Looping Wor(l)d

My bad. I made a mistake in the simplified scheme about point of view being trapped in relativity, even more clearly in its summarized version.

Overall, it still makes sense to me and should be solid, but there’s an aspect that I probably got wrong. What’s still correct is that Science sees the world as a closed system, and so there cannot be any meddling of any external entity, as well intervention of metaphysics. Even in this last case metaphysics mean that something external seeps into the system to influence it.

Given this model, it’s still true that no amount of information, information coming from within the system, can produce any real change, or any real “freedom”. From that external point of view of god, we are still trapped in a deterministic system (so, predictable), acting in deterministic ways.

My mistake is here:

So Bakker believes that if we posit that “consciousness” is a perceptive fraud/illusion, then one could explain consciousness from the “outside”. Starting from the natural world. That way, in his intention, consciousness should be “explained away”. In the sense that he should be able to describe how consciousness comes to be, how it works, and why it is perceived in the way it is (and why this is only a sort of hallucination).

The problem is that, even more specifically when you deal with consciousness, we know exactly the “origin”. It’s the brain/mind. The postulate is that everything begins in the brain, and so every consequent observation and description need to start from the brain. The switch Bakker makes from an internal self-description, to a “scientific” description from the outside is a formal violation. It’s like in a book switching from first person into third.

My mistake is about assuming that the same as we believe the universe as a closed system, so could be considered the “brain”. Another closed system. The creation of the world only “really” happens IN the brain. Without a brain that perceives things, there’s no reality. So that’s our closed system that we can’t escape.

This is also why I reverted the model: the metaphysics of consciousness. The dualism through BBT becomes the illusion of consciousness. The way we live as if in a different dimension that is separated from Nature. This dimension of conscious thought. It’s the dualistic model upside down. All the metaphysics happen right here in consciousness. There’s the world of physical reality, with its scientific laws out there, and there’s the world of consciousness, with all its myths and legends, with its gods, spirits, and all the “magic”. If consciousness is the illusion, then we all live WITHIN magic, completely soaked in it. Magic is not “elsewhere”, it’s not exotic, but the world we inhabit. The dualism body/mind becomes reality/magic, physics/metaphysics.

The important point of BBT is that it erases this bi-dimensionality (that I refused to accept because even illusion is still one legitimate point of view). But a model where there’s no dualism is also the model, obviously, where my claim is wrong: the brain isn’t closed in any way. The system doesn’t need to be opened, because it’s already wide open.

And if the system is open, then BBT has the power to alter perception directly. This STILL doesn’t offer any real freedom, since it’s still a deterministic system, and opening one box doesn’t achieve anything, nor can in the future. But from the relative experience within the system this makes a great difference.

It also doesn’t change the validity of the relative freedom we have. The deterministic system only removes this freedom if seen from the external point of view. But we can only theorize this point of view, we can’t get there. And so the subjective experience remains authoritative and valid.

The title should be mostly accurate, minor a slight subversion on the concept of “unreality”. This is an attempt at charting the consequences of Bakker’s Blind Brain Theory, so the hope is that everything I write is an abstraction of what’s entirely possible within the grasp of Science. Hence, for Unreality I do not mean the “impossible”, but the illusory experience that is the “human condition”. In the distinction body/mind (that BBT sets out to remove) is present the distinction between physical world (body) and metaphysics (mind or soul).

Look at this image:

This represents the “environment”. For environment I intend everything that pertains to “Reality”. It includes the planets, the starts, as well as all the laws regulating the behavior of it all, and down to physical objects like a rock or a table. All “environment”, all within the domain of Science. You can see this line in the image as oddly shaped. This because every “object” that we can distinguish in reality has a different configuration, or structure. A table and a rock are both environment, just differently organized, and so abstracted in the image as the line having a different shape.

The first may be the abstract representation of environment configured as a rock, and the second as a table. Now look at this image:

What you see there is instead the abstract pattern that represents a “man”, a single human being. From the perspective of the environment this different shape is no different from everything else: it’s still environment. It has a different configuration than the rock or the table, but it isn’t “special”, or qualitatively different. Just peculiar because that shape specifically defines a “man” instead of something else, and so can be distinguished.

With the course of evolution, and the emergence of complexity, this happens:

The man develops observing capabilities. We can still assume he’s still completely passive, but he can now observe the environment, and so understand it, making distinctions between the various configurations the environment can take. By turning observation on himself, he can also make the distinction between himself and the environment (becoming a system, distinct from environment). From the point of view of the environment, that barrier dividing the man from the rest of the environment simply does not exist, but from the point of view of the man, having observation and now a sense of “self” distinct from everything else, that barrier is real. It’s the barrier giving the man his individuality and so also his personal needs and desires. From that point onward the man acquires knowledge so that he can use the rest of the environment he’s observing for his own end and personal advantage.

Consider this:

The one on the left is the general idea we all normally embrace, and that is also subscribed by science. It simply means there’s a Reality, that here I call “Nature”, and within Reality human beings exist. Part of it. One element within the bigger set representing all of Nature.

But from the perspective of the man I described above, the way a human being “feels” and lives in the world is better represented by the image on the right. The man exists within a separate dimension, existing out of Nature, and actually in contrast with it. Man and Nature are constantly at war, one against the other. A human being would not survive in Reality, it’s not a natural habitat, and so men create a protective cocoon, an artificial dimension meant to become an “heaven”, where men can survive. A safer space. We can call this “egg” as Culture. Culture, and language, is the dimension within which human consciousness lives and manages to survives. It provides sense and meaning, it provides values and morals. It creates a vision of the world that is tolerable.

Yet we still know that this vision is just an artificial construction, and that the scheme that more accurately describes Reality is the one on the left: men as one element within the bigger set of Nature. This already reproduces the problem of Dualism: the point of view of the environment, versus the point of view of man (or man as consciousness).

