A Letter For Dr. Dave Levy
Perspectives and Materialism
How do you want to experience this world?
Over the last few weeks this is the question I wake up most days and ask myself. The reason the question is so important is because it’s framed around the assumption of agency. It’s also a question with infinite answers. Let’s break it down word for word:
How - In what way or manner…what are all the possibilities?
Do - perform (an action), to act
You - the person being addressed - me (finger pointing at myself)
Want - desire
To Experience - direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge
This World - reality of what can be observed (this is the most loaded part)
As I’ve deeply contemplated this question I’m often left with more questions than answers, although the answers are becoming more clear. The questions that have arisen have taken me down several very interesting paths of inquiry.
What agency and choice do I have and can control?
What is “the world” and reality?
What is matter?
Is everything just an emergent system?
What do I want and desire?
What do I like and not like?
Can I change what I like and don’t like?
How does my brain encode experiences?
Is my body and mind just a sensory experience machine?
Can I tune and shape that sensory experience machine?
What is a thought?
What is a feeling?
What are emotions?
Are emotions just the calculated output of a compilation of all conscious and subconscious signals?
What is consciousness?
What is the subconscious?
What is material vs non-material?
Is everything non-material?
What can I observe/experience?
What can I not observe/experience?
If I can not observe/experience it now, can I train myself to observe/experience it?
As you can see, this list is merely scratching the surface, each of these questions leads to more questions and more complexity. It’s led me down some pretty deep rabbit holes. I want to start and focus on one key part of this that started me down this path.
What is matter? What is material?
Classically, matter is defined as any substance with mass and volume, occupying physical space and resisting changes in motion (inertia). This encompasses everyday objects—solids, liquids, gases—and excludes massless entities like photons.
Wait, what? How can it be defined while it excludes massless entities like Photon’s?
Aren’t photon’s a key ingredient to, well, everything?
Well, what is a photon then?
A photon is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that can move no faster than the speed of light measured in vacuum.
Light (i.e. photons) carries the electromagnetic force. Without it we would have no atoms.
Emission of light of all frequencies, visible or not to our eyes, is a consequence of electrons in atoms being excited to higher energy levels and giving out photons as they return to their equilibrium state. Whatever your philosophical view of it, because it’s so fundamental to how matter works, the universe would have to be very different to not have light. It's like asking whether the universe would be different without matter, the two are so entwined.
If we didn’t have photon’s to carry light and radio waves, atoms wouldn’t exists, which means matter (as defined above) wouldn’t exist.
So the classical definition of matter is meaningless.
If light and the photons that carry it are a consequence of excitation of electrons to higher energy levels and atoms themselves wouldn’t exist without this - than what is an atom even?
This is where I became shocked.
The nucleus of an atom is composed of electrically positive protons and electrically neutral neutrons. These are held together by the strongest known fundamental force, called the strong force.
To give you an idea of the composition of an atom - imagine a nucleus that is the size of the tip of a ball point pen (it’s much much much smaller than that) or about 1mm by 1mm.
Do you know how far away electrons are from the nucleus? 10000x the distance away as the size of the nucleus. So electrons are 10 meters (33 feet) away from the tip of the pen that is the nucleus.
This is what blew my mind.
What is in all that space between the nucleus and the electrons?
And if matter is composed of atoms, than matter is just vast empty space as well.
I know I’m just barely scratching the surface here and that way more is to this paradigm - mainly that quantum field theory and quantum mechanics being are huge parts and I’m oversimplifying.
The point of getting to this simplified conclusion is that the implications for it boil down to this:
The energy and vibrations that we consciously choose to create and share with the world and the rest of humanity are fundamental to reality.
The key word being choose. We have agency over it.
Having conscious choice or thinking of consciousness as being the fundamental element of reality itself is not even a new thought. In fact the founder of quantum mechanics, the German physicist Max Planck, posited this position back in January of 1931 (quote from The Observer).
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
I find it fascinating that this subject was never brought up in any school classroom I ever stepped foot in - at least not directly.
I took one class at the Air Force Academy called “Perspectives in Management”. My professor was Dr. Dave Levy.
This was an unconventional class to say the least. It was designed by Dr. Levy to to twist and distort your mind and challenge the way you think about everything. It was the first place I had any formal education on meditation and contemplation and to explore and idea or topic from many viewpoints, even if those viewpoints seemed crazy.
Looking back now, I think Dr. Levy was trying to teach us the lessons I’ve talked about here.
One day we walked in and playing on the projector at the front of the room was the movie The Matrix.
We started class and when he paused it after a particular scene in The Matrix where Neo visits the Oracle and in the living room encounters the spoon boy.
Watch:
The spoon boy is a “Potential” a person who has the ability to manipulate the Matrix (a computer simulation where the processing units for the simulation are the human brains - those billions of brains are connected together to run the Matrix).
He is able to bend a spoon with his mind.
Neo approaches him, curious and interested.
The boy gives him the spoon and gives him a simple explanation:
“Do not try to bend the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth”
Neo asks “what truth?”
“There is no spoon”
What the boy is saying to Neo is that the spoon itself is coded into the program of the Matrix (a construct) meaning its properties and how it exists in the matrix cannot be manipulated. That’s why it’s impossible.
The “truth” he talks about, that there is no spoon, is the fact that Neo’s own mind is part of the processing and intelligent power that runs the Matrix and that his mind is what controls the properties of the spoon. It only exists because he allows it to exist.
The realization quickly hits Neo and he’s able to control the spoon. He can Exert his will on the program.
After all these years I’m finally connecting the dots. Dr. Levy tried to connect them for me back in 2008, but I wasn’t ready yet. Even so he planted the seed, I truly think that’s the first time I even pondered the idea of consciousness.
If consciousness comes first and all matter and reality are derivative of that, then even in this world there is no spoon.
How do you want to experience this world?
The question becomes much easier to answer, at least to me, now that this perspective exists.
I get to create it and mold it and craft it any way that I choose.
I can fill it with good energy and vibrations. With love and compassion and grit and resilience. I can fill my experience with what serves me and my family and help them experience the world that they want, too.
I’m so grateful.
With love and deep appreciation,
-Andrew