Have you read any John Wu? His book Chinese Humanism and Christian Spirituality has some great essays on eastern/western spirituality. The Lao Tzu and Saint Therese one especially is 🔥🔥
This was an absolute delight! Alienating and controversial topics are always a great time, especially when they are well defined. You talk about it all with such finesse that even if you don’t fully agree, it feels lovely to read. Your home altar is beautiful. And that El Greco painting. WOW.
Oh yeah, it’s a real one; Roger loved it, I believe had seen it in Toledo as a younger man and felt greatly affected by it. I don’t have a reproduction, but I do have some reproductions of other El Greco works; they’re all compelling to me. And thank you for the kind words!!!
My wife and I rarely read each other’s stuff. I don’t think it requires a big explanation. I don’t want to read a poll about it, but I suspect a lot of two-writer couples already know the other is nuts in really a neat way. So why ruin a good thing just for validating evidence?
I can’t believe I get to talk to you all the time! This post is like one of our conversations in written form so I’m gonna print it out and keep it forever.
Parts of this connect to my own experience, other parts are very, very far from my experience and perspective, but I appreciate this as extremely well-presented in an important way.
I've seen the suggestion that, when approaching difficult or controversial subjects that it can be more productive to not approach it as an attempt at persuasion-- trying to convince other people of your beliefs-- and instead say, "here is what works for me, and if you are interested in hearing more about why I have found this perspective helpful I can share more."
I’m at Costco so I will be to the point: I think you’re a good person and would be even if you weren’t weighed down by doubt. Even without mustache. Or long philosophical ramblings. Just a solid dude.
I’m fascinated by how our beliefs are almost exactly opposite each other’s: I don’t believe in a Judeo-Christian God, I believe consciousness is emergent (and bad luck!), and I don’t think there will be anything left of me once my body dies. It’s not comforting on any level!
(I’m terrified that the afterlife is whatever we believe it will be and I will have fucked myself out of a better outcome!)
That last line is a very familiar form of thought to me; I think all of us who are this way have a not-unfounded fear of “our minds creating our realities,” and that’s the maximum expression of that! (It reminds me of the old saw that planes only fly as long as we think they do, which sounds silly except that I often only fly as long as I think I do; the moment of “losing belief in oneself or one’s project” is something I feel with real intensity, because the game has often been up for me then).
We’re thinking of changing the name of Sucks to Suck to “Rats from Rocks,” after some months spent on the possibilities and problems of the concept of emergence! My own view is that the term says only “something magical happened,” except in cases of statistics (eg the determinism of diffusion is “emergent” while all individual particle movement is non-deterministic; but every part of that is describable and understood, including the emergence). Because consciousness also “passes down” information and control, it’s not statistical, and as yet there aren’t any theories for how it could be the emergent property of neurons or electricity. But they might figure it out tomorrow, and boy if they did, I bet our treatment options would really improve!
That’s the usage I agree with! But you and I and scientists can describe every single part of it: the individuals and their instincts, the chemicals and communications, and how it sums; and crucially, “the anthill” does nothing: it’s just the sum of all those individual processes. There’s no mystery to that emergence, it’s just a description of how individual elements can yield something together that none of them accounts for on its own. This is also how the emergence of diffusion is.
There’s nothing like this so far in brains or theories of mind, and I don’t mean “nothing I agree with”! I mean: there are no claims that “neurons do what they do, and some of them do C, and others Q, and the sum of Q and C is a a mind,” or even a thought. That’s bad enough, but may be addressed.
More crucially though: your mind influences your thoughts and your body and your neurons and the real world, often by using reason to make predictions that are true or false based on eg understandings. Nothing like this happens with anthills. Never does an anthill “command” an ant; never does an ant “obey” an anthill. Anthills do not have “information” that ants use. The anthill is the emergent result of individuals who are self-determining and inter-influencing. But it doesn’t “talk back down” to any of them (and doesn’t need to). Your mind not only isn’t in any known way “the sum of this kind of electrical activity and this chemical activity,” but also your mind does and can be seen to talk back down, driving physical activity. There’s no analogy for this in other examples of emergence, which is why there’s no current theory for how minds works, let alone how the workings of minds can be “true” or “false,” since if they’re just physical chemical reactions, they should have no relationship to pure abstractions like “mathematics.”
