What a profound, beautiful essay. I'm not an academic, so I submit this comment humbly. But I wonder if the dominance of the cult of Materialism in Academia is related to our similarly cultish attachment to technology and hyper-capitalism. There's a lot of money to be made if you can hold fast to a purely materialist view. Sometimes it seems like the purpose of science is not the acquisition of knowledge but rather as R and D for tech interests.
All it takes is one good Zen "slap" in one's mind to realize that there is a psychic/spiritual dimension to all! I struggled with the idea of Existentialism, which was considered a very hip and cynical way to view things. Was everything truly meaningless? I was continuing this mental struggle while waiting for a subway train on my way to my college classes. Then I realized that even if everything WAS meaningless, my mind WOULD assign meaning to things. Given that, everything DID have meaning. The subway train arrived. I got on it. And I was no longer troubled. I saw into the emptiness of Existentialism and never looked back. TRUE STORY! I have had enough psi experiences to know that "there is more in Heaven and Earth, than is dreamt of in your philosophy....," or however that goes. Kudos for breaking out of that ignorant repudiation of the true scientific method by the Materialists!
As a person who has been awake to the transforming paradigm around me for the last fifty years, it is gratifying to see the sudden exploding interest in metaphysics. It might be said Ms. Quinn is the tip of an iceberg. Consciousness is the hottest topic in physics these days. Recounting near death experiences is suddenly mainstream. (See the hundreds of YouTube videos.) According to astrology, we are entering the Age of Aquarius. Hinduism calls the new age we are entering, the Satya Yuga, or age of truth. I suspect the last two examples might be woo-woo for most followers of this channel, but think how far we have come and know that we still have a long way to go.
This was fascinating to read. I enjoyed it from beginning to end.
"It fully dawned on me that I was in a new orthodoxy with all the requirements of membership that you would find in an intolerant faith."--beautiful comparison.
A thought comes to mind after having had one sleep and a re-read of this wonderful essay: Is it conceivable (not within the materialism paradigm, of course) that your departed colleague has learned something in the metaphysical realm that enabled them to grasp the possibility of reaching out to you, still in the physical. Did you ever discuss such concepts before they departed?
A beautiful and well-argued piece with which I agree wholeheartedly as a computer scientist and philosopher. I would also add that a similarly intolerant and false belief is the belief that our brains are just computers. What I find interesting is that many who hold that belief have no actual understanding of how actual digital computers work nor limitations of algorithms they run.
What a profound, beautiful essay. I'm not an academic, so I submit this comment humbly. But I wonder if the dominance of the cult of Materialism in Academia is related to our similarly cultish attachment to technology and hyper-capitalism. There's a lot of money to be made if you can hold fast to a purely materialist view. Sometimes it seems like the purpose of science is not the acquisition of knowledge but rather as R and D for tech interests.
All it takes is one good Zen "slap" in one's mind to realize that there is a psychic/spiritual dimension to all! I struggled with the idea of Existentialism, which was considered a very hip and cynical way to view things. Was everything truly meaningless? I was continuing this mental struggle while waiting for a subway train on my way to my college classes. Then I realized that even if everything WAS meaningless, my mind WOULD assign meaning to things. Given that, everything DID have meaning. The subway train arrived. I got on it. And I was no longer troubled. I saw into the emptiness of Existentialism and never looked back. TRUE STORY! I have had enough psi experiences to know that "there is more in Heaven and Earth, than is dreamt of in your philosophy....," or however that goes. Kudos for breaking out of that ignorant repudiation of the true scientific method by the Materialists!
As a person who has been awake to the transforming paradigm around me for the last fifty years, it is gratifying to see the sudden exploding interest in metaphysics. It might be said Ms. Quinn is the tip of an iceberg. Consciousness is the hottest topic in physics these days. Recounting near death experiences is suddenly mainstream. (See the hundreds of YouTube videos.) According to astrology, we are entering the Age of Aquarius. Hinduism calls the new age we are entering, the Satya Yuga, or age of truth. I suspect the last two examples might be woo-woo for most followers of this channel, but think how far we have come and know that we still have a long way to go.
This was fascinating to read. I enjoyed it from beginning to end.
"It fully dawned on me that I was in a new orthodoxy with all the requirements of membership that you would find in an intolerant faith."--beautiful comparison.
A thought comes to mind after having had one sleep and a re-read of this wonderful essay: Is it conceivable (not within the materialism paradigm, of course) that your departed colleague has learned something in the metaphysical realm that enabled them to grasp the possibility of reaching out to you, still in the physical. Did you ever discuss such concepts before they departed?
A beautiful and well-argued piece with which I agree wholeheartedly as a computer scientist and philosopher. I would also add that a similarly intolerant and false belief is the belief that our brains are just computers. What I find interesting is that many who hold that belief have no actual understanding of how actual digital computers work nor limitations of algorithms they run.