Emergence Part 3: On Technologies That Sever Our Souls From Our Bodies
We have traded away / The thrill of being alive / In exchange for / A cheap magic show
This is the 3rd essay in a series of six. If you have not read the first one, you can find it (and more information about the nature of this essay series) by reading the initial essay, linked below.
On Technologies That Sever Our Souls From Our Bodies
In Phaedrus, Plato writes: “[People] will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered [in the written word] is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.”
It is a bit funny to imagine people debating the potential ills of the technology of the written word - particularly in this late-stage-techno-age in which we are wondering if having a universal-doom-scrolling-meme-machine in the palm of our hands is bad for our well-being. For many of us, books feel symbolic of an earlier age we wish to return to, when in reality, the commonly available printed book is a relatively modern technology, only made truly possible in the centuries since the invent of the printing press.
When I was a teenager, I took deep refuge in books. I felt like books were media that allowed my soul to expand - as if the words were rays of sunshine and I was a tree extending my branches, nourished by the light. Books seemed to open new trails for my soul to walk down, and I felt I learned a lot about what it means to be human from reading these books. Books made me feel less invisible. Books made me feel loved.
As I got older, I lost this deep connection with reading and, in a lot of ways, I felt like something deeply beautiful had been taken from me. I felt that there must be something wrong with me that I was no longer deeply drawn to reading like I once was. I held quite firmly to the false illusion that I ought to read books, that I ought to enjoy reading. I grew insecure since I could not access a part of me that desired to immerse myself in literature how I once did - for years I held on to the belief that I am supposed to want to read.
With hindsight, I now recognize what drew me into reading and how it was only natural that my desire to read became pickier (at times disappearing altogether). The written word deals in shadows and illusions. For example, a cook book may tell you how to cook, but it will never give you the experience of cooking, nor that of tasting the food. Reading a recipe gives you (as Plato put it) the “conceit of wisdom” - a conceit because you can explain with words what must be done, but you may not actually know what the words mean in practice.1
Perhaps you are instructed to separate the egg whites from the yolks. If you’ve watched someone split an egg shell in half and transfer the yolk back-and-forth between the two halves until the white breaks away and falls into the bowl below - if you’ve watched this, you will develop an intimate understanding of this process, the true nature of this process, that words can only hint at. If you’ve never witnessed this and you read “separate the egg whites from the yolk” - these words may not actually provide for you the wisdom to actually undertake the task.
The cookbook provides the idea of the wisdom you need to cook, but in the end the wisdom is developed by the work of your own hands, working with the ingredients and creating the dish itself. If you have never made, for example, a loaf of sourdough bread, a written recipe can help provide you the outline of the wisdom you need to actually make it. However, no book, no words alone can fully transmute the wisdom you develop when you work with a ball of dough. The feeling of the dough being overworked or underworked, under-proofed or over-developed. You can only get these feelings by making bread and experiencing the dough over and over again. Once you begin working with dough, once you understand the outline of the process, the words in the cookbook become so much less rich than the experience of making loaf after loaf. It is the making of bread that gives the bread-maker an intimate experience with their art - the cookbook is a shadow of this experience, providing the reader a road map to discovering the true experience of baking.
In fact, a bread-maker does not even need to be able to translate their methods into words to have a deep, spiritual connection with their art. True wisdoms of being are generally not verbal in nature - words were born, partially, from our need to communicate with one another. One can bake bread without being able to fully explain what is going through their mind. This is akin to the relationship many musicians have with their craft - there are many wonderful musicians who can’t explain in words what they are doing, but this does not diminish the quality and soulfulness of the music they create.
The passage of knowledge has, until the modern era, been done in person and has not always required words. One must simply look at any non-verbal species of animal to understand this. If you are raising baby chicks and want them to drink water, you can dip their beak in the water tray to show them where the water is. Not only will the chicks learn that this is their source of water, but the other chicks will soon imitate them and discover the water for themselves. There is a communication that occurs amongst the chicks.
In fact, imitation seems to be one of the most powerful forms of passing knowledge between pretty much all sentient species. This is true for humans as well - when we are exposed to the wisdom of being, we are able to absorb it. When we are exposed to the shadow of this wisdom, we must still venture out in some way to truly experience and expose ourselves to this wisdom - it is a conceit to assume we know the nature of something just because we know that it exists.