Now let’s get to the problem of God. Science is compatible with the idea of God as the First Mover. As long god doesn’t interfere with Reality, and so as long the system of reality is CLOSED, then this view is compatible with Science. Science can only deal with observable reality, and so only opposes the idea of metaphysical intervention /within/ the closed system. It can’t exclude powers or dimensions existing outside our perception and outside Reality.

So let’s assume that there’s an external entity to Reality, our god. He created the System of the World, but from the moment it was created (the Big Bang) this system becomes “sealed”, and so completely closed. From this point onward the god can’t modify anything anymore and can’t meddle with what happens within this system. The god can only “observe” what happens within it.

What I’ve just described is a deterministic system. Everything in this system simply happens accordingly the law of Reality as they were defined from the beginning. From that point onward it’s only about a cascade of effects. This means that from the perspective of our god, given any point in the timeline of this universe and, knowing every element of the system and every law, the god can predict EVERYTHING that happens in the future (of that point) and EVERYTHING that happened in the past. It’s the same as taking an arbitrary point of a movie and that move forward or backwards. Since the movie is a finite thing you are going to see always the same thing, it doesn’t get to “change”. If at some point in the movie a car turn left, it will always turn left no matter how many times you rewind and replay the scene. And since the System of the World was created by the god as closed, then everything that happens is deterministic, and so can be directly deduced as long you know every element and every law within.

Now let’s assume, as I was doing at the beginning, that one of the particles in this system, a human being, acquires observing capabilities. This is our element:

I’m abstracting to get to the point. This particle represents a human being. He can observe the environment, he can self-observe, and he always, constantly moves “East” as long he stays alive.

During the course of his life this man, since he can observe, has made his own idea why he’s going East. He thinks that moving east is his own choice. Maybe there are all sort of ugly people around him and he said: “what the hell, I’m going East.” Where there are less ugly people. Now let’s say that at some point this man has a big revelation. He finds the Blind Brain Theory and suddenly realizes that he’s not moving east for the reasons he thought, but simply because he’s a particle whose purpose and obligatory need is to “move east”. His nature.

Here’s the PARADIGM SHIFT. He decides to turn and go North:

If our particle suddenly decides to stop going East and go North, after it got the revelation of its true condition, then two, and only two, scenarios open:

1- A formal violation happens. The system of Reality that was supposed to be closed, is not. Because a particle within the system, by gaining consciousness and making a different choice as consequence of the information it acquired, “exited” the system and then re-entered influencing it. It’s like this particle was able to communicate with the external entity called god (so information not originally part of the system) and bring back that information into the system. Producing a change.

2- We are just observing the perpetuation of the illusion. It’s the system that was meant to make the particle go north at some point during the course of its life. The system is still closed, everything still moves accordingly to the original plan. What appeared to be as “change”, or a novel behavior, was only novel for the norm. But it was still caused by the natural law governing this system, in the exact way they were set in motion when the system was sealed.

Let’s assume that (2) describes exactly Reality and that (1) is completely speculative and implausible. This means that a Blind Brain Theory won’t free human beings of their limited perspective. No amount of (accurate) knowledge gives a man a true control on Reality. The closed perspective we’re trapped in can’t be betrayed or breached. Our knowledge can aspire to reach the knowledge that the hypothesized external entity I called god might posses. But it’s still information in this system that belongs to the system. It can never ACT on the system itself to change it, because this would mean the system isn’t closed anymore. That there was a breach. No amount of self-awareness can free one of the Determinism within a system, because that self-awareness is simply an iteration of the Determinism of that system. More of the same.

That’s the point of my counter-argument to BBT. If we have no way to escape our closed perspective, then paradoxically our perspective acquires legitimation. Even if we are able to imagine the other perspective, and assume it “true”, it still can’t change the way we are and feel. We can swap one dream world for another, but we can’t get free even if we are aware of the illusion.

Can then human beings be blamed if they decide to live solely in their fictional bubble, in their artificial and illusory Eden?

The first lines of a post over at Bakker’s blog seem almost unreadable, but at the same time offer a very effective summary of his “Blind Brain Theory” (BBT) and especially why it’s important. It also ties together a number of aspects and brings out the true core of the issue. So I’ll try to give my own exemplification of all this, hoping that I can grasp this transitory moment of clarity (I always feel like I’m ironing. The moment I think I’ve smoothed out a corner, everything else gets wrinkled up again. My mind just isn’t big enough to encompass the whole thing. The blog helps nailing down some issues in a less volatile way.)

The satisfaction here for me is about taking something that sounds incredibly complicated and unexplainable, and unwind it so that it becomes smooth and planar. As when you’ve reached the top of the mountain and finally look down on it:

There are no representations, only recapitulations of environmental structure adapted to various functions. On BBT, ‘representation’ is an artifact of medial neglect, the fact that the brain, as a part of the environment, cannot include itself in its environmental models. All the medial complexities responsible for cognition are occluded, and therefore must be metacognized in low-dimensional effective as opposed to high-dimensional accurate terms. Recapitulations thus seem to hang in a noncausal void yet nevertheless remain systematically related to external environments.

Now let’s smooth this into something that makes sense, I think I can manage to make all this understandable even for non-specialists. “There are no representations”, this is already a very important idea. If you look at this video with Dennett, minute 2:35 and onward (but not for too long), he basically says that in order to think we need language. That’s what can distinguish human beings from animals, the fact that human beings have language, and so can reflect on things. To be able to “think”, Dennett says, we need to have an independent representation system.

