IYKTYK Ep12: Knock, Knock, Neo.

If You Know, Then You Know.

As with many great stories, this one contains the sentence, “Well, it all goes back to one night in the 90s when I tried my first ever full acid trip.”

Wake up, Neo…

The Matrix has you… 

Follow the white rabbit.

Knock, knock, Neo.

My eyes rolled back as I tumbled down the rabbit hole.

Knock, knock, Neo.

Fun fact: the boyfriend’s name is Choi. The girlfriend’s name is Dujour. Choi dujour roughly translates from the French as ‘choice of the day’. To you Dujour, my answer is ‘definitely’.

It’s a funny thing - life.  It gets you thinking.  Everyone has heard of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution - survival of the fittest and all that.

To me it is a self-evident truism.  We saw in almost real-time the mutations of the COVID-19 virus as it morphed and changed based on random mutations in the gene sequence.  Some of those mutations were advantageous, so that mutation did well.  Other mutations were inferior, and those mutations quickly died out.

It's not true to say that the virus developed these mutations in order to survive.  Viruses don’t have team meetings to brainstorm good adaptations.  It’s random.  Some things work, and other things don’t.  The things that work outcompete those that don’t.

It always make my eyes roll when people say things like, “the giraffe evolved to have a long neck, so that it could feed on the high leaves.”

That’s not what happened.  A mutation randomly happened somewhere such that one branch of the giraffe predecessors had a longer neck.  They outcompeted their shorter-necked cousins, and then bred the shorter-necked cousins out of existence because they had more food to feed on.  It’s like what happened with COVID-19, only with a complex mammal instead of a strand of DNA.

Charles Darwin was a skilled geologist.  The initial observations that put him on the right track were with regards to geologic formation, and how it would take billions of years to manifest the geologic formations he was analysing.  This flew in the face of the established religious timelines of the day. 

He unravelled the story of geology.  That unravelled the truth of the age of the planet.  With those two things achieved; and seeing parallels between the way geology changed over time, it then dawned on him that perhaps living organisms could evolve over time just like geology does.

Welcome to On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Charles Darwin. Lateral thinker. Challenger of norms. Heretic to some. Legend to others.

The Theory of Evolution has one HUGE blind spot though.  To my mind, that theory completely explains how animals, bacteria, and even viruses evolve over time.  What it doesn’t explain is consciousness.

Let me put it to you this way:  when Darwin came out with his theory, some religious parties accused him of heresy.  How dare he propose that things just randomly evolve?  There must be a grand plan.  There must be an intelligent design.  There must be an overseer.  There must be a God.

And this is where the religions of the day won the battle.  Their views DID address the idea of consciousness.  Darwin’s theory did not.

To put it one way: humans abhor a vacuum of explanation.  Humans perceive their own consciousness, but do not have an inherent explanation.  Religion comes along with super-natural stories to fill in that void. 

Indigenous Australians have Dreamtime stories that describe animal spirits transforming the land.  Indigenous Americans have similar Great Eagle stories.  Abrahamic religions speak of a talking snake, a pregnant virgin, a self-igniting bush, a dude called Moses who parted the Red Sea with a hand gesture, and a rainbow that is a sign from God that he promises to never again flood the Earth like he did to smite the heathens, but save Noah.

The Roman Gods, the Greek Gods, the Viking Gods, the Hindu Gods…..

To my mind, these are all super-natural explanations to provide comfort and remove the anxiety of not knowing what this weird thing called consciousness actual is.

Why it is that so many millions of people are prepared to believe things like the supernatural stories in the Christian Bible, but find the Indigenous Dreamtime stories to be fantasy and fable is beyond me.

To put it another way: if Darwin’s Theory is so overwhelmingly compelling when compared to the concept of religious intelligent design, then why do we find ourselves 150 years later with religions that have not only continued to exist, but in some cases have flourished?

Why?  Because religions provide a comforting storyline for our consciousness-anxiety.  All that they ask is that you have FAITH.

Rene Descartes famously said “I think, therefore I am.”  You know it has to be a cool quote, because some dudes even say it in Latin, “Cogito, ergo sum.”

Rene Descartes. The father of Cartesianism. My personal hero.

It's a home-run, six and out-of-the-park kinda statement.  Let me talk you through it.

I have a consciousness.  I am thinking words in my head before I type them into my keyboard. 

But am I ABSOLUTELY SURE that the keyboard exists?  Am I ABSOUTELY SURE that you exist as a reader, separately from me?

