Will idealism ever become part of the mainstream?

[AshvinP]

Yeah maybe I'm just not getting something and need to give it some time. It feels like Kastrup's idealism has only taken off in the past few years so perhaps I just need to give it space to grow. My primary worry is that we're just going to be ignored, especially since the Essentia Foundation includes parapsyhcologists. It just provides great fodder for the radical skeptics and materialists not to take us seriously. It just feels like we're hindering oureselves but maybe I'm wrong and it will produce something. I'm just more interested in empirical data and experiments than spiritual musings honestly.

That's what I figured, and that's understandable, because we all get concerned if we aren't hearing "enough" about the things we are most interested in. But I'm sure you can also see how that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because there is never "enough" to alleviate our concern. The fact that BK and others have garnered the resources and motivation to even create the Essentia Foundation in the first place seems to be a pretty good objective indicator that they are still heading in a fruitful direction.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Some days I'm feeling optimistic about the progress toward a paradigm shift into recognizing the primacy of consciousness, and other days I'm feeling more pessimistic at the incremental pace of change, depending on where the attention is focused on any given day. Still, I have no doubt that the paradigm is currently shifting, and ultimately will shift, regardless of whatever may be hindering it, and that academia will be dragged along with it, if need be one funeral at a time. How much of a role Essentia will play, who knows, but once credible scientists, just like Hoffman and many others, finally grok for whatever reason, whether experiential or intellectual, that materialism has led to a dead end in terms of its explanatory power, then they will begin to inquire into other avenues of investigation that can lead out of that dead end, while continuing to build the scientific case as the do so. If I'll be around long enough to see it come to pass, I have no idea.

[Astra052]

Some days I'm feeling optimistic about the progress toward a paradigm shift into recognizing the primacy of consciousness, and other days I'm feeling more pessimistic at the incremental pace of change, depending on where the attention is focused on any given day. Still, I have no doubt that the paradigm is currently shifting, and ultimately will shift, regardless of whatever may be hindering it, and that academia will be dragged along with it, if need be one funeral at a time. How much of a role Essentia will play, who knows, but once credible scientists, just like Hoffman and many others, finally grok for whatever reason, whether experiential or intellectual, that materialism has led to a dead end in terms of its explanatory power, then they will begin to inquire into other avenues of investigation that can lead out of that dead end, while continuing to build the scientific case as the do so. If I'll be around long enough to see it come to pass, I have no idea.

I'm only 18 so I do take solace in the idea that we're only at the beginning of this and the truth (whichever way it goes) will bear itself out. I just really want to make sure we don't hurt our credibility in avoidable ways.

[AshvinP]

Some days I'm feeling optimistic about the progress toward a paradigm shift into recognizing the primacy of consciousness, and other days I'm feeling more pessimistic at the incremental pace of change, depending on where the attention is focused on any given day. Still, I have no doubt that the paradigm is currently shifting, and ultimately will shift, regardless of whatever may be hindering it, and that academia will be dragged along with it, if need be one funeral at a time. How much of a role Essentia will play, who knows, but once credible scientists, just like Hoffman and many others, finally grok for whatever reason, whether experiential or intellectual, that materialism has led to a dead end in terms of its explanatory power, then they will begin to inquire into other avenues of investigation that can lead out of that dead end, while continuing to build the scientific case as the do so. If I'll be around long enough to see it come to pass, I have no idea.

I'm only 18 so I do take solace in the idea that we're only at the beginning of this and the truth (whichever way it goes) will bear itself out. I just really want to make sure we don't hurt our credibility in avoidable ways.

I hate you...

Give it 10-15 years and you will definitely find yourself more interested in spiritual musings. Probably sooner hanging around this crowd.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Astra ... The very fact that you're only 18, and so passionately feel a vested interest in this shift is one reason why I remain convinced that a shift is underway. If young minds like yours are at all indicative of where we are headed, then that is surely a good sign

[Astra052]

Some days I'm feeling optimistic about the progress toward a paradigm shift into recognizing the primacy of consciousness, and other days I'm feeling more pessimistic at the incremental pace of change, depending on where the attention is focused on any given day. Still, I have no doubt that the paradigm is currently shifting, and ultimately will shift, regardless of whatever may be hindering it, and that academia will be dragged along with it, if need be one funeral at a time. How much of a role Essentia will play, who knows, but once credible scientists, just like Hoffman and many others, finally grok for whatever reason, whether experiential or intellectual, that materialism has led to a dead end in terms of its explanatory power, then they will begin to inquire into other avenues of investigation that can lead out of that dead end, while continuing to build the scientific case as the do so. If I'll be around long enough to see it come to pass, I have no idea.

I'm only 18 so I do take solace in the idea that we're only at the beginning of this and the truth (whichever way it goes) will bear itself out. I just really want to make sure we don't hurt our credibility in avoidable ways.

I hate you...

