At some point in all of our timelines, the lights turned on for the very first time.
It isn’t clear exactly when or what it was like, because that first moment of complex consciousness
has long since lapsed our memory. But at some point, everything began to become some form of
everything for the very first time. The world, or rather our mental construct of the world,
began. And in this birth from nothingness into our subjective color of everything, we became
both the creator and object of our worldview. We see the world not as it actually is, but how it
is painted by this unique lens of consciousness. Inexorably bound to it, our view and experience
and understanding of everything is created by our interior experience, created by our consciousness,
created by the natural world, in a reflexive, continual feedback loop. And so, the world as it
actually is exists, at least in some major part, behind a sheath of subjectivism. This is not to
suggest a solipsistic stance that the physical world does not exist outside of consciousness,
but that the particular image of the world we experience–this color–would not. “We see
the world not as it is, but as we are.” Wrote 20th century author, Anaïs Nin.
Ultimately, we are in something that we can seemingly only touch through a body and know
through a conscious mind, forever prohibited from contacting it outside of our personally filtered
experience of it, forever stricken to the methods of perception our brain allows or can create,
forever condemned to the persistent illusions or hallucinations that come as a result. For
good reason, likely this exact reason, one of, if not the primary, distinct quality of our complex
form of consciousness appears to be its ability and desire to inquire about and into itself,
the world, and the relationship between the two. It wants to know what things really are,
how they are, and why they are. It wants to dig and dig and dig, until it hits the inner most core
and knows all there is to know, finally able to understand and control the mechanisms of
existence, toppling or rising above the very substrate force through which it is made,
and freeing itself from the necessity of further inquisition. But what if, in fact,
there is no such core to be reached? Or if there is, but it cannot be reached by us?
Of course, there are plenty of things we can know and be right about in plenty of
different contexts. I can point to a blue pillow and say that the pillow is blue,
and since most of us share eyeballs, optic nerves, occipital lobes, and human brains
that generally function the same when it comes to visual processing, we can agree that I am right.
However, we can’t actually know that what we see is the same blue, because we cannot see into each
others’ minds and know that, although we both agree that we see blue, we are actually seeing
the same mental experience, or qualia, of what we are calling blue. This and all other problems
related to the disconnect between our perception and what is really outside of our mind is known
as the egocentric predicament, which is further extended and made more difficult when considering
what is experienced in other people’s minds by the concept known as the explanatory gap, which is the
challenge in explaining the subjective experience of physical phenomena sufficiently well enough to
translate what the experience is actually like to another person. And so, even here in this simple,
everyday, obvious example, we can’t confirm that anybody is objectively right. Furthermore, someone
who is severely color blind might not agree that the pillow is even any type of blue at all.
To them, if they do agree, they must agree not out of their sense of truth, but a willingness
to sacrifice the truth of what they see for what the majority of the rest of the species sees
and tells them. But fundamentally, are they really wrong if they say the pillow isn’t blue?
What if all humans were color blind? Or, what if the pillow is in fact a much more vibrant color
of some other wavelength that we can’t even imagine, let alone perceive? Wouldn’t we all,
who say it’s blue, then be just as right or wrong as the colorblind individual who says it isn’t?
This is all to say that even though there can be derivative truths derived from sufficiently
shared subjective experiences, about which one can be right (i.e., the pillow is blue),
in the very same sentiment at the very same time, the same someone can be fundamentally wrong.
And if somehow, suddenly, we could all perceive different, higher wavelengths of color,
and we all agreed that the pillow was in fact not blue, then we would all also agree that anyone
who still said it was would be wrong, even though the pillow, in itself, never changed.
How many things in the conceptual atmosphere of political, moral, economic, metaphysical,
and so forth are blue pillows? What are we all color blind to? And what have we all agreed is
true simply and only because we all agree that it’s true? What is underneath all the different
shades of blue, green, red, and all the rest? This is not to say that such agreements of perception
and value judgments aren’t majorly useful and sufficient in many, if not most cases,
but it is to point out the off-putting fragility, or at the very least, malleability
and abstractness of all of what we think is true. There are, of course, ways of measuring and
getting closer to apparent fundamental truths of physical reality through tools, theories,
and methods that supersede any sort of perceptual illusions, biases, and so forth, but also of
course, all tools must start and end through the first and final tool and method of the human mind.
