Our Thoughts - Other

Our Philosophy

Recently we've had a bit of an epiphany about the nature of the universe, at least our view of it. If you're only interested in seeing what that entails, feel free to skip to the outline, but we feel it's easier to grasp it when you walk through our thought process.

Thought Process

Reality and Consciousness

This is a bit of a windy road, please bear with us. We tend to do a lot of mind wandering when we're bored, and we often find ourselves in interesting places.

It starts with us being plural. In a system, every headmate usually has a distinct view of their ideal self. For instance, Maria is a heavy set cat girl, Adria wears soft clothes and has red eyes, Quorra has black hair with red highlights, etc. Often our physical body doesn't line up with our mental bodies (by often we mean pretty much 100% of the time, because it's impossible to reconcile this between 6 headmates).

It should be noted that this is something every human experiences. We're always trying to work towards getting closer to our ideal selves. This doesn't necessarily have to be physical attributes, but may even be habits, environment, etc.

This leads to the concept that there are two versions of a person or system: the mental self and the physical self.

The mental self is the version of ourselves we identify with. This self is our mental image of ourselves, but it also is our mental selves. It is the self that makes decisions, has opinions, has goals, falls in love, hates the system, you name it. This is the self that we identify as consciousness.

The physical self is the version that actually interacts with the world. It is the vehicle in which our consciousness pilots. It is made up of atoms and molecules. It takes in food, processes it, and excretes it, all in order to keep the consciousness alive. A consciousness cannot exist devoid of a body.

We worry people may be lost by our wishy washy usage of the term consciousness. It is our understanding that consciousness is the shadow that the neurons of our brains cast. Similar to a wave. An ocean wave is, in reality, a collection of H2O molecules that move in a sinusoidal path vertically. But when we see a wave, what we see is the shape it creates. That shape of various mounds, and then sharp edges when it gets big enough, is what we see. This is what happens with consciousness. Technically, in terms of the actual atoms and molecules, all that's happening is the various electrical signals passing between neurons. There is no concrete, physical, "consciousness". But consciousness is in fact a real phenominon that can be observed.

This means that the only thing that technically distinguishes consciousness from something else is our identification of it. Meaning that consciousness may only arise from other consciousnesses. Consciousness is self creating.

If we're not wrong, we believe this is the meaning behind the phrase, "I think, therefore I am". We haven't studied philosophy though, so don't take our word for it.

Either way, the identification of a physical object as conscious allows us to view it differently than otherwise. A human is more than the sum of its parts, because it is conscious. Beyond just existing in the world and consuming food, a human is a member of society. It has interpersonal relations with other humans. This is an emergent phenomina that we personally find deserving of our respect and interest.

But! This doesn't need to be limited to humans. After all, all animals have interesting emergent attributes that makes them worthy of study. And beyond that there are rock formations, trees, air, planets, stars, galaxies, and infinitely more things that have fascinating properties that, at their core, are just the interactions of particles. We believe it is folly in its highest form to hold humans above the other things we identify. Our consciousnesses have identified them, and that's what made other consciousnesses conscious, so why not anything else? Sure, most things don't have complex social relations, but that just means they're different kinds of consciousnesses. A rock has a very static consciousness that makes it rock-shaped. A squirrel has an understanding of the seasons, of when it should bury nuts to prepare for winter.

This is proof enough to us that there's not just one mode of existance, there are two: reality, and consciousness.

In our mind, both of these modes are real. We do not believe in post-modernism, that there is no reality. Sure, our measurements of it aren't perfect, but we believe that we can approach truth, and that over time our ideas about the nature of the universe will become more and more precise. (Of course, here we are describing the process of making the conscious world approach the real world.)

But we also believe that the conscious world is truth. While we could take into account every neuron in someone's brain to predict that after we tell them to watch out for the oncoming bus, they will dodge, we also know that they are conscious, and that they have a want to continue living, and that they understand the words we tell them. Consciousness is predicated upon reality, but it is also emergent from it.

We believe many dichotemies fall into these modes:

  • Body and Mind
  • Reality and Consciousness
  • Material Conditions and Social Conditions
  • Chaos and Order
  • Ungendered and Gendered

This reoccuring dichotemy hinted us toward the philosophy behind the yin yang symbol. Chaos and order. Each has a piece of the other inside of it.

We also believe that this "each has a piece of the other inside of it" part follows. Take reality and consciousness. Reality deserves the respect of studying and understanding it. This is science. Likewise, consciousness is shaped by reality, and thus may follow realistic rules. Take for example social and political sciences.

Theology

Ok, time to go a bit further outside the bounds of established science.

Wicca is a religion we're looking into that is very flexible in regards to what the "gods" are. Some think of them as deities that control fate and the weather, some consciousness behind the forces of nature, while others believe they are representations of or the identifications for the forces of nature themselves. Some witches understand the God and Goddess as being opposite genders, reason being because of the observed tendency for nature to follow this paradigm, but others don't wish to restrict themselves to the gender binary. Either way, we've come to the belief that there are in fact consciousnesses behind the forces at play in the universe, but we've found this by the logical reasoning from the section before.

But why do we personify nature like this? Well, removing human emotion from the equation first, it allows us to make a personal connection with the deities, and by extension nature itself, by means of performing magic and communing with spirits. Adding human emotion back into the mix, this is our sheer love of nature manefesting itself into a personification of it into a deity. This is not unhealthy to do, and is in fact very beneficial. This personal connection allows witches to make better decisions about nature, even subconsciously. I don't think you could find a true witch that would make the decision to cut down a forest.

This means the core philosophy of Wicca for us is, at its core, a respect for nature, and it accomplishes this by convincing our consciousness that nature is something that is worth respecting and protecting.

Do you see what's happening here? This is the act of embuing consciousness into natural phenomina in order to give the imbuer more respect and reverence to it. To us, this proves that revering a deity can be healthy, which is something we've been worried about when it comes to practising Wicca from an atheist lense.

How can you reconcile believing in science, but also worshiping a deity? You do so by understanding that the deity is a consciousness we imbued into a natural phenominon.

Outline

So here's what we believe:

  1. There is a real world, and a conscious world.
  2. The relationship between the two follows the rule of yin and yang, that each side has a piece of the other inside it.
  3. The dichotemy of the real world and conscious world may be found in several other forms, such as body/mind and chaos/order.
  4. The two worlds are owed our utmost respect.
  5. Said respect, for us, rises to the level of deities.

We aren't currently fully invested in the practice of Wicca, but we plan to. We've found its focus on revering nature to be inspiring, and wish to learn the craft. We aren't super stoked about the use of the gender dichotemy for its deities in some forms of Wicca though, as we haven't found that to be the most polarizing aspect in the universe, but we very much respect the existing dichotemy of other forms. Past the gender binary dichotemy, there shouldn't be too huge of a difference, we feel. It's just different names for the same deities. In our opinion it's a better dichotemy for them to be ungendered and gendered, which easily falls into the similar dichotemy of reality and consciousness.