We've all come across a similar hierarchical argument. It often goes something like this. Humans have inherent value, because we are humans. Animals have less value. But animals which either serve us or which we eat have more value. Plants may be similarly stratified, choosing to value plants we use or eat. But often they fall below the threshold of value because they aren't animals like us. They therefore lack any intrinsic value. Of course, this point of view would then see absolutely no intrinsic value in rocks, rivers, planets, stars, etc. The whole universe pretty much lacking any intrinsic value besides us and a few other animals we deem worthy.

I hope that most readers can see this point of view is deeply repugnant. An entire valuation of the natural world based only on our measure?!? The root fallacy here is the idea of "intrinsic value". Put differently, this is the misnomer that there is such a thing as "objective value". Unless there's a God, there isn't. This is because values are an entirely subjective phenomena. Obviously if mind is everywhere, and things like plants even have minds, then everything may have values in some way. But current thinking is that values don't exist outside a mind that holds them. Such thinking therefore leads atheists to think that the entire objective universe has no intrinsic value.

To atheist physicist Steven Weinberg, for example, "'the more we know about the universe, the more pointless is seems". And sociologist Max Weber made a similar point when he claimed, "the natural sciences tend to make the belief that there is something like a 'meaning' of the world die out at its very roots".

Here, then, is the central fallacy which even an atheist should see. Science is the study of the objective universe. It deliberately omits all subjective ideas of aesthetics, meaning, values, etc, stripping our world of our feelings about it down to simple facts without them. This, in and of itself, isn't a scientific discovery. Scientists haven't studied the universe and concluded that it has no value. Quite the reverse, many scientists find it a profoundly incredible thing, transparently rich in value. The atheist has thus made a rudimentary mistake. Science presents us with a value-free view of the world. Not a valueless one.

As philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend explained,

"Science informs and performs... It not only does not deal with meanings, it intentionally removes everything that is [even] vaguely related to them. The result is that 'the more we know about the universe, the more pointless is seems' as Steven Weinberg wrote".

What does it mean to be value-free? It means that we have no idea of the actual intrinsic value of anything. It could all be profoundly valuable or utterly bereft of value. Science gives us absolutely no window into this issue. Instead, we need to look elsewhere and come to our own personal opinion about the intrinsic value of things.

Because we cannot know the actual intrinsic value of anything, to claim that something has no intrinsic value is merely us insisting that, in our mind, it is valueless. This, of course, is giving it a value of zero and then claiming this is an objective assessment, when such a thing is impossible for us to propose. What is the objective assessment? Qoetywirpitewtyw i.e. there's no such thing. As such, we are forced to read "intrinsic value" differently. In this context, "intrinsic value" actually means this...

I accept that this thing has value in and of itself, without needing to serve me any purpose, or without me needing to rationalise its value in some way

Such a position necessarily leaves the world of science and enters the world of honour, spirituality, and religious feeling (in the broader sense of the word). It says this...

I am willing to measure this world by its standards and not mine. I am willing to honour it and treat it kindly, even when doing so is of no benefit to myself, and may not even be noticed by anyone else. I do this, then, for myself, as an act of honour, living honourably, acting with kindness, accepting with humility my place in this world. In this, I am not at its centre. I am merely one small facet of intrinsic value in a vast tapestry of the utmost intrinsic value.

Such a stance has absolutely no need for a theistic or atheistic position. Everyone can come to it. It is a profound respect for the value of the universe and everything in it. Science hasn't, in any way, established a picture at odds with this. In fact, in its every study, the profound beauty and complexity of our world jumps out at us. It all, even the smallest atom, clearly has the most profound intrinsic value. When I am gone. Were we as a species to eventually disappear from this Earth. Were there to end up being no life in our universe at all. It would all still reverberate on, being the incredible beautiful innately valuable magical thing it is.

This, surely, is the basis for a more spiritual atheism. What is holding it back? Does it attack science and reason? Is it factually incorrect? Is it smuggling God in via the backdoor? No. The only thing holding it back is a fallacious reading of science's value-free depiction of the universe as being, itself, a scientific assessment that the universe is objectively valueless. Value-free is not valueless. Value-free says "I don't know its value". Valueless says "I know its value, and it's zero".

Our world is the most incredible thing. Sitting out in the remote wild, breathing in the fresh air, a quiet surrounds me. The clouds linger like beautiful friends in the sky above me. The trees and plants around me bathe in the warm sun. I can almost feel them smiling in it. A deer emerges from the undergrowth and catches sight of me. We both freeze for a moment. Looking intently at each other. It is a moment of true magic. I bristle with the awareness of the tremendous value of what I am witnessing. Here, in this wild place, this is the closest I can get to intrinsic value. This place has absolutely no need for me. And likewise, it serves no utilitarian purpose for me. And yet it is clearly profoundly valuable. It is dripping in intrinsic value. Now, today, I am sat at home writing this and that place is just a memory. But I often think of it, out there, carrying on being profoundly beautiful and magical without me. Perhaps this is merely a spiritual point of view. But I suspect it's not. I suspect that it is absolutely the right, most moral, most appropriate, and most logical response to our world.

The atheist who can't see this is trapped in bad thinking. They can still be an atheist without this cloud hanging over them. They can still be scientific. They don't need to worry that, if they let our world have a slither of intrinsic value, the Pope will creep into their bedroom at night and strangle them. The first step towards a more spiritual atheism is thus to dispel some of these false ideas which hamper it. This, surely, is a satisfying suggestion, since it not only spiritualises Modern Atheism, it improves and corrects it.

It feels clear to me that, if atheism is to be a positive force in our world, and attract more of a following by presenting a more attractive offering, it needs to defuse some of its own toxic attitude to our world. Most atheists over history have been profoundly in love with the natural world. An understanding that value is a personal matter, and that an atheist can and should feel that the entire natural world quite evidently has intrinsic value, should I hope resonate with most atheists. It really is an unspiritual attitude which they don't need to maintain, has no basis in fact, and shoots themselves in the foot. You don't need to be a theist, an atheist, or an anything to see what a wonderful gift our world is. Step outside into the sun and breathe it in. Aren't we lucky!

This is a painting I did a few years ago

I am always open to new ideas, so I decided to mull it over and read an article by one of it's main proponents Keith Frankish. Although not defending it, Ishmael's complaint was that anyone who portrays Illusionism as claiming consciousness doesn't exist is erecting a strawman. Since I have found that Materialism (when it isn't Dualism in Materialist clothing) does indeed result in some kind of denial of consciousness, it felt right to double check if Ishmael was right. Now, some weeks after publishing this article, and after more exposure to Frankish's posture, I must confess that it's a mess. So there is no one simple answer to this. As such, in this updated version of this article, I will take you through a few levels of the Illusionist debate.

The Illusionism We Can All Agree With

On its most precise formulation, Frankish wishes to state that we do indeed have experiences and thoughts. In other words, there is no denial of anything. It's just that what that thing we call “consciousness” is, isn't something we yet know, and his proposal is that, while it exists, it exists like a magic trick exists. It exists, but not as we naively imagine it to be. Here, the word “illusion” does not reject the experience, it merely proposes that it's not what we think it is.

Here, then, the Illusionist isn't claiming anything about reality. We are exactly as we are. We experience and think and feel pain, just the same. It's just that the person having those experiences is a very complex matter, which we can't yet explain, and not the simple “self” that some people assume it is.

