizon as distance increases. Yet Flat Earth belief prevailed until recently. Part of the point is that adoption is not monolithic or simultaneous. Most people still had no need for anything but a Flat Earth model. Restricted to a small locale, the larger truth was neither evident nor relevant. That’s what counts for effective mental models. A Flat Earth model is not at all inappropriate, in a limited context. All mental models are incomplete and wrong in some way(s), after all.
Copernicus led the charge in demoting Earth from its central status, which was a profound shock to a culture believing itself to be made in God’s image on an Earth that was the central focus of all creation. Again, the simplest default mental model supports a geocentric view. Never wandering off the planet, Earth is indeed the center of all our activity. The sun, moon and stars certainly appear to wheel around us. Limited context makes the geocentric model not just forgivable, but highly appropriate and perfectly functional. If it’s good enough for newts…
Darwin made huge waves in the world when pointing out that animals evolve into their present, temporary forms, and that humans are no different—as one of many members of the animal clan. Prior to this and since the dawn of agriculture, it seemed obvious that humans outranked all other beings and had little in common with them (somehow overlooking blatant and ubiquitous—even demeaning—anatomical similarities). Effectively operating in modern human cultures was facilitated by this attitude: one could thrive by embracing mastery and justifying any action—no matter how heinous to other life—on the basis of superiority and entitled dominion. It’s perfectly reasonable and logical to disbelieve evolution. The notion that humans were placed as-is in static form distinct from animals is a coherent mental model when applied to our snapshot-lives as long as one does not look too closely. Evolution has been a big adjustment that not everyone yet accepts, but again within a limited context, the shift is unnecessary.
It now galls us that humans are not exempt from the laws that govern the universe and other ecological beings. We bridle at any hint of limitations: speaking of inexhaustible ingenuity, endless growth, expansion into space, and even immortality. Modern mythology regards humans as transcendent beings: the pinnacle of evolution and the whole purpose of the universe—now able to contemplate itself. To be fair, evidence of humans breaking limits is not hard to find, so again this mental model is not illogical—just narrowly/incompletely contextualized.
Ultimate Authority
Countering notions of transcendence, we still must eat, drink, pee, poop, and die (I still need to get onto creating this T-shirt and opening a merch outlet!). Gravity grips all of us, without exception. It’s demeaning to be treated no differently than a rock if finding ourselves over a cliff edge. As an aside, use of the word “demeaning” carries a significant insight: many people derive meaning from the (ultimately erroneous) belief that humans are exempt from the rules of the universe as applied to “mere matter.”
Importantly, our minds (mental models) have no authority over physics. Perhaps that’s the sentence best encapsulating this series, in fact. Our mental models—as products of physics—are powerless over physics: unable to override physical consequences. Any clever actions we take must work within physics, because working against it is impossible. But, just as for the earlier examples of prevalent mental models that were fundamentally wrong, limiting context (including timescale of consideration) allows us to pretend that we (and our culture) are a special exception to the rules that apply everywhere else. One can see the appeal of dualism in this context: something sets us apart, so we concoct a new “substance” like mind or consciousness or soul as a brush-it-under-the-rug lazy “explanation.”
The Pattern
Can we identify some common elements to mental model failures as a way to help in detecting our own blind spots and vulnerabilities?
One adaptively-sensible tendency is to go with the simplest, most obvious model that fits experience—in an inherently limited context. Earth as a flat plane that extends farther than we will ever walk requires little thought and serves well enough. The sun (and stars) moving around Earth is apparent to any observer. Earth is obviously stationary, because surely we would feel motion—as suggested by the kinds of motions we typically experience, in practice (involving bumps and headwinds). Earth orbiting a “stationary” sun is prima facie absurd, given direct observation of the sun’s motion revealing the opposite “truth.” Man (and not woman, by the way) is obviously at the top of the pyramid, because just look around at the copious evidence. Cows don’t own and control us! The point is that all these models are reasonable and effective within limited contexts, even if wrong.
When a cherished model is challenged, we have a habit of applying band-aids before ditching the paradigm: elaborating the mental model to account for perplexing or even embarrassing discrepancies. Ptolemy had his epicycles to explain retrograde motions of planets that inconvenienced the “cleaner” geocentric theory. God made for a facile one-size-fits-all explanation for any anomaly that arose: “that’s just how God made it; far-be-it for us to question or object.”