Let’s examine three possibilities:

1.  I have a consciousness.  You have a consciousness.  Everyone on the planet has a consciousness. 

2.  I have a consciousness, and you are all illusions in my consciousness.  I am the only consciousness that exists.

3.  I DON’T have a consciousness.  No-one has a consciousness. I am being TRICKED into thinking that I have a consciousness.  But if this is the case, then the fact that I can be tricked, must mean that I exist in the first place in order to be tricked.  So, I think, therefore I am.

Note that Descartes proves that the third possibility is self defeating. In doing so, he also proves that a fourth possibility - that none of us have a consciousness is also self-defeated.

With only the first two possibilities left, the only fact in common is that I exist.  You lot may or may not exist.  My keyboard may or may not exist.  But I am sure that I exist.

One interesting thought is to further examine Descartes first possibility:  that everyone has a consciousness.

Where does consciousness exist?  Where does it start and end? 

I’ve met dogs with definite personalities.  They clearly demonstrate happiness, sadness, even guilt. 

I once co-owned a pet goat that was the most empathetic creature I have ever encountered.  He would absolutely reflect back to me whatever emotion I put out to him.  When I was happy, he was happy.  When I was excited, he was excited.  When I was anxious, he was anxious.

This is me with Gruffy the Goat. Gruffy was (and still is) hands down the most empathetic creature I have ever had the pleasure of hanging out with. He could read my emotions like a book and empathise with me. Are you telling me that Gruffy doesn’t have a consciousness? Descartes first possibility says he does. Descartes second possibility says he doesn’t. And my heart? My heart says he does.

I’ve also co-owned chickens that had clear personalities.

So where does it start and end?  Do you need a brain to have a personality?  Do worms have personalities?  Do bacteria and viruses have personalities?  Does having a personality necessitate having a consciousness or vice versa?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, and I never can.  Because they are predicated on Descartes first option being fully correct, and I have no way to prove that.

The only undeniable truth of Descartes analysis is that I think, therefore I am.  I must exist.

Cypher. You shouldn’t trust him, but he does make some good points.

In The Matrix movie, after Cypher realises that he is living in an illusionary reality, he says, “You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist.  I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.  After nine years, you know what I realise?  Ignorance is bliss.”

Cypher knew at that point that the world he was perceiving was actually an illusion.  A trick.  But he is also sure that he exists in a grounded reality.  He understands the implications of Descartes three possibilities.

If The Matrix is not studied in philosophy class, then it should be.  It is quite simply the finest movie ever made.  Philosophically, cinematically, fashion, all of it. Brilliant. Just Brilliant. 

It's a shame the sequels couldn’t follow up on the hype of the original.  But when your opening salvo blows people’s minds to the point that they start to question and indeed change their views on religion and reality, then what you have is an act that is very, very hard to follow.

So where do I sit in the whole intelligent design / evolutionary / Cartesianism Venn diagram?

Well, it all goes back to one night in the 90s when I tried my first ever full acid trip.

I’d had half-trips before.  At the time I enjoyed them.  Nowadays, all hallucinogenics terrify me.  But that’s another story.

I was living in Ada St, North Beach at the time.  I shared the house with two flatmates, and we had invited two other friends over for the night.  One of them was an experienced acid-taker.  We thought it prudent to have one around.  I vividly remember the words Julie said as soon as we all simul-dropped in the kitchen - “See you on the other side….”

It would be a lovely story to say that we all had an exciting adventure together.  However, that would be entirely untrue.

What I am about to describe to you is my vivid recollection of the visions I experienced while I was on the trip. 

If you have read some of my stories before, you could be forgiven for thinking that I make this stuff up.  I simply have too many clear recollections from my drug-fuelled days in the 90s for some people to find them plausible.  I have no explanation for how I have this recall.  But recall them I do.

I remember Julie telling us that they take a while to kick in.  We hung out in the kitchen chatting away, constantly saying to each other, “Do you feel anything yet?”

Then it hit.  Man, did it hit.

I stopped being Paul.  I just stopped………. being.  There was no house on Ada St, North Beach.  There was no Australia.  There was no planet Earth.

I was a sphere of white energy with white sparks zapping out of me.  The background was black void space.

I was self-aware.  I knew I was looking out of the eyes of my own sphere of energy.  I perceived that “I am here, and others are there.”

But I didn’t have arms to hold out in front of my eyes.  I just had white sparks of energy radiating out in front of me.

I watched as I moved in three-dimensional space.  There were other spheres the same size as me.  Thousands of them.

And then I saw her.  The mother-sphere.

I noticed that occasionally, one of the small spheres would blend into the mother-sphere and its energy would be released into the mother, increasing it in size ever so slightly.  At other times, new spheres would emerge from the mother-sphere, and the mother would decrease in size by a little bit.