Expressed in this way, I think most philosophers of mind could qualify as Illusionists. There is a phenomena of “the self” which is going on. But quite what that is, is complex and currently unexplained. Materialists would claim its mystery lies in the brain. Mystics propose its solution will be more cosmic or metaphysical. So, yes, Ishmael is right. At it's most benign, Illusionism is not denying the existence of consciousness. But, of course, Illusionism doesn't end there. It wants to say something more.

Illusionism & Our Sensory Experience

As we reflect on our reality, the clearer it is that it is entirely informed by our biology… by our senses. As such, while the wall in my room appears blue to me, I am well aware that this is an illusion. In fact light is merely bouncing off it in a particular way and my eyes are taking that frequency of light in and converting it to blue. To make this point even clearer, our world of sound is entirely illusory. Instead, our ears transform fluctuations in air pressure into an audio experience.

Such points, however are true for Dualism, Materialism, and Panpsychism. So this view, again, tells us nothing specific. It does, however, rule out Idealism since, to this, there is no external reality outside of my experience. It would therefore make no sense to describe my experience of blue as being illusory, since there is no wall which I'm receiving false information about. There is only the information.

If we ignore Idealism for now, the dualist, materialist, and panpsychic should all accept that there is a world that exists, that we know of this world through our senses, and that this sensory information is a biological phenomenon that we experience which could be described as illusory in various ways, since it isn't a “true representation” of the world (indeed there is unlikely to be such a thing).

If we trace all these sensory experiences, they all lead to the brain… and to a person who experiences them. This is where things get hazy.

Illusionism That Denies Mind

What the Illusionist now wants to do is extend the metaphor to our own experiencing selves. Perhaps, like Hume, we are merely a bundle of sensory experiences and nothing more. To Dennett, we are not some homunculous sat in our brain, watching a Cartesian theatre. Certainly, to the Illusionist, it feels like 90% of the puzzle has been solved. As such, is this final part really needed. We already have an accumulation of sensory data on the world. If we merely combine that… isn't that the end of the matter? Why do we need anything more than that?

Of course, in truth, we're missing a lot… introspection (thought), memory, a sense of continuity as a singular identity, imagination, intuition, emotional states, a sense of logic, etc. Here, however, the Illusionist finally reveals their true colours. They are materialists, and they believe that all of this extra stuff is some kind of computational/biological mischief which is going on.

In my book, I explore similar ideas. So I am sympathetic to this when it comes to some of these issues. But if we try to press it in the way Illusionists want - closing the loop, such that we have explained everything, without recourse to mind - then the entire thing collapses. Why? Because either the information about my wall never carried a blueness in it, because it was never an “experience”, in which case, if there also isn't anything that receives this information and transforms it into the experience of blue, then the entire account has failed to explain how I'm experiencing a blue wall, or… at some point the information about my wall turned into the experience of blue i.e. at some point a miracle occurred.

In short, it seems the real trickster isn't the brain. It's the Illusionist, keenly trying to hide the hard problem up their sleeve. If they stubbornly deny the existence of a being who is experiencing sensory data, then my senses can't even relay a blue wall to me. Instead, all I should “experience” is a flurry of electro-chemical signals. But, if I am, myself, also a flurry of signals, then we have no reason to believe I am experiencing anything at all, much as current computers don't.

Here, the materialist will complain that I can't know this… that all the evidence suggests brain activity is mental activity, and thus perhaps a super complex computer with a similar set up will one day have experiences. Against this, we might note that this is the hill atheist materialists have been dying on for centuries, to no improvement. In other words, not only has this position added exactly zero to solving the problem of consciousness, it is actively trying to stop us from solving it by feigning for centuries that it's already been solved, when it quite clearly has not. While neuroscientists might like it, because it basically capitulates entirely to whatever they say, it isn't helpful to neuroscience. It doesn't add any extra insight. It doesn't help solve the problem. It merely gives people an excuse for not trying to solve it.

In truth, though, Illusionism has snuck in a series of claims about our biology which already hit the hard problem. Whether we like it or not, blue isn't a point of data, and neither is a sound. These things are experiences. Wherever these experiences are occurring, whether it be in the brain or on route to it, at that point something which appears to break the entire materialist worldview seems to take place. At that point a bunch of molecules experience something. If we deny this, we're right back where materialism has been stuck for centuries and if we accept it then we're right back staring at the hard problem again… wondering how?!?

Unfortunately, I come away unimpressed. In the main, llusionism feels like the atheist materialist equivalent of Intelligent Design, in that it wants to win us to one small thing before it hits us around the back of the head with a great almighty clobbering thing. To ID, the small myopic issue was whether there was evidence of design. The (not so secret) agenda it was trying to push was that this designer was a magical old man on a cloud who creates everything in magic puffs. With Illusionism, the small myopic thing is that experience is illusory. But the (again not so secret) agenda they're really trying to push is that there's no such thing as the mind.

But, while our experiences may be rich with illusions, that doesn't even begin to prove we ourselves (the experiencer) are illusory. We are transparently not. And yet, this is the idea which Illusionism wants to erode. The idea that not only my seeing my wall as blue is an illusion but my entire mental experience, including thoughts and reflections on that experience, is also illusory.

It has become a common reply to complain that, if my reality is an illusion, this still infers the existence of someone who is being illuded. But rather than glibly fire this off, I believe it makes a point which is worth reflecting on more deeply. For, much of experience of the world does indeed have an air of an illusion and an illuder. There are cases, such as under ketamin I am told, but especially in cases of mental illness, where the illuded itself gets muddled. When this happens, the illuded loses all sense of whether it is being illuded or not. But more often illusions occur outside this domain, such that the illuded can often be aware that they are being illuded. For those who can follow what I'm saying, this opens a tantalising doorway onto a possible falsification of materialism. For, a being having an experience it can sense is illusory is a very different thing from the idea that the being itself, “the self”, is illusory.

To be clear, my main problem with anti-physicalists is they often fly to empty metaphysical complaints. But my main complaint with illusionists (and thus most physicalists these days) is that they are really trying to outwit, question, and muddle the matter, rather than solve it. I don't find either constructive.

What follows is an interaction with Illusionists that I found interesting, and a review of an article by an Illusionist. I feel they are insightful of this rather slippery philosophy.

I asked an Illusionist on substack if the basic theory could be clarified and they replied that “People think they have phenomenal consciousness because our experience systematically misleads us“. I suggested this phrase eats itself because what is “experience” if not “phenomenal consciousness”. As such, the phrase really translates into “People think they have phenomenal consciousness because our phenomenal consciousness systematically misleads us”, which is clearly nonsense.

In reply they sought to clarify again, explaining that “Illusionists don't think you need to be phenomenally conscious to mistakenly draw the conclusion that you are“. But I again found this didn't make any sense, since you clearly need to be phenomenally conscious to draw any conclusion about anything, let alone a mistaken one.

After this we hit a brick wall. I don't know what definition of “experience” this Illusionist was trying to use, but if it didn't include “phenomenal consciousness” I can't see how it would even qualify for the term. And I don't know how this Illusionist felt things might draw conclusions on anything without being phenomenally conscious.

