We and the world are plenty strange as is, no need to look afar for strangeness

I've got solid evidence for my affinity for strangeness: 49 Strange Up Salem columns that I wrote for our alternative newspaper, Salem Weekly, in 2013-2015.

Here's how my second column, "Strange is Life," started out.

Life is strange. From birth until death, mysteries abound. No one -- not scientists, not religious leaders, nobody -- knows everything about anything.

This is a good thing. Certainty is for machines that act robotically. For four billion years or so, life has evolved in unpredictable, though natural, ways. So let’s invert my words:

Strange is life. At the core of each of us beats a marvelous heart of strangeness. We feel it pulsating in ooh! and ah! moments when a burst of mysterious beauty breaks through the mundane veil that often shrouds our consciousness.

I still feel this way.

That's why, even though I'm enjoying reading Eric Schwitzgebel's book, The Weirdness of the World, which I have written about here and here, I have some problems with his "1% Skepticism" chapter.

His basic idea, as reflected in the chapter title, is that it makes sense to be approximately 1% skeptical that our habitual way of looking upon the world truly is the way things are. Meaning, reserve 1% of your judgement about reality for the possibility that, say, we could be living in a simulation conjured up by a bored teenager in an alien civilization with powerful computer technology, or that we're dreaming.

Schwitzgebel recommends the 1% be adjusted by an order of magnitude lesser, 0.1%, if 1% seems like too high a probability for the world being Really Weird. Well, my own take on this is that there's a 100% probability -- absolute certainty -- that the world is Really Weird, or if you like, Really Strange.

This applies to each of us also, since we're part of the world.

I can make this bold claim, which carries with it that absolute certainty, because while Schwitzgebel is talking about the nature of objective reality, I'm speaking about the nature of subjective reality. Meaning, reality viewed from a certain perspective: my own. 

But I don't think I'm the only person who sees things in the Really Strange way that I do. Not constantly. Not every waking moment. Just often enough for me to realize that strangeness is an ever-present component of my mind that, now and then, moves into consciousness from wherever it lurks at other times.

Today I was driving home after getting an acupuncture treatment for my sciatica/leg pain (having needles stuck into you for an hour or so is strange in itself) when I suddenly sensed the utter improbability of everything around me -- trees, pavement, sky, vehicles, and so on. 

It struck me that out of the 100 billion or so galaxies in the universe, with our Milky Way galaxy containing about 100 billion stars, here I was, driving my Subaru Crosstrek while listening to the news being discussed on a satellite radio station.

That seems mundane to me most of the time. However, when the Really Strange bug bites me, I envision an alien being from a galaxy far, far away looking upon our world and thinking, in its alien fashion, "Wow, this planet is amazingly bizarre!" 

Because everything we look upon as normal, to an alien being would be astoundingly different and unique. 

But even if we accept that the probability of our world being as it is is 100%, since what is, is, this neither takes away from the Really Strange fact that it is this way, nor from the Really Strange fact that each of us possesses an awareness capable of knowing that the world is as it is. 

This awareness, or consciousness, is completely private and subjective. No one other than us has direct access to it. At this moment I know what I'm feeling, what I'm aware of. Out of eight billion people on this planet, only I have this knowledge. 

And the same is true of you. So I agree with Schwitzgebel that how our mind relates to the world is an unexplained weirdness that no one fully understands, and perhaps never will -- at least not in the immediate future. 

His emphasis on consciousness will keep me reading the rest of his book. After all, I like his title, The Weirdness of the World, a lot. I just find weirdness/strangeness everywhere, when I'm in a certain frame of mind.

Comments

[Ron E.]

Yes, I agree, life, the universe and everything is strange and often defies common sense. Common sense being described as ‘sound, practical judgement and being common to all people’. And yes, common sense often falls flat as new discoveries arise – and are superseded by ‘new’ discoveries.

It seems to be quite normal for us to question and delve into the how and why of things; it is after all how we have advanced our knowledge and understanding but I do wonder why we like to term things ‘mysteries’. Okay, so the usual answer is that life, the universe and everything is a mystery, but who or what is labelling it a mystery. Certainly not the everyday mind that comprises all the knowledge and information it needs to operate and function in its particular environment. Perhaps it is the aspect of the mind that needs to be secure in the sense of seeing mysteries as something bigger, more profound than little me. Are mysteries (in some mysterious way!) merely a substitute for the God’s that have been displaced as our knowledge and understanding outgrew them?

I’m not saying that we should be content and complacent with our lot (knowledge or whatever our lot may be), but there is a case for looking at life etc. simply as it appears to me now without the demands and insecurities of the ego/self that loves (needs) to make more of itself by inventing mysteries. The ego/self aspect of mind has its place but does have a predilection to muddy the waters of the simplicity of the life and environment we have our being in.

[La Madrugada]

Hi Brian,
I do hope that the acupuncture treatment will relieve your pain.

[s*]

Yes it seems absolutely weird..everything...!!
Nice to read this from someone else...

[Ron E.]

Brian. Have just had a re-read of this blog and had a thought about this strangeness or weirdness of things you mention on driving home after acupuncture treatment (hope the treatment helped),
“. . . I suddenly sensed the utter improbability of everything around me -- trees, pavement, sky, vehicles, and so on.”

I know there is some weirdness re the universe and life (thinking quantum physics here and the fact that things are not as we believe or sense them to be). Becoming aware of the improbability of everything; the experience of improbability sounds similar to the mini-awakening(s) as a result of awareness or meditation practice.

Usually we seem to be ‘living in a world of thought and concepts, caught up in constant thinking, unaware of the world and everything about us. At times, perhaps when suddenly seeing a sunset, a tree or a child laughing, we are taken out of our thinking and witness what is happening right now before our eyes. Then, as suddenly as the images appeared, thought can intervene covering the sensed reality with words and concepts such as mysterious or improbable.

Stephen Batchelor described such experiences (or perhaps a way of life) as seeing the everyday sub-lime. J. Krishnamurti said something similar: “We are frightened to be simple. We want things to be complicated. The more things are complicated, the more we think we are intellectual. We are never simple. We don’t know how to look at things very, very simply. When you can look at things very simply, you are beyond all the intellectuals.”