What is self?

Hi Reader,

I try to avoid cosmology in these emails.

(Woo, big word right off the bat. Cosmology attempts to get at the way things are actually put together, as opposed to just what they look like. In the land of “the map is not the territory,” cosmology is interested in what the territory actually IS. Anyway, for the sake of my normal human brain I’ll instead use “the way things are” from here on out.)

There are several reasons for my avoidance, and probably some others I’m not fully conscious of, but one of the main ones is that I don’t really want to write about “the way things are” because I don’t think I know the way things are. I don’t think anyone knows that, and it seems to cause a lot of problems when people think they know things they don’t and can’t!

But there are some limits to this. Let’s look at some examples real quick before we go where I’m going with this:

There are domains of taste/style, like music. It makes no sense to say “jazz is the way music is” because everyone has their own taste in music, and can choose amongst the existing styles of music, or can choose to create a new style.

Then there’s the empirical domains like science, which in this way is the opposite of music. Here, it makes no sense to say “the world is flat,” because such a preponderance of empirical data points to the best-available explanation that it’s round.

But these are two ends of a spectrum, and it’s not always clear how to handle the things in the middle. Take nutrition. There’s a lot of science around nutrition, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to me that anyone should, with current knowledge, say “keto is the way nutrition is.” Maybe someday. Until then, is it just a matter of taste? That doesn’t seem entirely wise. Surely we have some good guidelines. But which ones?

And then there’s the area of philosophy and religion, which doesn’t seem to fall on the same spectrum at all. Is being a Christian or an atheist a matter of taste? Or something else? It’s hard to say when whatever you are inevitably colors your answer to the question.

And this already-complicated area is further complicated by the fact that these things that are off the “the way things are” spectrum of, let’s call it…

taste <———–> empiricism

…that these things like religion that are off this spectrum have things to say about this spectrum. Christianity and atheism, as well as different philosophies, have things to say about “the way things are,” even though they themselves may not be a result of taste OR empiricism!

So the reason I try to avoid talking about cosmology is because I don’t want people who think it’s more a matter of taste than it is to dismiss what I’m saying because “that’s not MY truth,” and I don’t want people who think it’s more a matter of empiricism than it is to dismiss what I’m saying because “that’s not scientifically verifiable.”

I want to talk to everyone.

But I see that’s manipulative, or at least inauthentic. I’m acting as if I myself am off the spectrum simply by virtue of claiming “I don’t know anything!”

Well, I don’t know how much cosmology I’m going to have to go into in the following emails. I don’t know how much will be required to communicate “coming home.”

But I know there’s some serious (though subtle) cosmology embedded in what I want to share with you today. And I feel some fear about that. Because I really love what I’m going to share, and I hope you love it, too.

It’s this video my wife shared with me. It’s from a show I haven’t watched so I don’t really know the context of what’s happening, but it doesn’t matter. It’s some thoughts on what happens when we die, and it is, to me, beautifully expressed.

(And it makes the subject line of this email make sense after all that blahblah about cosmology.)

Heads up there’s an early F-bomb, so if you’re in a place where that’ll be a problem take care.

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There’s something very like coming home there. Maybe it’s the same.

It’s related to this thing I keep forgetting. And I wish I could just straight up tell you what it is. But I can’t remember. Or at least I feel like I can’t.

What are you feeling? Send me a note.