Birth, DNA, Disability

This session grew out of our discussion on the 11st of Nov, when we discussed the body and its boundaries.

In Bernardo’s idealism, individual consciousness is a localised excitation in a field of subjectivity; a dissociated alter of universal consciousness. So we took questions about how this dissociation begins, develops, decays and dies. It was also the chance for people to share their personal experiences with pregnancy, birth and how society responds to genetic variation. 

Thanks Amy Lemon for assisting, Deborah Chen for her reflections that I share below, and underneath are Rita Conde’s timestamps and the recording. 

As we returned to contemplating when life begins and ends, Bernardo cautioned against trying to pin down any process too cleanly. Despite our desire for clear boundaries, no process in nature is binary, and dissociation is not a surgical divide. 

Instead, birth is a deeply archetypal process, one starkly coupled with death. When both of these occur in our lives in close proximity, it is multiple archetypal processes in motion at the same time, liable to cause what looks like a breakdown, but likely with its own internal logic.

When mind becomes matter

When we adopt new ideas and beliefs, we may wonder if those changes in our minds affect our bodies. This may not happen at first, but over time ideas sink deeper and deeper into our psyches. Eventually they may affect our physical states; however, we should guard against thinking that we can hack the system and think our way to good health. There are complex processes at work, and while our deeply held convictions play a role, we are by no means in complete control of our health.

Society's response to genetic variation

Because our culture values people as economic tools, any genetic variation that impairs productivity is a disability. In contrast, in some indigenous cultures schizophrenia might confer high social status thanks to access to the spirit world. In Nordic culture a blind person was considered a seer. How we view genetic variation is culture bound. Many conditions with limiting factors are paired with special gifts, such as the known link between savant syndrome and autism.

Even the stars will die

As no process in nature is flawless, sometimes dissociation is partial, as in cranial conjoined twins, who sometimes can understand each other’s thoughts and feelings. Every natural process comes to an end. Stars fade. Human beings decay and die. The end of the body is not the death of consciousness, merely are remerging with Mind at Large. As the dissociative boundaries crumble, the small eddy that was once you returns to the ocean of all that is.

Speakers

Bernardo Kastrup

Analytic idealism

Bernardo Kastrup is the Executive Director of Essentia Foundation and Founder/CEO at AI systems company Euclyd BV. His work has set off the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence).

As a scientist, he has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect’ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). He has also been creatively active in the high-tech industry for almost 30 years, having founded parallel processor company Silicon Hive (acquired by Intel in 2011) and worked as a technology strategist for the geopolitically significant company ASML. Most recently, he has founded AI company Euclyd BV.

Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured in Scientific American, the magazine of The Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. His most defining book is Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st-century’s only plausible metaphysics.

Explore Bernardo’s work →