My manifesto

I don’t believe we can ever know anything for absolutely sure but finding out is one of the greatest pleasures in life.  I suppose that makes me agnostic, but I feel uncomfortable with that term.  I feel like it’s lazy to say there’s no point in having a view, since you can’t ever know for sure.

I have ideas. Ideas that I like.  Ideas that I buy into and use to form a worldview.

Let’s be clear. The act of deciding isn’t a statement of fact.  Everything on this blog should be read with the caveat that I can be and probably am wrong. Please, give me a compelling argument to the contrary.

On being

We do not come into this world from some other spiritual place, we grow out of this world (a favourite phrase of Alan Watts). The fact that people are sentient means sentience is an inherent trait of the universe. That trait comes alive to varying degrees in all objects. We don’t have the science (yet) to recognise and understand our own intelligence properly, so let’s not assume it doesn’t exist in forms all around us.

On the meaning of life

The universe is experiencing itself through us and everything around us.  It doesn’t have a point or a purpose and it’s not heading towards any kind of narrative climax… but that doesn’t make it meaningless. It’s just that meaning is imparted, not inherent. That’s why we can’t all agree on what it means. We keep expecting it to be self evident, but it’s clearly not. Instead, we have to decide.

I’m not talking about whether that tree over there is real or if you and I are real. Most likely it is if you can see it and touch it and so on.  I’m talking about what that means. What it means is just as important as whether it’s real, because the way you answer that colours what you believe is going on. It influences our whole experience of life.

The meaning of your life and of life in general is imparted by you and by others. You’re not the only person imparting meaning to yourself. You might think you’re the expert on yourself or that only you have the right to impart meaning about yourself, but it doesn’t work that way.  You are always yourself AND someone’s son or daughter, friend, employee, customer etc.

So. the universe is nonsense, but it’s an intelligent, fun, beautiful, crazy, interesting nonsense.

Physics is simply the rules of the game.

On religion
Religion arises from our relationship to the sentience of the universe. We come up with theories about it and stories. The experience is valuable and real. The way we make sense of it is probably not.

You can communicate with the universe. We call it prayer, meditation, contemplation, ritual, observance etc. Maybe it’s a trick of the brain. Maybe not. It feels real enough that most human beings across the globe that now or ever lived, engage in some form of practice. There’s clearly something in it and we find it worthwhile.

All paths do not lead to god, as though god is some cosmic end-game.  Your experience depends entirely on the story you tell yourself about it (the meaning you impart to it).

Seek and you will find is a self fulfilling prophesy. If you’re looking for God, you’ll find regular experiences of the god you expect.  If all you expect is emptiness, you’re setting yourself up for a very unhappy existence.

In closing
It’s worth your while looking for the lovely, the beautiful and the incredible. Why wonder if there’s more to life, when there’s so much more of THIS life to live?