We also notice a centering pattern to all these past models. Our own experience is centered on our bodies and sensations (ultimately a key motivator of dualistic beliefs). Extending this obvious truth, it is easy to get Earth and Man as the central focus of reality. It is likewise understandable that a toddler would imagine themselves to be the reason for the world. In the process of maturing, we go from the center of the universe to a state somewhat less self-centered, but the question is how far we are able to take this train (varies by individual). Because our window onto the world begins (or terminates?) in our bodies and via our personal experience, it is a struggle to recognize the validity of other experiences—extending far beyond humans or Earthly considerations. The further we get from ourselves (gender, race, age, nationality, species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain, elemental composition, planet, galaxy, or into a multiverse), the more difficult it is to relate.
Notice that the more we learn—the more context we take on—the less special humans become. Does anyone here think we’re done, or might additional demotions be in store? Can we imagine, for instance, that an experience we once attributed to a transcendent state in the magical province of “mind” turns out to be the result of enormously-complex material interactions shaped in feedback over times we do not have the mental capacity to truly appreciate? Food for thought.
Whatever the case, mental models form a crucial interface to the world: one with which we become intimately acquainted. They are familiar, reassuring, and easily mistaken for actual reality. Our direct experience becomes primary and the most trusted, reliable basis for assessing the world—even when the generated models are fundamentally flawed. To make matters more complicated, we model those models as “mind,” which to many becomes the most convincing reality imaginable: the map that makes the world. Our “mind” is almost like an imaginary best friend that no one else can see.
The Flaw
The main flaw in these (flat, geocentric, creationist) examples: missing context (or ignored, avoided context). It’s undetected relationships and dependencies, or ones that don’t easily fit into our limited/distorted mental models and are thus more readily shoved aside. But mostly, I would say that it’s stuff to which we’re oblivious. And that’s okay: it’s to be expected—couldn’t be any other way, really. Our senses and cognitive capacities are limited—as evolutionary products adapted for purposes other than mastering the universe—so that we can’t expect to capture the full context of complex situations. That’s impossible.
Overwhelming Complexity
The universe is hella complex! As an illustration, physics students learn to compute exact solutions to the two-body problem: orbits of two (spherical) bodies about their common center of mass—which turn out to follow perfect conic sections in a Newtonian context. Add a third body and all bets are off. Approximations in the form of perturbation theory are possible for many scenarios, but arbitrary situations have no closed-form mathematical solution, and thus call for numerical step-wise modeling (essentially how the actual universe also does it, by the way). It’s even impossible to predict in general terms whether any given body in a three-body dance will be ejected. Oh, and even the mathematically-exact two-body solution falls to pieces when admitting that General Relativity is the real story: the tidy, fixed conic sections no longer hold, precisely.
Similarly, we can exactly solve the hydrogen atom in a full quantum-mechanical treatment, nailing the energy levels and electron-cloud configuration to high precision. Now step up to helium (two electrons), and we’re lost. Again, approximations and/or numerical modeling can get close enough to confirm experimental results and validate the underlying theoretical framework. But exact solutions are not possible due to limitations in mental/symbolic representation. The only fully accurate representation is the thing itself, as expressed by the universe following its inviolate rules.
The exactly-calculable cases are the simplest of simple situations. We very quickly run out of steam in the face of complexity, often unable to leverage first principles to provide exact accounts even at the molecular level—let alone a cell, organism, or ecological community. Yet, each Herculean effort to build, say, a detailed—albeit necessarily approximate—model for how a protein folds under electromagnetic and quantum influences bears out and validates that the universe appears to obey physics without known exception.
Space Colonization
As I’ve written a number of posts on space fantasies lately (starting here), let’s use space colonization as an example of mental models gone wrong. Try the progression: walking, horseback, carts, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, Moon, space station, Mars, stars, galaxy. Isn’t that just obvious, and oh-so-easy to spell out as a series of words? The path seems clear, and its extrapolation obvious.
Bolstering the case further, men have indeed put footprints on the lunar surface. Individual humans have spent over a year in orbiting space stations. The international space station (ISS) recycles (some) oxygen and water. New space launch capabilities are being explored today, including the very nifty trick of the first stage landing itself back at the launch pad. And let’s not discount a powerfully-suggestive form of “evidence” that roots in our brains exerting a subliminal influence: movies and television shows have provided numerous visionary examples of “realized” space existence. The net effect is so convincing as to make denial of a space-colonizing future seem ludicrous in our twisted culture.