There is no way out of the mind, and thus, there is no way into the world as it actually
is. And moreover, it would seem that if we could understand and explain what and how
all the physical stuff of the material world is, we still wouldn’t necessarily be any better off
knowing what it ought to mean. And so, if all human truths are based on agreements of shared
subjective, internal experience, which are all limited inexorably by human perception, then
we can likely never know if there even is a core of objective truth to be reached, or at the very
least, if we conclusively ever reach it, if there is. And if this is the case, then would we not,
in every effort towards such a goal of fundamental axiomatic conclusions of reality and truth,
be endeavoring the impossible? And consequently, is not attempting to think and talk in generally
true, objective terms, also impossible? Not useless, but impossible in the absolute sense.
If we cannot arrive at any grand, fundamental, objective truths to life,
but we must build all conclusions, ideas, and discourse on top of some sort of foundation,
this places discussion, thinking, and believing on a constantly shifting,
unstable, and wide spanning ground of various types of subjective, ideological worldviews.
And this absurdity at the core of all worldviews likely then spiderwebs into the attempt to discuss
and think about even relatively commonplace ideas built on or within such a system of thinking.
This phenomenon potentially reveals itself when we confront another person who is so obviously wrong
but has no idea how they could possibly be so, while at the same time, is equally certain that we
are in fact so obviously wrong even though we have no idea how we could possibly be so. Or perhaps
when we confront a sudden breaking down of what we were so majorly sure about for so long, realizing
that everything we believe, individually or collectively, is in fact entirely opposite to what
is now apparently true. This is learning if it ends, but some kind of madness if it never does.
Of course, it is obligatory to mention that all of the aforementioned ideas could themselves
be wrong. They might entirely oppose what you believe or feel you know to be true.
But, ironically, if anything, that would seem to potentially support the main point here.
In either case, for the most part, knowing what the real color of things are, metaphorically
speaking, is perhaps minimally relevant to living and thriving as an individual and collective
species. Perhaps what matters is that we can agree on subjective things sufficiently well enough and
cordially enough often enough. And also, somewhat ironically, it seems as though in order to do so,
if such a feat is possible, the perquisite is a willingness and embracing of often being wrong.
Naturally and culturally, the desire to be right is a deeply enduring and forceful one.
As often as possible, sometimes at all costs, and often times in spite of good reason,
we are both compelled by our psyche and pressured by our social circumstances to always be right.
And when we aren’t, it hurts. So much so that it can often create horrible sensations in the brain
akin that of real physical pain. And so, we of course try to avoid it, or at least admitting it,
at all costs. And yet, it is impossible to avoid. And furthermore, it is possibly the
case that fundamentally, we are never actually right at all. In the words of St. Augustine,
“I err, therefore I am.” As a consciousness, in the form that we are born into, we are all
put up against the imperative of our mind to desire absolute truth, while simultaneously,
the seeming imperative of the natural world that prohibits us from obtaining it.
We will all cling to reasons and answers and worldviews just to have them smashed to pieces
time and time again, whether we know it or admit it to ourselves or not. We will all
likely not only be wrong often, but right rarely, even in the meta, subjective sense.
And so, perhaps we can and must learn how to be ok with this if we wish to be ok with consciousness.
Perhaps we must learn how to fundamentally be ok with being wrong, or we will loath ourselves
until the end. Perhaps we must love and accept the hypocrisy that runs through the very veins of the
human condition, or we will hate all of humankind. Perhaps we must learn how to dial back our
expectations and the degree in which we dread over the inevitable failure of everything we believe,
and the beliefs of others just the same. This is not to make light of the immense challenge
of such an arduous endeavor. It is an endless, upward climb of surpassing one’s default mode
and understanding of the world. But perhaps if we can, at least some of the time, succeed in
doing so, we can feel a little less embarrassed, disgusted, miserable, ashamed, bitter, angry,
and all the rest, and perhaps we can be a little less wrong a little more often.
This apparent impossibility of successfully thinking paired with the inability to ever
not be thinking, seems to beg the question: is consciousness a gift or a curse? Or perhaps some
combination of both? Perhaps the answer depends on whether or not all of this, the ability to be
curious about and discuss things like the possible impossibility of ever truly being right is worth
possibly never being right about anything. And perhaps such a truth can only be answered by you.
“It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life
perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of
the universe which we dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend an infinitesimal part
of the intelligence manifested in nature.” – Albert Einstein.