What is this “representation(s)” that Bakker refers to? It’s simply a “model of reality”. We know that we don’t have a direct, unfiltered (or “analog” to use a technical term) perception of reality. We only have our five senses, and these five senses transmit information to the brain, information that obviously represents only a small part of total reality. Our brain then takes this information and tries to “organize” it into something that makes sense. So basically through senses the brain receives information, and then organizes this information into a model of reality, a sort of contained simulation. We know that the image itself, the perception of depth, color and so on, are all things that pertain to the model the brain builds. As conscious beings, we feel like we exist in the middle of this simulated reality, built by our brain by using the information it receives through the five senses.

This process I’ve just explained, gives origin to the fundamental idea we deal with here: a dichotomy or duality. There’s reality out there, and there’s the model of reality built by the brain within which consciousness dwells. We can call this organized model of reality “representation”, and it’s also defined in other various ways, like “Cartesian dualism”, or Cartesian theater, or model of the Homunculus. These are synonymous. They all refer to a duplicity between reality and perception. The “Homunculus” is the idea of imagining a “little man” within our brain looking at a screen. On this screen (the “theater”) our brain projects its model of reality, that little man represents our own consciousness. This is also the established religious idea (as well the main scientific one until recently): the fact that we are “more” than just physical matter, that we have a “soul”. And it’s again this duality that makes possible the idea we have “free will”, the possibility through out thoughts to decide and be free. All this is possible only as long we believe in this dualism, a distinction between the physical and the metaphysical. Free will, formally, requires independence from the environment, authority over it, so that we have that control and freedom. A “leap of faith” dividing physical matter and spirituality. You’ll see later what this space, this gap, actually represents. For now just remember I’ve mentioned it as the dividing space between the fundamental dualism (and I should also mention here “the God of the gaps”).

If these days we go watch 3D movies it’s thanks to the model I’ve just described. We can create the illusion of the three-dimensional image because we know the way our brain organizes visual information and so we can feed it information that has been manipulated to appear that way. Ideally this manipulation could be done in two different moments. It could be done, given enough technology, right at the level of the brain, making it organize it the way we want, or at the external level, of the information the eye receives, as we are doing with 3D movies. So this is possible because we give the eyes, and the brain, pre-organized and manipulated visual information. And since we only perceive our model of reality, instead of reality itself, we simply “believe” the representational model that our brain builds for us. But then all cinema works like that, since the illusion of movement also relies on a similar pattern. This simply to say that the Cartesian Dualism isn’t some fancy idea, but it describes the basic belief all of us share and that is ingrained in our culture.

Technically this dichotomy or dualism is defined in a branch of information theory as the “system/environment” distinction. It refers to the same stuff: the “system” building a model of reality, and the environment from which it takes information. This can be found even in popular culture, for example I watched recently episode 16 of Evangelion, an anime, and this is a dialogue from it:

– People have another self within themselves.
– The self is always composed of two people. The self which is actually seen, and the self observing that.

That’s a decent explanation of system/environment, and the Laws of Form by Spencer-Brown. You can find a more complete explanation here. The idea is that every possible observation draws a distinction, between what you’re pointing to, and everything else. That’s why we say, for example, that we need to know “evil” if we want to know “good”, or be able to see “black”, if we want to see “white”. As with language, we perceive the world in “digital” terms, through distinction. An undivided space for us is unknowable. The more distinction, the more specialization, the more detail. Human beings are “digital” beings because we only perceive this separation, and can’t deal with “analog” continuities.

Going back to that last quote you can see how it creates a paradox: in order to perceive a “self” you need to be able to point to it. In order to make the observation, to observe, you need to make your “self” the object. Instead of the subject. You need being, at the same time, both subject and object. As a cat trying to outrun itself to catch its own tail (imagine how it would look like). So you essentially need to build an ideal “double”, or mirror, of yourself. Once you have this double you can “know” it. There would be the observer “self”, and the observed “self”. Which means that in order to make reflection possible you need, in technical terms, to repeat the system/environment distinction. In the same way you (system) observe the world (environment), to know yourself you need to reproduce this distinction by making a system/environment distinction within the system itself. Observation needs subject/object. And in order to self-reflect, you need that the subject makes itself object, so he can observe himself.

As you probably can see the result here is one of “infinite regression”. Mise en Abyme, the effect you get when you put one mirror in front of another. The infinite tunnel of reflections. As in the model of the Homunculus, a little man in your brain looking at the screen, who within his little head has another little man, looking at another screen. In repetition, all the way down INTO THE ABYSS. Are you scared? This is what is going on, right now, into your brain.

Self-reference, metacognition, present “patterns” that have been abstracted and formalized in Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. But it is a common, almost practical problem. How can you build a formal system if you don’t have an external one on which to rely? Gödel simply explained that even in math a fundamental rule needs to be supported by a more fundamental one. An origin is not possible, you always need something that comes before, and when you have it you need what comes before it. Infinite regression. How can a theory that regulates something also regulate itself if not through another theory, that will also need another definition? It’s as if to hang a painting we need a wall, and then the wall also need to be on top of something, and that something also needs some other sort of support. How is it possible that we don’t all fall down? Cosmologist have the same problem: if the universe is what began with the Big Bang, is there a bigger universe that contained the universe we are in? And that universe is then contained within a larger one? How many iterations? What’s “beyond” all this? The thing is, the paradox of infinite regression contained in our small brain is what we see all around us. The Hermetic mantra “As above, so Below”, or microcosm/macrocosm. In order to see and know something we need to distinguish between it and everything else. So if the universe is “this”, what is that lies beyond it? There’s a mathematical model called the “Klein bottle” that offers an “impossible” image that could help visualize the paradox. The Klein bottle is essentially a one-dimensional (non orientable) space, without an “outside”, and so the “one and boundless” space representing human consciousness, the qualia. And if you think about it, a one-dimensional space solves the contradiction of the distinction system/environment because there’s no inside/outside:

