The Compromise—Panpsychism /panˈsīˌkizəm/

“And the earth was without form and void”—a better reading

Life—amalgamating with matter which “was without form and void“—Genesis 1:2. Void of what? Simply without form and without the void. Containing no defined area imbued by life to perpetuate, but animation itself (energy) creates a void between the nucleus and the shell when it permeates matter, enlarging it by millions with a seemingly empty space—expansion, and all kinetic energy wrapped up in galactic collision.

When life happened upon this pale blue dot, or collided with this insignificant speck in a deluge of massive energy, the globe that we know today was without space for life. Without the consciousness of energy, it sat billions of years since last contact—about the size of a basketball in truly space-less matter—containing no life, but by perfect cataclysm aligned with a star. With energy, wave functions, invisible quantum fields, quarks and gluons, fantastically create, then occupy what we perceive as space, expanding them a million times their inert, lifeless size.

Dinosaurs, once tiny specimens of slightly larger flecks of dust before the earth enlarged its area thorough never-ending chains of cosmic collisions, emerged again in their re-birth as expanded fossil-forms to thousands of times their prior size as the power came on for this generation of conscious energy, expanding to life in the void, for life makes space—and a lot of it (by comparison sake) creating a void between the nucleus and shell, massless electrons fill the space by being everywhere simultaneously as pure energy. Prior to this moment, all the fossil fuels on earth would contain in a thimble.

By removing the empty space, the atoms that make a complete human are the size of a small, minute dust particle, with all of current humanity fitting into an area of a common sugar cube.

The rapid expansion and evolution of species when life infiltrates non-life, gradually stabilizes. Environments peak and yaw, decline and drive evolution and migration. During times of calm these changes are slow and hard to see, but what might happen in a lifetime years ago, now takes millennia.

Earlier, un-eradicated men knew of these energies that infiltrate organic and inorganic life, including the rivers and mountains, considered themselves part of the system we have been forged to forget. By being “civilized” we have lost intuition with the connective forces that sustain us.

Is it a coincidence that the sun encompasses 99.86% of all the visible matter in the solar system, while we (and the other planets) get a trickle that amounts to the matter we possess? That the tiny ray that dissipates this direction contains and maintains the energy that is life and sustains it, earth, and that our very bodies thrive because of shared elements of the stars? We capture a mere fraction (1/billionth) of her emissions.

The atoms that make us, from the calcium in our bones to the iron in our blood, brewed in the heart of an exploding star billions of years ago, and now nurtured by her distant cousin with a mere trickle of energy. Just enough to be, and to simultaneously maintain.

The Conibo people of the Peruvian Amazon, when asked how they knew which varieties of plants to use for what purposes, answered simply, “the plants speak to us. This exchange of informations takes place at a primitive level. Attuned simply to the frequencies and vibrations of the earth and its secrets—secrets that are now considered quackery, sorcery, witchcraft, and second class to modern medicine, shamanism.

These deeply connected people knew “to be“, was to be in touch with their natural environment, sharing electrons and transferring data with every thing that came in their path. The secrets of life are found in our bare skin and the souls of our tightly bound feet. But we now live in a world of barriers.

pan·psy·chism
/panˈsīˌkizəm = pan/all, psychism/consciousness—all is conscious
  1. the doctrine of evidence that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness.

We are vastly made of empty space (filled with energy) 99.999% of the human body is a relative illusion of shared energy—same as the rocks, the rivers, and the trees. All as alive in their own element as the next. Finding your roots in the asphalt, concrete, and barriers to nature is a modern challenge—finding those roots is to find the meaning.

It may not be very sophisticated in this day and age to reverence the sun or the earth—but try life without them. Panpsychism is 99.999% more likely to be accurate, than to postulate a god we have no evidence of.

While apologists continue the debate over the word “was” in Genesis 1:2, again we see that science and the shaman produce the answers to their void, which is truly empty of reason or evidence.

“Was” in the Hebrew is a great attempt at hairsplitting scripture to try and align with scientific evidence that the earth is very old.

HERE is an example of the past 3000 years (really) of trying to determine what “was”, was.

Author: jimoeba

Alternatives to big box religions and dogmas

51 thoughts on “The Compromise—Panpsychism /panˈsīˌkizəm/”

  1. I like, especially because it’s the exact opposite of classical theism. I see panpsychism, IIT, and Constructal law as overlapping fields of enquiry, circling the same thing, and your poetry here has taken up residence right in that sweet spot. It doesn’t reveal a meaning that was waiting to be discovered, but rather it writes one, and that’s a critical distinction.

