They fear love because it creates a world they can’t control.
~ George Orwell, 1984
I am about to propose something radical. You may even read it and think me a bit paranoid. I think that everyone has at least one “crazy conspiracy theory” that they believe in earnestly, even if they’re willing to chuckle in the telling of it. So let’s call this my own crazy conspiracy theory.
Physicalism and materialism — the metaphysical worldviews which believe, respectively, that there is nothing beyond physical “stuff”, and that “matter” is self-creating and self-supporting — are a mechanism of control. I do not mean by this that those who believe in physicalism and materialism (hereafter used interchangeably, as they almost always go hand in hand) are in some grand conspiracy to mislead people. In fact, I think that many of them are being intellectually honest when they espouse such metaphysics. This must be borne in mind when interacting with people: they always have reasons for believing this way or that, and we are at our best as people when we realize that our own experiences have a great deal to do with our beliefs about the Cosmos, and that the same is true of others.
I don’t intend, either, to conjure some nebulous and fearsome Them behind all of humankind’s ills. I do, however, think that materialism unduly aids those who seek and hold power, and so receives periodic boosts, often at times of mass spiritual stress such as the present. It isn’t necessary for there to be a massive global secret society for this to be the case. Corruption and greed are usually quite sufficient explanations for world events.
Materialist assumptions undergird the entire ugly business of modernity. For all of our gains in the realms of medicine, of information technology, and other fields besides, any sober observer couldn’t help but recognize a corresponding increase in capacities for mass violence, surveillance, and control. There is also the matter of climate change and overall degradation of the environment to consider, with its roots in unchecked, profit-driven industrialism.
Materialism, in this most destructive incarnation, has been with us for a few centuries. Even our major religious traditions are more materialist than spiritual, at this point. Spend even a moment among Evangelical Christians and you’ll see this in action: their concern is control of the world rather than salvation or illumination, and they are willing to use all means of technology, economic pressure, and bureaucracy to achieve it. Temporal force is of greater significance to them than anything we would typically call religious. “God” is invoked as an ideological bludgeon; there is little evidence that these “Christians” have any concern for the Divine, having far more concern for protecting their own vision of themselves, making a god in their own image as a power-hungry, angry, and basically fearful child with more force than wisdom. Put this way, “religion” doesn’t sound much different from government, does it? Both are hierarchies of a very physical sort of influence which seek a monopoly on the use of violence and other forms of worldly force to achieve their ends.
Further, these religious sorts are just as opposed to the anomalous and paranormal as any upholder of scientism — the pseudo-religion of mainstream Western society which clings to science as a body of orthodox doctrine rather than a process of empirical testing and information gathering. Charles Fort’s referral of such phenomena as “damned” takes on an added dimension of meaning, here. It is damned because banished from the straight story (to borrow Mitch Horowitz’s phrasing), but it is also damned because banished by the religious body which claims authority to tell us how we may be bodily resurrected after Jesus (also physically) returns to Earth.
At least the Evangelicals will agree with me that the physicalist arguments against free will and consciousness are faulty at the outset. Neurological and physical (in the sense of the actual science of physics) arguments against free will are merely irrelevant; they toy with definitions of “freedom” and “will” and point to such things as neurological correlates and Newtonian billiard ball-style interactions — legitimately interesting and useful areas of study as they are — to undermine the very sense of agency which led to such researches in the first place. Causality may present certain hard limits on choice, but “choice” seems very much to be a distinct activity.
Arguments against free will, though, are largely a back door attempt at undermining the existence of consciousness itself, and a great deal of ink is spilled in the direct assault approach to the claim that consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon or, sometimes even more extremely, an entirely illusory event. All that is necessary to sweep these aside is the refreshingly simple yet infinitely sophisticated observation that consciousness, which is to say subjective experience, is the only phenomenon we have yet encountered in the Cosmos which demonstrates itself. If it is suggested that consciousness is non-existent, it need only be asked, “Ok, but who says so?”
All of this is to say that the arid desert of materialist philosophizing is put to shame by the lush, dew-bedecked verdure of lived (conscious!) experience.
Paranormal, occult, and anomalous events challenge every kind of power structure just by being experienced. If, for example, verifiable past life memories weaken our fear of mortality, violence becomes less of a threat. If, through such practices as astral projection or remote viewing, we are able to individually experience spacetime beyond the usual dimensions and sensory apparatus, we begin to feel ourselves to be less limited agents. If we are able to succeed in an act of divination or magic, not only do we realize ourselves as larger agents, we feel ourselves as actual creative agencies. And if, through profound meditation, we experience a trans-biological substrate for consciousness, we truly begin to understand ourselves as, at base, unlimited.
There can be no such thing as “collective awakening”. But individual awakening is already intensely powerful, and the more individuals who pursue it, the more that influence may be felt in the world. Consciousness, like love, is fearsome to power; it presents a living Cosmos which can not be controlled and, more dangerous still, it invites us to participate.
I think this is one of your best essays. Penetrating and astute in digging down into the mess, I don't think I've ever read or heard a more insightful assessment of religion in contemporary America, and that the solution to it all is the one thing they forgot--love. That vacancy in their rhetoric is the cosmic elephant in the room. How simple it all is. Yet it seems so difficult. How human.