We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
(…)
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.
—T. S. Eliot (‘The Hollow Men’ Poem)
I don’t particularly identify myself as a monotheist (sorry, mum).
But I feel inclined towards Julian Barnes, when he says, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him”.
I miss Him (or Her or It) when I’m stuck at a crossroads. When I’m not entirely sure of what to do next. When I have to say goodbye to the people I love. When I see kids on the streets of São Paulo begging for food. When I can’t quite articulate why I’m here. Or when I catch myself questioning, “Who am I?”
What’s peculiar about these moments is that they all point to the same direction: somewhere I am not familiar with.
Whenever I feel I am not at home, I miss God, even though I don’t have a precise definition of Him. The God that I miss is that which “transcends what I can know and fully comprehend”, as Iain McGilchrist wisely proposes.
These days, I think a lot of people feel the same way deep inside. There’s something missing, but we find it difficult to pinpoint what that “thing” actually is.
We’ve seen it out there and we’ve felt it in here. We have a hunch material gains won't get us closer to it. It doesn’t seem to be about money, power, status or prestige. It’s not encoded in the neoliberalism ideas. Neither can it be found in nihilism. It’s deeper than that.
We live in such day and age where people are avid to call themselves “spiritual, but not religious”. We look around and see the omnipresence of Mindfulness, Meditation and many other secular ways to connect to our core being, without the crutches of organised religion.
We long for the depths, but we’ve become skeptical of too-good-to-be-true breathing apparatuses kindly offered to us by hypocrites with hidden agendas. We want back the agency of being able to explore the deep blue oceans of our inner selves as free divers. But how?
Too much power had been outsourced to religion up until the Enlightenment period (18th century), when reason and the pursue for the evidence of the senses arose to dethrone it. The Industrial Revolution paved the way for the rise of Atheism as a more companionable narrative. Apparently, soul-searching and assembly lines didn't work very well together.
Since then, with the ongoing development of science and technology, the promises of religious institutions have been discredited.
We’ve been told that religion is the “opium of the people”. We treat it with disdain. We joke about it. We ostracise those gullible enough to blindly fall for its heavenly promises.
What we hardly do, though, is wonder how the void left by religion’s departure is affecting us today.
How are we fulfilling this void? Are we even aware of it? And are we doing any better?
As German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, remarked, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”
If you are a believer, the gospel spells out (though not unambiguously) what you should or shouldn’t do in order to live a good life.
As meaning-seeking beings, we are constantly trying to make sense of our existence in a world ripe with ruthless variables lurking on the very next corner.
As the celebrated American astronomer, Carl Sagan, put it: “Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves”.
So religion, with all its highs and lows, somewhat quenches our thirst for meaning by offering us a set of “commandments” if you will, a framework, a map for living.
Being shown a direction brings us a sense of security, thus, alleviating the existential angst inherently present in our lives, inevitably brought by our infinitesimal role in the vastness of the universe and the sheer fact that we’re all going to die one day.
As anthropologist and Pulitzer-Prize winner, Ernest Becker, reminds us, “This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression—and with all this yet to die.”
In exchange for telling us how to live, religion lets us off the hook (sigh of relief!).
God’s authority is unquestionable, after all.
All we need to do is follow the path, and heaven awaits upon us.
The problem is, of course, one of perspective-taking—whether we see religion from the viewpoint of the shepherd or the sheep.
And before we jump the gun and self-nominate ourselves all in favour of the shepherd-looking perspective (who wants to be called sheep, right?), please indulge me here for a moment while I lay out the perks of being the sheep by revisiting… Thermodynamics (whaat?).
An open system is one that interacts with its external environment. It exchanges both matter (i.e. oxygen, carbon dioxide etc) and energy (i.e. heat, movement etc) with its surroundings.
As human beings, we are considered to be open systems. We exchange energy and matter with our surroundings all the time—when we eat, when we breathe, when we talk, when we move about. In a closed system, on the contrary, there’s no interaction with anything externally.
The ultimate closed system that we know of is the universe/cosmos.
