The Essence of the Unknowable
The French language has an idiom: “Je ne sais quoi.” It literally translates to: “I don’t know what.” A person or experience or work of art with a certain je ne sais quoi may be thought of having a certain something that is hard to put into words — a certain ineffable charm or intangible quality.
The expression is a colloquial umbrella term for the indefinable, the indescribable, the inscrutable. It represents something that we know is real, but cannot adequately pinpoint or place one’s finger on — the ineffable, the inexpressible, the transcendent. It is something that cannot fully be known or expressed in words — being qualitative, it can never be adequately defined or described in plain terms. It is something that we often recognize by its absence, something that one may only apprehend beyond the bounds of normal sensory perception.
The things that give life its meaning and value are, very often, fundamentally undefinable and unquantifiable. They are ineffable in nature. One can never nail them down or pinpoint them exactly. Meaning, itself, is not quantifiable or clearly definable. Truth, justice, liberty, love, poetry, art, beauty, joy, wonder — none of these qualities are clearly determinable or communicable. Yet, without these qualities, life would be a meaningless shadow of itself and, perhaps, not worth living.
Immaterial Science
The trend in modern physics is the search for a fundamental sub-atomic particle. The unspoken assumption behind investing millions of dollars into ever more powerful particle accelerators, such as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, appears to be the inclination to uncover the material building-blocks of reality. The underlying supposition is that at the core of reality is some deep fundamental particle that defines all of reality — similar to the Higgs Boson, determined to be the “God particle” that gives matter its mass.
However, at least half of reality is driven by energy — states, fields, and waves. Even as the Double-slit Experiment, contrived in 1801 by British polymath Thomas Young, demonstrated the phenomenon of wave/particle duality and launched the emergent field of Quantum Mechanics, the energetic nature of reality appears to have been sidelined in favor of a quantized particulate understanding of reality. This experiment demonstrates that, depending on observer interaction with electromagnetic energy fields (EMFs), like visible light, for example, energy waves sometimes behave like quantized particles — photons of light, in this case. Without observer interaction, the same beams of energy generate interference patterns characteristic of waves. This fundamental interchangeability between matter and energy was also described in the world famous mass-energy equivalence equation (E=mc2), which is the highlight of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity.
However, even though Relativity and Quantum Mechanics both appear to suggest that energy is the essential attribute of the observable universe, there appears to be an inexplicable bias in the scientific community towards research into particulate matter, with the search for a fundamental “god particle” consuming a substantial chunk of physics research funding. Even while relativity suggests that matter is really only a condensed form of energy, the scientific research community appears to be driven to prove that reality is ultimately quantized or pixellated in some fundamental way — in other words, that it is essentially particulate and tangible and, therefore, quantifiable and measurable.
Any unbiased interpretation of modern theoretical physics suggests the opposite — that the physical universe is not fundamentally material or particulate, not necessarily even fundamentally tangible or measurable. Indeed the measurement of physical properties — of space-time, in effect — may only be projections of conscious perception onto a universe that may not inherently possess such quantifiability at all.
In absolute terms, the very experience of a tangible, perceptible, even quantifiable, universe, may only be a construct of the mind — a figment of the imagination, as it were, construed from out of sensory perceptions received by the brain through the sensory apparatus, from a universe whose fundamental nature still evades our deepest research. Can we therefore even know for certain that the universe we perceive has any independent existence at all? That it is not all merely an illusory figment of the imagination?
Human beings have a deep-seated bias towards the tangible, the material, the measurable, the quantifiable, because that is how we perceive and experience reality directly through our senses. However, this human bias towards the tangible and quantifiable does not necessarily imply that the universe itself is fundamentally tangible or quantifiable, or even that reality is fundamentally describable or understandable. An in-depth study of any scientific discipline suggests the opposite — that the intangible, the energetic, the ineffable is what is truly fundamental, while the material and the tangible is only a superficial experience or construct, a condensed expression of the intangible.
Materialism in Language and Culture
Did ancient human beings once have a direct, prelinguistic connection with and access to the domain of the intangible and spiritual levels of reality? Did we lose that intuitive transcendent connection with the onset of language? Perhaps the ancient Biblical myth of the Tower of Babel describes the loss of this archaic mode of perception and experience — of how human beings lost a direct spiritual connection with the ineffable, intuitive, transcendent domain of reality as they came to rely on verbal, linguistic forms of expression and communication.
Verbal language limits and circumscribes human perception because it creates a sensory envelope around experience. Our perceptions are filtered through language so that we no longer perceive reality directly, but only through the screen of narrative and language, constituting the “hypnosis of words.”
Is it possible, therefore, that prelinguistic cultures, as well as infants and babies, have a deeper spiritual connection with a “higher” intuitive plane of reality — one that is lost to adults because of the filter of narrative and language? Is it possible that meditative practices, such as TM, yoga, qigong, Vipassana meditation, etc., enable one to escape the noisy domain of verbal narrative that drowns out a deeper, direct connection with divine, spiritual levels of experience, which, in turn, may be accessed through the vehicle of profound silence?
