Warning!
This rabbit hole can break your mind if you dig too deeply into it without a path out. But, if you stick with me until the end of the series, I promise to lead you out on the other side. You may wish to read the final conclusion article first, so that you can have the “safety explanation” in the back of your mind, while you delve into the darkness. It will also help you determine whether or not this is something that you even want to examine at all (See: The Path Back To Sanity – Base Reality Primer #5 ). Jumping straight to the end does spoil the timely revelation of several of the pivotal conclusions that are developed throughout the course of the series, but perhaps that’s better than having nightmares :-). We will dig all the way to the foundations of consciousness, and discover the not-so-sturdy roots which support it. However, once we have come to terms with this, it grants {[a level of understanding] & [a degree of freedom]} that is unmatched, but it demands an equally heavy price of {responsibility & [permanent awareness of the true depths of chaos that surround us]}. I’ll try to keep this series in the shallows, and only go as deep as is necessary, but if you should decide to wonder this path alone, be warned: beyond here lie monsters.
This is the first in a series which will examine the understanding that {moral, cultural, political, & technological} systems do not actually exist, and will culminate in the realization that this understanding is both {[fundamentally important] & [completely irrelevant]}. My basic premise is that there are only 2 things that actually exist: {[the material world of the physical] & consciousness}. Everything else is either an illusion or a construct; this is not to say that either lacks value, on the contrary, both are essential & beneficial. However, their true nature remains what it is.
This first article serves to build the foundation of the following articles in this series. The entire purpose of this article is simply to convince you of that single claim, which the following articles all depend upon. As such, it’s a bit redundant, and makes the same argument several times from different angles. But you don’t have to read all of them. As soon as you are convinced to accept the claim (or are at least willing to humor it for the sake of argument), then you can go ahead and skip to the second article in the series. Similarly, this article is broken up into several different chunks, each attempting to convince you of a specific sub-claim. So, as soon as you are convinced of the sub-claim, you can go ahead and skip to the next section.
The Claim
Virtually nothing actually exists. The only things which really actually exist are the foundational building blocks of physical reality, and consciousness. That’s it. Atoms, molecules, pumpkins, door handles, etc. all of these things are mental constructs; arbitrary groupings of the foundational building blocks, to which we have given names.
In our current scientific view, we believe these foundational building blocks to be: the Standard Model quantum fields, and Space-Time. However, this argument is not dependent upon that specific breakdown being accurate. This argument simply claims that there is some root foundational set of building blocks to physical reality, whatever they happen to be composed of, and that those, combined with the bounding box of our physical reality: {Space & Time}, make up our physical component. And along with consciousness, these are the only things which truly exist in base reality; everything else is a mental construct.
September 15, 2021 Update:
This article was originally written in October of 2019 with some occasional edits since. But the YouTube channel Vsauce just released a video yesterday examining this concept, entitled “Do Chairs Exist?”. So, if you’d prefer to watch a video instead of reading, you can go watch that video, and then return here to proceed to the next article in this series.
In my argument I say that the only things which really actually exist are the “fundamental building blocks of physical reality“, this is equivalent to the “simples” Vsauce refers to in his video.
Spoken Words Don’t Exist
To demonstrate this reality, we’ll start with something simple that you may have already realized: words do not exist. Language is nothing more than a list of mutually agreed upon codes to which we have ascribed meaning. In the same way that a grunt, moan, or whimper conveys meaning, words are simply the culmination of millions of years of experimentation into making more complex noises in an attempt to communicate more information. If every time I point at a tree, I say “Rom”; eventually when I say “Rom”, you will think of that tree. Thus is the beginnings of language; but you’ll notice that at no point in that process was anything new created. The only thing that happened was that I conditioned your memory to associate that sound with an object. The only thing that was created was a memory, keyed to a recognizable pattern. Instead of a vocalized word, it could have just as easily been a cough, or a facial expression, or a hand gesture, or a shape drawn in the sand, or {stomping my feet, clapping my hands, or whistling} in a recognizable pattern. All would produce the same effect.
Our brains are very skilled at detecting patterns, but if you think about it, what is a pattern? It’s not a physical object, but rather a quality which a group of objects have in relationship to each other. But a pattern is not an objective attribute either, since the same group of objects can have multiple pattern interpretations, depending upon the opinion & perspective of the observer. Not to mention the fact that the grouping itself is a construct of the mind, and the only unambiguously defined ordering system in the universe is time, and most recognized patterns exist without relationship to time. Since the existence of the pattern is wholly dependent upon the grouping, and since the grouping itself is an artificial construct, then how could the higher order conception be anything other than artificial. Thus, patterns do not exist in an objective “fabric of reality” sense; they exist only in the mind (i.e. consciousness).
