There is no spoon
While most people know this quote from The Matrix movie, few know an old philosophical Zen-like riddle that illustrates it and makes it easy for the mind to understand in an instant. There is no mysticism to it.
It’s not just a Buddhist concept, as is commonly believed, it’s been pondered in ancient Greece, by Jean-Paul Sartre in twentieth century France, and by many others in between. You can and should read these various theories — note some will differ more or less with what’s written here — but with this riddle, it takes just a few minutes to instinctively understand at least the problem if not the solution.
What is this?
Good. And what is this then?
A broken mug. Lastly, what is this?
There is no mug in the third picture, and there is actually no mug in the second picture either, because mugs are things that can contain liquid, and whatever is in the second picture can’t. However — and this is the punchline — all the molecules that made up the original mug are still there in the second picture, nothing has physically disappeared. Nothing has disappeared in the third picture either really, the mug molecules are simply out of the picture, but they didn’t disappear off the face of the universe. They still exist, in trash.
If everything physical about the mug is still there but the mug is gone then the “mug” cannot be a physical object. It’s not even a specific arrangement of molecules, because there are all kinds of mugs, with vastly different molecule arrangements, and they are all called mugs. “Mug” is a concept, meaning that it only exists in your head, and not out there in the real world. Indeed, you can imagine a mug without it having to do anything with the real world at all, ever.
Your dog, for example, doesn’t see a “mug”. Your dog sees an object in their world, which is the same object in the physical world you associate with “a mug” in your world. Dogs may even understand that this object may hold water and may look in it if they are thirsty, but a “mug” to you is a different thing than an “object which may contain water” to a dog, however it is represented in their dog-mind. For example, a dog would never think of a mug as something you would put coffee in. Coffee only exists in your head too, by the way.
What about other people? If two people see the same physical object and both say it’s a mug, is it the same mug they are talking about or are they talking about different mugs, each existing in their own heads? We’ve already established that mugs don’t really exist in the physical world but in our heads, so it could not possibly be the same mug. There is no reason why two mugs couldn’t be very similar, like twins, but are not one and the same mug. You see a problem with that? I see no problem with that.
But what if you shatter the object that represents the mug (like I did above) and ask the two people what they see now. They would both say they don’t see a mug anymore. Aha! A single change in the physical world caused two mugs to disappear, how could that be? It must be that the mug is really out there, and not in people’s heads. I can hear you saying “it’s just a magic trick you are playing!”
There is something out there for sure, but it’s not a “mug”. Imagine a meteor striking Earth, and all humans going extinct within a hundred years. If a mug manages to survive longer, is it still a mug or a blob of matter? For whom is it a mug if there are no humans around? Look around you. How do you know that all those random things all over aren’t something very meaningful to aliens who inhabited the Earth a long time ago and left, or to dinosaurs. Or for that matter squirrels. In what classical physics theory (which you seem to be clinging to in your worship of the physical world) do things cease to exist when the viewer is gone?
This is similar to that other riddle in English of whether a falling tree makes a sound if there is no one around to hear it. Of course it doesn’t make a “sound”. Certainly some molecules get disturbed in wave-like fashion, but for it to make that distinct “falling tree sound” (or any sound) would require a listener with a very specific receiver (ear + brain, human or otherwise). I am not a fan of this philosophical thought experiment because there is of course no way to personally verify what happens in the woods when nobody is there. Pictures of “mug” work better.
I am not denying existence of physical reality (though some are). There is no denying that the physical world and events in it can have a relationship with your reality, my reality, and everyone’s reality, indeed, terminal relationship. But if physical world is all there is, then nothing else can exist, including us, or mugs. If mugs can exist, then they exist in our heads, it’s that simple.
The same object or event in the physical world may have a very different impression on your reality and my reality or it may have an indistinguishable impression. The mug example is trivial, but, as you know, two people who witness an event may describe it in very different terms, sometimes to the point where it doesn’t appear they are talking about the same event. So what actually happened? Some molecules got rearranged, that’s what actually happened. The real world is meaningless.