I felt at peace with this situation, and I watched on with loving curiosity.  I felt like I was seeing absolute truth for the very first time.

In the morning, I was the last to wake up.  When I opened my eyes, all four of the others were kneeling next to me asking if I was ok.  I assured them that I was.  I found it odd that they were so concerned about me. 

I later discovered that I tripped much harder than the other four, and they had spent a large part of their night making sure I was ok.

And let’s not forget that I was not necessarily realistically manifested in their trips either.  It was the Theory of Relativity on acid.  Literally.

It’s a miracle that we all got out of it unscathed, but at the time I was confused by all the concern.  I was not only fine; I felt like I had had a spiritual awakening.

Newton. He had a brain the size of a planet, and an equation to calculate it.

Are you familiar with Newton’s Fist Law of Thermodynamics?  It’s fine if you aren’t.  Let me summarise it for you.

The law states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed.  It can merely be converted.  The sum of all energy in the entire universe is a fixed unchangeable amount.

For example, when you turn on a light bulb, you are converting electrical energy into light and heat energy.  If you add up the sum total of universal energy before, during and after you turn on the light bulb, then the amount is identical in all cases.

Now let’s just imagine for a moment if the same thing applied to consciousness.  There is a fixed amount of consciousness in the universe.  When you are born, you get a small amount of that global consciousness embodied within you.  When you die, you give it back.  The sum total is always the same.  The only difference is where the allotments of consciousness are at any given moment.

That’s what I got from that trip.

It's an intriguing thought.  So much so that I recall it thirty years later.  And it does resonate with me.

I grew up in a Christian household.  Christianity didn’t gel with me.  The literal interpretation of the bible had too many holes in its story, and the abstract interpretation of the bible seemed to always fall back on the catch-all get-out-of-jail-free response of “you just have to believe.  You just have to have faith.”

For a long time, I described myself as atheist.  Some time ago, I started to describe myself as ‘spiritual, but not religious’.

I now know that there is an exact -ism for the way I feel.  It is called Ietsism.  The etymology comes from the Dutch word ‘iets’, which means ‘something’.

So Ietsism is literally Somethingism.

I believe that there is something out there, and that my consciousness is part of it.  I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know that it is something.

As I write this story, I know that in all likelihood I have at least one of four possible cancers – oesophageal, stomach, colon and peritoneal carcinomatosis.

The first three are most likely treatable.  The last one is not.  It is entirely fatal, and rapidly so.

It will be at least a few weeks, but possibly a month before I know what I have.

It's an unsettling place to be.

There is an aphorism that goes “There are no atheists in foxholes.”

It is attributed to a military chaplain during World War Two, although this is disputed.  What is not disputed is the inherent truth in the statement.

When faced with an existential crisis, we NEED to find a higher plane of existence. There is too much anxiety to think otherwise.

As I sit here waiting for a clear diagnosis on my cancers, I am in the definition of an existential crisis. 

Any of those cancers could kill me.  Peritoneal Carcinomatosis will kill me within four months. 

Take away one month to get the diagnosis, and a last month that is pretty much me lying in bed on morphine, and that means that peritoneal carcinomatosis leaves me with maybe two months of living to go.

And as you may have noticed from the above, I am currently spending a fair few brain-cycles thinking about religion, life, the universe, and everything.

I don’t know all the answers, but I do know two things for sure:  I exist, and there are no atheists in foxholes.

And that may be all any of us can ever know.  Let me highlight to you where reality is about to be.

With recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, we are not far off having computer algorithms that are indistinguishable from conversations with real people.

Similarly with Virtual Reality (VR), we are not far off having virtual experiences that are indistinguishable from true three-dimensional reality.

Now put those two things together.  Imagine a world where you absolutely cannot distinguish between real reality and virtual reality.  No matter which one you are in, you will never be able to convince yourself of which is which.  Virtual becomes real, and real becomes virtual. 

It won’t be many years before mankind has to face this issue.

I may not live long enough to have to resolve that conundrum.  But you might.

So remember these words:  I think, therefore I am…..and there are no atheists in foxholes.

If you mind isn’t bent enough at this point, then try this:  are you ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that AI and VR haven’t already surpassed your ability to differentiate reality from virtuosity?

Wake up, Neo…

The Matrix has you… 

Follow the white rabbit.

Knock, knock, Neo.

………………..

If you know, then you know…..  Or do you?

Paul.

PS:  to relive the two scenes from The Matrix referenced in this episode, feel free to visit my playlist.