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    1. It was an interesting exercise. I didn’t realize I was writing my own meaning the way you describe. I liked it because it included everything and everyone. Hell, even a hardcore Christian is already a Panpsychist. If god can command elements and they obey, doesn’t that fall in line with consciousness in the element? Animals as well.

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      1. It gets fuzzy (and confuses a lot of people, because they think ‘sentience’) when you start talking about the conscious life of a rock, or a proton. ITT tries to steady that ship by calling it Phi: the more Phi, the more the conscious thing resembles what we consider ‘consciousness.’

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        1. John, you have an interesting idea there. Isaac Asimov’s “Robot” series concluded with a similar concept, the development of a kind of world being, where the entire planet and everything on it were all part of the same organism. Sort of. He claimed this was a form of near immortality, because the planet, and its consciousness, of which the individual creatures living on it were part of, would continue to exist for billions of years. When you died, you didn’t really die, you just merged back into the planetary being. Sort of. Kind of? It’s been ages since I read the book and I frankly disliked it and thought it was one of the worst things Asimov ever wrote.

          I always had difficulty dealing with the idea in the novel that the individual being somehow returning to the planetary consciousness or whatever, was a way of avoiding death, because it wasn’t. If the being that is “me”, so to speak, is entirely subsumed into this overarching super-being, I, as an individual consciousness, no longer exist. I am, for all intents and purposes, dead.

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          1. I agree: dead. Roger Penrose is trying to find a way in which that ‘self’ continues, albeit not as the self we understand. He’s deeply into IIT and panpsychism, but I think he might be driven by an aversion to the whole “dead” part of dying.

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        1. I should read some of the other thoughts on this. Round one I just let the idea ferment and try to reason it out in some sense. I did notice at the end, that I am a victim of my interests. I tied it all together in my own head. I’ll read it today add to let you know

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  2. Language can be fun to study, but the apologists really hold its feet to the fire and torture it to try to twist it to mean what they want it to mean, not what it really meant to the people who actually used it. How many trees died so these guys could publish millions of words to try to explain why a word or phrase doesn’t mean what it actually says?

    Even in modern times they can’t get it right. When the catholics changed from the traditional latin service to the local vernacular a lot of us who actually understood what the latin meant were left scratching our heads and wondering if they’d bothered to actually read the original text before doing the translation. “Et cum spiritu tuo” was translated in the English version of the mass that we were given as “And also with you” when it actually means “and with your spirit”. There were similar mistranslations scattered through the whole thing, some of them a pretty significant alteration of the meaning of the latin. A lot of that has been corrected now, but it took ’em 40 years or more to correct it.

    They can’t even agree on the terms “brother” and “sister”. The bible explicitly states Jesus had brothers and sisters, but that is totally unacceptable to a lot of christian sects which claim that Mary was “ever virgin” (what the hell is this obsession they have with virginity? The nuns we were taught by back in the day literally worshiped the concept of virginity as if it were a deity in its own right. In fact, a lot of these christians are so obsessed with sex, especially with other people’s sexual activities, that I’d argue that their obsession qualifies as a sexual perversion in its own right.). So they go through all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to claim Jesus was an only child. The claim is that Jesus had brothers and sisters, but they were by Joseph and another woman, not Mary, or that the terms don’t mean biological brothers and sisters but close friends or disciples…

    God is, I suspect, really a psychology student working on his degree and the human race is his experiment and one of these days he’s going to come along and whack our heads off so he can examine our brains and figure out what the hell is wrong with us like they do with rats.

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    1. I like what you’re saying, but could you define the word”it” for me. APA format please, preferably in a book form, 500 pages? I just thought it was interesting that they try to tweak the Bible meaning to align with what we figured out without it.

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      1. Ha! It’s sort of like the nonsense that went on during the Clinton impeachment when they were trying to claim that “oral sex” wasn’t really sex and a lie wasn’t really a lie. My feeling is that if you have to go through such convoluted twists of logic and have to slice and dice the meanings of trivial words in order to try to prove your point, there’s something inherently wrong with your point in the first place.

        I think that the point you and I both want to make is that if the bible is indeed the pure and infallible word of god, then it would be written in such a way that its meaning couldn’t be mistaken or misinterpreted.

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        1. I remember that. What “is” is, or some damn thing. Sure, if you have to contemplate it much at all, imagination rules the day. Was it Paul Simon—“ I know they’d never match
          my sweet imagination?”

