Our Deeper Stories
Our Deeper Stories
The book that introduces my Substack and will help it grow.
I’m writing a book—a short one, based on the posts I’ve compiled here so far. Several of us are doing the same thing, and we’ll promote those books on Bookfunnel in a newsletter promotion. You can join us. I write about it here:
with a follow up here
This is open to all non-fiction genres and poetry, and if you think that’s too generalized to be affective, you’re right. We’re solving that problem and with our communities will make Bookfunnel productive for non-fiction newsletters like never before, but we need your participation.
If you’re already on Bookfunnel, you can join us here.
Now, About that Book
The foundation are my articles about the existence of the self. My piece on the simulation hypothesis should work with that as well, with more major edits—that one was in response to another article.
It should also work with my article on absurdists and Star Trek, that might even be my way in. Finally throw in translated perception and Star Wars and we’re ready to go.
Our Deeper Stories
The Illusion of Continuity
There’s nothing to be done.
Or so says the first line of dialog in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
ESTRAGON:
(giving up again).
Nothing to be done.VLADIMIR:
(advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart).
I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle.(He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Estragon.)
So there you are again.ESTRAGON:
Am I?VLADIMIR:
I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
I admire Camus by way of Beckett who adopted Camus’s philosophy and depicted existence without meaning. Early audiences didn’t know what to make of Godot; they hated it. It wasn’t until a performance at a prison, where the inmates were the first to ever understand, that it finally caught on. I think that’s perfect. It took inmates to understand absurdism.
Absurdism, of course, assumes no god and no meaning. I’m not suggesting you take that up. I’m not, but I could. If I lost all faith, I wouldn’t lose all hope. As Camus says, one must imagine Sisyphus happy.
What does that mean practically? I considered that one day recently while on a cruise along the Grecian Isles. That ship goes on without me. No memory of me remains in that place. Does that mean I should have had a miserable cruise, consumed with the ultimate meaninglessness of my vacation?
I imagined myself gone from that place. Not somewhere else. Not home. Gone. I no longer existed, and for the first time that thought didn’t bother me. I felt at peace.
We’re inspired in many ways with the necessity to leave our mark in this world, and if you can, so that the remembrance of you lingers a little after you’re gone, that’s nice. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But for everyone, the remembering only lasts so long, and we’ll have no knowledge of it. Exalted artists and novelists died in failure. Our praise means nothing to them.
Is that a reason for depression? Or can we imagine Herman Melville happy?
We began with Samuel Beckett; let’s shift gears to Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame. One of his characters, Dr. “Bones” McCoy, hated transporter beams, and there are many who will tell you he was right to do so. The transporter kills you, they say. It’s a copy of you that appears on the other side, not you.
The continuity of existence is an illusion. You died and have been replaced.
Here’s what I think of that.
The continuity of existence is already an illusion. You are not the body you carry but this thing we call awareness… consciousness. And that consciousness links itself to the past experiences your body passed through with rewritten memories from copies of memories that resemble events that once happened. You have the illusion of continuity, but the you that began this paragraph is gone. The transporter of time kills us moment by moment. We are copies of our former selves, and if Captain Kirk died every time he was beamed up, then we die constantly.
If the soul is the unity which binds us, and I’m not saying you must believe it is, then that soul is not destroyed by anything so temporal as a transporter beam. Otherwise the resurrected body would be soulless.
The point.
The point is not to argue for the safety of the transporter beam but to highlight the illusion of continuity, the absurdity of time. When this body ends, if that’s all there is, and I’m not saying you should believe there is no more, what concern is that? Why should we wring our hands over such a moment?
We have died infinite deaths and will one day die no more.
I believe in meaning and purpose, but I also believe that meaning is often not as meaningful as we would like. Or rather, we fail to appreciate the meaning we have because we long to be important.
If in this moment, you have importance, that’s okay. It’s a nice thing. If one day, the world says that importance has faded or that you’re “no longer relevant”, that’s okay, too. Nobility was never measured by its praise.
