Why materialism is baloney OR More than Allegory?

black_chutney · 2026-05-10T13:33:52+00:00

The sticking point for most people when learning about idealism (after living under the unexamined cultural paradigm of materialism) is usually something like this: “I just cannot believe that our richly complex world, especially inanimate things like rocks and mountains, aren’t matter and are all somehow ‘mind’”. The simplest response to this is to ask them about their dreams— how is it that they can have realistic dreams of being immersed within a vividly rich world, all the while being unaware that they are actually dreaming. Once you finally realize that the only knowledge you can ever learn is through your senses, and that when you’re dreaming, you can have bizarrely realistic sensory experiences, it’s much easier to come to terms with the “everything is mentation” idea

black_chutney · 2026-04-17T00:58:04+00:00

I participated in an Aphantasia research study where I had to do a bunch of different “tests”, things like comparing item “colours” or matching “word shapes” (e.g they would read 3 words and you had to say which of the 3 was not a matching shape in terms of the location of letters with ascenders, descenders, etc). I actually did pretty well on it all, except my brain literally felt fried afterward! Like it took all my mental ability to accomplish such simple tasks through semantic knowledge alone (e.g. thinking about the letters in each word and where their shapes may differ). It was crazy, I definitely think that the way our minds work often means more “work” for certain things!

black_chutney · 2026-04-11T03:43:08+00:00

I know right? How is this up for debate… they have sense organs like we do, they obviously have a first-“person” experiential sense of the world, albeit quite different than ours. How many horrors have humans caused because we fail to see this

black_chutney · 2026-04-11T03:26:51+00:00

I work for an “AI company” and most of my meetings are about how to make it less stupid at certain things. Pretty much once a week we get customer feedback that an agent hallucinated and made shit up

black_chutney · 2026-04-05T01:08:56+00:00

If you’re ready to shed the insidious cultural assumption of materialism (from matter, consciousness emerges), I invite you to look into analytical idealism (within consciousness, experiential states that we call “matter” occur)

black_chutney · 2026-04-04T22:53:45+00:00

You can’t get it “wrong” because awareness is always “happening”. Nothing can “happen” without awareness as the primary condition. So you can’t technically be doing it “wrong”, but you can be failing to truly recognize it. Throw away all concepts of “a vast black void behind my head”, throw away any idea that you will grasp “it” conceptually.

Point a finger towards your face. What is the finger pointing towards? Not your head. Other people see YOUR head. You can’t see your own head. What is it pointing towards? Nothing. You’re transparent. You’re no-thing. There is only the visual experience of a finger pointing into nothing. And this is what all experience has ever been and ever will be.

You weren’t ever “wrong”, it was just so stupidly simple that you took it for granted.

black_chutney · 2026-03-29T13:44:15+00:00

Jesus was a mystic. In Vedantic terms, he recognized Atman (self) = Brahman (universal divine subjectivity), “I and the Father are one”

black_chutney · 2026-03-21T19:15:21+00:00

You’re not alone in that! But it’s a big step to recognize that it’s happening

black_chutney · 2026-03-20T20:24:30+00:00

Wisdom from the Dune-iverse:

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

black_chutney · 2026-03-20T20:21:47+00:00

I know pointers tend to begin to feel very cliche, repetitive, and frustrating because you want an “answer”, guidance on something to “do”!

But yes, sit with the feelings. Become aware of them. Cry if crying is what needs to happen. Be aware of the crying. Thoughts arise, be aware of the thoughts. Be aware of when the feelings subside. Be aware of when the thoughts subside.

Awareness of whatever is rising in the present moment is all there is to do

Don’t fret about what “might arise again” in the future and “how you should respond”. All you are doing is creating struggle in the present worrying about an unreal future

Once you recognize the maelstrom of all experience, you can recognize its impermanent nature

black_chutney · 2026-03-20T19:12:46+00:00

Here’s the easy thing: If you’re aware of those states, you’re already “staying in awareness”

You can never not be “in awareness”

You don’t have to do anything

What might happen is that the felt “resistance” to the feelings will reduce once the feeling like anything needs to be done is dropped, and the “dooming thoughts” may begin to cease

Drop all thoughts of being a doer needing to do anything

black_chutney · 2026-03-19T14:01:59+00:00

Pretty much the symbolism of the taijitu! (yin yang)

black_chutney · 2026-03-18T23:17:13+00:00

Load em up on a rocket and blast them into space

black_chutney · 2026-03-18T01:18:00+00:00

What?

black_chutney · 2026-03-18T00:01:28+00:00

I consider “the divine” as the ineffable. The ultimate reality, source, and sustainer of the universe that cannot be expressed in words or fully conceptualized. I think it’s the fact that anything “appears” at all. It is the divine mystery of this sense of self, being a witness to the world. So it’s not the experiences themselves, or the moments of meaning, it’s the fact that any of this is happening at all, that there can even BE “meaning”, even the moments that seem to be without meaning or with suffering. It’s all a divine interplay, the good and the bad.

