Animals and the Absolute

Dmitri: Robert, You said that we humans are animals first and foremost. If this is true, what are the implications? Does this mean that we are governed by animal instincts?

Sandy and Harlequin, 2025

Robert: Well, that is part of it, Dmitri, but not all.

Due to our advanced intellectual abilities compared to our primate cousins, our ability to record ideas in speech and writing allows us to be inculturated with shared information and values. This brain power also permits metaphysical considerations to fall within our powers of speculation.

Those abilities have upsides and downsides, in my view.

One of the downsides is hypnosis by ideas. If an idea is powerful, it takes a strong mind to resist being seduced by it, even to the extent of advocating for it and preaching it. That is the mess I see in religion, non-religious metaphysics, and so-called spirituality—preaching of opinions as if they were facts.

Years ago, when I began discussing this, some “spiritual” people, feeling superior because they knew “Truth,” tried to instruct me. “If only poor old Robert could understand ‘The Absolute,’ he would not be talking that way,” they’d say. I’d try to joke around and lightly respond to their learned ignorance, but it was sad to see.

I’m not saying that sources commonly categorized as spiritual are bereft of nourishing ideas. The so-called perennial wisdom can be a helpful resource, assuming one remembers that we are all human here and no one has final answers to ultimate questions. I was able to explore all that without getting lost because I am a natural skeptic who questions everything, including my pet ideas—especially my pet ideas. However, if one is looking for final answers and somehow, unfortunately, finds them, that is religion, not wisdom, and blessed indeed is s(he) who knows the difference.

One way to resist seduction by ideas such as perfectionism, monotheism, idealism, transcendentalism, etcetera, is to recall that, at root, one’s outlook is that of a human primate animal, not an omniscient observer, nor even an impartial observer. Since our outlook depends entirely upon perceptions, we can never know how our beliefs relate to any ultimate reality. Actual wisdom demands skepticism as the default position and regards knowledge as provisional and subject to revision.

That posture of reservation toward spiritual and metaphysical belief systems, no matter what imagined authority supports them, allows a naturalistic view shared by countless people throughout the ages.

The transcendental view, except in the best cases, abhors and fears naturalism, imagining and even insisting upon some ideal source of knowledge beyond the primate brain. So much for “oneness.” Suddenly, there are levels and hierarchies.

Nowadays, we hear voices claiming that panpsychism is a fact, naturalism is “baloney,” and the human body is only an imaginary avatar, only a “headset.” However, logical speculations and mathematical proofs do not necessarily point to reality. Ultimate reality is what we don’t know. Our “reality” consists of perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, and we have no way of standing outside of that flow. The notion of an impartial observer is pie in the sky.

When it comes to ultimate reality, philosophical arguments, however engaging or well-founded, are pointless because there is no way to test them. And a scientific theory that delivers useful predictions may be no more a description of reality than a simple wild guess. In other words, a scientific theory or mathematical proof may be useful for calculating the probability of observable phenomena without necessarily providing true descriptions of the world. It may even be that there is no objective reality beyond human linguistic and conceptual frameworks.

Conscious awareness has no known cause and no factual elucidation. Irrespective of what some people believe, we human primates do not comprehend our place in the Universe and may have no basis for doing so. We don’t even know what “myself” is or isn’t, much less what “reality” is.

“The ‘I’ of enunciation never thinks just what it thinks it thinks, and never simply is what it thinks itself to be.” ---The Ten Thousand Things, page 17

We human primates know nothing concrete about reality any more than an ant can understand a picnic. We know our feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, which are human feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. From whence comes this stream of consciousness remains entirely unknown and mysterious.

What do we know about some purported “Absolute?” Absolutely nothing.