The sounds you hear in a person’s voice are just vibrations in the air; patterns of varying frequencies & intensity into which your brain imbues meaning. A full language is essentially just a giant lookup table of all the patterns and their associated meanings. So, I know that if you have the same lookup table as me (i.e. the same language), that I can emit those patterns in order to trigger you to hallucinate the meaning which I’m trying to communicate to you. But, without a common lookup table, the meaning is lost, and no communication is possible. This is because the meaning was never in the symbols to begin with. The meaning is in the lookup table, which is in the mind. This is most clearly evident when multiple languages have the same word with different meanings. If I say such a word in the presence of 3 people who speak 3 different languages, what does the word mean? It would “mean” something completely different to each of them. If you and I stumble upon a number drawn in the sand, and you see a 6, while I see a 9, which is it? And what if, instead of being drawn in the sand, it was constructed from a car tire & a length of curved rope, laid on the ground to mark out the 6/9 character. Is it still the number? Or were they trying to draw the shape of an opened padlock? Or did someone just dump some trash on the beach and it just so happened to form that shape? Does it still have meaning if it was crafted by accident? Or does the symbol require intent to have meaning? If I drop a bag of scrabble tiles on the floor, and it accidentally spells out a word, does that word have meaning?
No, because the symbols never have meaning. The symbols are just a means of {reliably & precisely} triggering elements within that lookup table, in order for me to craft a precise hallucination in your mind. Language is essentially a form of telepathic mind-control, that only works if you share common memories.
Written Text Doesn’t Exist
The letters in a book don’t exist, and are nothing more than light & dark patches of one chemical soaked into another; but done so with a pattern into which your brain imbues meaning. This text you’re reading right now does not exist either. At least with a book, there are physical particles of ink arranged on a page, but with a computer screen it’s not even that tangible; it’s just a blackish-gray plate of uniform texture & composition, that simply emits highly constrained fields of light that mimic the behavior of ambient diffraction; the light from the text you see isn’t even bouncing off of a real thing, it’s literally being simulated & emitted. And most importantly, the only difference between the light of the pattern’s different colors, is the frequency of the photons. You may argue that in most text, the page is white and the text is black, therefore the text is actually the absence of light; it is a shadow in the light of the page. However, that would only be true if you had an ink which was perfectly black and reflected zero photons. Such an ink has never been discovered. The closest thing to it would be Vantablack: a surface coating which uses carbon nanotubes to trap photons, but even that reflects some light. And in the example of a computer screen, the black regions of an LCD are blocking only a portion of the light; some of the light gets through, which means that your black text is actually gray; and gray is just dim white (not to mention that in most displays all colors are actually represented with varying combinations of Red, Green, & Blue, but we’ll ignore that for now). Therefore the “black” text on the white page is also white, just with a lower intensity. Furthermore, even if it were true that the black text were perfectly black, does that mean that if you change the font color to green, the words disappear? Obviously not.
Intensity by itself is not a dissecting feature either, since it’s just another form of grouping. With light for example, you either have particles or a wave. In the case of particles, you have a swarm of independent photons flying through space whose only attributes are {speed, position, direction, & energetic frequency}; your decision to draw an arbitrary boundary around certain regions of that space and say, “there are more photons in this arbitrary region than there are in that arbitrary region” is just that: an arbitrary, artificial construct of the mind. Likewise, if you take the position of light as a wave, then you have a continuous field through which independent waveforms travel, whose properties are just as independent from one another as the quantified groupings of photons before. And since all light travels at the same speed regardless of frequency or intensity, and since we’re talking about a stream of light you can see, all the relevant light would have an equivalent direction which converges in your eye; thus, the only distinguishing characteristic of the light is its frequency. But, this also means that we are arbitrarily excluding all of the other wavelengths of light outside the human visible spectrum that is also bouncing off of the page and entering your eyes. But, because your human biology cannot register it, you ignore it; but in base reality all of that light is still there.
But, even the concept of a frequency implies that there is a genuine distinction between one and another; but there isn’t. A frequency is an arbitrary measure based upon the time period of a second, which itself is an arbitrary slice of time. Furthermore, there is no harsh physical boundary between frequencies; it is a smooth continuous gradient all the way from zero to infinity. This is simply because “frequency” is nothing but an observational categorization. It’s a measure of how fast a photon is vibrating or, in the case of sound, how closely pressure waves cluster together. A precisely measured frequency is just a fancy technical way of saying “fast” or “slow”; it doesn’t mean anything more than that, not really. And “fast” doesn’t exist in the objective physical world any more than “old”, “big”, or “heavy”; it’s merely a subjective comparison to the perceiving source.