Dose of Reality
Allow more context into the picture and the fantasy becomes less appealing. Space stations barely skim Earth’s surface, enjoying frequent deliveries of air, water, food, fuel, and equipment as well as partial protection from cancer-causing cosmic radiation due to Earth’s magnetosphere (even then, visit duration is deliberately limited for health reasons). The surface of other bodies like the moon, Mars, or asteroids are far more difficult (costlier) to service, and experience more than a hundred-fold increase in harmful radiation compared to Earth’s surface: hello, cancer! Despite the best technology money can buy, only 42% of oxygen is recycled in the ISS, requiring a continuous supply of rocket delivery from the surface at a typical cost of $200M per launch. Thus, the ISS is still strongly tethered to Earth’s environment (to which we are explicitly adapted). Every hour a human spends in space incurs an environmental cost (on Earth!) matching that of about 2,000 hours of a global average citizen. The fastest way to wreck Earth would be to try to leave it. It would be marginally easier to believe space colonization if we first saw condominiums on Mount Everest or the ocean floor—both of which are far more accessible and hospitable than any place off-planet. For that matter, living on an airplane staying aloft 24/7 is cheaper and easier than space habitation, and has about as much point to it!
At the widest scale, modernity has initiated a sixth mass extinction based on rapid depletion of one-time non-renewable resources (primarily from direct activities and not greenhouse gas emission, although that’s plenty bad in itself). In all likelihood, this very recent phenomenon will prove to be a temporary blip rather than a prelude to space. Also on this broadest scale, and bringing us back to dualism: the core flaw in space-fantasy mental models is the conceit that we are separate from the rest of the universe, and therefore can be plopped anywhere and be okay. What this leaves out is, again, context. Earth is our context. We are so thoroughly woven into its ecology as to be inseparable, other than during temporary, expensive, damaging stunts.
Any of us can imagine swimming and breathing underwater indefinitely, or jumping off a skyscraper and into exhilarating flight (both are frequent personal accomplishments in my dreams), or living permanently in space. Yet we die if we try (sooner than we would otherwise). Imaginations are unconstrained by reality, and are thus unreliable. The same is true for mental models in general: the better ones don’t overtly violate physics and contextual constraint, but nothing much stops them from doing so.
Fighting the Urge
When it comes to dualism, just because the mentally-constructed “mind” is thoroughly-convincing and familiar doesn’t mean it’s a reality of its own. The belief shares many traits with previous self-centered “apparent” illusions of existing as physics-exempt, non-evolved, superior beings on a flat plate at the center of the universe. The real story is far more complex—and told by the universe, not fabricated by brains.
We essentially end up as captives of our own cognitive limitations, reluctant to admit anything outside our conceptual capabilities—like overwhelming complexity. Because we are constitutionally unable to imagine the complete story of how physics animates life, the reflexive (but baseless) tendency is to reject that it even can. But that’s on us as a human limitation. The universe is under no obligation to refrain from stacking up arbitrary levels of overwhelming complexity. It does not somehow restrict itself to simple ways we might intuitively grasp on a moment’s reflection. We need to get over ourselves.
A common reaction to this line of argument is to try throwing it back at me: maybe it’s me who lacks imagination or the right answers. Of course I lack sufficient capacity. I have the same model meat-brain as all other humans, after all. As an aside, my use of “meat” in this context offends the dualists (and idealists) by demoting “mind” to a (nutritious) form of matter.
Note that my own meat-brain is not claiming to know how the universe works so much as advocating that we admit our limitations and don’t concoct facile Flat-Earth explanations out of contextual ignorance that might satisfy our impatience, emotional needs, and insistence on arriving at an answer that more comfortably fits in our cramped brain-space. This tendency is especially dangerous when the constructed worldview privileges humans (and mind) in such a way to maintain justification for carrying out acts of superiority—which in fact may be the reason for its pernicious grip: a toxic addiction. The position I advocate is thus to humbly receive the minimal (experimentally validated) foundation that can plausibly account for everything we experience, even if we can’t ourselves connect all the dots. Trust the universe, not our brains. It appears that amazing things can result, even before we existed and even if we’ll never understand.
Next time, we’ll lay out the main metaphysical choices relating to dualism, and I’ll make the pitch for a non-dual materialism.