Witnessing the “wisdom of being” provides a depth of information the written word can never capture. If you simply watch a master bread-maker make a loaf of bread from scratch, you will not only be exposed to the steps outlined in the cookbook, but you will also receive the fullness of their energy as they work. You will see the care they take at each step, you will see how they use their hands, you will see how they handle moments of uncertainty - you will see the act of baking bread embodied in their art. In this witnessing, you will receive more information about the art of baking than any book could ever provide to you - you will witness baking in it truest, realest, most dynamic form.
Now, I like to joke that nearly all philosophical conversations can somehow be tied to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave - and, perhaps I am simply reframing it for the times and to help me navigate my own experiences. I think, though, it is apt to consider the quote from Phaedrus I began this essay with - Plato, among so many of us, was concerned deeply with the nature of reality. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato reflects on the idea that if we only experience the shadow of reality, we will actually believe that the shadows represent reality. We will believe that the recipe for baking bread is the reality of baking bread.
In Phaedrus, Plato equates words themselves to shadows. A word is a symbol that refers to something real. A child does not first learn the word “happy” before experiencing happiness - a child is overcome with happiness and they learn the word that represents this feeling is pronounced “happy”. A word is a shadow of what it is intended to represent.2 A great slew of well-connected words can paint a masterful, complex shadow.
Now, a shadow is most interesting when it points to the reality it symbolizes. A shadow is cast by an object, so one must simply follow the shadow to its source to discover the reality that has given birth to it. A shadow becomes less interesting to us when we are already familiar with the reality that is generating it. A shadow is always less rich, less robust than its reality - and so, experiencing the shadow of a familiar reality can leave us feeling empty and wanting.
For example, if you are already well-familiar with the Allegory of the Cave, you may find this essay a bit redundant - that this essay is the shadow of a reality you have already experienced. On the other hand, if you are not familiar with the ideas of shadows and the allegory, then this essay may affect you quite profoundly. You see, you are reading my written words, and even as an author I must acknowledge that these words are simply a shadow of what I truly mean to say.
So, with hindsight, I now recognize why I no longer have a voracious appetite for reading.3 I have come to know more of the real world, as we all do with time and experience. Some books cast shadows I recognize and I don’t feel compelled to immerse myself in them - the reality is far richer than the shadow.
And, many books illuminate the same shadows. There is a false illusion that “smart people” read a lot of books.4 Yet, in my experience, there is not a strong spiritual imperative to read about the shadows you have already stepped out of. Personally, I was introduced to a lot of philosophical and spiritual ideas reading Kurt Vonnegut novels; I was introduced to ideas of society through Philip K. Dick; and, I was introduced to spirituality reading bell hooks. Sometimes I will begin reading a book (perhaps, even a classic that all “smart people” ought to read5), and I will discover that it is illuminating shadows I have already danced with, maybe even shadows I have traced back to their source and experienced for myself. This is not a discredit to such a book - perhaps I would be a disciple of some other great authors if I had discovered their writings before that of Vonnegut, Dick, and hooks.
This is where Plato’s idea of the “conceit of wisdom” is really important. When we consume the shadows as if they are reality, we reinforce the fractures between our soul and our body. Words are a shadowy illusion of reality - the power of words (more broadly, the power of all shadows) is to provide our body a path to access the reality that casts the shadow. The shadow can be our guide to true wisdom, to the wisdom of being.
However, when we consume words and shadows as if they are reality, our souls live solely where our bodies cannot go. Our bodies are firmly rooted in the physical world - words are a shadow of this world, an illusion that our soul can play with and experience. When we collect words and shadows for the sake of it, we commit ourselves to a life of illusion - we experience life as shadows cast on the wall of a cave. Being well-read gives many people the illusion of wisdom. Being able to speak intelligently gives many people this illusion too.6
When we live entirely in the shadows, we become vampires, living as parasites, feeding off the silhouette of the physical realm. When we live entirely in the shadows, we become occupied with being called “good” instead of embodying the reality of “good”. When we live entirely in the shadows, the light becomes too intense for us to bear - we seek refuge from reality by hiding in the idea of it. When we live entirely in the shadows our bodies whither and become sickly, for our souls have left them behind, for our souls do not trust our bodies, our souls forget how to live through our bodies, our souls forget how to experience the world through our bodies, our souls forget how to practice being - living this way, we gain no wisdom, just the conceit of it.