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    2. Very good points, grouch. One of my tasks as an altar boy in the 1950s was memorizing the Mass in Latin, a chore that became useful in high school Latin class. Mistranslations have a notoriously long halflife, the badly interpreted stuff withstands correction indefinitely. Absurd philosophical stances, musings, and paper-wastages live long and fester with the mistranslation of a *single word* — such as forcing a camel through a tight spot:
      https://billziegler1947.com/2018/03/21/threading-a-hawser-through-the-eye-of-a-needle/
      🙂

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      1. For 700 years Moses has horns due to Jerome’s vulgate Bible. I imagine standing around the water cooler discussing the horns of Moses—how long were they? What did they do? Transmitters to god? All over a word. Funny thing is people actually believed it because it was in the Bible. I wonder how many people suffered blasphemy because of it. Haha. Not funny, really.

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  3. I like cheese.

    Like I’d be upset if someone moved it.

    (I wanted to comment… but actually I have no idea what going on in this post… but you know… I support you Jim… and probably the rest of you guys too)

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            1. Haha. Everyone should read your blog, really. I just love the way you think without thinking, make points without pointing. But, I guess your not doing it for points, but I’ll give you 1 billion!

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        1. It works, so why not? Providing “it” is something one really wants to be, or believe, or whatever “making it” means to them.
          As far as changing oneself, as in getting rid of a bad habit, addiction, ot character trait, “Fake it until you make it” has been one of my favourite methods for some 40 years now, and it is so easy to remember, because it rhymes…

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    1. What’s interesting me about the concept? It works for scientists, works for spiritualist, reincarnationists, traditional/aboriginal religion and also allows for the abrahamic religions to postulate their god even though it’s not necessary. That will never end, but it’s a system of thought that includes everyone. Christians gave up the ability to see outside their submission.

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    1. There certainly were some objections in my head even though I wrote this based on compiling my prior knowledge without me reading on post topic. They seem mostly workable but I wanted to present my own feelings as a rough draft without being influenced by experts. I wanted a fresh look. Christians all believe someone else’s thoughts and dismiss their own minds. I’m trying to avoid that in this blog. Thank you for the articles. John had challenged me to see what I reason out on this. It was a bit entertaining to think about, probably one of my favorite thought exercises.

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    1. As a proponent of all living beings being conscious, even I cannot define what a living being is. We know how to recognize beings similar to us in some shape or form (although few seldom do, unable to see past the human shape and form), but beyond that things could also have life that seem totally lifeless to us.
      I am of the opinion that natural items have way more chance of being alive more than human-manfactured things, particularly plastics and metals. To go a bit farther, most human-made things not described above are made from things humans have killed, from once-living material that is now dead. Not to say that humans don’t use some things while they are still alive, but for the most part none of the materials can be brought back to life, as in regrowing it. Once wheat is ground into flower, it cannot regrow. But break off a branch of some species of trees, willows for example, and they will still grow.
      All in all, life is a very specific thing for me. But even so, I know nothing for sure, just sheer speculation.

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  4. When it comes to atomic and subatomic particles I cannot see them as alive. They do not change on their own, but only if they are induced to do so by outside forces, called catalysts, like chemicals or heat or pressure, etc. When I went to school the smallest known particles were electrons, which I can imagine and accept, but quarks and gluons or whatever, I am out of my comfort zone. Not that I deny their existence, I just have no idea what the hell they are. But from what I have read, they don’t change either. To me they are not alive. Fair enough?
    But anything that comes into being, through eggs, seeds, spores, or mitosis, is alive. As I have noted elsewhere, they all consist of cells, with nuceii, RNA, DNA, and whatever else makes up living matter. At one time, all living things were one cell in size. Evolution changed that. Now there are beings that have quadrillions or quintillions of cells, but still there are beings one cell in size. And since the larger beings have consciousness, and they are all related to the first single cell beings, that tells me all living beings are conscious. And they are all related. Panpsychism, or not panpsychism? You tell me.
    But on the matter of pronunciation, no matter how the creator of the word feels it should be pronounced, I split it up thus: pan psych’ i sm. Just cuz I gotta be me…

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    1. That’s how it’s pronounced. I included it at the bottom.
      , I just have no idea what the hell they are. But from what I have read, they don’t change either. To me they are not alive. Fair enough?” You do not know what consciousness is either, but you believe it is real, correct? Those pieces of the atomic puzzle can be anywhere at once and sustain a half of billions of years. They also behave differently when they are being watched by a conscious observer. They are the epitomic definition of living consciousness and baffling physicists with unpredictable behavior.

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      1. All that is true and possible. I can especially see suns being conscious, but I don’t get the intuition they are. The earth itself seems alive, with all the life living on and off it, but really it does not grow of its own accord. Cosmic dust collects on it, as does the garbage of life, particularly human. But they do not take in food and add on matter, which makes me question if they could be alive. As I already said, I DO NOT KNOW, anything is possible. And does it really matter?