It’s one of the most shocking things in the world to me: there isn’t a single explanation for how this works, but we assume it must work like anthills even despite these total dissimilarities because we believe that to think there’s anything unique or special about mind is dumb, hopeful, old-fashioned, etc. Maybe it is! But not because there’s any sense in which your mind is emergent from neurons. If it is, it’s not emergent in the way anything else is emergent; I should think it would merit a new word entirely, for the downward propagation alone but also because “physically deterministic processes” cannot result in anything but more determinism or chaos, noise. This leads many to say “well, then mind is an illusion and truth is an illusion,” which is fine but also means their arguments aren’t real, they’re just chemistry, and there’s no need to worry about them (or about anyone’s feelings or ideas, as it’s all just the “accidental sum of physical process”).
On the other hand: my mind feels like an anthill for real lmfao, so I can cosign that metaphor!!!
Lovely essay. I am no one to come to for advice on relationships, but if a marriage can be seen as a living thing, maybe it's a good idea not to try too hard to take it apart to see how it works.
💯💯💯💯💯💯 We did couples therapy a few times during a hard patch and both left one day feeling like: tinkering with this is a mistake lmfao! It wasn’t without its value, but broadly: it’s not a system to be optimized IMO!
I think you've comprehensively dealt with relationships. It's alchemy. I consider myself lucky if anyone is prepared to accompany me even part way along the path, and I've learned to try not to question why.
As far as religion is concerned I too used to think that our very capacity to contemplate the existence of God indicated that there must be a supreme being. Unlike you I ended up atheist, but I see a lot of merit in Buddhist teachings.
Thanks for another very relatable post. I always find them helpful.
Relationships are so mysterious that I should’ve said that they too make me feel epistemologically open! Also: I appreciate that you shared your atheism; I know it’s sometimes awkward to register that sort of difference, but I think it’s lovely and for the good to be straightforwardly honest about where the same things have led us, and e.g. for other readers I’m glad to have a demonstration here in the comments that all the same inputs can lead to different conclusions. Kundera has a great line about how non-tribal atheism and non-tribal credence are closer to one another than either is to the sorts of intense group projection dynamics that characterize many adherents of both!
Dude brilliant! I call myself a woo-adjacent atheist so I’m the question of “all of nothing” I guess I land on all, including the claim that there is no god.
Also love your thoughts on marriage. I feel that applies to me and my wife as well, but it’s not a view that gets much press nowadays. Love that line of the modern conception of “reification of best friends with benefits”. But yeah, I definitely feel a little self conscious about that too. But maybe a little fear is good so we don’t complacent about the state of play at home.
I feel very self-conscious about it; it’s like a semi-magical and definitely delicate little mechanism, like a complex watch built in the heart or something, and even talking about it feels like it could break it!!!
Thanks for the great comment Justus! Always great to hear from you.
Mills, as I was reading through your description of religious beliefs, I wished you could sit down for an in-depth converstation with our friend Ellis Potter (his background is in theology, philosophy, music, and art). He is a descendant of Charles Wesley, and while he grew up Christian, he felt that "Christians cared more about maintaining their religious subculture, than looking for answers to questions and exploring deep connections" that were of great interest to him. After exploring many religions (he was a Zen Buddhist monk for several years), he ended up converting to Christianity under Francis Schaeffer at L'Abri in Switzerland. For the last four decades, he has been speaking and teaching internationally on worldviews, exploring how the major worldviews have profoundly different consequences for how we see everyday reality, hope, and the purpose of our lives. My husband Peco served as editor for his books, and I think you might appreciate
Everything you and Peco have written and shared has been so outstanding and life-improving that I’m ordering both of these right now, and I’ll have a chat with anyone, anytime! I can’t promise that they’ll enjoy it, but I know I always do!
That mini-biography is of course extremely relatable!
The 3 Theories is part of "The Universe that Hopes" so need to order both. I think you'll appreciate Ellis' approach; it is unlike any other Christian thinker that I have encountered. His interview biography (Staggering Along With God) is also worth a read and entails the most fascinating encounters including Paranamba Yogananda, the Pope, and an Italian train companion who sang the whole of Rigoletto (we even get a mention too:).
I FUCKING LOVE YOU
Seconded.
Man I love that Simon Weil quote LOL….
Have you read any John Wu? His book Chinese Humanism and Christian Spirituality has some great essays on eastern/western spirituality. The Lao Tzu and Saint Therese one especially is 🔥🔥
Oh and I already love Therese! Snagging at once!!!
> I have often found claims I believe within Hinduism...
was it "don't have a cow, man"?
lmfao first and foremost! an old sage told me: yes, Brahman is Atman; but Bartman is above this.