Just learn to be. Learn to be okay with the idea that one day you will not be. Don’t sully the experience of the present moment with the fear of a moment you can’t experience.
Translated Perception vs Internal Reflection
In 2023, Cambridge Press published the paper “The Passage of Time Is Not an Illusion: It’s a Projection.” In it, author Adrian Bardon argues between A-Theory and B-Theory concepts of time, with A stating there exists an objective present moment with events existing temporally in relation to the present, and B arguing the time is subjective and an illusion of human consciousness. Bardon argues for A-Theory and treats time as a projection in the way that color is a projection, meaning that certain conditions in objects which:
“induce in us sensations which cause us to ascribe colour to them.”
(Poidevin, Reference Le2007, p. 95, as quoted by Bardon.)
An illusion, he argues, is a mistaken perception. A projection is… if you’ll allow me to coin my own phrase… a translated perception.
This scientific use of the word, projection, is interestingly connected to Plato’s use in his Analogy of the Cave, and perhaps we can see Plato’s realm of forms as analogous to the structure of objects that we interpretively perceive as color and the structure of reality that we interpretively perceive as time.
All of life, Plato argued, is a projection, and we must break free of our mental constraints to see the reality behind it all.
It amazes me how we all tend to believe our group is the one to have broken these chains, to alone be the ones to see the truth, rejected as mad for beholding what’s real. It’s not a helpful analogy in that sense, as the deluded nature of the argument becomes the justification for believing its veracity.
We see this in the Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, where Luke Skywalker realizes the Jedi have made just such an error. They believed they alone possessed reality, that the Force belonged to the Jedi alone, and Luke, made painfully aware of his potential for harm, has determined that the Jedi will die with him.
I said I wouldn’t talk about Star Wars on Substack except to occasionally mention my love for Andor, but I will now break that rule. Foolish, foolish me.
First, a peace offering.
I was 8 years old when Star Wars first came out, and it took over my life from 1977 to the early 80s. It took hold again in smaller ways over the years, and I always loved the original trilogy. When The Force Awakens was first advertised, I was drawn in by the beautiful shot of the X-Wing flying low over the lake, looking as if it had dropped into Zhang Yimou’s film, Hero (2002). I was thrilled to see the possibilities. The movie itself was fine, but as it drew to an end I was muttering to myself that this couldn’t be all there was.
I was pretty much over it.
I had no interest as The Last Jedi approached, but here’s my confession: when half the fan community screamed in outrage upon its release, that convinced me it might be worth looking into. I’m a fan, but I can understand why others felt the way they did. Even for me, some of the twists were jarring.
SPOILER WARNING FOR THE LAST JEDI
Psychologically, projection is attributing your own mental state onto others, a concept popularized by Sigmund Freud, and again, a form of projection that features prominently in the movie. We see it in the misunderstanding that tears apart the relationship between Luke and Ben Solo (Kylo Ren). Each sees in the other their own fears and failings.
One issue that angry fans had with the movie was its approach to Luke Skywalker. Some of those fans might be too young to know that in our old age we often fight again those battles won in youth.
Whatever the reason, they came into the movie knowing who they wanted their hero to be, and the movie, they felt, betrayed them. Yet, if we can momentarily ignore everything that came before it, there is a scene that gives us that hero. Mostly.
“You think what?” Luke asks Rey earlier in the film. “I'm gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?”
I can imagine Rian Johnson facing that same question. He’d been given a initial image from the end of the previous film, and he knew what fans would be wanting and expecting. This was the battle they saw in their minds, and so that’s what Johnson decided to give them, that ultimate battle between Luke Skywalker and this new empire.
Only, Luke’s presence is a projection. I find that fascinating.
I sense a tremor in the force, as if the projection of the hero mirrors the projections of the audience upon the hero, the demand for perfection, hoping that in his greatness we find our own, fearing that, in his weakness, we are ourselves revealed.
If I were to argue that this is intentional meta-narrative, I’d run the risk of being guilty of projection. It’s too easy to get wrong.