So there are these circular patterns, “strange loops”. The “environment” to observe itself needed to “knot up” into a “system”. Human beings serve as “observers” of the environment, for the environment. We ARE environment. A knotted chunk, become observer. Even widely respected men of science like Stephen Hawking fully embrace this perspective. I could use another popular (and genius-level) anime here, “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” that essentially says what Stephen Hawking says at the end of that video:

“How about I observe. Therefore the universe is. Therefore, we can say if the human beings who observe the universe hadn’t actually evolved as far as they did, then there wouldn’t be any observations and the universe wouldn’t have anyone to acknowledge its existence. So it wouldn’t really matter if the universe existed or not. The universe is because human beings know it is.”
— Itsuki Koizumi

Or if you want a more scientific discourse, the Anthropic principle. An observing system, or a human being, is merely a peculiar knot of “environment”, that “looped itself” in this strange way, and became able to “observe” the rest of the environment. Environment becoming “conscious”. In order to “see”, it needed its own separate dominion, so that it could separate itself from the environment, becoming “system”. Thus the original dichotomy. And then, in order to not see just the environment, but also itself as system, it needed reproduce the system/environment distinction within itself. And so on, iterating the same distinction over and over.

These circular iterations, or “strange loops” are the main topic of a famous book that won the Pulitzer, “Gödel, Escher, Bach”. So that’s what you can have fun reading if you want to explore more the nature of these loops, which are the “key to consciousness”. At least in the way consciousness appears.

Because instead here what we want to deal with is not simply how consciousness appears, but how it truly is. And that’s what brings back to Bakker and his BBT theory. That’s why those lines I quoted at the beginning enclose the fundamental question humanity has been asking for two thousands years or more, and give this question a possible answer. That’s what BBT is. A possible answer to the most fundamental question. As Bakker says, a theory is just a theory and it needs to be tested to be proved true or false (or truer or falser than whatever current model we hold), but as it is right now it is at least a proposition that seems able to do what it sets out to do. And it is both elegant and parsimonious, which means that it solves in simple ways a huge number of complicate problems, that then is usually a good hint pointing in the right direction (like Occam’s razor principle).

What is BBT’s answer then? What BBT tries to do is FLATTENING the bi-dimensionality (system/environment, consciousness/natural world, metaphysics/physics) into mono-dimensionality (just environment, just natural world). Or solving what is normally called the “hard problem of consciousness”.

Bakker believes that human introspection is intrinsically tragic. It can only trip itself over and over. Make a clown of itself. That’s why he has no faith in philosophy. It can only be revealed as a most tragic failure. He believes that “consciousness” is a cognitive illusion. So if you were able to turn things inside out, and so describe consciousness NOT as it appears to us from the inside (Plato’s cave) BUT from the outside, then this different model would “explain consciousness away”. Basically it would elegantly do without the need of any “consciousness” or “dualism”. If you were to revert the perspective the cognitive conundrum would be solved, the illusion of consciousness would be cleared.

Bakker subtitled BBT as “the last magic show”. It’s really a nice example because the basic form of “magic” (as we know it) is about the removal of information. You can’t see how the coin changed hands because your eyes didn’t see the movement. The magician “subtracted information” from your perception, and so you saw “magic”. Something impossible because you couldn’t see that link of information, you only saw the impossible leap, and your brain didn’t manage to fill it, if not with “magic”. All this is easily and linearly explained when applied to “consciousness”. Human brain is the result of very slow evolution. At the beginning the brain’s purpose was to navigate the environment in a efficient and efficacious way. So all its “tools” were built to that purpose: model the environment and deal with it. But only very recently the brain developed “introspection”, which is essentially the brain turning to itself in order to model itself too. Bakker says that our “introspective tools”, that he calls “heuristics”, simply weren’t built to effectively be able to model the way the brain itself works, they were built for the environment. And so we ended up with some blunt, clumsy tools that simply created a number of illusory and wrong perceptions. Being these tools extremely unsuitable for self-reflection, we only obtained “cartoons”, or caricatures of the truth.

Philosophy is a complete tragedy because it ends up sharpening the bluntness itself. It’s the superlative, the apex, the exponential maximum of human thought. And so of the human error. Instead of leading us to “truth”, it perpetrates the ILLUSION. Monumental cathedrals of thought, immense, illusory, self-contained constructions. Illusions of autonomy. Self-reliance. Monuments of stupidity. Testifying our very flaws and tragedies. Only the desperation you achieve by using these Broken Tools.

Since the tools we use to model cognition, these heuristic, are so unsuitable and low-resolution, we end up with these caricatures, or cartoons. Just horribly vague approximations that do not even come close to “truth”. Where there’s a “knot” of environment, we just see undefined space. We don’t have enough detail to go there, and so this knot appears unsolvable. Unexplainable qualia. A Feeling. A vague something we just can’t pinpoint. And so we rely on the cartoon we have even if it’s only incidentally linked to the truth.

Simplifying, think to three abstract points, A, B, C. In truth, it’s B that actually links A to C (as in the magic show B represents the subtracted information). But if we are constitutionally blind to B, then in our perceived world we see A directly linked to C. We are CONVINCED of the A to C relationship. Think to superstition in sport and how actually widespread it is. The obsessive compulsive behaviors, if you have done certain things and you end up winning the match, then the next time you feel compelled to repeat them, regardless of what your rationality tells you. Wear the same colors, the same sockets, or all sort of ridiculous habits like sitting always north at a table. This merely because we are subject to our cartoons and simplifications. We tend to accept a relationship between things even if it doesn’t make a lot of sense. We make caricatures out of everything and we actually rely on these caricatures to govern our lives. We act irrationally more often than we act rationally, and this because we lose track very soon of what is what. Too much hassle. When we see a correspondence we embrace it. It’s cartoons all the way down. Poorly organized, inefficient cognitive conundrums.