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. In other words, the total amount of energy in the universe doesn’t change, it can only be transferred from one object to another.
For example, we transform chemical energy from the food we eat into kinetic energy when we move about. However, this process isn’t 100% efficient. Some of this starting energy is released as heat, which, then, becomes unavailable for further transformation (unusable energy).
That means that whenever there’s some form of energy transfer, some amount of energy will become “useless”.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics taps into exactly this kind of “useless” energy. It tells us what this energy, in the form of heat, does when it becomes unavailable.
This “useless” heat is actually doing something. It works towards entropy—the degree of disorder/randomness of the universe.
The Greek root of the word translates to “a turning towards transformation”, with that transformation being disorder and chaos.
Let’s delve a little deeper now.
When we think of heat, we’re talking about the speed with which molecules move within a system. The hotter the object, the more quickly its molecules move about.
If we were to take a snapshot the moment before two objects exchanged heat, we would have a clear distinction between one cooler object with slowly moving particles, and another hotter object with quickly moving ones.
As heat exchange always flows spontaneously from the hotter to the cooler object, we would see these hotter molecules getting less hot, slowing down as they became cooler. Conversely, the molecules from the cooler object would become less cool, speeding up as they became hotter.
In the next snapshot of such a scenario of heat exchange, we would no longer have that initial clear-cut contrast between ordered states of a hotter and a cooler systems. Instead, we would have a more chaotic pool of mixed-up molecules bouncing around in a disorderly fashion, like a pinball machine.
This disorder in the system is entropy. And the system will always move towards this more disordered configuration.
It’s a matter of probability—disordered configurations are much more likely to occur in nature than ordered ones.
Think of a jigsaw puzzle box. When you tip the pieces out of the box, there’s only one possible configuration for them to fall into so as to form a completed puzzle. Statistically speaking, it’s way more probable that the pieces will simply arrange themselves into a heap of mess.
Once a system falls into a disordered pattern, it’s much harder to reassemble it into a neatly ordered state.
“The smoke never returns into the cigarette; the toothpaste never goes back into the tube”, as English philosopher, Simon Blackburn, put it.
That’s what entropy does.
If every energy transfer results in the conversion of some energy to an unusable form (such as heat), and since this “useless” heat works towards entropy (the randomness of the universe), we come to the conclusion that every energy transfer will contribute to the entropy of the universe.
Put simply, the entropy of the universe only increases as time goes by.
As the renowned English physicist, Stephen Hawking, observed about the relationship between entropy and time: “The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.”
Which brings us to an important aspect of human nature: energy efficiency.
As I type in this sentence, my body is generating heat, which, in turn, is dissipating into the universe. That dissipated energy is adding up to the number of potential states that the universe can be shaped, therefore increasing its entropy.
What we do to counter the effects of entropy, then, is to purposefully apply energy. The more efficient we are with it, the better this fending off.
Energy efficiency is the use of energy in an optimum manner so as to achieve the same or even better result that could have been achieved using a less efficient manner.
So we’re always working (mostly unconsciously, unknowingly) to maximise our energy efficiency as a survival strategy against entropy.
As American author, James Gleick, noted,
Organisms organize. (…) We sort the mail, build sand castles, solve jigsaw puzzles, separate wheat from chaff, rearrange chess pieces, collect stamps, alphabetize books, create symmetry, compose sonnets and sonatas, and put our rooms in order… We propagate structure (not just we humans but we who are alive)…
It would be absurd to attempt a thermodynamic accounting for such processes, but it is not absurd to say we are reducing entropy, piece by piece…
Not only do living things lessen the disorder in their environments; they are in themselves, their skeletons and their flesh, vesicles and membranes, shells, and carapaces, leaves, and blossoms, circulatory systems and metabolic pathways—miracles of pattern and structure.
It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in the universe.
Which leads us back to the perks of being the sheep.
As we’ve seen before, the more inefficient the system in utilising “usable” energy and dissipating “unusable” energy as heat, the higher the entropy. We don’t want that. Entropy is chaos.