We represent the real world (identify it, label it, describe it, store it, give meaning to it, etc) in our minds. The big claim is this:
The reality we live in is the world we created in our minds, not the physical world of rearranging molecules or buzzing electrons.
We don’t see molecules and we are perfectly fine imagining all sorts of things just laying on our beds with our eyes closed. We also invent concepts like “beautiful” that have nothing to do with physical reality. Things that happen in the real physical world will sometimes effect the world in our heads, though in many — not all — cases we have complete freedom from the physical world to decide how.
For example: if molecules that comprise our body collide with molecules that comprise this thing most of us often call a “bus”, it might cause molecules that compromise our body to disperse in different directions. This might have some adverse effects on our world which we may not be able to control. However, if molecules that comprise a “bus” collide with molecules that comprise something in our world we label a “light pole”, we actually have the freedom to react in whatever way we like. We are very likely to just go with the flow and give in to this automatically arising feeling in our bodies our minds commonly refers to as “shock”, but we could also just decide to “laugh”. There is nothing in the physical world preventing us from laughing when we see a bus hitting a light pole. Nothing. You may choose not to laugh, laughter may not come into your consciousness as one of the options, but nothing in the physical world is preventing you from laughing. (You might get diagnosed with hebephrenia though, a kind of schizophrenia, which is, interestingly enough, recognized by propensity of the subject for reality distortion!).
Whence this need for objectivity? If you and I sit down and compare notes, we would certainly find that our realities have striking similarities. I may ask: When you look up what do you see? “Sky” you say. What color is it? “Blue”. But as we continue to compare notes, we both find that some time in high school we both learned that there is no such thing as “blue” or “sky” in the real world, just sunlight wavelengths refracting differently in the atmosphere’s air molecules. It’s amazing isn’t it: we even agree on the common illusions that we share. This is because we are both the same species, live in the same century, speak the same language, have grown up and live in the same culture, maybe even belong to the same social class,or have attended the same high school and watch the same movies and TV shows. Geneticists say all humans share 99.5% of the genes and so our realities are likely going to be very similar just based on that. It not just the two of us either. It’s hundreds, thousands of people, millions even, or so the TV says anyway.
Because of this striking similarity of the worlds we live in, we have this very rational illusion that we all live in the same world, inside an objective reality — the Matrix if you will — which we sometimes perceive differently because we see it from different angles.
This Matrix actually does exist (the way mugs exist) but it is not one and the same as the real physical world. The Matrix we are served as reality-in-a-box goes far, far, far beyond anything in the physical world of molecules and electrons. How much you buy into this Matrix is your choice though, and I am not suggesting you permanently unplug because you may really go insane (“insanity” here defined as not being in control of your reality). Experience closest to it might be solitary confinement. That’s no place to live for a mind, and even putting criminals in it is cruel and unusual punishment if not outright torture.
However you should realize that this Matrix isn’t the same as physical reality. If it was all about whether we see objects and whether mugs in our heads are the same mug or different ones we could discuss it until we are blue in the face. But this Matrix we are asked to live in goes a lot further. It has a lot of things in it that are three times removed from anything in the physical reality described by quantum mechanics (which is by its own admission far, far from being a complete description of the ultimate reality anyway). All of it is a construct.
This matrix has a different way of persuading you that it’s “true” though. If ten people say there is a mug on the table, then the consensus is that there “really” is a mug out there. And anybody who claims the mug is not out there is “insane” (the common definition of insanity different from mine above). So are you insane? We have institutions for people like that, though we might first try to cure you with some mind altering drugs.
Force is for the most part not required though. This common reality does make superficial rational sense, but this is no argument that it’s real. Because it also makes sense that since the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and then reappears the next day in the east again, the sun is actually circling around an— obviously flat for all I’ve seen with my own eyes — Earth.