Now that I explained the overall scheme I return to the original quote. “There are no representations, only recapitulations of environmental structure adapted to various functions.” I explained that “representation” is the model of reality that the brain organizes. For Bakker this is the illusion. What we THINK we see. He says that there’s no duplicity or duplication. No duality. No theaters, no projections and no Homunculus looking at them. There are only the various cogs of our brain, specialized for specific functions. This all in unconscious space, or outside of conscious perception as we have it.

On BBT, ‘representation’ is an artifact of medial neglect. Medial neglect is essentially the unperceived “B” in the example above in the A->C relationship. So he says that what we consider “representation”, the model of reality, is the illusory appearance of a relationship, that we can’t accurately know because we lack the information to be able to. We lack information, detail. So it’s like a blurry picture, the cartoon. The tragic simplification. The superstitious belief of correspondence between the color of socks and a sport match being won. Wild inaccuracies. the fact that the brain, as a part of the environment, cannot include itself in its environmental models. The “fact” here is that evolution didn’t give us good tools for the brain to map itself correctly. So we ended up with a “spandrel”, a bad result of trial and error.

All the medial complexities responsible for cognition are occluded. This should be straightforward. He says that what we need in order to obtain an accurate picture is “occluded”. Or better: we miss access to most of the cogs in our brain, and so what we have isn’t remotely enough even for an acceptable approximation of truth. and therefore must be metacognized in low-dimensional effective as opposed to high-dimensional accurate terms. Low-dimensional means inaccurate. So sketches, cartoons. Vague blobs. And also correlations between stuff that isn’t directly correlated. Incidental correspondences.

Recapitulations thus seem to hang in a noncausal void yet nevertheless remain systematically related to external environments. And that’s it, the qualia. The “recapitulations” are the name Bakker gives to what we perceive as “representation”. The idea is that this model of reality as we see it “seems to hang in a noncausal void”. This represents the origin of the duality, the way we think consciousness as separated from the world, existing in its own metaphysical dimension: the noncausal void. The soul. Hanging there, somewhere. The breath of life. A wind with no origin. It’s suspended in a void because as explained above all the links that tie it to the ground, or reality, are unperceived. Medial neglect. A skyhook. We don’t have the tools to track those links, and so we end up with a picture that isn’t hung to a wall of reality, but just “floats there”, magically.

This is pretty much it. Despite the lengthy explanation my hope is that it seems quite linear. The basic story in the end is simple. The brain was originally meant to deal in a efficient and parsimonious way with the “environment”. Then only very recently in the breadth of evolution the brain started turning on itself. Trying to track not only the environment but also itself. And to do this it was only able to rely on the same tools that it developed for the other purpose. And so required, as it modeled the environment, to put itself in this model too so that it could observe itself (reflection, metacognition, introspection). Hence the “double”, the Cartesian Dualism, and all the consequent problems with consciousness, the soul, God and all other metaphysical ideas. Tangled in the cognitive conundrum, the labyrinth of the soul, trapped with the minotaur and unable to get out.

Daedalus had so cunningly made the Labyrinth that he could barely escape it after he built it.

I’m enjoying the labyrinth. So I hope I’ll stay trapped as long as possible.

The idea was to include this in the previous post, but then those quotes got too long and so I decided to postpone. Evangelion and the Kabbalah is a controversial theme because you have the impression that the anime added religious symbolism merely as window dressing and to appear mysterious. After all, when stuff blows up the resulting explosion is cross-shaped, and this isn’t explained at all.

When I started to look into Kabbalah it was solely because I was fascinated by the complex mythology and imagery. It was deep and so it was fascinating. This interest grew the more I went on because instead of a shallow mythology I was finding patterns that were extremely useful to understand a number of other things. It has nothing to do with “belief”, I still look at Kabbalah as a complete unbeliever. But it offers a number of ideas that work well in a number of different contexts. It’s like when you study psychology and use Greek mythological archetypes, or Shakespeare. Kabbalah incorporates powerful ideas that are deeply embedded in our culture, and describe well the human being.

That’s why Kabbalah “works” as an interpretative framework with Evangelion. To me it’s so obvious that it’s trivial. It’s not so much that you can recognize some Kabbalistic ideas within Evangelion, BUT that if you think at Evangelion in Kabbalistic terms then the story MAKES SENSE. So putting Kabbalah next to Evangelion doesn’t make it even more absurd and complicated, but actually clarifies a lot. That’s why it matters to me. It’s a key that works. And it’s not even so important that Anno deliberately put all this in the show with the exact purpose I mean, because what comes out is actually coherent with everything else.

In fact I don’t like at all reinterpreting some work outside its own context. I don’t like wild speculation and flourishing of fancy theories. But in the case of Evangelion the use of Kabbalah makes it simpler and coherent. Staying completely within the boundaries that Evangelion set for itself. So, in summary, Kabbalah has explanatory power for Evangelion, and that’s why it’s relevant for me (or why it’s relevant in other cases).

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One of the ideas that go hand in hand is about “Adam”, and “Adam Kadmon” in the Kabbalistic parallel. The idea here is that “Adam” isn’t the first man, as a kind of first ancestor, in biblical terms, but the Kabbalistic Adam. Representing the idea of the “collective soul”. In Eva(ngelion)’s mythology the waters get a bit muddied (and probably rewritten during the show) because we don’t have just an Adam, but also Lilith. In this mythology human beings didn’t actually originate from Adam, but from Lilith, whereas Adam generated the “Angels”. But the common idea that’s relevant here is that Adam Kadmon represents the totality of life. Each human being is merely a small chunk of that collective soul. At the time of the Big Bang, following the scientific theory that Kabbalah also embraces, the initially undivided light (of God) got broken into pieces. In Kabbalistic terms Adam Kadmon represents the origin, before the “vessel” was broken in individual parts, as well as the final “complementation” (to use one Eva’s term), when all human beings are once again united as one whole.