A Water Bottle Doesn’t Exist
Let’s take this in a little more tangible direction; imagine a bottle of water sitting on a table. Does the water bottle exist? Is it a distinct object from the water within it, or the table it rests upon, or the air swirling around it? Moreover, where does the bottle end? Is the paper label part of the bottle or just an adornment stuck to it? And what about the glue which provides this adhesion? Is the screw-on cap part of the bottle or just a paired object which supplies intimate cooperation? The short answer is that none of it exists, and the answer to any of those questions is a matter of personal opinion based upon a personal preference of precision.
Some would argue that the water is a liquid and the bottle is a solid, and thus, they possess distinct fundamental properties, and are therefore distinct entities. However, this is only true at a small fraction of temperatures & pressures. If you drop the temperature or raise the pressure, the water will freeze into ice, and then, the bottle would be a solid containing a solid. Does that then cause them to become the same object? Similarly, if you raise the temperature high enough, the plastic of the bottle will begin to off-gas portions of its constituents. Does that mean that these chemicals released as fumes are not really part of the bottle? If you raise the temperature higher in an oxygen rich atmosphere, the plastic will catch fire, and burn off even more of its ingredients. If you raise the temperature even higher, the material will completely disintegrate into a plasma; what then? If we are discussing the nature of existence for the fabric of base reality, why should the profoundly limited parameters of human-preferable calibrations be paramount? That is not even a valid argument for a restricted scope of “life”, since there are many animals & organisms which can survive environments far beyond human capacities. Case in point: the Tardigrade (aka: “Water Bear”) which is perhaps the most resilient organism on Earth. Furthermore, if you speak in terms of the norm for the universe as a whole, the extreme vast majority of the visible matter of the universe exists either {[within the scalding plasma of stars] or [in the cryogenically frigid vacuum of interstellar space]}. So, you certainly cannot make an argument from a statistical standpoint for human requirements being the predominant configuration of matter.
One could argue that such high temperature examples result in the destruction of the bottle, and therefore cannot be used to argue against its existence; in other words: “it did exist, but you destroyed it.” But let’s examine this; what exactly got destroyed? All of the protons & electrons are still there; the resulting plasma and/or {combustion-exhaust & ash} contain the same number of quarks that you started with. So, what got destroyed? A pattern. Bottles, materials, molecules, even atoms & protons themselves, are just assorted arrangements of lower-order constructs. Patterns do not exist in base reality; they are a construct of the mind.
Molecules Don’t Exist
You might say that molecules are a unit because the component atoms are {linked & [connected to one another]}. But they’re not; at least not in any direct physical way. In the stronger of molecular links: the covalent bond, the atoms never even touch, they are only “linked” to one another because of shared electrons; that is to say that they are both tugging on the same electron, so they pull themselves together. In the weaker “ionic” bond, the shared electrons are given up entirely to the receiving atom—retaining zero connection to the donor atom—and only the excess charge differential pulls them together. But in both cases, nothing of either atom ever touches the other.
Atoms Don’t Exist
In fact, the same is true for a single atom. The thing we call an “atom” is just an artificial construct; an arbitrary grouping of multiple independent particles which are not connected to each other. The {protons & neutrons} of the nucleus never touch the electrons; and in the rare event that a {proton & electron} do touch, they fuse together in a process called “electron capture”, transmuting the proton into a neutron. In a normal atom, the only thing linking the nucleus to the electrons is the nebulous energy force pulling on them: the electromagnetic force. But that is not the only fundamental force in the universe, so why should it get special treatment?
Gravity is also a fundamental force. Does that mean that any 2 things which are connected by gravity are the same object? The moon is locked in orbit around the earth; does that mean that the earth & the moon are the same object? What about a person held down to a chair by gravity; does that make your butt part of the chair?
Protons & Neutrons Don’t Exist
{Protons & Neutrons} are no different; they are only held together by the atomic strong force, and can be {[connected together] or separated} by the natural nuclear processes of {fusion & fission}, respectively. In fact, in radioactive atoms, it can even happen spontaneously, with zero outside triggering interaction.
You may counter that claim by saying that Protons & Neutrons are touching, but they aren’t. Also, since when does {two things touching} make them the same object? When you put on a shirt, does it merge with you? If I glued a tennis ball to my forehead, would that make it part of my body? Do you become one with another person when you shake their hand?
And going even deeper: {protons & neutrons} are not even fundamental particles, but are, instead, groupings of lower-order objects called quarks.
So…
If none of this seemingly foundational stuff even exists, then what does that say about morality?
Continued in Part 2 – The Foundations of Morailty
