The neurosis of materialism

How can we avoid the many evils of materialism? Rooted in the idea of a single, determinate universe, materialism fools us into thinking that the world around us is all we have.

One of man’s greatest weaknesses is to be lured to only believe what you see. The man running through the desert after the mirage of water on the horizon, or chasing after the end of the rainbow.

Man’s visual cortex and acuity is unparalleled in the animal kingdom, and because of this we believe that the information our eyes gather is sufficient in itself. And sure enough, sometimes it is - but often it is not.

You may think this is something that other members of the animal kingdom struggle with, but even their more primitive brains have learned to rely not so much on vision as their sense of smell - after all their sense of smell can be more accurate, as it involves recognizing actual particles of the substance and not just a visual representation.

Man, though, has a greater intellect that allows him to judge what is presented to his visual cortex. And that judgment takes into account far more than the visual appearance. It can involve discernment from inference, applying logic, an understanding based on previous memories and concepts that have been learned. When we see water on the horizon, we know instantly that it’s an illusion caused by the heat because we have seen it before, we know its characteristics and we infer that what we see isn’t what it appears to be.

Yet for such an advanced species, we still rely heavily on our vision.

One example is the evidence for the multiverse. It requires a simple inference to conclude the existence of these parallel timelines from the output of experiments showing interference patterns and the like. Yet because it fundamentally changes our view of reality, many scientists still reject it.

But this deception of only believing what your senses present you - isn’t this what happened at the Garden of Eden? The fruit of the tree of knowledge looked desirable, even though its looks were clearly deceiving. And that was enough for Eve - she disregarded what God had told her, and even what her conscience told her was right. That one decision for knowledge over faith is what made the forbidden fruit poisonous. That is what introduced death and hardship into their world. Our world.

When we believe only what we see, and only what we can touch, we are subscribing to an understanding of reality that is called materialism. Such a philosophy is rampant today, and it is at the root of many evils in the world.

Firstly, it naturally leads to a reductionism: all matter, after all, can be broken down into particles (what else is it?), and those are only there because of causes rooted in other particles, and those in others, ad infinitum. What is a thing, except for its causes? This kind of reductionism leads to something akin to the Buddhist view of anatta - “no self”. This is central doctrine in Buddhism that teaches you that you don’t really exist as an independent person, and that everything you are comes from some other person or other cause. In this erroneous view, there is not one thing that you can point to that is actually you. The very purpose of the practice is to brainwash yourself into believing you don’t exist, and neither does reality itself.

This of course naturally leads to a feeling of not being responsible for anything (after all why should you be? if you don’t do something, it’s someone else’s fault!). If your situation is negative in any way, then you can find justification in being a labeled a victim, oppressed and in demanding retribution from others.

Such a view leads us to a very dark place - nihilism, depression, amorality (or relativistic morality), and fatalism/determinism (no basis for free will, after all).. When it’s coupled with the view that life is suffering, then of course it leads you to hate yourself and everything that caused you to exist. And that’s extremely dangerous.

What’s more, when you believe that what-you-see-is-what-you-get, that this world around us is everything we have - then people start to get over-protective of it. Any even vague threat to it is met with a massive response, which makes everyone constantly feel on edge, to the point of becoming neurotic. We hoard our possessions, hide them even, and the fear of losing them gives way to paranoia. Materialism quickly devolves to a hellish existence.

I can’t help but see echoes of this in the Gospel, where Jesus warns against how hard it is for a rich man to enter into heaven, or warns against holding on to our possessions. Being overly protective of what we have betrays a lack of faith in God to provide for us, because now we’re saying that what we have is all we can get - instead of seeing what we have as a gift from a God who will keep on giving.

Worse still, how can we even be expected to keep God in mind when this materialistic view alienates us from our own mind - because our mind, according to this view, is just a machine, phenomenal consciousness being just a side-effect of its mechanism. And pain and suffering that we experience through this mind are as unnecessary as they are unbearable, which makes us feel like we’re unjustly trapped in a torturous prison.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that this view is entirely incompatible with, and anathema to, Christianity.

Dualism

Ironically, perhaps, this alienation can easily become mistaken for the idea of Gnostic dualism: that this material world is evil and full of suffering, and imprisons our soul. The solution for Gnostics was to destroy the matter trapping our existence and release the soul into perfection. And perhaps we see the same today with this nihilistic culture of death so prevalent. We see this manifest in a plethora of ways in modern society through the many ways that people try to escape reality: Drugs, hedonism, obsession with virtual reality, for a start.

It isn’t actually dualism, but perhaps it might as well be when they view the world they’re in being evil, and believe they can exit it into some kind of peace of non-existence.

The Multiverse Perspective

So how does the multiverse help us refute such radical materialism?

Firstly, there is plenty of evidence that the world is not as it seems. We’ve already seen breakthroughs in quantum physics proving that the world around us is not locally real. Quantum physics is already immaterial. The idea that any one particle is caused by a specific, pin-pointed event is incompatible with quantum physics. Ironically, empirical evidence proves it.

But let’s look at it more specifically from the point of view of a Christian Multiversalist. In a potentially infinite multiverse where the passage of time is governed by mind - through downward causation, reality simply cannot be said to be driven purely by material causes. There is a kind of duality of causes. That’s because what governs the step by step experienced from one moment to the next is a matter of what is compatible with our consciousness, with our history, our beliefs - in other words, our spirit. From our perspective of our own subjective experience, we are no longer governed purely by the laws of nature. Instead, what leads us is something more aking to our disposition. Our faith. Even though that is heavily tainted by an underlying belief in materialism deeply ingrained in us.

The possibility of downwards causation potentially frees us from the constraints of material causes, even though the timelines we traverse are each still made of matter, and run according to their own laws of physics There is no dualism where we escape the world. But by eliminating the causal reductionism from materialism, it unveils an alternative line of causation - a causation that actually allows for the perfection of matter.

And what is another word for these reductionist material causes? The laws of physics of course, but from our perspective is it simply knowledge. Knowledge, specifically, that is limited to one universe, one history, to a materialism that is totally determinate. When knowledge replaces faith, as it did in the Garden of Eden - the very first, original sin of mankind - then we become slaves to matter. It exaggerates all pain and suffering, and makes us into a victim causing us to view all existence as evil - ironically just like the dualistic Gnostics. And that is materialism, and is literally the root of all evil.

When your knowledge reinforces a materialistic, monistic worldview, then it is an obstacle to faith, and an obstacle to believing in heaven, in manifesting your desires and in salvation. This is why I say: what you don’t know is in God’s hands. And it’s often better off that way.