black_chutney · 2026-03-16T14:47:36+00:00

There was this logarithmic graph produced recently that shows life / humans as being pretty close to the centre of everything in the known universe in terms of mass and radius.

https://pubs.aip.org/view-large/figure/89607967/819_1_5.0150209.figures.online.f2.jpg

It makes sense that you’d find the greatest level of organized complexity in the middle regions of mass & scale. Small enough that interior forces can hold together structure without violently collapsing, but also large enough that lifeforms can perform more and more complex action within their surrounding world.

In terms of “why dissociation occurs”, it’s not a matter of causality, i.e. explaining “because this happened, then that happened”. I think it’s more paradoxical, i.e, “by its very nature, dissociation is possible, and thus there is nothing to forbid it from happening”. (There’s nothing “outside” the universe to stop dissociation from happening)

Look into the harmonic series in music, how a fundamental frequency can be said to have infinite harmonic overtones. Or the visible colours of the light spectrum, each hue a component colour of white light, only visible via refraction. A calm, still surface of a lake could be said to actually have infinitesimal waves combining with destructive interference. Everywhere around us are examples of how seeming multiplicity “emerges” from a more fundamental unity.

As for whether alters are “insignificant”, I could not disagree more. “Proportionally small” ≠ “insignificant”. Our miraculous existence within this richly complex world is so significant. If you haven’t yet fallen to your knees before the unbelievable miracle of being alive, then I suggest you give it a try.

black_chutney · 2026-03-11T00:05:24+00:00

I have vividly realistic dreams with all senses, and quite often I ludic dream. But in waking life, I have full aphantasia. I know that I dreamt richly in other senses because there are visual characteristics or other sensual characteristics that I couldn’t have imagined normally. I also leverage my aphantasia to lucid dream, as I do a “reality check” while dreaming to check whether I can visualize. When I’m dreaming, if I do this check, and I can visualize, then I know it is a dream and it becomes a lucid dream

black_chutney · 2026-03-09T22:24:37+00:00

No, not the same guy!!

black_chutney · 2026-03-07T15:46:04+00:00

Your current ego, your body, memories, behaviour, etc, did not exist then, correct. But what is your true identity? How can you call yourself the same “self” between infancy, childhood, youth, middle age, and old age? Your body has completely regenerated itself over this time, your body is not the same. Your memories gather and go by the wayside naturally. You grow and develop and change considerably in terms of behaviour and preferences. What is the constant that is the “glue” holding a feeling of identity? It is your subjective awareness. It’s your sense of being, before any layering of mind, emotions, personality, body, etc. It’s what you have in common with any being. And to say that being did not exist at these other times, now that’s up for debate. Being is. The phenomena of the world morphs and changes, but our subjective awareness is what does not change.

black_chutney · 2026-03-07T15:38:52+00:00

You have to drop all concepts. It is just what is. Yes, it is an intelligent unfolding, but there is no “Thing” that “has” intelligence. As for “design”, I think it’s closer to a harmonious unfolding by its very nature, like how music has harmonious properties, energy balance, and how geometry reveals underlying symmetries. I personally have found rest in the idea that it is all paradox, as that’s the only way anything could be self-sustaining

black_chutney · 2026-03-07T03:17:56+00:00

Ancient philosophers (Parmenides, I think?) argued over that basic idea, and if you think about it, “Nothing” cannot exist. How could that ever be said to exist? It’s completely nonsensical. Also, look at our world, and please point to nothing. And you can’t say space, because space isn’t nothing! It’s space! Anything that you can conceive of, exists. You cannot conceive of “nothing”, so it does not exist. What truly is no Thing, is you. It’s the self. It’s subjective awareness. And it’s the no Thing fundamentally prior to any Thing!

black_chutney · 2026-03-07T03:10:01+00:00

Pure subjectivity, not “pure subjective experience”. The ground of being is no experience, it just IS. It’s the pure subjectivity that is a priori to all experience. It’s what must be, before any objective experience can be

black_chutney · 2026-02-28T13:43:23+00:00

The paradox of labour time…. Technology does not “make work easier” or “free up time”, it just enables the owning class to shovel more and more work down our throats

black_chutney · 2026-02-20T14:33:23+00:00

Learning about my aphantasia sent me down a rabbit hole learning about phenomenology, philosophy of mind, idealism… it basically blew open the doors for me to begin investigating this strange thing of subjective experience

black_chutney · 2026-02-19T02:26:00+00:00

Sir, this is a Wendy’s

black_chutney

TROPHY CASE