How deep could you go down the rabbit hole?
The most essential question remains: how broad is your sphere of consciousness? The ultimate purpose of all human endeavors is to expand our sphere of consciousness. To witness, understand, and appreciate the world that we live in.
Almost evidently, humans can never “fully know the truth”, because we all live inside the truth itself, and we can never rise above it to see the whole picture. Think about the whole truth as the whole universe, and ourselves are merely a part of it, not to mention our consciousness and knowledge. To fully know the truth, we must be at least as great as the truth itself. The Universe is larger than all of us. The Truth is larger than all of us.
I am certain this line of thinking sparks reminiscences of agnosticism, which stipulates our inability to know the existence or the non-existence of god. I am not hitherto concerned with “god” in the religious sense, where the truth lies in the ancient and holy scriptures. I am more concerned with the “god” in epistemological sense, where the “god” is the truth that flows through everything in the objective world, whether perceivable or not. As many ancient scriptures and documents tried to convey the very same idea that the “god” is the force behind all, and humans have been in eternal contrivance to understand god’s ways. The only real difference now is that, thanks to our scientific methods, modern humans have a much more sophisticated and precise way to describe god’s ways, than mere scriptures depicting genesis and the stories of apostles.
God is the universe. The universe is the truth. Those words down to the core are equivalent.
Mathematically speaking, humanity as a species is a subset of the universe, a subset of the truth, and we only belong to it, and we perpetually cannot equate to it. Concisely, we can’t know more with less. To put it into example, it’s much like being inside a mountain and we can only see its rivers and forests, but never the whole mountain. All we can do is to know different aspects of truth, and together they can reveal to us a larger portion of the whole truth. All we have done in our history of inquiring the world is to approach the whole truth closer and closer, and so far we have achieved marvelous accomplishments. As an individual human being, my mission in this life is no less than understanding the world as much as possible. My ability to think about anything in different perspective and wisely put these perspectives together is the key to reach a profound and accurate insight.
At this stage, I have outgrown many things I used to think that’s important to my life. They are still interesting and meaningful to me, but my priorities have changed. I am not going to list any specific thing I am thinking of because that’s going to digress from my point. My point is, that all the components of my personality still exist and play a role, but I have restructured and reorganized them to fit my ultimate mission: understanding the world as much as possible. The theme of the altar piece of my personality chapel has become “seeking a greater truth”.
To me, if there will be only one title for my life accomplishments, it will be “the Philosopher”. However, in the modern time which I live in, most philosophers are unfortunately mere pupils of past philosophies and prisoners of dogmatic philosophical thinking. They are well-disguised and self-serving moral creatures who enjoy pontificating the ideas of past giants, but often lack inspiring originality and practicality. I am not hitherto arguing that we should not learn from past giants, instead we definitely should. I am simply saying that we should always encourage the most unique aspect of ourselves, and never be afraid to stand alone in the world. I often consider “standing-alone” is the cost of having true originality, but the reward of “standing-alone” can be unimaginably enormous, sometimes even posthumous.
Another expression can be that they see philosophy more as a subject or a field of study, almost a pure academic matter. But to me, it should not be. I am in no way a philosophical academic and have no interest in becoming one. The way I approach philosophy is more on the practical side such that I should exercise my understanding of philosophy to all my endeavors and to my life. Yao the Philosopher, should have his own original way of thinking, should be a practitioner of philosophy. I am a firm believer of the practicality of any theory. If it cannot be rigorously tested according to the universe and proven to be an effective description, then it’s just a fantasy. A fantasy is often beautiful, but it lacks real basis. A fantasy can even be calming, but it’s not true. A fantasy is an intricately-woven spiderweb, or an exotic carnivorous plant, luring prey into their traps, and killing them in silence. Conversely, the greater truth can be extremely dull, devastating or even unbearable. Truths often have no advantage against fantasies except for being more true to the universe. It takes bravery and wisdom to accept truth as what it is, and that is why truth-seekers are so often lonesome.
My definition of “Philosophy” is very simplistic and general, which is: “the understanding of the relationship between yourself and the universe”. There is no restriction on what this relationship should be, or what form it should take. This relationship can be spiritual, physical, metaphysical, or epistemic, etc…
In my philosophical methodology, I have roughly three strata of perspective to approach every question that I face. Imagine a two-dimensional coordinate system where the x axis is the level of specifications and y axis is the level of philosophical deepness. Then my strata is shaped much like a pyramid.
The first stratum is on the highest abstract level, and I call it the “cosmological point of view”. This is at the tip of my philosophical pyramid, which bears little specifications but immense profoundness. When I stand on this level of perception, everything in my own life and everything happening around me is reduced to triviality. In the eyes of cosmological timescale and evolution, what we do as humans and as earthlings are essentially meaningless. Think about a luminous giant emitting light 100 times more intense than our sun; Think about a supernovae explosion releasing the same amount of energy that our sun will release over its whole main sequence lifetime (~ 1 foe = 10^44 J) in merely 10 seconds; Think about all the generations of stellar clusters and remnants that witnessed the infancy of the universe. The universe itself, with its incomparable power and phenomena, is the very emblem of the word “God”. The course of the universe is inevitable and everything that we humans do is so insignificant to a point of being pathetic.
SO WHY WORRY? Something very widely known in astrophysics is that all chemical elements heavier than lithium are produced in stellar nucleosynthesis. What does it mean for us? It means, that we humans and all other lifeforms, have our origins in the stars. On the molecular level, we are children of the Earth. But on the atomic level, we are all children of stars. We are literally stardust. But most of the atoms that made us are not produced by the sun, but by the older generations of stars whose remnants forged our solar system. In a way, the atoms that made us are older than our solar system itself. It took a long time for the atoms and molecules in the proto-solar accretion disk near the third planetary orbit to congregate into a solid rocky planet, which we call Mother Earth today. That’s how most of our atoms ended up on Earth.
