The times they are a-changing-again
ARTICLES
The times they are a - changing - again
I like to listen to talks by people I admire while I fall asleep, not just as a focus for my scattered mind but as often in that slightly altered state of consciousness where I’m fading into sleep or coming back around, interesting things occur to me and links I would not ordinarily make forge themselves seemingly independent of my conscious mind.
The other day, as I settled down to nap listening to talk by Rupert Sheldrake and began to drift off, I heard him mention, quite casually that organised groups of so called ‘guerrilla skeptics’ work together online to edit all wikipedia pages about his work and the work of other scientists and thinkers to portray them in the most negative light possible’.
As I resurfaced from my nap a little while later, in a phase of semi-lucidity the words from the classic Bob Dylan song ‘The times they are a - changin’ began playing in my mind. My brain often forges links through lyrics, uses them as messengers to intimate something I don’t yet wholly understand. The same line kept playing over and over.
‘‘Don’t stand in the doorway don’t block up the hall’
‘‘Don’t stand in the doorway don’t block up the hall’
‘‘Don’t stand in the doorway don’t block up the hall’
It increasingly dawned on me that what was being shown to me was that people like the ‘guerrilla skeptics’ are standing in the way of progress, and that what they are doing is not benign and perhaps even dangerous.
Maintaining the status quo view of the world as rational materialist despite several decades now of scientific evidence to the contrary is both zealous and unscientific. The ‘guerrilla skeptics’ believe themselves to be doing something noble, valiantly defending materialism from the faulty claims of pseudoscience. Apparently it is lost on them that what they are doing is inherently unscientific. Using a backwards logic that goes something like…under materialist rationalism Rupert’s work cannot be true, therefore the work must be false and unscientific because we already know that materialism is correct.
The thing that made me take notice though, that felt buzzy and alive in that moment is that if it is materialism that underpins the worldview that has got us veering towards climate collapse, then those who are going out of their way to defend it, despite growing evidence to the contrary, are standing in the way of the paradigm shift necessary for us to once again regain an animist, spirit full, divinely suffused, holistic view of ourselves within and as nature and save ourselves from climate catastrophe.
If we can tell when we are being watched, if plants have morphogenic fields, if consciousness is not a bi-product of brain activity, if matter is a phase of consciousness, if non local particles can interact, If universal laws aren’t fixed but are more like habits and constantly in flux, if all the world is animate,if there are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in materialist’s philosophy then the implication is surely that we are called to live differently.
Materialism is convenient for Capitalism and the current blindness to the very imminent threat of climate catastrophe. If land is inanimate it can be mined and plundered. If people are not divine they can be exploited. If life has no inherent meaning then what does it matter if we hurtle towards self destruction. It turns out humanism is not a big enough defence against nihilism and apathy. It breeds discontentedness and depression, and as there is increasingly less scientific evidence for its veracity anyhow then the only reason we are still operating under its outdated philosophical claims is because it is propping up the current power structure.
There has never been a time when a quick paradigm shift has been more imperative as we draw ever closer to major climate tipping points from which there is no return. I can feel a shift is imminent, people a few years ago I would have bet money would never have used the word spiritual are talking about the divine, prefacing more animistic thinking with I know it sounds crazy but… . even in academic circles, much to the horror of some, people are tentatively broaching the idea that there might be ‘different ways of knowing’. Shamanism is becoming more and more popular, pagan festivals that mark the seasons turning are being revived and people are desperate for more meaning in their lives. But I worry it won’t happen fast enough when people like the ‘guerrilla skeptics’ insist on blindly blocking up the hall, when legions of middle aged western men are terrified that the mundane, wholly un-magic- infused lives they’ve been living might actually have been lacking something that has been right here the whole time just out of their reach. It is a bitter pill to swallow to awaken to realisation they have been complicit in maintaining a status quo that not only turns out to be scientifically flawed but has been propping up power structures that oppress indigenous people, who, it turns out may have known far more than they did all along.
The debate has evolved. It is no longer that science, despite it’s ingenious inventions can only get us so far, and after that we need ‘something more’ in order to make our lives bearable, but that the science itself is now beginning to produce evidence for the ‘something more’ and that the unbearableness of rational materialism evident in the levels of depression, anxiety and malaise in our society are actually pointing to something real. That we can feel that we are living in ways that are an affront to the spirit, that feel wrong because they are wrong. That treating people like machines is wrong not just because the end result is it makes them miserable but because they contain a spark of the divine, which on some level they know, that’s why it hurts so much to be treated otherwise.
Part of our motivation to prevent climate catastrophe ought to be because humans are sacred, as is the planet and it’s every living creature, and it would be a loss to the universe if much of life on this glorious planet was lost. The narrative that humans are a parasite on the planet is getting old, it is self hatred and it is nihilism taken to its worst extreme. As we begin to re-inhabit the old beliefs now backed up by science, that all living beings are sacred, the weeds in our garden and us too, then the processes that are a threat to life on this planet ought to be curtailed. It gives us a reason, a deeper, truer, more compelling reason to create change and start to move the dial on climate change. So I say, (particularly to the middle aged men who need to hear it most), ‘gather round people, wherever you roam and admit that the waters around you have grown or soon we will indeed be drenched to the bone. For the times they are a -changing-’ …again.
Afterword: The point of this article was not to go into depth about scientific theories that appear to disprove materialism, but rather show how still seeing the world through a materialist lens allows us to exploit both other people and the natural world, however if you are interested in doing further research in this area, I suggest exploring.. The ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, Quantum Mechanics and non locality, emergence and complexity, Qualia, intentionality, The explanatory gap. Einstein’s work on matter, Ian mcgirlchrist’s work on the relationship between matter and consciousness and of course as mentioned in the article, much of the work by Rupert Sheldrake, to name a few
As well as articles such as:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/28/science-move-away-materialism-sheldrake
In many ways science is just catching up to what indigenous groups have known for millennia and so another, probably better option is to read and listen to indigenous groups and elders as they explain the way the world is, gleaned through slowly revealed insight over thousands of years. If I knew more on the subject this would have been the thrust of the article.