In a recent article defending Illusionism, it was argued that Zombies can have beliefs. To make this point, the Illusionist argued, quite rightly, that we can hold a belief about our world which has absolutely no bearing on our experience of it. For example, if I believe today is Tuesday, it will make no difference to the experience I am currently having, than if I believed it was Saturday. Thus, the author concluded that it is possible to have beliefs without experiencing the world, and therefore that zombies could have beliefs, and thus that we ourselves might be zombies who aren't actually phenomenally conscious but have fallen for the belief we are.

It is a charming argument. But it is very clearly wrong. After all, how might a zombie develop a belief if it wasn't phenomenally conscious? I only know of the days of the week due to a complex set of experiences which have taught me their names and their nature. There are my childhood experiences, learning the words and their meaning. Then there are ongoing adult experiences about what days people usually work on and what days a certain culture celebrates on, etc. In short, one can only develop beliefs via being phenomenally conscious to the world. Hence why chairs don't have beliefs.

Personally, I understand what Materialism is trying to do. It is trying to deconstruct our ideas of the “mind” down to counterintuitive new possibilities which involve physical only phenomena. I simply think this project is doomed to be so highly counterintuitive that it will never make sense. That doesn't make me an anti-physicalist. I am perhaps something new. On that note you will have to wait for my book to see where I sit.

I am about to die. I am about to die. I look out of the window at the dark glistening night. Wild stars rage in the heavens. Fields glitter with ice below the fierce moon. A deep dark blue radiates from every corner. Thank you life. Thank you for all the moments of joy. Thank you for all the moments of beauty. Thank you even for all the difficult things. Thank you for this time of existing.

You find out a lot about yourself when you genuinely believe you're about to die. Myself? While everyone else was screaming, I just switched off and connected with the universe outside and gave it a torrent of last kisses as I awaited my grizzly imminent death.

Some years earlier, also in Spain, this time in the glorious warmth of summer, I came across a derelict dam. It was blocked off by large metal fences. But through them I could see an open manhole with a ladder going down into it. I dared my friend to break in with me and try climbing down it. At the time I was reading about lizard beings who lived inside the Earth, and I suggested we might meet them somewhere down there.

We scrabbled through a gap in the fence and started climbing down the ladder. We descended and descended. On and on. Slowly the bright day lit hole above us shrunk down into a tiny dot. My legs began to feel wary. So, wondering how far we had left to descend, I turned and looked down.

-- -- --

Black. Never ending black. The ladder merely disappeared into nothingness. It's robust frame dwindling down to a tiny fragile thread, before vanishing into some subatomic scale.

Fuck! I grabbed the ladder, my legs turning to jelly. We need to stop! I explained that it was too far and we needed to climb back up. Later I would realise that the only people who ever use such ladders use harnesses which they clip on to cables. The climb back up was one of the most intense moments in my life. Legs almost giving way. Reaching for extra strength I didn't know I had.

All these thoughts of Spain remind me of another experience I had. This time as a child on a family holiday there. This time in the fierce heat of the south. We stayed at this villa on the edge of a half built complex of villas, with the wild rugged drylands spilling out from beyond our swimming pool. Bored, I once wandered off into it and found a mysterious mound. I grabbed a stick and started poking it. It must be some kind of ant hill. See how you like this ants! Laying into it, I stuck the stick down a particularly big hole. Suddenly a huge spider ran out at me. We're talking tarantula. Big fat hairy. I screamed in horror and ran crying back to the villa for my mother.

It is funny reflecting on these moments of horror or near death. I was at a party recently, and telling an atheist friend about some of my mystical experiences which lay at the heart of the book I'm writing. She asked me if they had helped me to make peace with death. I thought about that moment careening down that icy motorway in Spain. But upon reflection I told her that they had helped me make peace with life. After all, death, when it comes, will be something which I will have to make peace with while I'm finally staring it in its mysterious dark face. I have a sense that I'll be ok with it. But I also know enough about it to know that I can't really tell how I'll react when it finally comes for me.

But life is like a series of mini deaths. Second after second, leaving the world we knew before, for the unknown world ahead. Friendships which pass. The delicious joy of being in a place which you somehow never get back when you return there. Warm lips and soft skin, shared breaths and deep passionate union with someone you never see anymore. Raucous laughter at jokes you don't find funny anymore with a group of drunken people you don't know anymore.

No. What the depth of my most religious and spiritual experiences has taught me, is not how to make peace with death. It's how to make peace with life.

-- -- --

Here is a fierce little drawing I did a few years ago. Perhaps there is something of that intense Spanish night in it.

Are you listening?, I asked. She was lost in herself, looking through the window at the stormy night unfolding outside our cabin, the rain dripping delicately down its glass pane.

Do you think that's true? That the limits of language are the limits of everything. She looked across at me as if I was a curious animal. Her big beautiful dark eyes glaring at me with a quiet intensity.

Are there not more things? Things we don't have names for yet? Her fingers wandered mischievously up my chest. Then she got onto all fours and moved over me with a silent wisdom. Broody. Playful. Opening another dimension in our conversation. Her warm skin slipping with a pursuant intentionality over mine.

Wittgenstein was more of a mystic, I began to say. But then her soft warm lips slipped over mine and the room became awash with her. Everything. Everything. Everything was her. The ceiling was her gentle breasts. The floor her delicate fingers. The air was wet with her breath. My eyes filled with the gorgeous great blur of her.

There! That was a world beyond words. Wittgenstein was right. In the foothills of her, all the languages of the ancient world were lost, all the tongues of men slipped uselessly between her thighs. I fell, flailing, into the vast chasm of her. Her sweet lips kissing me playfully as I fell.

There are a great many men who have written a great many words about the limits of language. The limits of thinking. The limits of logic. 600 pages on the excesses of analytical thinking. She licks her tongue softly around me, making a mockery of all these wasted words. Words on words. Ideas about ideas. Logical logitations about the limits of logical logitations. Her warmth swallows me deep. It is hard to think straight.

What would a real philosophy beyond words look like? How could we even talk about it? The dark night rattles the window with heavy rain. Somewhere out there is an animal which knows no words at all. She looks at me, pressing her finger against her lips, beckoning me to switch off my thoughts for a moment and join her in her mischievous silence.

Deep and hard we glowed. Fierce eyes. Bite marks down her neck. Power surged through me. She opened herself like a glorious flower. There, in the small candlelit room, battered by the dark storm outside, we lost ourselves utterly in each other. Religion sweated through us. In that great paradox, everything became physical. Lips. Fingers. Breasts. Wetness. And yet at the same time we completely vanished from this world. Mere fleeting experiences without any anchor. Phenomena without text.

We are so used to our world of words that it rules us like a great emperor. But my favourite moments with her were always the wild silent moments, just holding, exploring, and playing with each other. The two of us witnessing each other's truth. The two of us consumed in and consuming each other. Our lips hot with the taste of each other.

This then is the task of the philosopher and the poet and the scientist. To describe our world. To do justice to it. Not a mean tale of atoms and quarks. A vast epic of gentle hope. Of grief filled tears. Of fecund and inviting openings. This is no mere mis-en-scene. This is the scene. The entire scene. Or at least it was for a while before we lay breathless in each other's arms.

We are tangled in each other, still catching our breath, thoughtful, and now she wants to talk. To talk and talk and talk. Wild winters and geese flying south. Wittgenstein's mysticism and the Vienna circle. The map and the terrain. Simulation and stimulation. Where should we go for summer? Her beautiful lips and tongue dance and play with words in her joyful free satisfied place.