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Turkish zoologist and fiction author C.M. Kosemen has proposed that interstellar colonization purely for the purpose of long-term redundancy is inevitable (on the scale of centuries) through autonomous probes carrying heavily shielded samples of supercooled bacteria, plants and human embryos, along with the equipment to manufacture industry, housing, an education system and 'nursing machines', while no living things make any transit themselves.
Technical feasibility aside, doesn't it imply some kind of meaninglessness where it doesn't matter whether any space travel even happens at all?
"When it comes to dualism, just because the mentally-constructed “mind” is thoroughly-convincing and familiar doesn’t mean it’s a reality of its own. The belief shares many traits with previous self-centered “apparent” illusions of existing as physics-exempt, non-evolved, superior beings on a flat plate at the center of the universe. The real story is far more complex—and told by the universe, not fabricated by brains."
Good idea to put "mind" in quotes. Mind is just a convenient word for the "something" that can doubt its existence. Then you (Tom) go on about illusions as physics-exempt, etc. etc. Not a problem. However, who in the hell are you to say that the "far more complex" story is "told by the universe, not fabricated by brains?" How arrogant Tom. Even Descartes – who you so despise – didn't go so far as to make a statement of certainty without a lot of preparatory discourse. Fer chrissakes, why do you suppose these old guys were so wordy? What it comes down to is that "something" is doing the doubting. We call it mind as a convenience. As I said before, all the rest is Englightenment drivel. If I accept the body as a "thing" and it is NOT a delusion, the brain seems to be where the thoughts come from. Oops.
@Walter:
I don't want to be inflammatory here, but guess one could argue that the "preparatory discourse" underpinning Tom's "statement of certainty" is physics, i.e. the picture that has been built up of how the universe works based on actual observations of it, as opposed to a private internal verbal discussion held inside the mind (which its seems to me what Descartes' preparatory discourse was). I don't doubt the existence of the "mind" (or the "something" that it is), but I doubt it's claims about anything, especially any claims about its own origin that are made based purely on an internal dialogue with itself, because I think verbal thinking is highly dubious beyond a certain point. I don't trust the mind's wordy analyses (not even my own), because language and words seem to be such a limited (fundamentally flawed?) way to "capture" the universe beyond a certain crude level. Language is suited to a group of hunters planning a hunt together, etc., but not discussions about the whole of reality inside a person's head.
I'll personally take Tom's "arrogance" over Descartes' arrogance any day… but each to their own I guess, and what would I know at the end of the day…
The inner voice/“I” state is a self-imposed state of “separation” from everything else (what it views as “not-I”). Its activation entails setting up a (temporary) dualist framing of reality that is real to the “I”, but only to the “I”. The “I” state doesn’t (can’t?) exist unless this dualist framing of things is overlaid onto reality. But dualism is not real!!! This dualist framing only holds when we are verbally thinking, dividing the world up into categories based on words. That’s why I am highly suspicious of any claims made by the “I” state. It is a state that entails activation of an erroneous framing of reality, in order for it (the “I” state) to exist at all. Anything that it claims to be true is therefore to be taken with a grain of salt.
I think we should be careful to distinguish between the mind and the “I” state. The “I” state is not the whole mind, but the “I” state is very prone to thinking that it alone is the mind, something that I think Descartes fell victim to. The “I” state needs to be kept tamed/controlled. If you can temporarily quieten the inner chatter/verbal thinking, you realise you still exist without it.
The “I” state has a purpose, but it is not to make sense of the whole of reality, which it can’t do because it itself corresponds to an incorrect dualist framing of reality (I/not-I). It needs to accept this fact. It is limited because of what it is.
Just to clarify, when I say “If you can temporarily quieten the inner chatter/verbal thinking, you realise you still exist without it”, the “you” to which I am referring is not the “I” state, but the “you” part of your mind/body that doesn’t “see” itself as separate from anything else, the part of the mind/body that doesn’t resist the notion that it “belongs” to the whole universe rather than just “us”, with no true separation between anything. It “accepts” (doesn’t question) that it is made of the stuff of the universe (“matter”); it doesn’t question anything at all, in fact. The “I” state is likewise made from the inseparable, interacting web of matter that is the universe. It’s just that it is the part of the mind that doesn’t (fully) accept this, and perhaps never can, because to do so fully would perhaps be for it to permanently die/not exist at all.
Perhaps I am being overly “condemning” of the “I” state here though. Perhaps the phenomena of Life and consciousness (which may be inseparably intertwined with one another) are fundamentally based on, or involve embodiment of, a *perceived sense* of separation. Maybe it is necessary for this sense of separation to be perceived as actual reality for Life/consciousness to exist at all, even if isn’t the true reality.