At one point, Kylo Ren says, “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.” Angry fans took this as meta-commentary, as Johnson saying let the past of Star Wars die. The emotional reasoning for this is understandable. They felt that’s exactly what was being done. Even with all that in consideration, however, it’s clear to me that’s not what the movie was saying. It doesn’t work to put those words in Johnson’s mouth.
So, I’ll resist assuming intent here lest I make the same mistake. That being said, it was perfectly justified for angry fans to use the quote as effectual meta-narrative, whatever the director intended, and that’s what we’ll do here. We will examine this scene as effectual meta-narrative, with no concern for Johnson’s intention.
We know Luke is a projection because the name of the power is “force projection.”
Fun fact: according to Wookipedia, it’s also known as Similfuturus.
In the diegetic mechanics of the scene, since Luke is a projection, his powers have caused a shift in Kylo Ren’s local reality that he perceptually translates as the physical presence of Luke Skywalker. If Luke were an illusion, then it would all be in Kylo Ren’s head (and everyone else’s), a mistaken perception.
In the event that severed their relationship, Luke perceived Kylo’s attraction to the dark side of the force. All the fear and trauma within Luke were now projected onto Kylo, and for an instant, Luke meant to kill him. Just as quickly, Luke saw his error, but it was too late. Kylo saw him, and all his own hatred and anger were now projected onto Luke.
One immediately saw the error of his perception, and the other carried that error ever since, bringing it with him into that final battle. It’s why Kylo assumes Luke is there to fight him, to kill him; because that’s what Kylo desires, he sees that same desire in others. Meanwhile, Luke has seen his own capacity for harm and has sworn to never hurt anyone, ever again. He keeps that promise here, sacrificing himself to give the resistance time to escape.
The audience wants to see Luke face the New Order. We’re given that. Does the audience want the hero to wield the sword of vengeance, slaughtering the enemy where it stands? If so, why?
Isn’t this Luke’s triumph at the end of Return of the Jedi? He refuses hate and violence and saves his father. Earlier, in a moment of weakness, Luke nearly betrays that lesson, but here it is reconfirmed. He is both the hero, standing alone before the enemy, and he is the hero who has learned violence is not the way.
The hero’s violence is only a projection. The reality is the repentant heart of a man sacrificing himself to save his sister and the hope of the resistance.
The initial instance of violence is not one the audience can enjoy. Luke shouldn’t strike down his student, his own nephew. He’s a better man than that. The great battle presented beautifully for the audience’s pleasure includes no violence from our hero at all.
The movie begins with the violence of another hero, Poe. It wrestles with the consequences of that violence, and Poe’s lingering inability to see any other way. It challenges us to examine what we expect of our heroes and asks us to judge ourselves by what we project upon them.
Reality Doesn’t Need to Be Real
Let me begin with this: philosophical mind games aside, no, I don’t think we live in a computer simulation. At the same time, I don’t expect it would matter very much. An artificial construct able to produce a reality on this scale would be indistinguishable from the core physical properties of our universe and that existence would be no less real than our present conscious experience.
I recently stumbled upon this article on Simulation Hypothesis by Parker’s Ponderings, and I would like to respond to his article, however, with arguments against some of his conclusions.
Using The Truman Show as an example, Parker attempts to disprove an argument against the claim that the Simulation Hypothesis is self-defeating.
The claim states that if we’re in a simulation, we can’t trust our own sciences or philosophies, so what are you basing all these theories on anyway?
Parker’s purpose is to defend this idea, that simulation hypothesis in self defeating. To do that he has to confront the argument against it.
The argument goes like this: A sim’s empirical beliefs are largely true [in relation to] their simulated world, even if their empirical beliefs are not largely true [in relation to] the base reality outside of their simulated world.
To show the fallacy of the argument, Parker uses The Truman Show as an analogy. Truman understands his world according to the lies he’s been told, but those lies don’t help him understand his reality. He can’t trust his own science and philosophy.
He goes on to say that if we affirm simulation hypothesis, then we are affirming that our cognitive processes have been formed to understand the simulation, not the base reality. Like Truman, we believe the lie and know nothing of the greater truth.