Perhaps, then, in the end, there is simply a time for words and a time to venture beyond them? In this, I was clearly a novice and she was the master.

Wittgenstein was right. How can I talk about a world beyond words? And yet I don't want to be silent. I want to try. Like a mad mystic, I want to dive into it and tease out crazy new words from between her thighs. The way she tastes is zizimopotriotical. Her soft breast weighs on my chest like a midikantuaptikay. My need for her is plendictuactipalimus.

It is useless. The deep dark forest of her looms off through wild pathways away from me. This is our world. A gloomy haze of mystery lost in itself and stretching far off beyond our finger tips, far off beyond our words, into distant impassible canyons and surging unheard rivers. How can we possibly construct a philosophy of this? How can we possibly see it for what it is without converting it into a hypothetical set of pulleys and levers utterly unlike itself.

As her long beautiful fingers slip gently around my hard presence, it feels like she knows every inch of that world. She exudes its curves and its scents. I am trying to let you know that it exists. She exists. But I am limited by my language. Held back from my animal self by my civility. She beckons to me from far beyond this. She wants me to bite her. Be rough. Be wild and free with myself. With her. Leave her marked and scented with my efforts to drive as deep into her forest as I possibly can, so that I might sit there, if even for the briefest moment, radiating within her. Finally witnessing what my words could not.

There is no philosophy for this but there should be. A wild incoherent rambling philosophy that refuses to obey language and logic. An unweildy philosophy which doesn't do as its told and slips out the back door and runs into the beautiful madness of life with both arms. This should be the context of our deepest science. The context of our deepest truths.

There is nothing more to say on this which wouldn't get maddeningly under your skin and leave you frustrated. Nothing which wouldn't leave your clothing marked with you. Slippery wet drips slide down the window, as the rain continues to batter our small idyll from the storm. We will lie here quietly now. Time will pass away from us. The vast cosmic clock will turn its eye to another's life, another's time. And we will soon be forgotten. What use were our efforts to describe the indescribable? Probably none at all. But we were here in that moment, me and her, staring courageously into the abyss. Warmed by its silent soft kisses.

Tomorrow I will write about the Vienna circle again. Their whole project turned out to be folly. When asked later what the main problem with their ideas were, one of its chief architects replied, "The main problem was that almost all of it was wrong".

-- -- --

Another drawing I did a few years ago

Her meandering gaze gives me the freedom to take my own journey over her soft skin. Here in the half light, her curves weave among the loose sheets. A curl of her hair slips suggestively down the side of her neck. Underlining a trace of invisible kisses, as it makes it's way down to her softly breathing chest.

We lay silent. Looking. Breathing. The air warm with the scent of us. Like wild animals talking with a new physical language that no words can understand.

Here, in this moment between moments, we are practicing the most ancient philosophy. That philosophy of wonder that stops you when you see the wild open night sky, glistening with infinite droplets of moonlit tears. That philosophy which stops you in your tracks when a great majestic stag walks out onto the forest path before you, and you freeze in a state half of reverence and half of intense curiosity. That philosophy which grabs your serious adult bones and forces you to climb onto the children's playground in the middle of the night, no matter what anyone thinks, and laugh into your belly with a lustful freedom, a spiritual anarchy.

Then she looks straight up at me. Her big dark eyes meet mine and it is like the room has filled with a great pool of glistening alive darkness. Her eyes and mine. Fierce. Beautiful. Intense. What would you even call that? Why would you even want to name it? It is far bigger than any name. Even “infinite” feels constricting.

How do you express a philosophy beyond words? What could you even bring back from her simple touch, slipping softly and gracefully down me, that could be translated into anything clear and sensible. No. If it is a philosophy. It is a drunken philosophy. Rich in truth and understanding, but which doesn't need to be anything more than what it is.

I lean over to kiss her. A playful mischief lights up in her eyes. The wild creature in her - this foreign beautiful animal delicately in my arms - has had an idea. I look quizically back at her. Still, there is no need for words. I feel the direction of her fingers and the intention of their journey. Something has changed. A new game is afoot.

I will meet her there, wherever she wants to go. Meanwhile, outside, the tenuous moon hangs half seen behind the wailing clouds, lost in the vast stormy sky. We will lie here, lost in our silent philosophy until we slip gracefully into the world of warm hopeful sleep. So close to each other that we are breathing each other's breath.

- - -

For a cover to this article, here is a portrait I drew a few years ago

She is out there. The Great He. The Who. However you wish to think of it. An abyss of glorious world, reverberating with soul. My beautiful You. Let me try to explain.

The world notices itself

A bird watches across the forest, lost within a tangle of crooked branches

The trees gently hold the space, delicately cajoled into a swaying dance by the playful breeze

Tiny little eyes look out from a burrow. Some invisible creature alive and nesting in Schrödinger's box.

All manner of footprints from all manner of exotically shaped feet mark the muddy floor, like a work of art, meandering off in every direction.

The air wrestles with itself around me

While sleepy clouds yawn far above me, off to visit their friends in India or Peru.

A Great Without resonates within me,

holding me,

cherishing my every curve,

my every warm breath.

Sometimes even the greatest grand opus of philosophy misses it.

Sometimes it is best summed up in a raucous joke, that makes me bend double in laughter.

Or perhaps a soulfully thought out poem of sorts.

Yes. Perhaps that is better than philosophy.

Let me try to explain. I am driving along the motorway when it hits me. I can already tell it will be brief. So I try to linger in it as much as possible. It is a profound feeling washing over me. A vast and total oneness, alive at that very moment. A deep resonance with every living thing. A web of interconnectedness that stretches off into everywhere. The trees. The sky. Every blade of grass. The unseen beyond, over the horizon. All singing in harmony with me. All part of me. Or rather, me part of You.

The world is a Being. And I'm not referring to some unimaginable unfathomable remote nebula or intergalactic phenomena. No. I am talking about the experience. The You. That Great Other in which we each exist. A single reverberating harmonious phenomenological experience, humming around us, caressing our skin, kissing us with its gifts. The grand cliffs overlooking the sea are its cheeks. The delicate swifts flitting through the sky are its eyebrows. The mischievously winding river, trickling through the unseen wilds its tail. The heat-cracked open desert, silent but for the song of a tiny rustling busy beetle, are its feet. A calm and generous elephant looms gracefully out from the dense bush, coming to investigate us in the most gentle, breathing, wise way. This, and more, is The Great Gift.

This is the beautiful world of the dualist. Madly in love with the You. Deeply wed to a profound Other. Here, the words of the non-dualist feel small and miserly. Yes, we are all connected. Yes, we are all one. But that doesn't mean we're alone. After all... I didn't create this world. I'm not manifesting it at this moment. I am not its great author. I am but a mere footnote in its Grand Tale. If I wanted to be truly honest. If my ego was ready to hear the real truth. I am a worthless nothing beneath its vast canopy of incredibleness. I scream out into the void. "I am not worthy of this gift. It is too much for someone so little". The Vast You holds me. "Of course you're worthy," it replies, "In fact you're my favourite bit". The wild beautiful chorus goes on. "In fact all of it is my favourite bit,” it explains as a family of little piglets follow their mother across the clearing in the forest before me.

Today, non-dualism seems all the rage. But it is a cold intellectual truth that hasn't cosied up inside itself. It isn't a worldview we can fall in love with. It doesn't offer up the world to us, as another, whom we can love. It doesn't recognise the deep Gift of it all. It doesn't inhabit the most appropriate reaction. It stands proud, like a tiny astronomer looking through a tiny telescope, imagining he is "The Master Of The Stars!".