Many of us are surrounded by people living entirely in the shadows. When this happens, we can be made to feel deeply isolated and alone. We are trapped in a world of shadows and we know that it is a world of shadows. We get trapped and can’t find a way back to the physical realm. I know my lowest moments - deep, deep depression - came on when I lived in the purgatory between shadow and light, illusion and reality.
The advent of phones has made the shadow world far more literal. We may be sitting in a room with one-hundred other people, yet everyone around us may be reading clickbait, scrolling through social media, doom-scrolling, completely disconnected from the physical space being shared. When you have stepped out of the shadows, enough at least to know that they are just that (shadows), it can feel deeply alienating to be surrounded by people deeply immersed in their phones.7
Our relationship with smart phones often physically manifests the severance of our soul from our body. Steeped in the pale glow of our little doom-boxes, we are fully able to escape our bodies and live amongst the shadows. On the internet, we even exist as the shadows of ourselves - avatars evoking the idea of ourselves to the world.8 We consume the shadow of one another instead of the reality. We become unfamiliar with the true nature of ourselves because we become unfamiliar with the true nature of other people. Communicating becomes a shadow-y game - we struggle over each and every word we send online and wait, agonizingly so, for a response. At some point, we discover that we ourselves live as a shadow, de-corporealized.
When we live completely in the shadows, we not only lose familiarity with the physical world, but we come to fear it. Our body feels like an adversary because it is our gateway to reality - there is nothing we can do to fully shelter ourselves from the infinite stream of energy that our body is receiving. We grow insecure in our bodies, we grow to despise ourselves, we wish we had power over our bodies that we do over the illusions we weave in our souls.
Worst of all, illness and death are inescapable matters of the body. The decline of bodies - accelerated by our disconnection from them - will arrive like the most terrifying bogeyman. Without a grounding in reality, severed from our bodies, death will arrive like a nightmare.
I say this not to fearmonger or increase our collective load of anxiety - but to say it has become imperative to me, personally, to ground myself in the physical realm. I love books, I love reading, I enjoy scrolling on my phone - I even enjoy curating a shadow persona of myself on the internet.
But, we must maintain a healthy relationship with the shadowy world of illusions, we must remember that illusions are a powerful tool when they guide us to their source in the physical plane. We must remember that illusions can provide us a roadmap for developing a wisdom of being, but that the shadows themselves can never provide that for us.
When we live solely amongst the shadows, our bodies decay from neglect. We fail to listen to our bodies. We fail to adequately care for our bodies. We fail to understand our bodies. We come to distrust our bodies. When this happens we lose our connection with reality. We come to distrust reality, instead finding safe harbor in its shadows.
So, I am working to release the false illusion that “smart people read books”. This false illusion has long created insecurity in me, that perhaps I am an imposter. Books (like all media) evoke shadows of reality - when we let these shadows guide us to their source (i.e., the reality which they symbolize), our lives become enriched by them, reinforcing the unity between our soul and our body.
There is a character in the film The Menu, who quite literally embodies this idea. He is obsessed with the culinary trade, knows the words to describe every trick in the book, the recipe for preparing every meal – yet, when given free reign in a kitchen is unable to make an appetizing meal.
Connected to the idea of “false illusions” - it is also quite dangerous to use a word we don’t know the true reality of. What if the child never felt truly happy, but they are equipped with this word - “happy”. What will they do with it? How will this inform their idea of the world? Most likely, they will understand “happy” as a shadow, as a dictionary definition, as a state of being that they can label themselves with without realizing they haven’t experienced it. They may even live a “happy” life and die “happy”.
An appetite clearly replaced with one for writing.
I know I long clung to this illusion. My relationship with reading has grown much healthier now that I simply read when I feel called to do so. After years of reading almost nothing of my own desire, I now pick up a book on occasion and drink from it happily.
Said in a Kurt Vonnegut accent.
Prior to becoming a mad-musician-spiritualist-homesteader, I was an academic researcher and found that many people in these high-on-the-hill institutions were dealing completely in shadows, shadows disconnected from their source altogether. As a result, there is a great deal of academic work (particularly that focused on society and human nature) that seems entirely detached from physical reality.
It is the Sun that shines light into our world, not our phones. This feels akin to worshipping a false idol, a shadow god that fills our minds with illusions and allows us to fully escape from the “prison” of our bodies.
I’ve read a lot of Philip K. Dick.