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        1. Sure it can matter when we realize this is us, this is all we get. Maybe a little more respect for the place. Although there is a big portion of the population that thinks they can’t be good without god

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          1. Yeah, but we don’t need panpsychism to do that, we can choose to do that all on our own. I have done so for decades. However, I am glad to see you at least considering something like this. You are more open-minded than the average atheist, but I still feel a hesitancy to look at a living cosmos.You are still trapped in a physical universe, in my mind, whereas I see different universes, different levels of life. This is what I mean by cosmos, the totality of everything physical, mental, and spiritual for sure, as well as anything else even I cannot imagine. And I am just one living being. How many other living beings can imagine things I cannot, and what am I imagining that they cannot–that you cannot?
            I have to admit, Jim, I have lost my way in this discussion. I find it hard to focus on something called panpsychism. While I use a lot of labels myself, including spiritual atheism, I do not like labels. They confine, build boxes, fences, and other kind of limits. The cosmos is my real playground, though I do not and cannot fully get a picture of what that is. I am levels away from that. And if it has taken me billions of our years to wake me up to the possibilities I can now imagine, what kind of time period am I looking at?
            Does time even exist? Many say it doesn’t, but I fear something does, though not based on revolutions around a star and the smaller bits we break time down into. Those are sheer human inventions. Yet we cannot move back and forth in time, except possibly in spirit. There is something, at least on our present level.
            But that is all we need to know for now. Labels are not important, once you get used to living without them. Though they do make communication easier.

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  5. Panpsychism seems similar to pantheism in the sense that it considers all matter and energy to be essentially one ginormous entity. I really think we are too puny and short-lived to understand the universe in its timeless enormity. I certainly don’t get the point of turning to scripture and parsing some nonsensical Hebrew phrases as a way of determining the age of the earth. Study the earth itself!!

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    1. Exactly! I know you love to investigate. The world has turned to videos and reading what others believe, but the real learning of these things is about field work. That’s why I dumped religion. It is by faith that we live it, and by fact that we leave it. Those here that vehemently preach the gospels have never tested the promises. They only know the words. Things that sound good after persuasion don’t always have any utility. It’s all about the words.

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  6. I haven’t seen too many atheists seriously consider panpsychism before. Thomas Nagel caused a stir when he criticized the prevailing reductive materialism and embraced what looks a lot like a panpsychist view. Most atheists I have encountered treat a certain type of materialism almost like a religious commitment. For that matter, most Christians also believe in this same form of materialism(some attribute this to the influence of Descartes), they just believe in a god that is completely outside this cosmos of “dead matter”.

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    1. This was a thought exercise of my own after reading the definition of the word. Granted, I am a product of my interests, but was challenged to write what I thought of the idea. I let it ferment a couple of weeks and shared what could be, based on my limited work. I honestly don’t have much in the way of spiritual inklings, but this could make sense to me, and include everyone in it. The Christians still get their first cause, and we get our natural world and all it’s energy. Preferred of course, to a synthetic, created, unnatural world.

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    2. Just to let you know, K, I have believed in a living cosmos since 1969, when I was 20 years old. Panpsychism is just another label, though discussing the ideas behind it intelligently is not an easy thing to do. We don’t really have the words, at least not in English, which is the only language I am competent in.
      Still, I am an atheist and have no belief in any kind of superbeing. Where that leaves me is somewhere that is hard for others to see or reason. But I am where I am, and no one can change that.

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      1. I hold views that amount to panpsychism(with some nuance) and reincarnation myself. I get where you’re coming from. Though I do find it unusual for a present day atheist to have those views. That is very rare as far as I know.

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        1. I get a lot of harassment, but not as much as I used to. The internet makes it possible to meet people in numbers impossible in real life. The more you meet, the more chance of discovering not necessarily people who agree, but people who are willing to consider.
          Still, we are rare… But that’s okay. We won’t always be, given the human race survives the next hundred years…

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  7. I always thought that the Native American philosophy of life (I believe it is akin to panpsychism) was an interesting way to look at things. And then it turns out that indeed we are physically related to every single living lifeform on the planet. Which blew my mind a bit.

    Then of course everything on the planet owes its existence to stars, and supernova debri. Again, fairly mind blowing.

    But…I still can’t quite see my way to accepting rocks as having any sort of spirituality, concsciousness, or mystical powers.

    If I was to ever start looking for a god worthy of worship, it would be the sun. Truly it (and its brothers) are why we enjoy this thing called life. At least as far as I understand it.

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    1. It’s not too far fetched. It seems to be one of those concepts that grow, the more we discover—Unlike abrahamic faith getting smaller the more we discover. There is really just one last nut to crack and creation myth will go the way of the dodo. Everything else has already toppled.

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