This was an absolute delight! Alienating and controversial topics are always a great time, especially when they are well defined. You talk about it all with such finesse that even if you don’t fully agree, it feels lovely to read. Your home altar is beautiful. And that El Greco painting. WOW.
Oh yeah, it’s a real one; Roger loved it, I believe had seen it in Toledo as a younger man and felt greatly affected by it. I don’t have a reproduction, but I do have some reproductions of other El Greco works; they’re all compelling to me. And thank you for the kind words!!!
My wife and I rarely read each other’s stuff. I don’t think it requires a big explanation. I don’t want to read a poll about it, but I suspect a lot of two-writer couples already know the other is nuts in really a neat way. So why ruin a good thing just for validating evidence?
hahahahaha very well put; I wouldn’t trust a poll anyway: too many people want to perform an ideal, even when answering some silly poll!
I can’t believe I get to talk to you all the time! This post is like one of our conversations in written form so I’m gonna print it out and keep it forever.
I feel very lucky to know someone who can and will talk about this stuff with me; a lot of this stuff I literally worked out in those chats!
Parts of this connect to my own experience, other parts are very, very far from my experience and perspective, but I appreciate this as extremely well-presented in an important way.
I've seen the suggestion that, when approaching difficult or controversial subjects that it can be more productive to not approach it as an attempt at persuasion-- trying to convince other people of your beliefs-- and instead say, "here is what works for me, and if you are interested in hearing more about why I have found this perspective helpful I can share more."
This post is a great example.
I’m at Costco so I will be to the point: I think you’re a good person and would be even if you weren’t weighed down by doubt. Even without mustache. Or long philosophical ramblings. Just a solid dude.
Some really beautiful thinking in here, Mills.
I’m fascinated by how our beliefs are almost exactly opposite each other’s: I don’t believe in a Judeo-Christian God, I believe consciousness is emergent (and bad luck!), and I don’t think there will be anything left of me once my body dies. It’s not comforting on any level!
(I’m terrified that the afterlife is whatever we believe it will be and I will have fucked myself out of a better outcome!)
That last line is a very familiar form of thought to me; I think all of us who are this way have a not-unfounded fear of “our minds creating our realities,” and that’s the maximum expression of that! (It reminds me of the old saw that planes only fly as long as we think they do, which sounds silly except that I often only fly as long as I think I do; the moment of “losing belief in oneself or one’s project” is something I feel with real intensity, because the game has often been up for me then).
We’re thinking of changing the name of Sucks to Suck to “Rats from Rocks,” after some months spent on the possibilities and problems of the concept of emergence! My own view is that the term says only “something magical happened,” except in cases of statistics (eg the determinism of diffusion is “emergent” while all individual particle movement is non-deterministic; but every part of that is describable and understood, including the emergence). Because consciousness also “passes down” information and control, it’s not statistical, and as yet there aren’t any theories for how it could be the emergent property of neurons or electricity. But they might figure it out tomorrow, and boy if they did, I bet our treatment options would really improve!
*My own view is that the term says only “something magical happened,”*
I see that. I feel like it has something to do with how anthills are organized - they appear goal-directed, yet no individual ant knows the plan.
That’s the usage I agree with! But you and I and scientists can describe every single part of it: the individuals and their instincts, the chemicals and communications, and how it sums; and crucially, “the anthill” does nothing: it’s just the sum of all those individual processes. There’s no mystery to that emergence, it’s just a description of how individual elements can yield something together that none of them accounts for on its own. This is also how the emergence of diffusion is.
There’s nothing like this so far in brains or theories of mind, and I don’t mean “nothing I agree with”! I mean: there are no claims that “neurons do what they do, and some of them do C, and others Q, and the sum of Q and C is a a mind,” or even a thought. That’s bad enough, but may be addressed.
More crucially though: your mind influences your thoughts and your body and your neurons and the real world, often by using reason to make predictions that are true or false based on eg understandings. Nothing like this happens with anthills. Never does an anthill “command” an ant; never does an ant “obey” an anthill. Anthills do not have “information” that ants use. The anthill is the emergent result of individuals who are self-determining and inter-influencing. But it doesn’t “talk back down” to any of them (and doesn’t need to). Your mind not only isn’t in any known way “the sum of this kind of electrical activity and this chemical activity,” but also your mind does and can be seen to talk back down, driving physical activity. There’s no analogy for this in other examples of emergence, which is why there’s no current theory for how minds works, let alone how the workings of minds can be “true” or “false,” since if they’re just physical chemical reactions, they should have no relationship to pure abstractions like “mathematics.”