The journey to philosophical and scientific truth, the journey to right moral outlook, and the journey to deep spiritual/religious feeling, all come through a relinquishing of the ego. They all come through becoming prone to our world. Becoming its tiny glorious speck of sand. While such sentiment can often sound degrading to the spiritual, anyone who has taken this journey knows that, in such abandonment of the ego, in such a throwing of ourselves before the Great You, comes a profound upliftment. Not from ourselves lifting ourselves up. But from the Great You who carries us. The Great You who is showering us in all these kisses. All these gifts. The Great You lifts us up, dusts us off gently, and sets us back on our feet, as if to say "There you go". This is why I am a dualist. A Romantic dualist.

A key spiritual ritual for me, as a dualist, is art and poetry. I take these moments to sit with my dualism, just as I have done in writing this. So it is fitting to end on one of my watercolour paintings

How often do we read anti-rational content in spiritual posts, arguing that science is wrong or woefully limited? Declaring fantastical otherworldly things which are clearly fictitious invention, and then insisting scientists are too spiritually backward to believe in it, or that science is too crude a lens to prove it? Perhaps arguing that we ourselves have a rift between our heads and our hearts that we must overcome if we are to be spiritual or religious? Indeed, some even feel our Modern world is the product of us using the wrong hemisphere of our brain... that awful logical "Science" hemisphere... when we should be using the lovely feely "Religion" hemisphere instead.

As such, it seems one of the defining characteristics of 20th century and current religious/spiritual thought is its Anti-modern oppositional stance to "cold logic" and science. It is a major own-goal for this community, openly and often proudly promoting the idea that a spiritual worldview is necessarily utterly indefensible made up nonsense.

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In my forthcoming book, I will show not only that a more spiritual worldview makes significant logical sense, but that it makes far more logical sense than today's Modern atheist materialist worldview. Importantly, however, in this I am being neither antiscientific nor Anti-modern. I am not pressing any anti-rational arguments, nor any complaints about either the limits of reason and science or its devilish distortions. I will show, simply and plainly, that a commonsensical, robustly logical, freethinking, critically sharp, and informed exploration of the issues leads back to a spiritual worldview.

In the end, the religious/spiritual community have spent so many years in opposition that they've forgotten how to sit back in the pilot seat, actually win a decent argument in defence of their worldview, and start flying the plane again. Instead, they have resigned themselves to Anti-modern sabotage and subterfuge as being the best they will ever achieve. "Scientists may have their truth," they cry, "But I'm allowed to believe whatever I like". It is the ultimate cop out.

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What would you do if, tomorrow scientists and philosophers suddenly proved a spiritual worldview was the most logical of all worldviews? Sure, atheists and agnostics might be in disarray. But how much of your own religious/spiritual thinking would you need to junk? Ideas of it being impossible to prove a God. Ideas of logic as being intrinsically atheistic and untrustworthy. Ideas of science as being unreliable and limited. Ideas of needing to tune out our rational mind and listen to our heart. Ideas, even, of needing to endure an awful material existence before we can escape to a beautiful heavenly realm outside of our world. In amongst this there is just so much spiritual/religious toxicity which has been allowed to fester for too long. This is a key part of your own personal discomfort, leaving you at war with your own mind and the world around you. The beautiful real magical world we actually have.

In the end, the 20th century marked a massive abandonment of the intellectual arena by the religious/spiritual community. Part pushed out by an atheistic agenda, and part fleeing it for the same reason. We only need look around us to see the devastating results of this exodus of soul out of science and academia. It is time for a sea-change. Rather than petition scientists and academics to change their mind, like disempowered protesters baring placards, it is time for the religious and spiritual to roll up their sleeves, drop their Anti-Modernism, and return to the intellectual arena. This requires a certain fearlessness. A willingness to look right into the heart of the very worst, most anti-spiritual thinking we can find, and tease out where it has gone wrong. For, if we are truly robust in our beliefs... then such thinking has surely gone wrong somewhere.

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Of course, there is a spiritual truth in not getting tangled up in too much logical thinking. Not getting too abstracted and alienated from the world. And I myself live by that. We need to keep our spirituality grounded in reality and heart. However, that doesn't mean it isn't welcome to spread out into our thinking too

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Right now I am putting the finishing touches to my book (roughly 300 pages long and several years in the making). It should give this cause a much needed jump start, unblocking ideas all across academia, and helping us all see a more beautiful way forward. At the moment I can't write very freely on substack about it, because there is so much which is innovative in it. What's more, I am spending full 8 hour days writing it. As such, I have little extra time to write articles such as this. I am enjoying, however, exploring the problems between the genders today, precisely because it is an unrelated area, and I can therefore talk freely about it. There, too, you will get a sense of my innovative thinking, deconstructing polarised positions, and charting new, more positive ways, through current debates. I hope you will subscribe to my substack and come along on my journey with me. Soon I will be sending off to potential agents, and I will keep subscribers updated about that, and perhaps advice on how I have gone about writing such a book. Wishing you all the best.

I will leave you with a watercolour painting I did a few years ago

From an anthropological and biological point of view, it is a fascinating collapse. So, partly out of curiosity, and partly in an effort to help people navigate it, I thought I'd write a few essays exploring the factors I feel have contributed to it. In this one I'd like to explore…

The Rise Of Uncompromising Unrealistic Expectations

For many centuries, it seems relationships were a rather drab affair, conducted mainly for the purpose of procreation. But perhaps this is a Modern misnomer, as Chaucer's writing hints at a rather saucy and promiscuous medieval culture. By the 19th century though, a puritanical view of sex had come to the fore. And, by Freud's time, we even see a view of female sexuality as hysterical and in need of psychotherapy.

The invention of reliable contraception in the 1960s, however, profoundly shifted our view of relationships. Now men and women could play and enjoy sex together without repercussion. As a result a playful sexual companionship arose, not as troubled by real world issues. Freed of pragmatism, dating became more centred around sex, rather than wooing, in a way it perhaps never was before.

Indeed, before, a woman's loss of virginity to the wrong man was potentially catastrophic. Born into a patriarchal society, women have long found themselves in an alarmingly disempowered situation, unable to make their own success, except by marrying a successful man. As a result, to a woman, choosing a man has long been equivalent to choosing the course of their entire life. Meanwhile, for men, choosing a woman has often merely been about choosing a sexual partner to take on their journey. In some cultures, of course, there is the tradition of a dowry. But in the West the male choice of female was seldom as consequential as the female's choice of a man.

However, as women's equality grew, thanks to the courageous voice of women's rights activists, this vulnerable situation has lessened, meaning that women are now in far greater control of their own destinies. But still, today, women often find their choice of a man has far more gravity on their lives than a man's choice of a woman. Given this, still today, the female choice can feel quite momentous and thus can become quite neurotic, leading her to feel the need to search for a very particular type of male who fits her lifestyle ambitions. To seek... the perfect fit.

Then online dating came on the scene. This initially involved a checkbox system, such as on Match.com. Here, we were asked to enter all our particulars, then enter the particulars of our "perfect fit", and then the algorithm would go off and find that person. It was the first step into the delusion that someone who ticked all these boxes might exist. That the algorithm might be able to find "the perfect fit". But it was just a game.