Our cultural bias towards the material and materialistic expresses itself in a number of ways in our lives. For instance, there is the mainstream cultural obsession with commercialism and consumerism. Furthermore, there is a widespread cultural tendency, even more prevalent in the 21st century world of media and information technology, to venerate wealth, material success, and temporal power, rather than the metaphysical qualities of character and spirituality. The phrases “bigger is better” and “the more the merrier” — expressions of the modern obsession with size, bulk, and quantity over intangible essence and quality — are further expressions of the bias towards physicality and materiality that is deeply entrenched in our collective modern psyche.
By the same token, this all-too-human bias towards the tangible and material expresses itself in the scientific domain, wherein particle physics and the search for the fundamental physical particle conveys the implicit hypothesis that reality is fundamentally particulate and tangible. Similarly, the funding of the sciences in modern academia tends to follow this bias — physical sciences receiving vastly more attention than the humanities, for instance. We see this trend, furthermore, in the drive towards technology and commercialism — in ever-faster and more efficient means of production, along with the ever expanding commercial exploitation of the earth’s resources.
Shopping malls are the modern cathedrals and town centers, being the hubs of commercial activity in our cities. The veneration of billionaires and ultra-wealthy celebrities preoccupy us as we obsess over their exorbitant lifestyles. The digitization of the media, commerce, and, indeed, of every aspect of our lives — even of our social behavior through social media — is another recognizable feature of the modern era of consumerism and materialism. Virtual reality and digitized social environments, which are entirely quantized, quantifiable, and, thereby, controllable and manipulatable, are gradually becoming the norm in a society wherein most of our experiences tend to be second-hand and mediated by screens.
Energy and Spirit
The expansion of human consciousness, perhaps, means becoming more aware of and attuned to the qualitative domains of experience. Perhaps it means opening up to the energetic, spiritual dimensions of reality, of the interplay between yin and yang — the material and spiritual, the physical and ethereal.
At least one half of the study of physics deals with intangible, non-material phenomena — with energy, waves, fields, forces, light, and electromagnetic radiation — all of which are invisible and intangible states of existence. Such forces and energies are deemed to be included in the study of physical phenomena, i.e. physics, because they are detectable and measurable using physical instrumentation. They interact with tangible instruments to produce a measurable electrochemical, photoelectric, or similar reactions, which can be modulated and recorded. This continues to reveal that even though the sciences grudgingly accept the reality of the immaterial and intangible — of invisible energies, fields, and forces — the scientific bias towards the tangible remains in effect. Science only acknowledges the reality of invisible energies that produce a tangible, measurable, physical reaction of some sort with observable matter.
Nevertheless, intangible fields, forces, energy, and radiation, are not directly quantifiable because they are inherently non-material, even non-physical (even though they are integral aspects of theoretical and empirical physics). Can we, therefore, discount the possibility of fields, forces, energies, even objects and entities, that may be entirely non-material or non-physical, not producing any measurable reaction at all with tangible, observable objects or phenomena? We can speculate that, logically, they may well exist, but because we cannot quantify or measure them in observable, physical terms, we tend to dismiss them as fantasy or delusion. The only reason for our inclination to do so being the inherent human bias towards tangible perceptions and experiences — that which can directly be perceived by the senses.
What if we human beings once possessed a sensory apparatus that was directly attuned to the immaterial and intangible (per our current understanding)? What if this apparatus has since become attenuated, even atrophied, in our minds and bodies — perhaps as a result of accumulated stress, trauma, and similar factors? What if the reinforcement of language, narrative, and culture, effected through the mechanism of sensory gating in the human mind, renders such intangible phenomena invisible to us in our current state, so that we can no longer directly perceive them?
Could the ancients directly perceive and interact with supernatural beings and events, as recounted in many ancient texts — even Biblical sources? Could this be fantasy or delusion? Or, perhaps, literal reality, as a description of a level of perception that ancients may have once taken for granted, but that has since become attenuated and deadened in modern human beings?
We may speculate about such possibilities, but we have no way of knowing for certain, one way or another, in our current state of being. If an entire population is color-blind, for instance, they cannot prove that there is such a thing as color perception. They will tend to dismiss the possibility of color perception because they have a built-in bias towards monochromatic vision, which excludes the possibility of color. The entire culture and way of life of these people will emerge from and revolve around the non-existence of color in perception. They will exclude and persecute people with color perception, dismissing them as freaks and marginalizing them, together with the entire concept of color perception. The entire culture would be biased towards and hinge upon color-blindness, so that it would be taken for granted as a part of life, the way things simply are. Chromatic perception would be ridiculed as fantasy and marginalized as freakish.
Similarly, in the context of the materially-oriented, 3D mode of perception that constitutes our everyday experience and our immediately perceived reality, that which we cannot directly perceive or become aware of tends to be marginalized and dismissed as fantasy or delusion. However, can we really be so certain that we are correct and justified in our judgements?