So what is the truth? Is the world flat or does it circle the sun? The truth is that, for the most part, you can believe whatever the hell you want to believe, that is, you can live in any world you want to construct for yourself in your mind. This is true even if you live in North Korea. If you are a North Korean it is highly recommended that you nod and clap in certain situations if you believe that longevity of your world is a good thing (entirely up to you) — the same way you should not try to dodge bullets or jump in front of busses — but you most certainly do not have to believe anything they tell you to believe: you can nod and clap without actually believing anything. It may indeed be possible that there are North Koreans who live in a more free reality than many Americans. After all, if you believe that Kim Jong Un is a Dear Leader then you can’t be oppressed by him: you will want to clap and nod.
Many Americans feel oppressed by Donald Trump. It’s quite possible that more Americans than North Koreans are oppressed. It’s not just that these Americans think they are oppressed, they’re actually oppressed. This is not fake news, because “oppression” exists only in the mind, in their mind, not in the real world. If you believe that some North Korean is oppressed, then they are oppressed — in your reality, but not necessarily in theirs.
So should you believe that Donald Trump is Dear Leader? Or should you feel oppressed? Or something else. That of course is not a question anybody can or should answer for you, it’s your world and that‘s kind of the point. But you should reexamine everything you believe in so that it really is your world, and not someone else’s. If you go back and reexamine everything you believe in and end up constructing exactly the same world all over again, that’s certainly fine, since you can do and believe whatever you like. It’s fine. The reason why you should perhaps go through this exercise is not necessarily to design a different world. No, you should do it because in all likelihood the world you inhabit right now, the world in your head, wasn’t constructed entirely, if at all, by you. It wasn’t constructed to enslave you necessarily, like in The Matrix movie, or maybe it was, or maybe we have evolved to live in this Matrix— I don’t know — but if you yourself reconstruct your world from scratch then it will most certainly be your world, and not someone else’s, by definition.
This would be one definition of freedom, some would say far more important than the superficial I-can-vote-in-elections type of freedom that you are told you have and North Koreans don’t. You can’t truly be free until you own the world you live in (this is more Sartre than Buddha, by the way). It matters a lot less, if at all, what it looks like. Of course, once you get on this path, you may find you don’t value freedom nearly as much as you thought you did, and ask to be plugged back into the Matrix, like Cypher. This too is fine: freedom is just one dimension of living, and maybe not the most important one. You’ll have to decide for yourself. Just make sure you do decide for yourself, else it’s really hard to speak of “yourself”.
Another important thing to remember is that just because you’ve designed your own world it does not mean it’s true. You can believe that the Earth is flat and not trust people who tell you they took photos of it from space which shows that it’s round because those people also voted for Hillary Clinton. You don’t like her, and so you believe the matrix is all one giant Clinton Foundation conspiracy. Unfortunately, while you are free to believe this, it doesn’t mean photos of Earth from space showing it’s round are fake. Don’t confuse freedom and truth. Just like freedom may not be everybody’s cup of tea, truth isn’t either, so it’s fine.
If you are feeling a little nauseated like Antoine Roquentin in Sartre’s novel La Nausée or feel like you want to puke like Neo in The Matrix, it’s a known, natural reaction to these things. It means that your mind got it. But actually what this is all supposed to do is liberate you. Free your mind. Unplug you from the Matrix long enough to see that it is separate from reality in which you really live. There is no spoon. The spoon is in your head, and in your head spoons can bend no problem. You may even be able to convince other people that their spoon is bent too (it’s not the same spoon remember). Happens all the time, every day. You’ve met people who can convince other people of all kinds of crazy ideas.
Whatever you do, please don’t go jumping between buildings (except in your mind; Neo also did those things in the Matrix only, not in the physical reality of Morpheus’ ship). You can go learn kung fu too if you like, or another sport. Exercise is known to help you think clearly and can also help with nausea. I’ve actually decided to go a step further and quit that most glaring socially acceptable mind altering drug.
To close, getting this conceptually, while nauseating, actually isn’t that hard. What’s hard is acting on it, making that jump from one building to another in your head. But that’s a topic for another time.