Parker argues that we can’t trust ourselves to form theories about base reality if we live within a simulation, but this is his error. We don’t need to do so.
The entirety of the issue is do we believe the world is a) a construct of either happenstance or divine intervention wherein humanity evolved (or was created) from the base properties existing in our natural environment, or b) that this same experience was created by artificial intervention wherein humanity evolved (or was created) from the base properties existing in our simulated environment.
Either way, science is our study of our environment. To presuppose the basis of our knowledge to be any different based on the nature of that environment is to artificially dictate a reality contrary to our experience.
That is an unfair and unnecessary constraint. Our experience is our experience. We’re only theorizing about the nature of its construction, something that is, either way, beyond our ability to witness or measure.
It is true that we cannot understand “the base reality” if there is one, but we aren’t called to. We can understand the reality we’ve been given as far as our current knowledge allows. Presupposing limits on that knowledge within its own reality based purely on how that reality was constructed is a prejudicial assumption. We don’t need to understand anything about a possible base reality to theorize about the nature of this one.
That brings us to The Truman Show argument, but it isn’t an applicable analogy.
The Truman Show is the base reality. Truman has been lied to about the nature of his immediate environment and the unseen world, but the same physics apply. He’s a base reality human being in the base reality world.
A simulation doesn’t require us to presuppose our world is not as it seems, any more than if our world is the base reality. After all, we know solid objects aren’t solid. Colors are a projection interpreted by our minds and not a realistic expression of base reality.
When I say that it doesn’t matter, I mean that reality doesn’t have to be a simulation* to be a simulation**.
*artificial
**have the properties inherent to an artificial simulation
Truman’s beliefs are based on intentional misdirection. Our sciences are based on our best studies of reality as we’re able to experience it. We can trust our sciences because real or simulated, the nature of our knowledge and how we attain need not be presumed different. Again, to do so is to artificially prejudice the outcome of this thought experiment.
Fundamentally, the differences in our argument goes back to my initial statement. I don’t view the argument as being, “What if this were just a video game?” We don’t live in the world of Ms. Pac-Man. The irrelevance of that framing doesn’t change for me by upgrading the game. We don’t live in Baldur’s Gate 3. We don’t live in a video game a million times more complicated than that. We live in the reality around us, and the underlying nature behind that reality doesn’t flatten it.
A Non-Circular Argument for the Existence of the Self
I may not exist. My world may not exist, and this non-existing world may be experienced through the context of this non-existing self. Yet, even if a non-entity hallucinates a non-entity, the reality it proves is the existence of the hallucination—the thought.
The thought exists but perhaps not the “I” who thought it.
Therefore, thought is real, and we’ll define thought as the experience of the self and other, whether or not these things exist. Thought becomes the active subject. It is aware, whether the subject and object of its awareness are real or not. We’ll define this thinking awareness (which experiences the presumption of self and world) as consciousness. Consciousness is therefore real. Everything of which it is conscious may not be.
The experience of consciousness is the sum total of reality if nothing else is real, and it is the sum total of subjective reality if everything is real.
One might try to argue that the experience of consciousness is the sum total of subjective reality even if the world is real and the self is not, but that reasoning cannot hold. If the self exists in no other way, it would then exist as the subjectiveness of the experience of consciousness, the self as a projection of consciousness, as opposed to the self possessing consciousness. There’s no meaningful difference between the two concepts, only the acknowledgement that two are linked so that when one ceases to be, so does the other.
It is different with the world.
“My” relationship with “my” consciousness can be that complicated, enmeshed relationship without it changing anything. Even if we presume the existence of the self is some superficially corporal way, allowing for the reality of the body and the brain, these things alone would not produce the existence of “myself” any more than any other random body and brain. Whatever the chicken-and-egg of brain and the thought may be, it remains reasonable to argue that the experience of consciousness projects the existence of self.
If the world is a projection of consciousness, however, that is relevant. Then, the world would also cease to exist when consciousness ceases. The others whom consciousness experiences would only be a projection of itself. These are two vastly different outcomes, and this argument has not distinguished between them.