Give it 10-15 years and you will definitely find yourself more interested in spiritual musings. Probably sooner hanging around this crowd.

Well, I wouldn't say I'm not interested in spriitual musings. I actually have had a deep interest in esotercism, name Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and other things of that vein as well as more eastern things. I've read the Corpus, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, much of the Nag Hammadi library, a litany of Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist texts plus various occult writings. I probably would've considered myself to be an esoteric Christian up until recently when I began really feeling like I had no answer to materialism. Until I discovered things like the hard problem of consciousness and the realization that the jury is still out I felt a lot of despair. I just don't want to feel like I'm only trying to find a justification for my beliefs instead of just believing empirical evidence. I'm not trying to delude myself.

[AshvinP]

I'm only 18 so I do take solace in the idea that we're only at the beginning of this and the truth (whichever way it goes) will bear itself out. I just really want to make sure we don't hurt our credibility in avoidable ways.

I hate you...

Give it 10-15 years and you will definitely find yourself more interested in spiritual musings. Probably sooner hanging around this crowd.

Well, I wouldn't say I'm not interested in spriitual musings. I actually have had a deep interest in esotercism, name Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and other things of that vein as well as more eastern things. I've read the Corpus, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, much of the Nag Hammadi library, a litany of Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist texts plus various occult writings. I probably would've considered myself to be an esoteric Christian up until recently when I began really feeling like I had no answer to materialism. Until I discovered things like the hard problem of consciousness and the realization that the jury is still out I felt a lot of despair. I just don't want to feel like I'm only trying to find a justification for my beliefs instead of just believing empirical evidence. I'm not trying to delude myself.

That's very interesting. If I am understanding correctly, apart from the hard problem of consciousness, you feel like most of the science stacks up in favor of materialism? And that also caused you to question/abandon esoteric Christian theology?

[Astra052]

I hate you...

Give it 10-15 years and you will definitely find yourself more interested in spiritual musings. Probably sooner hanging around this crowd.

Well, I wouldn't say I'm not interested in spriitual musings. I actually have had a deep interest in esotercism, name Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and other things of that vein as well as more eastern things. I've read the Corpus, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, much of the Nag Hammadi library, a litany of Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist texts plus various occult writings. I probably would've considered myself to be an esoteric Christian up until recently when I began really feeling like I had no answer to materialism. Until I discovered things like the hard problem of consciousness and the realization that the jury is still out I felt a lot of despair. I just don't want to feel like I'm only trying to find a justification for my beliefs instead of just believing empirical evidence. I'm not trying to delude myself.

That's very interesting. If I am understanding correctly, apart from the hard problem of consciousness, you feel like most of the science stacks up in favor of materialism? And that also caused you to question/abandon esoteric Christian theology?

Yes pretty much. Besides the problem of consciousness I really don't see what would create too many flaws with materialism. I also don't see why like gravity, evolution, or electro-magnetic waves we should discount the idea that materialism can one day answer it even if it can't right now. I guess I'm looking for something that materialism has no answer for and so far that only thing is consciousness. It's pretty much the last frontier and if it ever gets explained/proven how consciousness arises in the brain through physical processes then that's pretty much the final nail in the coffin.

[SanteriSatama]

We are not that innocent as we would like to think of ourselves. Even if we are at the bottom of the pecking order.

Sure. But there could be a degree of difference between the Athenian farmakos institution of clubbing to death the most ugly slaves for the sins of of the Polis, and living as part of modern society and trying to deny your responsibility of the collective unsustainability.

There are things that are currently blasphemies in the eyes of physical science. What if we say that the patterns of vicious weather and earthquakes have mysterious connection with our collective unconscious - the hatred and lies bred everywhere - not only on global elite level but also in the very mundane personal level? Or if we say that a vast part of the nervous diseases plaguing our modern civilization result from the release of astral elements of pain and terror by the mass execution of thousands of animals each second?

It's often said that Oedipus is the founding myth of Western ethos (Freud etc.), and there's wonderful ecopsychology take on that story, which compares scientism to King Oedipus who is asking Teiresias for the cause for the plague in the city. But there's also third act of the narrative, Oedipus in Kolonos, the return to home part of Hero's Journey...

[JustinG]

It's probably true that whilst idealism can be connected with spirituality, it doesn't have to be. So there's probably value in both atheistic and nonatheistic forms of idealism being developed.

For example, I've been reading about Italian idealism of the 20th century, which was very much focussed on immanence rather than transcendence, with the Italian liberal politician and philosopher Bernedetto Croce (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedetto_Croce) calling his form of idealist philosophy "immanentism". Immanentism holds that "all but only lived human experience, taking place concretely and without reduction, is real".

Mind you, immanenetist idealism also has its dark side - Giovanni Gentile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Gentile) advocated what he called "actual idealism" and was a supporter of Musssolini who dubbed himself "the philosopher of fascism".