This idea in Evangelion is directly represented in the image of Lilith, who’s called at first “Adam” (so you can assume that characters in the show also made the mistake, thinking themselves generated from Adam). A body nailed to a cross, whose lower half is missing and showing many human-looking limbs dangling off it, as if not completely formed. In any case, beside the manipulation in Eva’s mythology about Lilith/Adam mix up, there’s still the idea that all human beings are generated by that first “angel”.

Note: Kabbalah has a completely, utterly anthropocentric view. It explicitly says that a single human being is “worth” the totality of non-human life. Or, more accurately, his spiritual impact has power on all the lower three domains. That means: (the totality of) animate – vegetative – still. That for Kabbalah is a way to describe how immense is your power, since you affect directly everything else. This hierarchy simply follows an ideal of growing “desire”, which is the fundamental piece of all Kabbalah.

I’ll try to not derail and keep this focused on the structure of Eva, but it’s tricky because all these parts connect. What’s important to point out is that Eva is not a show with a religious theme. Religion is not its goal, and the authors declared this a number of times. And that’s why religion as a structure works so well. While in traditional Kabbalah “spirituality” is the goal, in Eva the goal is the personal message. It’s about the real world, like a message individually targeted at each spectator. The central theme is about living fully, connecting with others, overcome difficulties and introversion especially. Coming out of a shell, that also becomes the representation of a fictional egg where many people today live, refusing to participate in the “real world”. Hikkikomori. So there’s nothing abstract or metaphysical in Eva’s message. But they use some Kabbalistic framework to analyzes psychology and go deep in the human soul. The message needs to be both individual and universal.

The “Human Instrumentality Project” is an Eva’s term. It coincides with the “Third Impact”, which also means the end of the world. An apocalyptic event. But this also is the event that triggers the transformation of the main character into a “better” human being. It represents success, the breaking of the shell.

In Eva’s original project we read:

“Humanity has reached its evolutionary limit. Their salvation lies in invoking the Human Instrumentality Project.”

This curiously resembles to what I heard in Kabbalistic lessons. They also say we are, right now, at a pivotal time. Kabbalah has been kept hidden for all this time. It was “esoteric” knowledge, so only accessible to initiates. But now it’s different because they believe that humanity has reached the end point, and now Kabbalah needs to be extended to everyone regardless of race, sex, age, religion and so on. They measure this end point in terms of “desire”. And now that men have everything, the ultimate desire can arise everywhere: “spirituality”. In Kabbalah, as in Eva, the personal awakening coincides with a literal end of the world. But while in Eva the goal is tied to its own specific message, in Kabbalah it is obviously about spirituality and connection with god.

In both, the successful “complementation” of human beings, means a fusion, a return to Adam Kadmon. In Eva this is “metaphor made literal”. Eva uses terms like “Absolute Terror Field” and “LCL”, the first is a fancy term to define the ideal barrier that keeps us as individual beings, instead of being fused into Adam Kadmon. The force, or field, keeping us physically separate, with individual minds, fears, desires, memories, feelings. The LCL is instead the “primordial soup”, a generic liquid from where all life is generated. When the A.T Field finally collapses, with human beings literally “popping out”, everything is fused as LCL. All minds are joined. This is the premise of the “Third Impact”, and of the “complementation” of human beings. In Eva, all this is happening literally. You see it onscreen, people exploding and made into liquid soup. But this also follows precisely Kabbalah’s structure, taking those ideas and showing them literally instead of as metaphors. Also in Kabbalah human beings are kept individual by a force, but instead of being fancily named A.T. Field, the force in Kabbalah is simply called “egoism”. Egoism is both a positive and negative idea. Positive because it represents the “will to receive”. The will to fulfill personal desires. And so the will to be alive. Can you see anything wrong with this? But it’s also negative, and in fact Kabbalah is about cleaning and removing egoism. In Kabbalah there’s no way to escape the “will to receive”, because that’s the program embedded into us. That’s what you’re meant to be. But it also holds the principles to return to god, by connecting with other people. Even in Kabbalah the goal is “complementation”. The return to the undivided LCL, or Adam Kadmon.

“Success” in Kabbalah is fairly obvious. The idea is that in spirituality forces that are similar are also the same. Without distinction. Which means that through spirituality men can become “like god”, and so god. This means that the total removal of egoism, including the removal of the “self”, are the goals. In Eva, considering that Eva’s goal isn’t neither religion nor spirituality, “success” is far more ambiguous because successful complementation affirms the “self”. It’s about breaking the shell, affirm oneself as worthy of life, a positive force to move on.

This is also the split between the end of the TV series and the end in the movies. As I already said in the other post, I interpret these as alternative endings, where one includes Anno’s own personal reactions, to the reactions of the public at the TV ending. The message of the TV series, the “successful” complementation and the affirmation of Shinji who got out of his shell, was not received by the public. In the movies, then, Shinji is shown as a lot more passive, as if the character reprises the reactions of the public to the TV show ending. It’s a story of failure. A sort of tragedy where the character is simply crushed under the difficulties. He’s not good enough to solve all his problems and become a successful and praiseworthy human being. Maybe this is the most realistic portrait, because it’s not anymore a “fictional” story where the protagonist has plot armor and is ultimately always successful.