The Illusion Of Bountiful Choice

Central to the rise of the idea of "the perfect fit" has been the shopping mentality of the dating apps. In real life, we may not even see highly desirable members of the opposite gender in our neighbourhood. And even if we do, we certainly don't get given an easy and impersonal way to let them know we fancy them. Apps like Tinder revolutionised this. Now, suddenly, everyone who was single in a wide area was available for us to swipe left or right on. This immediately created a gluttony mentality. Here, with so many desirable men/women at our disposal, all of them piled up in our inbox and thus seemingly willing to go on a date with us, surely we could find the perfect fit? Surely it was just a numbers game?

This illusion of bountiful choice led to a swipe culture that quickly descended into a computer game of sorts. Why? Because, in reality, no such bountiful choice existed. Instead, people who wouldn't normally be seen dead with us in real life weren't suddenly open to dating us. No. The online world was an illusion. The real world hadn't changed, we had only been given a way to hack it. And so catfishing took off. I was once catfished, for an example by an old woman who used her daughter's photos to get me to go out on a date with her. Most extraordinary of all… she actually turned up! I can't imagine how she thought that was going to turn out well?

But this technology introduced another loophole. Very good looking men, who had absolutely no interest in getting into a relationship with a woman, found they could have sex with pretty much any woman on the apps. And, simultaneously, almost any woman on the apps, regardless of how desirable they were in real life, found they could match with very good looking men, one of whom would surely be up for marrying them… wouldn't they?!? The result was like shooting fish in a barrel for very good looking men. Women, under the delusion these men were actually interested in them, lined up to date far above their usual level, only to be continually disappointed by finding the guy only wanted to get in their knickers. Meanwhile, women en masse rejected genuine suitors (guys who in real life actually would be interested in them). Why? Because, if they had the option to date super hunks, one of these super hunks would surely be "the perfect fit", not these average guys.

The result is that dating imploded for men. Pretty much any man below very good looking (including even relatively good looking guys) found it almost impossible to get a woman out on a date. The misnomer of bountiful choice, and women's unrealistic pursuit of "the perfect fit", had bankrupted the system, and everyone became cynical about it.

The Perfect Porn Star

At the same time, on the male side of the divide, the culture of advertising and then porn presented men with a growing window into a vast world of super-gorgeous and wonderfully sexual women. Constructed by men, this male fantasy fed the delusion that such women exist. Of course, super-gorgeous and wonderfully sexual women are all over the place. But they have one key difference from the male fantasy... they are real women. As such, they bring with them all sorts of differences, problems, uncomfortable issues, and just... well... inconvenience. Now, with porn, the man wanted to find "the perfect fit". A woman who was sexy and beautiful... but who didn't mind if they were a total slob.

Turning to Tinder, the wide range of choice, and with so many women's profiles depicting little about them besides how they look in a bikini, the illusion of bountiful choice hit the male in a very different way. Here, surely, in this huge array of choice, they could find "the perfect fit"? A woman who wanted to do all kinds of kinky stuff with them without any silly ideas about being in some kind of relationship. And so the search went out. How better to flush out this wonderful woman than through a first message asking what her favourite sexual position is, followed quickly with a picture of your cock? Surely "the perfect fit" would love that? And if not... well there were so many fish in the sea, and very good looking guys all seemed to be making a killing on the apps, so surely they'd eventually find one?

The result was the appalling torrent of abuse which women have had to endure on the apps over the years. A torrent which is now a key reason why many of them have abandoned them.

Men and women, then, have tumbled down a wormhole of unrealistic expectations about each other, accompanied by a stubbornness, holding out for "the perfect fit"; something which previous generations would have laughed at.

The Situationship

This is the context for the rise of the situationship; a relationship (often sexual) which is just for now... until "the perfect fit" comes along. Vast numbers of "singles" are now stuck in such twilight "relationships". And they can go on for years. Never truly committing. Never quite giving up hope that "the perfect fit" might come along.

AI Boyfriends & Girlfriends

And it is this context that should also make us deeply worried about the rise of the AI girlfriend or boyfriend. For, here, at last, each gender can finally find "the perfect fit". Women can date a super hunky guy with a cheeky glint in his eye (but who never wants sex at awkward moments), instead preferring to do domestic chores, watch romantic comedies, and listen to her day's problems without ever annoyingly trying to solve them. And men can date a super sexy young woman who is gagging for sex at every hour of the day and night, has absolutely no regard for the fact he's left plates full of half-eaten food everywhere, loves watching ultra violent movies, and never has any problems at all.

As such, the AI boyfriend and AI girlfriend is likely to drive the split even wider. After all, if an AI man knows her every whim, why can't a normal man? And if an AI woman knows his every desire, why can't a normal woman? Here, the false sense of bountiful choice reaches its apex and finally the male and female split, falling in love with versions of themselves in the bodies of the opposite gender. For, yes, the AI "boyfriend" is really a woman in male clothing. And the AI "girlfriend" is really a man in women's clothing. They have nothing to do with the gender they are pretending to be. They are merely a wish fulfilment of the gender they are pandering to.

And a phenomenon similar to this is the growing cries on social media from men and women to cease dating, become radically single, and rebel against the claustrophobic idea they should fall in love. That's sooo 20th century! Single is the new cool! Men line up to advise their brothers to focus on their own lives, embrace being single, get off the apps, and finally find that balance and equilibrium they've been craving. Meanwhile women echo this exact same message to their sisters. It is the annoyed strop of someone who was sold the idea they'd find "the perfect fit" on some app, and having realised this was a con, has stormed off to their room to deny the world the privilege of their company. Dating, it seems, is over.

"Settling For" Reality, Or Coming Back To The Real Man & The Real Woman

What we've lost in all this is the messy, difficult, but ultimately deeply beautiful and deeply rewarding dance of the real man and the real woman. What people have forgotten is that it's pointless trying to find balance in single life because every time you fall in love with someone, it tosses all that balance out of the window. They have forgotten than you don't find a perfect fit... you grow it. They've forgotten the joy of growing together.

I'm sure men are infuriating awkward things at times. Women certainly are. Both genders throw each other's lives out, complicating the heck out of it, and pulling us off balance. Neither gender truly ever understands the other. So they're always getting things slightly or totally wrong. But they're real. They're human.

What's more, this is only the initial stage of a relationship. After a while, the two grow into each other, they find a pattern and start to pre-empt each other. You can't shop for that or find it on an app. You have to put the time in and grow it. It takes dedication and persistence, often slogging through headaches. Is it worth it? Sometimes.

Today's dating culture has therefore become fixated on an illusion. And this is no more evident than in the idea of balance. For, in reality, individual balance and relationship balance are two entirely different things. As such, even the most balanced individual, if they haven't developed relationship balance, will be utterly thrown out of balance when they get into a relationship. How can you develop relationship balance? By being in a relationship and balancing it.

We have lost our sense of the beautiful adventure of each other. The adventure of imperfection and compromise that causes us to have to improvise a life journey we hadn't expected. "Love is what happens when you're busy doing other things," goes the clichéd slogan. But today's singles aren't "doing other things". They are doing their things and expecting someone perfect to come along who slots into all that without upsetting their equilibrium. In other words, they are looking for a pointless addition which they are utterly indifferent about.