Ideally, as biological beings, our ultimate goal is to survive and spread our genes out in a predictable, highly-ordered and controlled environment that is welcoming to our self-serving interests.
But how do we do that, from an evolutionary perspective?
From a Darwinian standpoint, we, living organisms, rely on three basic survival mechanisms:
Firstly, we set boundaries to distinguish "self" from "not-self".
Whether in the form of a cell membrane, by assembling nests and shelters, or by building a 2,000-mile fence between two huge pieces of land, we’ve learned to insulate ourselves from the rest of the world in order to protect our self-integrity against the wraths of outside forces.
Secondly, all organisms need to maintain an inner equilibrium for its optimum functioning.
Homeostasis, from the Greek words “same” and “steady”, means a set of physiological processes that need to be held in check in order to keep stability within the organism.
For instance, the human body has specific parameters that need to be kept steady, such as levels of temperature, water, salt, or oxygen, to name a few.
Outside our bodies, we could interpret concepts like corporations, sports teams, nation/state, as examples of “organisms” that need to maintain an inner equilibrium for optimal functioning too.
And thirdly, we are conditioned to approach opportunities and avoid threats.
We welcome situations that maximise pleasure, and avoid those that can result in pain.
This reward and punishment mechanism is widely studied as an evolutionary trait, as English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, noticed: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure”.
It’s worth noticing here that our tendency towards seeking “feeling good” and disliking “feeling bad”, also stems from this survival mechanism.
Meanwhile, life happens.
All these three mechanisms work in tandem, with their benefits extending to and overlapping with one another.
For example, the reward value of a stimulus increases with its effectiveness in restoring homeostasis.
Likewise, an organism with established boundaries will likely reap more rewards than punishments, while also increasing its chances of keeping its homeostasis in check.
As living organisms, we must aim for what Aristotle has called, the “Golden Mean”—that is, the right balance between pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance.
Mother Nature is intelligent. But there is one thing she doesn’t really care about: suffering.
The Buddha foresaw this harsh reality 2,500 years ago, when he stated the first of Four Noble Truths:
There is suffering (dukkha*) in life.
And the paradox here is that we suffer, precisely because of (or despite) the three mechanisms meant to warrant our survival.
To begin with, there can’t be real separation (boundaries) in a world where everything is intertwined. Interconnectedness is a feature of life.
If we take the time to examine closely, we will notice that we are always concomitantly a whole and a part of a bigger picture (what Arthur Koestler calls holons).
At the same time a cell is a whole structure, it's also part of a tissue, which is part of an organ and so on. As a human being, I am a whole entity, but I also play a role as part of a bunch of other "wholer" entities—my family, my workplace, my neighbourhood, the country I live in, planet Earth.
Secondly, how can we demand unfaltering stability in a world where “change is the only constant”, right? Impermanence is a cornerstone of Buddhism. "Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease", which I first heard from Joseph Goldstein referring to The Buddha's teachings, is a bitter pill to swallow, but unquestionably true.
And, last but not least, even when we have the privilege of pursuing the pleasant whenever we feel like, what if we can’t get it or if it’s not really that great? What if pleasure ends? Welcome, dukkha.
We must admit, the Buddha was spot on.
At some point in our lives, we have all felt pain, sadness, uneasiness, sorrow, loneliness, fear, frustration, unhappiness, discomfort, anger, distress, misery, unsatisfactoriness, grief—all different ways of saying, suffering.
To make matters worse (or better, at least for our survival), we’ve developed something called “Negativity Bias”—the universal tendency for negative events and emotions to affect us more strongly than positive ones.
Psychologically speaking, bad is stronger than good. As psychologist Rick Hanson put it, "our brains are like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positives ones.” In other words, we are hardwired to highlight negative events. The reason we do that is very simple, and it has to do with sticks and carrots.
We are highly responsive to dangling carrots. And not very fond of sticks. But sticks and carrots are not made equal. The ratio being 5:1, according to research—meaning, for each unpleasant experience (i.e. sticks), we need five positive ones (i.e. carrots) to counterbalance its effects. But why is that?
