“…when I think over the weirdest of all things I can think of, you know what it is?
Nothing.”- Alan Watts Linguistically and conceptually, we know that
nothing is the absence of a thing or things in a particular space. We might say that there
is nothing in a glass when we mean that there is no liquid. We might say that there is nothing
in a room when we mean that there is no stuff. And we might say that there is nothing in
a vacuum of space when we mean that there is no matter or atoms at all. However, true,
absolute nothing is perhaps something else entirely.
True nothingness might be nothing more than an abstract idea that doesn’t really mean
anything outside of language. Or perhaps, it might be a fundamental quality of all reality.
A void with a function. For obvious reasons, physics and quantum field
theory look towards empty space as a definition or understanding of nothingness. One could
study empty space by taking a fully sealed metal container and sucking out all of the
air. Inside would then become a vacuum, void of all atoms and molecules. But when particle
physicists do this and probe a vacuum, the space still actually contains quantum mechanical
properties. These properties have the minimum possible energy a system can have and are
in what is known as a zero-point energy state, which involves local quantum fields and virtual
particles, but the point is, there is not nothing. There are things going on with measurable
properties. Consequently, all the empty space of the universe isn’t really nothing. As
a result, science doesn’t really take much interest into what true nothingness is and
what it’s metaphysical implications might be, because science doesn’t really care
about what it can’t measure because how could it? But that doesn’t necessarily make
it any less relevant to everything. In the words of theoretical physicist Sean
Carrol, “It’s probably better to think of nothing as the absence of even space and
time, rather than space and time without anything in them." To try to consider this sort of
true nothing - as in, to try to the imagine the subtraction of everything in the entire
universe including time and space itself, one could theoretically do this and picture
a sort of stark, black void. But of course, one would still be left with themselves considering
the absence of everything, and thus, by defining or imagining this, one is still ascribing
a somethingness to nothingness. A thought. A concept. Not nothing.
Naturally, because of the dissonance and strangeness of such an idea, nothingness can be rather
intriguing, terrifying, or both. Also, of course, for some, the mere verbal
construction of “the concept of nothing” is enough to reduce the entire validity of
the idea into absurdity. To try to understand nothing sounds obscenely unnecessary and foolish.
And it might be. But what isn’t than? To question why or how anything is is, at bottom,
to eventually question everything. And to question why and how everything is is, at
bottom, to eventually question nothingness. When followed to their end, all inquiries
ultimately lead to the questions: why is there something rather than nothing? How? And is
there nothing beyond it? Many of the significant philosophers of history
like Parmenides, Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre,
and many more; as well as many religious and spiritual ideas suggested in Buddhism, Taoism,
and the very essence of God; as well as research areas in science – especially that of physics
and quantum field theory; all focus at least some of their discourse, effort, and intrigue
on the mystifying potential relevance of nothing. Arguably, in some faint, strange, sensorial
way, throughout moments of our life, we have likely all come in contact with a sort of
metaphysical nothingness. Many philosophers like Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger,
and Jean-Paul Sartre suggested that we sense the nothingness through moods like anxiety,
dread, or a dizzying nausea; a sort of premonition or awareness of the thin veneer and emptiness
behind everything. We might feel this when we are alone at night, having trouble falling
asleep, or during a strange moment while having a meal or watching tv, or when we are somewhere
out in public and something comes up that instills a certain anxiety in which we seem
to suddenly realize that this all sort of just showed up out of nothing. And that we
will all be returning to that. And if that’s the case, what is that nothing? Just on the
other side of our skull or underneath everything we perceive as real, what really is that?
What could possibly be the absence of all things, time, and space?
We might contrive all sorts of ideas for an afterlife, but we have no reason to believe
after life is anything different from what came before it. If our consciousness is infinite
and there is an afterlife, then our same consciousness would have had to precede before this life,
which no one could possibly claim as a self-identifying person.
The philosophical view known as Idealism posits that reality is, in some necessary way, linked
with and dependent on cognitive perception and the understanding of ideas. This is not
necessarily to say that the physical matter of one’s body or things outside of one’s
body occur only in consciousness, but that one’s knowledge of their reality only occurs
in consciousness and thus, their reality is interdependent on consciousness. Even if one
doesn’t agree with Idealism, one could still likely agree with the premise that our mind
creates – or allows - our sense and experience of being. And so, if our mind and consciousness
are lost upon death, then we are faced with a nonbeing of reality. A point at which we
could no longer even imagine everything in the universe being removed because, as the
imaginer, we would be too. This, of course, would potentially be the absolute nothing.
It is strange and rather terrifying to consider this; that we can be something for now and
nothing forever. But perhaps only because of the fact that we are nothing forever, can
we be something for now. A negation of all other things across all other time and space;
a being amidst everything else, and nothing more; and perhaps only because of which, we
are something right now. Following some semblance of the metaphysical
train of thought of the 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger as well as the
20th century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sarte, the nothing comes first. Nothingness
precedes consciousness, and the conscious act of negating, or imagining nothing, is
an act that is derived from the nothingness. In other words, the non-being acts on being,
allowing the intellect to negate everything except itself back to it. For example, by
self-identifying our self as our self, we have determined that we are our self minus
everything else, which is to also say, we are who we are and nothing else. Our total
sum of perceptions and understandings, all determined through this same process of negating
every individual thing from everything else, consolidates into the last and final negation
of self-knowledge. Nothing isn’t the opposite of being nor
what everything comes from per se, but what allows something to be at all.
To potentially deviate from any specific philosophers’ train of thought, it is possible that nothing
doesn’t necessarily create everything but rather, serves as the backdrop that allows
everything. Like a blank canvas is to a painting, nothingness is to the being of the canvas
itself. Likewise, to the painter painting and every particle involved. It could then
follow that, at the risk of more seemingly rhetorical wordplay, everything and nothing
are one, in simultaneous, interlocked coordination with one another; everything contained by
nothing; nothing supposed by everything. The blank canvas to the paining. The empty glass
to the glass of water. The empty room to the bedroom. The nothingness to all space and
time. To you. In the words of Alan Watts, “So in this
way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it's your reality, then
how can anything contaminate you? All the idea of you being scared and put out and worried
and so on is just nothing. It's a dream. Because you're really nothing. But this is most incredible
nothing. So, cheer up! You see?” When we are tuned into this nothingness of being,
and truly confront it as a potentially equal part, it could and likely should be followed
with a deep recognition of the thin temporariness coated over everything, and thus, the importance
of focusing - not on some ultimate end game goal, but on the very real implications that
there are none. That the ever-fleeting present is all there is – slid through us at the
intersection of the mystical oneness of all things and nothing. And perhaps, as such,
we should try our best to be careful of what we take seriously - and don’t.
As long as we are, we cannot escape the everything that is created through us nor the nothing
that we created it from. This very creative intuition fills the poetry and art and literature
and philosophies and religions and sciences and perhaps the general history of everything
past and yet to come. A passion. A longing. A meaning. An anxiety. A dread. A synergy
with the same mystery that lit the stars. We all share in this transient retreat to
and from and through nothing. And thus, in the most rhetorically ironic yet beautiful
way, we are all connected by nothing. We might never know what nothing is until
we know nothing at all. And even then, we might not. We are all free to imagine nothing
how we like. Because if nothingness is in fact the source and destiny that connects
us all, through which, perhaps anything
is possible.