It’s one of the most shocking things in the world to me: there isn’t a single explanation for how this works, but we assume it must work like anthills even despite these total dissimilarities because we believe that to think there’s anything unique or special about mind is dumb, hopeful, old-fashioned, etc. Maybe it is! But not because there’s any sense in which your mind is emergent from neurons. If it is, it’s not emergent in the way anything else is emergent; I should think it would merit a new word entirely, for the downward propagation alone but also because “physically deterministic processes” cannot result in anything but more determinism or chaos, noise. This leads many to say “well, then mind is an illusion and truth is an illusion,” which is fine but also means their arguments aren’t real, they’re just chemistry, and there’s no need to worry about them (or about anyone’s feelings or ideas, as it’s all just the “accidental sum of physical process”).
On the other hand: my mind feels like an anthill for real lmfao, so I can cosign that metaphor!!!
Lovely essay. I am no one to come to for advice on relationships, but if a marriage can be seen as a living thing, maybe it's a good idea not to try too hard to take it apart to see how it works.
💯💯💯💯💯💯 We did couples therapy a few times during a hard patch and both left one day feeling like: tinkering with this is a mistake lmfao! It wasn’t without its value, but broadly: it’s not a system to be optimized IMO!
I think you've comprehensively dealt with relationships. It's alchemy. I consider myself lucky if anyone is prepared to accompany me even part way along the path, and I've learned to try not to question why.
As far as religion is concerned I too used to think that our very capacity to contemplate the existence of God indicated that there must be a supreme being. Unlike you I ended up atheist, but I see a lot of merit in Buddhist teachings.
Thanks for another very relatable post. I always find them helpful.
Relationships are so mysterious that I should’ve said that they too make me feel epistemologically open! Also: I appreciate that you shared your atheism; I know it’s sometimes awkward to register that sort of difference, but I think it’s lovely and for the good to be straightforwardly honest about where the same things have led us, and e.g. for other readers I’m glad to have a demonstration here in the comments that all the same inputs can lead to different conclusions. Kundera has a great line about how non-tribal atheism and non-tribal credence are closer to one another than either is to the sorts of intense group projection dynamics that characterize many adherents of both!
Dude brilliant! I call myself a woo-adjacent atheist so I’m the question of “all of nothing” I guess I land on all, including the claim that there is no god.
Also love your thoughts on marriage. I feel that applies to me and my wife as well, but it’s not a view that gets much press nowadays. Love that line of the modern conception of “reification of best friends with benefits”. But yeah, I definitely feel a little self conscious about that too. But maybe a little fear is good so we don’t complacent about the state of play at home.
I feel very self-conscious about it; it’s like a semi-magical and definitely delicate little mechanism, like a complex watch built in the heart or something, and even talking about it feels like it could break it!!!
Thanks for the great comment Justus! Always great to hear from you.
Thanks Mills for sharing so personally and profoundly. Shorts eaten...
Mills, as I was reading through your description of religious beliefs, I wished you could sit down for an in-depth converstation with our friend Ellis Potter (his background is in theology, philosophy, music, and art). He is a descendant of Charles Wesley, and while he grew up Christian, he felt that "Christians cared more about maintaining their religious subculture, than looking for answers to questions and exploring deep connections" that were of great interest to him. After exploring many religions (he was a Zen Buddhist monk for several years), he ended up converting to Christianity under Francis Schaeffer at L'Abri in Switzerland. For the last four decades, he has been speaking and teaching internationally on worldviews, exploring how the major worldviews have profoundly different consequences for how we see everyday reality, hope, and the purpose of our lives. My husband Peco served as editor for his books, and I think you might appreciate
3 Theories of Everything https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13432505-3-theories-of-everything or the newly released "A Universe That Hopes" (which is a compilation of all his books).
Everything you and Peco have written and shared has been so outstanding and life-improving that I’m ordering both of these right now, and I’ll have a chat with anyone, anytime! I can’t promise that they’ll enjoy it, but I know I always do!
That mini-biography is of course extremely relatable!
The 3 Theories is part of "The Universe that Hopes" so need to order both. I think you'll appreciate Ellis' approach; it is unlike any other Christian thinker that I have encountered. His interview biography (Staggering Along With God) is also worth a read and entails the most fascinating encounters including Paranamba Yogananda, the Pope, and an Italian train companion who sang the whole of Rigoletto (we even get a mention too:).
I loved this description of marriage! It resonates with my experience.