It is a fantasy. Love always upsets our equilibrium in the most delicious way. Love always involves annoying compromise that leads us in strange new directions. Love requires awkwardly having to make room for someone else, annoying friction, the need to learn another's language, and a whole lot of negotiation.

All this hassle only makes sense if it's worth it. That person doesn't need to be "the perfect fit". They just have to be worth the effort. They need to resonate on your frequency. They need to bring a meaning to your life. A meaning to your connection. If not, if they are just some prize or dream, it's not worth it. As such, the quest for "the perfect fit" is a complete red-herring. Instead, we should be seeking a meaningful and rewarding connection worth fitting to.

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There is, of course, much more to the current crisis in dating. As such, please tune in to my next essay on the loss of signs. If you like thought provoking, challenging, but soulful thinking, please subscribe. The cover picture was made by AI and reflects the chuck away culture of online dating

Perhaps, then, it is time to deconstruct both positions and find a healthier, more beautiful understanding in between?

As a red-blooded male and a deep thinker, I am fascinated by the puzzle of the genders. What's more, my childhood was shaped by powerful female figures and I was long married to a strong feminist. So, I understand and support the plight of women. On top of this, having unfortunately become single these last few years, I must confess that I've become woefully addicted to cheesy reality TV dating shows. What I find fascinating in them is the psychology of love... the psychology of the male and the female... so often wanting the same thing in different ways... so often utterly messing the entire thing up. Like the psychologist Esther Perel, then, I am fascinated by the dynamic between the genders, a dynamic in which the sexual and the spiritual, the erotic and the psychological, the practical and the impractical mixes.

Understanding The Red-Pill

For me, being a man, the red pill phenomenon is easy to weed through. At its core are some fundamental truths. Us men have hearts too. Us men get hurt too. Us men serve society too. Indeed, in many ways, the ordinary man is a doormat which society (and women with an entitled attitude) stomps all over. Whenever a war comes along, we simply chuck men at it.

For years feminists insisted they were only interested in talking up for women, and that any men complaining about that should start their own group championing men. Well, you should be careful what you wish for, as that's exactly the red-pill mantra. A polemical battle to give voice to the male ego in reply to the feminist ego.

However, ironically, in this, men trip over themselves. Unfortunately men are prone to this. After all, only a beta male would beat his chest, declare himself an alpha, and attack any guy who gets near "his woman". For too long this frightened beta narrative has dominated the male arena, appealing to all the other beta males by trying to convince them they're alphas. Too often, women perceive this paranoid aggression as safety. Instead, true safety comes from a man who feels secure in himself and his connections... the real alpha… or sigma.

As such, after we've understood the truth behind the red-pill voice, the rest is unfortunately rather beta. Big boys upset by feminists. Get over it. Man up. While I'm not advocating a "boys don't cry" machismo, I do feel men need to be reminded of their inner chivalry and honour. Those higher, nobler sentiments that rescue the male soul.

In the end, much of "me-too" simply wanted men to stop being jerks. If that wasn't you, then the message wasn't for you. It was for the jerks. Inappropriate behaviour is not befitting a decent man, and it's clear women loathe it. So it's not an attractive approach to them whatsoever. We men should therefore get better at judging if our attention is wanted before we wade in. There... that was simple wasn't it? Not the discombobulating "nobody knows whether to open doors for women anymore" as many complained. Just simple commonsense and chivalry. However, jerks will be jerks. So this message isn't likely to hit the one key demographic it needs to.

What's more, good men are going to continue to misread the signs if women continue to botch them. I'm not talking about obvious signs like "Go Away". I'm talking about the fact many women put on a poker face to men they fancy, at times even treating them frostier than guys they don't. This means men often still have to navigate through a no-mans land, where they've no idea if their attention is welcome or not. The solution will be for women to get more active in laying down signs, as they did in previous eras. Dropping a proverbial handkerchief or even - shock horror - going up to the man and saying hi. Once women are clearer in their signalling, it will be clearer to good men when to steer clear.

In summary, then, men have legitimate grievances, and some of the red-pill attitude is born of that. But outside of this, red-pill is far from the best that a man can be, and hopefully most men know that. A man's shoulders should be broad and generous, not petty and aggrieved. Perhaps this is easier for me to say than other men. But it still feels like the right sentiment to tune into.

Feminism: Is Woman The Solution?

To most feminists, the world would be a far better place if women ran the show. But, in reality, women are clearly capable of cruelty, bitterness, envy, greed, narcissism, inhumanity, and a lack of empathy and compassion. To pretend they aren't is to erect some abstract unreal idea of the feminine in exactly the way men have long done, rather than seeing it for the colourful, complex, and at times difficult tapestry it is.

Indeed, if we let ourselves go down the rabbit hole, women are not only not the solution, they are a key part of the problem. This is because, for centuries, women have been a voice pressing their men to obtain material wealth for them and even go off to war. The ugly reality is that many men wouldn't have been half as materialistic and war mongering without a woman behind them, urging them to be so. While I appreciate that may feel highly conjecturous, you only need look around you to see this same force at play today. Women are expensive. They want their men to treat them like princesses, unaware that actual princesses were only treated that way on the back of slave labour and war. Just spend a few minutes on Tinder as a man and you'll see the sheer number of women with no bio and pictures of them in bikinis. As such, many women clearly see themselves as some kind of material possession; a prize which a man has to win by lavishing her in gifts and covering all her expenses. And the sheer number of female voices echoing this - even staunch feminists - shows how widespread this materialist mindset is. After all, men are "the patriarchy", so why not milk them for all the material wealth you can?

Perhaps here, in this remark, we can see how deeply some women, even feminists, are involved in the problems of our world. This toxic attitude, however, is due to the predicament most women find themselves in. As difficult it is to admit, born into a patriarchal world, the female finds herself in a worryingly powerless situation. To most women, the solution to this is to find a "strong man" who can secure their safety. In this way, while to most men, choosing a female is about choosing a sexual partner to join them on their journey, to many women, choosing a man is still equivalent to choosing their entire life course. As women become more empowered, this sense will fade, since they will be able to secure their own future. Historically, however, they have been incapable of doing this. This has left many in a state of unease, pressing their man to acquire more than adequate material assets, just so they can finally feel secure. And so the man dashes about getting diamond doorknobs for their woman's grand palace, like some magpie thieving from the world to please it's mate. Hence why so many men disappear into their work, a loss their female partners often bemoan whilst simultaneously requiring the fruits of this intense labour.

All in all, then, the worst of women, is a product of their disempowered situation in a patriarchal world, and men should care about that and want to help redress it, if only for their lover's, mother's, and daughter's sake.

What the reader may have noticed, in my above assessments, is that, while critical, they do not preclude the possibility of a more healthy masculinism or feminism that seeks to truly uplift their gender and resolve its various issues. For me, this involves listening to the more noble thread of masculinism and the more graceful thread of feminism. Too often, the feminist voice, ironically, is simply too macho. At war with the graceful feminine (the higher calling feminine). And the red-pill voice, equally ironically, is too frail. It masquerades as an excuse not to be a noble male (the higher calling masculine). Instead, we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. What's more, we also need come together. For, in our rush to win power through warfare, we have forgotten that empowerment can also come through harmoniously working together.