Just try wrapping your mind around how insignificant we are in this cosmological process. We should remind ourselves of the sheer scale of the universe when we’re full of ourselves. Nothing and nobody is too important in the cosmological point of view. Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? Genghis Khan? All past great emperors and rulers? They have made no difference in the cosmological process. On this stratum, I am standing at the very top of philosophical tower. I rid myself of the meaningfulness of everything and therefore I am totally free. I can float free in the endless and dead-cold space. This is a perfect state of mind for meditation. The only thing I am left to do is to merely observe and try to understand the vast universe that our body and mind temporarily occupy. In my opinion, this stratum of philosophical considerations should not be the main focus of our daily life or otherwise we will quickly fall into the trap of nihilism or existential crisis, which is not beneficial for our general mental and physical health. This perception is immensely powerful but at the same time a fierce double-blade. Practically, it should only be employed in deep philosophical meditations and in times of crisis (it would sooth and calm you). Employ it with caution.
The second stratum is the intermediate level, which bears both philosophical and realistic substance. I call it “anthropological and evolutionary point of view”. Essentially, this level of philosophical thinking puts me into the perspective of being a Homo sapiens (human species) on Earth, and the history of our civilizations on the anthropological timescale.
We humans, the Homo sapiens, are the last existing Genus “Homo”. We have been around for roughly 300,000 years. The archeological evidences indicate that we originated in Africa, and slowly migrated to different continents of the Earth. We were all hunter gatherers at first, roaming the lands, and we slowly evolved into sedentary agricultural settlers, centering our lives around tribes, villages, and eventually cities. We co-existed and interbred with our evolutionary neighbors for a long time. Our evolutionary neighbors, like Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Neanderthals, and Homo floresiensis, all built great tools and villages, such as Oldowan tools and Acheulean tools. Their tools greatly influenced our own: Mousterian tools, and later Neolithic tools. But we humans ultimately outwitted and outcompeted all of our brothers and became the last surviving Homo. But the amazing history of our genus “Homo” is merely a tiny fraction of the whole evolutionary history of Primates. We Homos share the same Tribe (Hominini) with chimpanzees, share the same Subfamily (Homininae) with gorillas, share the same Family (Hominidae) with orangutans , share the same Superfamily (Hominoidea) with gibbons, share the same Parvorder (Catarrhini) with baboons, share the same Infraorder (Simiiformes) with capuchin monkeys, share the same Suborder (Haplorhini) with tarsiers, and ultimately, us and lemurs (strepsirrhini) both belong to Primate order. Try to think about the amazing morphology and cladogenesis under the order Primates, and how incrementally differentiated we are from those creatures as we depart from our own kind. But so far we have not even left the order of Primates. What about all Mammals? What about all Chordata? Animals? All Eukaryotes? All lives? In the evolutionary picture, we have come a long way to become humans as we know it. Our civilization is such a rare case in the history of Earthly lives. We have evolved from wild lives to tribal barbarians, and then to urban industrialists, and now digital dwellers.
Then, a natural question to ask is: What’s my place in this evolutionary process? Where does it lead me? The essence of my second stratum and its philosophical purpose, is to think about my goals, actions and purposes in the context of human development. What is my contribution to our evolution toward an even higher intelligent lifeform? Is it beneficial and meaningful to our path of evolution? And consequently we should adjust our course of purpose and action according to our answers to these question. As you can see now, the second stratum has both metaphysical and realistic weights to our thinking, because it addresses the validity of our ultimate purposes in life. In my opinion, this perspective should be considered when faced with important decisions in life. However, it should still not be integrated into our daily efforts, because it will almost certainly impair our focus on the things at hand, unless a person has risen to a level in social hierarchy where one is no longer concerned with practical details but only philosophical and strategic thinkings. Practically, being a brave, curious and intelligent human is our highest mission in this short life.
At the bottom of my philosophical pyramid, is the cornerstone which I call “Humanistic point of view”. Not surprisingly, this stratum serves as the most practical and down-to-earth layer of my perspective. Although lacking real profoundness, it is the most wide-ranging and detailed layer of the pyramid. It deals with real-world problems that I face everyday and it guides me through daily decision makings. In essence, the humanistic point of view is concerned with history (in units of thousands or hundreds of years), politics, economics, laws, human relations and other circumstances with immediate impact on my life. I shall dwell in this layer constantly to improve my life conditions. The philosophy of this layer is limited by its timescale and world-range but it is in no way trivial. To put it into examples, we can’t call upon the knowledge of the cosmos and evolution to fix a flat tire or defend ourselves in legal court. In these two cases, we need knowledge of automobiles and laws, both of which belong to this layer of thinking. In my view, you can’t be too pragmatic in dealing with real-life issues. It’s impossible to elaborate on this layer since it’s so wide-ranging. The gist of this layer cannot be more stressed: Be pragmatic in the world, and stay true.
This is my philosophical pyramid of three major layers. There is one principle holding them together, the principle being: Find the balance between profound thinking and real-world pragmatism. Build a cohesive and agile connection between these three layers. We need all three of them working together.
I write down this meditation as a way to find peace, humility, and most importantly, mental clarity. Today’s world is a vast sea of unrelenting and saturated noise, and perhaps the most crucial skill to achieve a meaningful life is the ability to increase the signal-noise ratio in your life. We need to filter through the noise to grasp the signal of meaning and true wisdom. By thinking about perspectives of those three layers, this meditation essentially serves to find more signal in life.