Yet, the experience of consciousness has direction from a perceived interior to a perceived exterior. In other words, it has orientation. In that orientation is the experience of the self, and self need not be anything more than its own experience. We need not imagine self as a homunculus at the other end of the mechanism that is this orientated consciousness. Self is not the homunculus but the mechanism, and the mechanism is real.
Whether the world is real or illusory, the self is real according to any relevant measurement. Thought exists and is perceived from a particular orientation that is the experience of the self.
Self is the orientation of conscious perception; therefore I am.
Narcissism, Eastern Traditions, and My Argument for the Existence of the Self
After my article, “A Non-Circular Argument for the Existence of the Self,” won the challenge that prompted it, they extended the challenge because my definition of self was non-standard. They proposed the same challenge, proving a standard definition of the self.
Only, they provided no definition.
This had me curious, so I looked up some understandings of the meaning of self, both psychologically and philosophically. There are a multitude, but nothing really sparked enough curiosity to return to the subject until I was reminded of the narcissism / echoism spectrum.
For all our talk about narcissism, we overlook that it’s a response to a lack of a sense of self—a spectrum with narcissism on one end and echoism on the other. The narcissist fills his lack of self with an inward focus. The echoist fills it with an outward focus, making their lives fully about others.
In my argument for the existence of the self, I focus on our orientated conscious perception, and I believe definitions of the self can be layered upon the argument. Self is how we distinguish the interior oriented perception from the exterior. It is how we see that interior as being distinct from but similar to others we perceive within that exterior.
Many philosophical and maybe most spiritual traditions uphold an emptying or absence of the self as a high and moral achievement. It might be that this non-existence of the self is the concept that orientation is an illusory distinction placed upon conscious perception, forming a false individualization.
This would be manifestly different from a psychological failure to develop a sense of self during development which is then either compensated for by a disregard for the other (narcissism) or an internal appropriation of the other (echoism). Self is an identity built through the process of maturity, a collection of defining memories and adopted principles that give us a sense of history and belonging and guide our present choices and worldview.
We can distinguish an unhealthy lack of self from the concept of the non-existence of the self (in as much as orientation is said to be an illusion) and from the spiritual command toward selflessness. Spiritual selflessness and psychological echoism are different, but the church, it its rejection of psychology, lacks the tools to distinguish between them.
A healthy sense of self allows a balanced view of the exterior which is neither narcissistic nor echoist. It allows for spiritual commands for selflessness and even the belief that the self is an illusion. The self as oriented conscious perception would have to be tested against each definition of the self, individually, to prove it allows for each, but the most challenging which comes to mind is the self exists beyond the senses. However, conscious perception is not our awareness. The senses are merely the external input into that awareness. They are not the same, and the development of self creates a storage network beyond our conscious perception (the unconscious) which then feeds back into it.
The argument I made before still stands; we need not imagine a homunculus which views existence through the mechanism of our awareness, the mechanism is enough. By religious revelation we may hold that such a homunculus exists, but it makes no relevant difference. By revelation, we may hold to the immortality of the soul, and yet my argument stands. The self is extinguished along with our orientated conscious perception. According to some religious traditions, that perception would continue after death. According to others, it would continue but shed itself of the illusion of orientation, becoming one with everything.
Our Deeper Stories
In the arguments I’ve presented, the universe may or may not be real, and it doesn’t matter. If there were no God and no meaning to this universe, absurdism allows us to embrace life anyway. The self is real, demonstrably so, to the extent of our orientated conscious perception and the illusion of continuity granted us by the gift of memory. This is where we begin.
The hope of philosophy is an understanding of the self and our interaction with the world as we perceive it. This exploration is the heart of the Our Deeper Stories newsletter, we’ll explore the possibilities and maybe even a few fun improbabilities. We’ll dig deep for greater insight into ourselves, each other, and the world which we inhabit.
Until next time,
I’m Thaddeus Thomas
P.S. — I put together this short booklet in an evening. Now, I just need to follow the steps set forth in the articles linked at the top. You can do the same. Join the effort and grow your Substack.