A belief/commitment to being “separate” (and perhaps also of possessing “free will”) may be necessary for an organism to maintain the “will” to live.
Perhaps we modern humans just need to get back to an understanding that a fundamental and necessary feature of life is “complementarity”: we (and all organisms) are simultaneously a “separate whole” and part of a larger system (“the Whole” = Life, the biosphere, the Earth, the universe) that must be maintained in a suitable state for us be able to persist as a whole. We modern humans are just way too heavily weighted towards the “I am separate” and “humans are separate” side of things. We have forgotten that we are a part of something that must not be plundered and degraded without return if we are to exist and persist. We must give as well as take. We must die as well as live.
When I meant preparatory discourse, I meant preparatory discourse. In other words, a lot of words. Tom's base case for his whole career was the same as mine – physics. It still is. However, he has gone off on a wild goose chase and gone down a rabbit hole to boot. You seem to be diving down the same rabbit hole. Hopefully you have already caught the goose.
Your statement: "I don't doubt the existence of the "mind" (or the "something" that it is), but I doubt it's claims about anything, especially any claims about its own origin that are made based purely on an internal dialogue with itself, because I think verbal thinking is highly dubious beyond a certain point."
This is just conflation and confusion. If you can grasp that something is doing the doubting, you still do NOT have to believe anything else it says. In fact, you can continue doubting at every second. The structure – the process – is the focus here. It is not so hard to be eternally self-reflecting.
Tom Murphy thinks he has discovered the truth about agriculture, about the mind, and probably various other things. In fact he calls Descartes a wanker because he doesn't understand set and setting. A little history might be useful here.
There's something off about your belligerence to Murphy in this and other comments. I haven't seen him claim to have discovered anything, just presenting a lot of interesting stuff in an easy-to-understand style. Plenty of people have criticised Descartes. The website has a lot of valuable essays, and as it's evident that you find it irritating, well how many other ways are there for you to spend your time ?
You don't seem to see the bigger picture. Calling my criticisms of crap ideas "belligerence" is just childish. There are very real problems here that need to be addressed. Tom Murphy made a lot of money by working within a corrupt system and has trained other people to work for and keep supporting that same corrupt system. Now he is still trying to keep his hand in the game on social media. He is fair game and provides a foil for my own agenda, which is to break down the corruption and phoniness. Tom knows I am doing this. Sometimes he allows my posts. Sometimes he doesn't. But he reads the ones he doesn't allow on his website, so I get my point across to him at least. If the general public gets to see my criticisms, so much the better. I do the same thing with Nate Hagens on his Great Simplification website and he has the same response. If he feels threatened, he just deletes my comments, just like Tom. Someone has to hold these people to account.
Daniel Quinn's book Ishmael (1992) has become popular and it is very seductive for the uncritical mind. One of the things Tom Murphy focused on is the talking gorilla's contempt for agriculture. I tried reading Ishmael when it first came out over thirty years ago, but It just seemed like crap to me. The idea of agriculture being the reason we are all doomed in our phoney-baloney 21st-century lifestyle has many flaws, not only in its base case but in how the logic is applied.
I am a retired market gardener and I come from over 400 years of peasant farmers. In retirement, I continue to do crop landrace research, and still grow food to give away. I have been dealing with the false concept that agriculture is "bad" since 1970. I have written three books on sustainable agriculture as a solution for the collapse that is now upon us. In short, I know what I am talking about. Growing food by putting the labor in BEFORE the harvest instead of just harvesting is not a bad thing. The bad thing is how the elites have corrupted the social structure over the last 5000 years and used institutionalized violence to gain power and make the world a worse place. Agriculture was around for 5000-7000 years before the elites were able to pervert the structure. So Tom's wholly uncritical acceptance of Ishmael's false idea is a problem.
We are all part of this power structure and cannot escape easily. BUT we can reduce, reuse and recycle (1970). We can reduce our individual input to the minimum and actually audit our energy footprint so that we reduce our impact on the rest of the world. Tom is not doing that. He is waxing eloquently on dangerous subjects and herding the gullible into a false florescence of "making the world better." Part of my job since 1968 is to criticize the false teachers who keep the evil, corrupt system going. Of course I don't get many thanks. Most of the time I just get childish jibes like yours.