At the end of the movies, the “Third Impact” is triggered as in the TV series (but showing the literal side, instead of the metaphysical one of the TV ending). All human beings are fused in LCL. But during this process the “complementation” fails. Shinji refuses it, affirms his own identity in all the problems and shortcomings he has. He’s not suddenly and automatically a better human being who conquered all his fears, instead he has to face his “real” self. All his fears and limits. His selfishness, his egoism. His “will to receive”. And also his desire to be alive. All this is ambiguous and, because so, authentic. It mimics the complexity of life. Shinji who has done his best, and yet it wasn’t simply enough to overcome all his problems. It’s a non-judgmental view, and because so it is powerful. Shinji is cruelly shown as a shameful character, who failed and only showed his misery and his limits. Almost looks pathetic. The last scene shows another character with Shinji who expresses disgust. But it’s not a definite condemnation. It’s not judgmental because Shinji affirmed himself, his desire to be alive despite all his flaws and his lack of strength. It demands compassion. “Complementation” fails because Shinji has the power to negate it. While in the TV ending the shell is broken and Shinji becomes a new character who conquered his own issues (and this is shown as the goal of a successful complementation, as if all reality was just designed in order to get Shinji through this process), in the movie ending instead Shinji ends up REJECTING complementation, and he restores things as they were before complementation was triggered. Individual human beings are restored.

This obviously creates a controversy of interpretations, between those who think these opposite endings (one successful, the other a failure), and those who think that the end of the movies simply expands and connects back to what was shown in the TV ending: Shinji in both cases affirms his own life. With the slight difference that the movie ending is much less “happy” and unambiguous.

In both cases the Kabbalistic interpretation only enhances these possibilities. The fact that Shinji sabotages Instrumentality, and ends up breaking complementation, is coherent with the Kabbalistic complementation. You can’t trigger it artificially (as it is in Eva, since it’s forced against Shinji’s will). In Kabbalah the “next level” on the evolution, the complementation, only happens if one is ready for it. In Eva, especially the movies, Shinji is simply not ready. The movie shows a Shinji who fails breaking the shell, and ultimately rejects complementation. He’s not ready to strip himself of his “egoism”, so a proper return to Adam Kadmon is not possible, and as a consequence the division in individual beings is once again inevitable. Whether you find a positive or negative value in Shinji’s affirmation of the “self”, this is coherent with the Kabbalistic interpretation. Because in Kabbalah complementation REQUIRES the negation of the self. It requires conquering egoism fully, and only when one is ready for that step. Otherwise what happens is what happens: that we exist as individual beings. That we are selfish and concerned with immediate desires, completely driven by the selfish “will to receive”. We’re stuck in the physical world and all it comprises.

In the Kabbalistic’s vision the physical world is an illusion. It’s exactly like “The Matrix”. A simulation. The exact instant you “let go” of worldy needs, individual desires and embraces spirituality, the physical world collapses as the illusion it is. Instrumentality would be complete and successful. But Shinji isn’t ready, and so is pushed back in the physical world, back with his own problems to overcome.

There’s also an interesting aspect connected with all this. The very visceral idea when you watch the show, and made explicit with the TV ending, that everything that happens has Shinji as a pivot. Shinji-centric. It’s as if all the fictional layer is built FOR Shinji and around him. Built to push him forward through his Hero’s Journey. Without independent existence.

There’s a giant robot classic trope that is fully and willingly embraced by Eva: the hostile Angels that Shinji fights are DESIGNED TO SUCK. Every one has a blatant weakness that will be used to destroy it, and none of the following angels tries to improve or fix previous problems in order to actually try to win. Now, all this also has a post-modernist air. We know that the show has a WRITER, and that enemies in a giant robot show ARE designed to be defeated. That’s the point. But in Eva this isn’t just the truth OUTSIDE the show, it’s the truth INSIDE it. Gendo, Shinji’s father and deus-ex-machina, has always an unfailing faith in the giant robots. He’s always shown as completely emotionless even in the most dire situations. While this “fits” the character for other reasons, the point is that he simply knows how things will go. He’s not blinded by faith, but illuminated by clarity. He knows that what happens follows a pattern of predestination. He is essentially (partially) aware of how the show is written. He has read the plot. The same sense of inevitability as the show rushes to its end, is very similar to the sense of inevitability in the last episode of LOST. And if you were to compare them you’d notice some similar patterns.

Gendo knows that everything, as in a Kabbalistic construction or as in the actual truth, is a very elaborate fictional world that is built solely around Shinji. Nothing truly exists without Shinji. And Shinji can’t fail, because he’s the God in the Machine (Donnie Darko-style), following the unfailing plan of god/writer/Anno. This world would end, literally, without Shinji. It’s his story, his Hero’s Journey. Built for him exclusively. All other characters are puppets (but do not mistake, no more puppets than other people are for “you”), the angels are puppets. It’s all a story, for him. And it’s all, really, a story for us, the audience. Or better, not a generic “audience”, but you, the single spectator. The “self” experiencing this story, or the self who’s merged in reality, alone. The message is personal and aimed straight at you.

There are other small aspects that coincide between Kabbalah and Evangelion. For example in Eva’s mythology the “Dead Sea Scrolls” are simply a manual with the instructions to reach “Instrumentality”. They read in it about the origin of human beings and angels, the “hidden”, esoteric story of humanity. But this is essentially the same for Kabbalah. In our real world the “Dead Sea Scrolls” represent more or less the “Torah”, meaning the ensemble of Kabbalistic texts. And it’s interesting that, for example in the video I’ll link below, Kabbalah is literally defined as nothing more than an “instruction manual”. In Kabbalah as in Eva, these Dead Sea Scrolls are used as instructions to lead humanity to Instrumentality, or Third Impact, or Complementation of Human Beings. Or spirituality in Kabbalah, return to LCL/Adam Kadmon, or the actual end of the physical world, literal in Eva, spiritual in Kabbalah. The trick is simply that in Eva all the Kabbalistic framework is employed as a “metaphor made literal”, then mixed and dressed with “genre” aspects like giant robots and alien monsters, whose goal is introspection. Examining human condition through one character, and through that character specifically the social group of anime fans.

On a forum I concluded:

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That solution works on all possible levels of interpretation.

The ending of the TV series represented the ideal of the story Anno wanted to tell. It represents Anno’s wish and desire: that Instrumentality could work and Shinji would fix his issues, as the anime fans fixed their own by embracing the message in the show. But then the sequel movies became for Anno a way to THINK on the series itself and its message. They become meta-commentary: whether or not the message actually was understood and worked.

