Note 11: Spirituality from a programmer’s perspective
A midlife crisis is by definition an existential crisis. You realize that a large part of your life is behind you, but you still have time to change the overall trajectory. One of my biggest challenges was to reconcile my belief in science and logic, which led me to become an atheist, with the deeply spiritual experiences that triggered my midlife crisis. The following text is how I reconcile a scientific world view with spirituality and free will.
There is ample evidence that the universe runs on math. Theoretical physics even suggest that mind comes before matter.
If the universe runs on math, then we are the programs that have become conscious. From an evolutionary standpoint, consciousness is a pre-requisite for sapience. So we became conscious, then sapient. Once we became sapient, we started building civilization. A civilization that now has the average westerner living with standards that would make medieval kings and queens jealous. Fresh strawberries for tonight’s dessert, in the winter? Watch the work of an ensemble of thousands of artists and craftsmen, and be able to decide on genre five minutes before? Have a slab in your hand that gives you access to pretty much all of humanity’s collective knowledge with a few taps? No regent, however powerful, had that.
We may not have the same living standards as the royalty of yore, but the fortunate of us have roof over our heads and food on our plate on a regular basis. We have regained what our ancestors lost once they founded civilization: time for our minds to explore our world. There was no paid vacation in the 15th century, there was no need for vacation when we were hunter-gatherers. Here, I’m not romanticizing that lifestyle, it’s simply that they would not understand the concept of “work” and hence not understand “vacation” either. I’m also not saying that minds haven’t explored their world before, but in order for exploration to expand the world of many and not just the one, the fruits of that exploration must be shared. The fact that you’re reading this means that you have the means to share your exploration with not just your tribe, not just your village or town, or even the kingdom. You can share it with a large portion of the whole world. Which for all we know is every conscious being in our galaxy (though it may not be what we believe).
We live in the best of times, we live in the worst of times. Our known universe has never been as big. To our knowledge, not our belief — it’s important to understand the difference without judging one as lesser than the other. In the end, they really are the same thing, although the way there is different through each. In a complex world such as ours, either alone will lead you astray more often than not.
Belief is a feeling that can be more powerful than knowledge in some contexts, but belief without knowledge is as lacking as knowledge without belief. You cannot build a civilization on knowledge alone. In order for people to contribute to a better tomorrow they need to believe in the future. That belief is built into us through our DNA: we procreate, and we bond with our offspring. We want our children to do at least as well as we have.
Belief is the most basic of our sapient programming. It is programmed into us by our society, our community, our family and friends. It is programmed by our own wants and desires. The desire to be loved. Seen. Validated. Perhaps a mind can exist without the notion of “other”, but that is something we can not currently experience, because our DNA (which sets limits on our minds) has evolved sapience in a social context.
Have you ever doubted that you really have free will? I have. I understand many of the philosophical arguments against free will, and they seduced me for a while, give or take five years. I have landed in the firm belief that we have free will. That free will means “the ability to program your mind in whichever way you see fit”. What we see as restraints, is simply the stalk of a flower that has yet to bloom fully.
Knowledge can correct our belief when our belief is wrong. That is painful, the deeper held the erroneous belief is, the more painful it is to correct it. Sometimes that means breaking with our community, because communities are based on beliefs. If you don’t believe me, simply ask yourself: can you ever really know that someone loves you? There is no way you can prove it, you can simply tell me that you know it because you believe the person who says they love you. Love is where belief and knowledge become the same again.
Emotions are not only how we experience the universe, they are also how we program our mind. Belief is as much a feeling as it is a state of mind. You simply have to learn to recognize it.
Just like me, you have likely been programmed to view emotions as less than rationale. Few people can do a business presentation with beliefs alone. We need facts (another word for knowledge) to support our ideas or suggestions. The truth is that rationale is nothing without emotions. People whose emotional center is damaged often have problems making simple choicee. Rationale and emotions together they make powerful tools to program your own mind. If you’re wondering in which direction you should go, look to your compass: your emotions. Go towards love, stray away from fear. Expand your “I” to include as many others as you can, as often as you can. It can be one other person or humanity as a whole (although our civilization is so complex that the latter becomes very hard, so don’t blame yourself for failing). Every time you do a kindness, whether it is seen or goes seemingly unnoticed, you program your own mind in ways we do not yet understand.
You are the conscious program, created to solve an equation you cannot fathom. But if you are kind and follow your heart, you can be sure that you’re doing your part. (To be fair, those that are unkind also play their part, but it is a sad one: they are the darkness in which your light can shine).