Oh boy. Some record-straightening is in order, here, as the situation is being grossly misrepresented (well played). According to the approved/trashed records on my site, I have approved 26 of Walter's comments, and deleted… ONE! That one (submitted twice) was directed at someone else and included the following snark: "…even your pitiful attempts to cast scorn on me. You might want to consider that doubt is the sine qua non of existence. Oops." I don't tend to suppress criticism of me (I can take it; usually angry/misguided), but try to tamp down escalating remarks between commenters. I also sometimes end a tennis match where no new ground is being made. And many times, I let embarrassing comments stand for themselves without my rebuttal: they don't need my help in exposing their colors.
My only other remark in this case echos the Upton Sinclair quote about getting a person to understand something when their livelihood depends on them not understanding it. A person with a life-long (or 400 years, in fact) commitment to agriculture is less likely to tolerate criticism of the practice. Meanwhile, here I am saying: tear science/modernity down. Livelihood be damned! What about my work suggests I want to keep it going?! Somebody's not paying attention, casting further doubt on credibility.
And in full disclosure, I likely *will* terminate this thread here (without bothering to read). Nothing good will come of the response that might ensue. It's okay with me if the *real* suppression starts here. Consider it earned.
Best wishes for the festive week, Tom. Ishmael was my gift to the younger generation mostly, but a few selective elder friends too. I included a short story to give an introduction…apologies if it’s too long.
[It *was* too long: 14 screens on my viewer, which is 14 times bigger than a "long" comment; sorry]
This is all seems undoubtedly true to me. We are but one otherwise unremarkable ingredient in the stew of life. Though, something tells me that this is all building towards a moral conclusion. Possibly something like, "We should value and respect the lives of other creatures as much as we value our own."
Not a bad idea—especially if we want this earth to remain habitable for *us.*
Still, however (assuming that's where this is leading), a question arises: by taking it upon ourselves to extend unrequited altruism toward wild animals, isn't that once again presuming to put humanity in the driver's seat? Assuming a mastery and a superiority, and thus a "noblesse oblige" sort of obligation?
In a certain way—and this is a genuine question—wouldn't the more neutral position be, "We'll extend extra-ordinary munificence towards the mice and rats just as soon as they do the same for us. Until then, let the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."—?
But we *do* have an obligation, courtesy of our big brains. They gave us the capacity to manipulate things – with disastrous consequences over the last ~10,000 years. Humans need to wind their collective neck in and live much more meagre existences. Having such an obligation does not equate to 'mastery' or 'superiority'. It's an 'obligation' to do less – to do nothing, even.
"We'll extend extra-ordinary munificence towards the mice and rats just as soon as they do the same for us. Until then, let the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."
That is human supremacism, believing humans to be 'stronger' or 'better' than other lifeforms. If such a position is likely to lead to the destruction of the living world that enables humans' survival though, it cannot be described as wise, whether it is 'neutral' or not.
This post leaves me wondering and curious about hunter-gatherer/animist cosmology and also thinking about the effect of shifting baselines. Is it possible that a sedentary/stationary domesticated lifestyle would contribute to erroneous beliefs like flat earth and creationism, where basically you’re the epicenter of everything? Like which came first, the (domesticated) chicken or the dualism? It seems like the self centered and static view wouldn’t fit with mobile nomads, though it might depend on how mobile they are…
Definitely true that these outdated views still linger, and in some cases more than that – my first formal exposure to evolution was in college in 2000, as they refused to teach evolution in my Catholic high school. I watched the flat earther documentary and that we are still having to fight a battle over that essentially because an assortment of socially stunted individuals realized they could get attention and fancy themselves rebels by pushing it, says something about our collective maturity, even if most have put that particular belief where it belongs. Perhaps that we’ve cut off assorted heads of the hydra but have yet to strike at the heart (which is why we are now subject to the delusional visions around living in space). So kudos for putting out this effort to do so.
I think every living thing, bar modern humans overly dominated by their “I” state, have an clear understanding embodied within them that “perceived reality” (reality “viewed” from the perspective of the self) is necessary, but there is “another reality” that must simultaneously be taken just as seriously and deferred to without question in the end: true reality, the reality of matter. There is an “outside world” that sustains the existence of the self (through food etc), and without it there is no self at all! It’s just us deluded modern humans that want to claim that our “perceived reality” is in actual fact none other than the true reality. Do we truly believe that the mind can potentially exist without eating??!! Dualist thought just seems more and more like utter madness to me!