On BOTH levels, it didn’t. The message failed if you think about the public’s reaction (to the show’s ending). And then Anno realized that Shinji too wasn’t ready for Instrumentality. He wasn’t through his personal issues, as shown in EoE before Instrumentality. His character didn’t grow, it actually regressed. Hence the acknowledgement that the TV series’ “happy end” on one side wasn’t possible because rejected by the public, and then made by Anno into the truth of the story. Shinji not being ready for Instrumentality, as wasn’t the public.

This because the whole core of Eva is: Anno = Shinji = public (or nerds/otakus who can identify with Shinji, see Tsurumaki who literally says “it’s useless for non-anime fans to watch it”)

Or, if you want: God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit(LCL)

All themes converge on these three. Where’s the god? Nowhere. The god is merely the introspective lens of analysis. On Nerv’s logo (Nerv is the agency that built the giant robots and that wants to trigger Instrumentality) is written: “God’s In His Heaven, All’s Right With The World”. Which is obviously not a reference to some external god, but to the idea of a final peace, or acceptance. It coincides with the theme of Instrumentality. Evangelion is not (and the staff affirmed as much) a religious idea. The show is not about god. Kabbalah is just a pattern or a mean. In true Kabbalah the goal is spirituality. In Evangelion, it’s self discovery or whatever you want to call it.

As for Kabbalah, there’s a video I usually link because it’s presents the framework in a direct and seductive way: http://www.perceivingreality.com/

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I’m watching episode 25 again and enjoying the meta-fictional level. Here’s the mindfuck (if the end of TV wasn’t enough of it already):

On one side there’s a very manifest subversion on a Kabbalistic idea. Kabbalah says that at the maximum of evolution (as we are today) human beings reach the maximum of their desires. And yet they feel a “lack” that pushes them toward “spirituality”, which is the sublimation of desire and the consequent breach of the physical world as we know it. They call this feel as “the point in the heart”, which is the mechanic used by Nature to push us toward it, or otherwise we wouldn’t progress further and stop evolving. In Kabbalah evolution is guided by desire.

In Evangelion there’s the exact same concept. The setting explicitly mentions that it portrays humans at their evolutionary peak. The Longinus lance in the TV series is retrieved from the South Pole and thrust by Rei into Lilith in order to temporarily BLOCK the final evolution. When Gendo decides to speed up again the process, Rei pulls the Lance away, and we see Lilith starting to regenerate. When Kaworu meets Lilith, we see her having a swollen belly, all probably hinting that a “birth” was near. In this case this birth is the symbol of the next step on the evolutionary ladder (like in Kabbalah).

Now in episode 25, all this is made quite explicit. Instead of calling it “point in the heart”, Eva directly refers to “the void in the heart”. But its purpose is equivalent. These are exact quotes from the show:

“There is always a void, a part that has been lost in our hearts.
That is what gives rise to the hunger in our hearts
That’s why you’re going to bundle all human souls together,”

And:

“That was the beginning of the instrumentality of people”

Even in Evangelion there’s this “lack” that, as in Kabbalah, is meant to push human beings toward “instrumentality”. Both in Eva and Kabbalah, the lack in the heart is the Natural instinct that drives human beings toward the next evolutionary level.

The second level of this mindfuck is instead related to Anno and the final part of episode 25. What the characters tell Shinji is that the world he sees is EXACTLY the world he “willed”. That everything goes accordingly to his own desires and that this is just one of many possible futures (which also connects to the Rebuild as being “sequels”).

Quoting again:

“There are a lot of realities. This is one of them.
This is the result you wished for.
Yes, annihilation, a world where no one is saved.
This is reality.
It’s your own world where you coexist with time, space, and other people.
It’s a world where you yourself decide how to perceive and accept it.
Right now, this is your world, where everything is given to you.

You’re saying even this darkness and this world of half measures are all things I wished for?
That’s right.
This is one of the many ends that could occur.”

Now consider the relationship I underlined in the past. God, his son, and Holy Spirit. Anno, Shinji, the audience. Anno is the “god”, because he writes the reality of his fiction. He writes the show, the characters, the setting. So, being “outside” of his creation, he has god-like powers. In Christianity the dogma of the Holy Trinity says that each is essentially the same. God imposed on itself human limits and became Jesus in the physical reality. You can read that the “heavenly Son reflected his Father’s qualities and personality”. Anno writes Shinji as if he writes himself within the boundaries of the story. Shinji is Anno in the story, effectively his incarnation, with the limited powers as every other fictional characters. It’s like if there’s an opaque dome that covers the fictional layer, and so Shinji doesn’t know that “outside” there’s an Anno who’s writing it in his liking. He is like Anno, but he’s subject to the rules of the story. Can’t escape them or transcend his condition, and has to suffer like every other human being (like Jesus). And then there’s the audience. The audience is the singular “you” who watches the show and that can identify with Shinji, as well it represents the multitude of all spectators. The same as the Holy Spirit represents the “you”, as well as the rest of humanity sharing it. Shinji is the mediator between god and audience. The same as Jesus brought on earth the message of God. The message of god is Anno’s vision, and we become one with it because we identify with Shinji, and so “complement” with him (and so with god too).

Now reread that last quote while having this context in mind. The “reality” Shinji lives in, IS effectively decided by him, because it’s the Shinji-Anno who’s writing it. He’s effectively, literally the god of his world. He just doesn’t know because there’s the opaque dome that doesn’t let him transcend his dimension. Yet Shinji is one with Anno, he “reflects his Father’s qualities and personality”. He’s his own creation, on which Anno has total control. And so perpetuating the fact that this world follows EXACTLY the will of his heart. Just that hidden part of his heart that is concealed from him, because it belongs to Anno himself.