Planet Qualia: Happiness, Landscapes, and Ecosystems

By "Tony" "Brussat"

Animals participate directly with what they are interested in: on a scale of zero out of ten, both interest and participation levels are usually matched in the middle, both at five out of ten. This is in stark contrast to people, who desire their interest and participation levels to match at a high level. High interest and participation levels have made the human landscape an addictive landscape – we pay attention only to Big Dopamine.

Little Dopamine, on the other hand, is the path to recovery, for ourselves and our planet. We can regain our taste for Little Dopamine by refocusing ourselves upon qualia, instead of matter, and rebalancing our interest and participation levels in the middle.

Rebalancing ourselves, through the simple practice of conscious ritualing, will not only free us from our addictions, but it will give us a greater purpose as well: saving our ecosystems.

While landscapes are violent and competitive, ecosystems hold all landscapes together, harmoniously, and cooperatively. With ecosystems in mind, rather than landscapes, and qualia in our sights, rather than matter, we can break the Big Dopamine habit and change the human economy. Keeping up with the Joneses will have a different kind of status: not who has the most material goods, but who has the most qualiadelic gifts.

Ecosystems are like God, and qualia is like the Holy Spirit which flows into all life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribl
• Release date: Dec 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781633484146

"Tony" "Brussat"

Love to walk, especially in the mountains. I like to play music. I read too much (perhaps). I have a degree in English, a Master's in Rhetoric, and (gosh, surprise surprise!) I have been a registered nurse working with psych patients for the last twelve years. I want to leave everything behind and hike the Pacific Crest Trail.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This is a book about recovery from addiction, and from trauma – trauma that has been done to us and that we have done to others. Recovery is a hero’s journey we all need to take, because fixing ourselves is fixing the whole planet.

What moves our human, inner consciousness – or mind – and what moves our animal-like, outward-facing senses, is qualia. Animals put their faith in qualia, and we should, too. What animals know, unconsciously perhaps, and what we humans ought to be mindful of, is that qualia comes to us from ecosystems. Ecosystems do not judge us, even though we have lost our way, they just keep on giving us gifts, right to our last breath, and beyond.

This is not the first book to tell us that happiness does not come from material things – but it is the first to tell us that happiness is qualiadelic! Nor is this the first book to announce that happiness lies right in our own backyard – but it is the first, perhaps, to show that we are not at our happiness’ center.

The center of our happiness is in ecosystems. All things come to us from there, even when they pass through factories and farms along the way. The gifts of ecosystems may satisfy us, but it is our gratitude, and our giving back, that makes us happy. An ecosystem is a really simple idea: it makes everything cooperate, and through cooperation, everything flourishes.

Qualia

Qualia is a gift. It leads us to what we need. If we need food, or shelter, or sex, qualia takes us there. If we need meaning, or inspiration, or love, qualia takes us there, too. 

Our senses have evolved to notice qualia: colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures. Our minds have evolved to notice qualia, too: feelings, thoughts and ideas. Our senses detect the qualia which appears to be on the surface of things, while our minds detect the qualia which seems to be inside of things. For instance, our senses may detect that a snowflake is white and cold, while our mind understands that there is a hexagon inside the snowflake – which gives it its basic shape. The whiteness, the coldness, and the hexagon, are all qualia.

It is necessary to understand that even though qualia is a part of everything, it doesn’t really have any material existence. If you take a snowflake apart you will never find the hexagon within it. The same is true for color, sound, smell, texture, and taste. For instance, take a rose apart and you will never find the redness which colors its petals. Nor, for that matter, will you ever find the sharpness of a thorn. The thorn has material existence, but its sharpness is only a form within it of which the mind is aware; sharpness has no material existence, it merely serves a purpose, helping the rose endure. Our senses perceive qualities in objects that won’t be found in the matter of the things themselves.

Likewise, even though we have figured out many physical and mathematical laws which describe the universe, they too have no material existence without the matter that manifests them. There is no Fibonacci sequence in the spirals of a galaxy. The same is true for the mind: scientists have measured the brain in many ways, but they have never yet found a single thought or idea there.

Qualia is an overlooked ingredient in evolution: it creates relationships that hold matter together. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can recognize our connection to the landscapes in which we live, our landscapes’ connection to ecosystems, and, coming full circle, ecosystems connection to ourselves.

Landscapes

Evolution takes place in landscapes, and landscapes are full of competition and struggle. Only the fittest survive, but they survive, not merely because they can jump higher, run faster, or bite harder than the next creature – the fittest survive because of the qualia they notice first, before they jump, or run, or bite. They survive because of a sound they hear, a shadow they see, the hint of a smell or a vibration they notice.  Darwin might well have used the phrase qualiadelic selection instead of natural selection, in his theory, because it is the qualia that we notice, and react to first, which really makes all the difference.

Qualia is necessary for survival. Qualia leads us to the matter we need to survive. However fit an animal may be, sometimes the landscape changes so much that it must adapt or die. It must notice new qualia!. When things fall apart, if an animal is too entrenched in its routines, then it could miss the new qualia when it appears, and it won’t survive. The animals that do notice, however, live on to create the new landscapes – they write the history books, as the saying goes.

It was to meet the demands of changing landscapes that our human ancestors began to pay attention to something else, in addition to their outward facing senses. They began to notice new qualia within themselves. That is, they began to ritual with their thoughts and ideas.¹  As a result of paying attention to, and playing with, this inner qualia, our ancestors evolved an entirely new landscape: an inner landscape – what we now call the mind. The awkward, upright animal that chose to notice the qualia in its mind left the rest of the competition in the dust.

Despite this advantageous inner gift, people are still focused mainly upon the outer qualia, the qualia on the surface of things, the sensual qualia that leads us to our material needs and satisfies our desires. We are, in short, still focused upon landscapes.

Ecosystems

Human consciousness is determined by both our inner and our outer landscapes. By a sort of triangulation, we sense that we are part of something greater than ourselves. We attain a sort of local consciousness, which, ironically, takes us beyond the landscapes with which we are familiar. The epiphany of local consciousness (which fades all too quickly), is that we are all part of greater communities. The greatest communities on the planet are ecosystems. The harmony and cooperation they manifest are examples for all of us.

When we focus upon ecosystems, instead of landscapes, the world becomes filled with meaning, and our local consciousness expands. Could we but surrender to this truth we would transcend our fear of the unknown and actually learn to love our neighbors; yet, even after two-thousand years – nay, fifteen-thousand years – this is still a lesson unlearned.

While landscapes are violent, and full of evolutionary competition, ecosystems, are made up of many landscapes together, coexisting in harmony. Ecosystems make our planet something more than a collection of landscapes, just as