The Binary World of AI
Artificial Intelligence (AI) attempts to create a system that seeks to define the indefinable, quantify the unquantifiable, express the inexpressible, and measure the unmeasurable. Even though you can’t really quantify or measure such ineffable qualities as love, wonder, truth, justice, liberty, meaning, or beauty, the AI endeavor seeks to do exactly that.
Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally based in binary code — a vast matrix of countless zeroes and ones. Because of this underlying binary nature of its programming, AI is deeply entrenched in duality and dualistic levels of perception and comprehension. I would argue that, for this reason, there is no way for AI to comprehend or even perceive that which transcends duality. AI can never extend itself beyond the binary nature of the very code that it is constituted of. Thus, it can never comprehend, or even acknowledge the reality of anything that is not definable or quantifiable.
Remarkably, however, society seems to be increasingly convinced that AI represents some kind of messianic super-intelligence that will solve all our problems and deliver us into a new utopian age of infinite abundance. There is a growing propensity in modern society to seek to control reality and manipulate human behavior at an ever-more detailed and obsessively micro-managed level. The trend appears to manifest as an impulse to quantify, circumscribe, limit, and define the indefinable, ineffable, qualitative aspects of our lives.
However, this endeavor to limit and constrain the bounds of human experience within a tunnel vision of a binary perception cannot ultimately succeed. This is so because even in a life, world, or experience that is entirely quantified, measured, regulated, and controlled, the essential things that ultimately give life its meaning and give humanity its sense of purpose are inherently not quantifiable or measurable, determinable or, indeed, controllable.
Because AI is fundamentally rooted in binary code, therefore in algorithmic duality, I would suggest that AI is deeply incapable of truly comprehending reality as anything other than the binary duality that constitutes the very fabric of its being. Human awareness, on the other hand, is not driven or constrained by binary code — rather, it is analog in nature, and rooted in the continuum of experience. Human consciousness has a spiritual dimension, furthermore — one that is non-physical and non-material in nature. Indeed, human consciousness is possibly indefinable and ineffable itself, and therefore unquantifiable and unmeasurable. Being the very faculty of comprehension, human consciousness is possibly essentially incomprehensible — can the mind or soul comprehend itself, being the very faculty of comprehension?
Human awareness is abstract and spiritual even as human existence is not quantized or pixellated or defined by binary code. Human existence is a continuum even if energy and matter may sometimes manifest as quantized particles, under certain conditions. Even the tiniest of sub-atomic particles is constituted of the flow of energy, manifesting in certain forms, proving, thereby, that energy is fundamentally not quantifiable, not definable, and not quantized.
AI seeks to quantize and quantify reality, reducing it into binary code, in order to make sense of it. AI, being fundamentally quantized and binary in nature, cannot comprehend anything that is qualitative, anything that cannot be expressed as binary code. At best, therefore, AI can comprehend only a simplified approximation of reality — a model of experience that has been converted into and expressed as binary code. AI can never experience or comprehend reality itself. For instance, a photograph in a print magazine or newspaper is a pixellated approximation of a photographic print on photographic paper, generated from a photographic negative on celluloid film, which, in turn, is generated by exposing the film to capture an aspect of three-dimensional reality. This reality, however, is a non-pixellated, 3D continuum, unlike the pixellated 2D image that AI experiences and comprehends, even as the pixellated photographic print is a binary simplified approximation of a much more complex, multi-dimensional reality.
AI can never comprehend the original object, only a pixelated approximation of the object that it constructs internally to represent that real, original object. Thus AI can never know reality, only a quantized simulation, simplification, and approximation of reality.
Rediscovering Reality
It is evident that immersion in and with AI can, in the long term, constrain and distort one’s awareness of reality, of the scope of one’s consciousness and understanding of the universe. This is a societal trend that we must seek to reverse and circumvent, in my opinion, through immersion in the non-digital “real world” — through “real world” analog activities and interests, for example. In addition, I would suggest, one might choose to pursue such consciousness-expanding meditative techniques and exercises as TM, yoga, qigong, Vipassana meditation, together with intellectual pursuits such as reading, debate, and independent research, as well as physical, athletic activities, including golf, hiking, swimming, running, or any sport of one’s choosing. Immersion in nature through nature walks, “forest bathing,” grounding or earthing practices, relaxing on the beach, ocean swimming, snorkeling and scuba diving, and outdoor activities of every description, are invaluable antidotes to the digitization of human consciousness.
The mind is more impressionable than we realize. If we allow our awareness to be limited to and constrained by artificial, digital constructs, we would be lending ourselves to be manipulated and exploited by the unscrupulous interests that tend to be in control of such artificial environments. The remedy is never to allow the human mind to become confined by artificial constructs determined by any technological, cultural, political, religious, or other narrative. One must always seek to expand one’s awareness beyond the contrived, synthetic boundaries that are imposed upon consciousness and never cease to learn and grow.