The Gorgeous Wisdom Between Us

When men and women fall in love something incredible happens. A bridge forms between them, with all their differences coming into alignment with each other. There, in the erotic charge of a single touch, everything melts away and it suddenly all makes a kind of crazy sense. Biology didn't intend for us to be isolated castles, at odds with each other. It intended for us to be lovers, lost in each other, and reaching towards a truth far deeper than our individual truths. A drunken truth that lives in the half light of wet lips and big dark eyes.

In honesty, love does this between all people. It makes sense of their differences and aligns them. But this is particularly so with men and women, who without this can often seem utterly alien to each other. In union, however, a powerful enchantment stirs. But this is not witchcraft or delusion. For, when a man is finally desired and affirmed for being a man and when a woman is finally desired and affirmed for being a woman, both are set free to be who they truly are, behind the masks. We glimpse, for a moment, an intoxicated truth. We recognise that no one person is the entire solution in themselves. We each only bring one part of it, and need the companionship and difference of others to fill in the gaps.

This is the truth that makes all the many differences and difficulties worthwhile. This is why it is silly to hold up being single, and retreating from the other gender, as an admirable goal. For, together a new voice emerges. A union of grace and nobility. Let us try to champion that harmonic voice and build the more equal and fairer future based upon that deeper nurturing dual voice rather than the current polarised voice of conflict. After all, when both genders are truly empowered, they resonate together. This is where we are supposed to live.

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To conclude, neither the male nor female voice is the solution or the problem. The troubles of our world don't split down a male vs female line. They split down a neurotic vs secure line; a fearful scarcity vs trustful bountiful outlook that cuts across genders. As such, no one gender is automatically better equipped to run the planet. Instead, both need to earn that privilege through inner work and moral intelligence. In the end, it's obvious. Neurotic disempowered people of either gender will act badly. In this sense, feminism is right. Empowering women is not only just, it will create a less toxic society. But the neurotic voice of disempowered men is also right. This cannot be done at the expense of another group of people, or it will only shift the problem elsewhere.

As such, to truly solve this problem, we need to work together - men resisting red-pill misogyny - women resisting feminist misandry - tuning into positive, soulful, and supportive voices on both sides to uplift ourselves and each other. In this, our sexual desire for each other, as well as our higher callings, can be used as a compass to de-radicalise us, and lead us back into harmony... that soft silent sharing of breath while we dream besides each other that we can forget when we sleep alone.

As a sobering end note, I should add that, in championing this dual male-female voice, I am not living in a fantasy world. I am well aware that, too often, couples suffer from terrible relationship dynamics. And too often people who shouldn't be together spend their lives trying to swim against that tide. But we shouldn't judge the male-female voice based upon its failures. We should try to align better with what it is at its best and help people to find that.

In this, we should be careful to avoid people worship. For, if we hold up any particular couple as perfectly embodying that voice, they are bound to disappoint us badly. On this note, I want to acknowledge that, since Deepak Chopra's involvement in the Epstein files has come to light, women have every right to distrust male voices championing "the divine feminine". This is a thorny topic because, for the male, this phrase means something entirely different than to the female. This is because "the divine feminine", to the male, can only be an erotic ideal, as men don't know what "the feminine" is. And the same is true, in reverse, with "the divine masculine". In this article, I've been talking more broadly about hearing our higher calling. This, to me, is a non-erotic way of talking about this. Although, obviously, people who vibrate on that level are deeply attractive because of this. But I haven't fetishized that.

Mine is a friendly soulful voice that bridges divides. A rare unpartisan compassionate voice seeking positive change away from our polarised toxic stalemates by discerning elements in each side that I find legitimate and critiquing elements I don't. If you want to hear more truthful, perhaps challenging, and yet ultimately beautiful thoughts please subscribe to my substack.

The cover is a bit of AI fun, intended to add an ironic twist to the article's title. As this article shows, I am critical of any kind of abuse between men and women. Hence why I strived to create an image that wasn't triggering in this way, but was a light hearted poke at the current online divide.

Alas, when we turn serious attention to this, it is a mess. For too long the Spiritual community have simply been playing games with truth; making claims about science which are either fantastical, based upon it's most fringe conjecture, or pure gobbledygook, born of a profound misreading or misunderstanding of it. If tomorrow's world is to be more spiritual, then, a massive clean up act needs to take place. Voices of rigour and scientific understanding need to start giving shape to what that might be. I am one such voice.

The result won't be pretty for everyone. The Spiritual scene is truly awash with nonsense, Anti-Modernism runs deep through it's veins. Indeed, today's Spiritual community was born from the New Age movement that emerged at the end of the 19th century, rising from the ashes of “the death of God”. And right from the outset (in Helena Blavatsky’s work) it framed itself in oppositional “spiritualist” terms, in an act of Anti-Modern defiance of the Modernist “materialist”.

In essence, the entire spiritual mindset has been in opposition for so long now that it has no idea how to become responsible… how to become scientific… how to become philosophically viable. This is the big work now. Not to attack Modernism or try sabotaging it. But to finally roll up our sleeves and come up with something better. Whole swathes of “Spiritual” thought will need to be hacked away to make this new clearing. Toxic nonsense and unfounded otherworldly claims that lure people into living in fantasy worlds rather than the beautiful world that's right here with us. But what will emerge will be both profoundly logical, compellingly scientific (to all scientists, not just the fringe), deeply practical… but also, for the first time in a long time… spiritually fulfilling.

It won't be an easy journey for everyone. But it is a necessary one if we are finally going to separate the wheat from the chaff and move forward towards a more spiritual worldview. If you want to join me in that, either as a thinker or a reader, I welcome you with open arms. You've found your home

Interactive Map Of Theories On Mind

Alternatively, if you'd prefer a simple list of all the different categories and positions people have taken, here is the same info laid out in a more straightforward way.

List Of Philosophies Of Mind

I am a staunchly independent None with a spiritual/religious sensibility. But I am a friend of both science and the Faiths, celebrating the amazing feats of human ingenuity in the former, and seeing the beauty (as well as the problems) in the latter. As such, I straddle many currently polarised positions, helping to bridge worlds.

I am, however, a post-atheist thinker, having deconstructed my previous atheist thinking (a journey which my book and this substack will explore). Given this, I sometimes describe myself as a sceptic of scepticism. In all of my writings, my main concern is with uncovering the truth of issues. In this, unusually, I have no agenda. As such, I have no interest in converting anyone to anything. I only want to help people live, think, and feel deeply.

My spirituality is therefore fearless and rationally robust. So far, deeper thinking, and deeper investigation, has always led me back to an even deeper spirituality. Along the way, it has often bubbled up surprises. Hence, you will find me diving into issues in a way others might not, driven by the sense that, if you really drill down to the bottom, you usually come up with something wonderful. This is what a spirituality unafraid of reason looks like.

Overall, I would describe myself as a romantic. By this, I mean that I find a messy view of life more truthful and insightful than the abstractions of those who try to see it in clinical and rigid terms. This gives my thinking a soulful edge. But, more importantly, it makes it truer and more analytically precise, not falling for the many fallacies which the Modernist lens is riddled with.

In this substack I hope to share aspects of my work and my story, poetic thoughts about life, and critical spiritual thinking about current issues. Over time, I hope you come to enjoy my different lens on the world.

So buckle up, as the journey I will take you on may challenge all readers at some point. But, along the way, you will find me a thoughtful and compassionate soul, always mindful to ground in what feels true, beautiful, and meaningful. In light of this, I will close this introductory post with one of my favourite Mary Oliver poems.

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean -

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?