If we miss a carrot today, chances are we’ll still have another go at it tomorrow. But if we do not duck a stick today, we’re taking too high a risk of not having a crack at carrots at all.
So our brains evolved in such a way so as to primarily look for negative information, constantly scanning for threats.
“Life has to win every day, death only has to win once”, says social psychologist, Roy Baumeister.
So zeroing in on bad events turned out to be a good evolutionary adaptation.
Better safe, than sorry.
So as long as we, as open systems, are safe and sound, without much interference from external forces, we don’t really care about other open systems, let alone the ultimate closed system we know of, the cosmos.
We want to preserve the status quo, like well-behaved energy-efficient beings that we are.
Which also means that, whenever possible, we will avoid spending our precious energy pondering on the big questions of living.
Why bother, if someone else can do the work for us, instead?
We are desperate to be shepherded. So, what does it mean to be the sheep?
Behold! I shall show you the Last Man…
The earth has become small, and upon it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small…
A little poison now and then: that produces pleasant dreams.
And a lot of poison at last, for a pleasant death…
One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion.
Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion. No shepherd and one herd.
Everyone wants the same, everyone is the same: whoever thinks otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse…
‘We have discovered happiness’, say the Last Men, and blink.
— Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
The Last Man (Letzter Mensch) is a concept developed by Nietzsche, to describe the antithesis of his Übermensch (Superman).
The Last Man seeks comfort and security. He knows nothing of a self-actualised path. He lost his ability to dream and his intention of becoming a better person for humankind (if he ever had one) has gone out the window.
He is utterly blind to his privileges, and not infrequently, displays narcissistic behaviour. He rarely engages in social matters, generally under the guise of being a “busy” man with a “hectic" schedule, whatever that actually means.
His decisions are mostly based on convenience for him, his family and those within his tribe. There’s minimal sense of empathy towards others, even when he tips over a couple of gold coins to the beggar.
He lives in a transaction-based world. In fact, he is a proud advocate of meritocracy and is quick to point out that it’s all fault of their own, that they didn’t work hard enough (as he supposedly did), therefore, deserve their fate (as though he never inherited most, if not all, of his life’s open doors).
He spends most of his spare time alienating himself. After all, he feels he deserves a break from the demands of the nagging world orbiting around him.
But he does that, mainly, because it’s way too scary and painful to stare into the abyss of life.
So he ensconces himself inside his cave, watching shadows of a projected life, surrounded by equally shortsighted companionship, and various forms of anaesthetics at hand, blissfully oblivious to reality.
Publicly, he denies it all, of course. He is a passive nihilist**.
The sheepest of the sheep.
But the real issue is: he can’t see any of that.
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*Dukkha is a Pali word (duhkha in Sanskrit), which has been widely translated as “suffering”. Other commonly attributed meanings for dukkha are unsatisfactoriness, misery, frustration or, put more simply, the nagging sense that something is off.
The opposite of dukkha is the word sukha. While the prefix su- means “good, easy, and conducive to wellbeing,” the prefix du- means “bad, difficult, and inclining toward illness or harm.”
On the most basic level, then, sukha means pleasant, while dukkha means unpleasant.
**Nietzsche didn’t think everyone in a state of nihilism was capable of curing themselves. He in fact differentiated between two types of nihilists; those who have the strength to overcome it, and those who do not. The former he called ‘active nihilists’, while the latter he called ‘passive nihilists’.
“Nihilism. It is ambiguous:
A. Nihilism as a sign of increased power of the spirit: as active nihilism.
B. Nihilism as decline and recession of the power of the spirit: as passive nihilism.”
(The Will to Power, Friedrich Nietzsche).
The passive nihilist is the individual, who when confronted with nihilism, sees it as an endpoint or a sign to stop the search for meaning.
In short, this type of individual lacks the strength to make anything of their life, and unfortunately many who reach this stage will, out of sheer desperation, attach themselves to some form of mass movement in a final attempt to find an objective purpose to life.
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