Necessary Illusions

By Kambiz Zarrabi

We use the toolbox of the mind to uncover the
secrets of existence, the meaning of life, and our
purpose and place in the universe.

What tool do we have to investigate the nature
of the mind; surely not the mind itself.

Can the mind be its own witness to testify for
its legitimacy?

What judge would consider such testimony
convincing enough to vindicate the claimant?

The dilemma is resolved when the judge who
presides at this trial is the mind’s own reflection,
projected to create
NECESSARY ILLUSIONS,
its deliverance from chaos and confusion.

But such illusions work only if they are
perceived as real, even beyond real;
SACRED!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664109346

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

In the chaos of what appears to us humans as shapeless incoherence, energy and matter evolved, expanding from non-existence to create what became space, in a dimension perceptible to us as time. Of the infinite varieties of integrations and disintegrations, compositions and decompositions of matter and energy, gravity, mass and dimension formed; and from the heavy elements born in the cores of exploding supernovae, stardust accumulated in a tiny speck within a tiny speck of space, which we now call Earth.

Of all the possible combinations of matter on this tiny speck one led to a carbon-based structure with the ability to self-replicate. This self-replication led to the formation of self-contained units of organic clumps – which we call life. Life evolved in varying forms and sizes. Some, with a concentration of a particular assemblage of organic matter, which we call the brain, reacted to the environment and responded by regulating the behavior of the host; and began to affect the surface of the tiny globe. Of these, one particular species, the human, evolved a relatively larger processing center or brain, with a distinct peculiarity; it not only needed to understand and rationalize everything, it kept on asking the question, Why!

The quest became mankind’s lifelong pursuit, carried over from one generation to the next: Who am I, why am I here, where did I come from, where am I going, and what is this existence all about? When not totally engulfed in the affairs of daily survival, humans pondered on such questions across the planet. Conclusions were universal: The thinking, self-reflecting human concluded that it had to be the purposeful creation of some mastermind, and indeed the ultimate product of existence for whom all else had been created.

With these assumptions humans began to work backwards in their minds to structure suitable narratives that would best substantiate their self-image. They succeeded; but for many individuals who were too inquisitive to remain content with self-redeeming presuppositions, the quest led to much confusion and despair. The instinctive desire to find symmetry, purpose, design, and meaning in life, the basic ingredients that motivated mankind to carry on, was challenged by the discomforting prospect that this mechanism of survival may be no more than a necessary illusion: necessary because, without such capacity for self-delusion, struggle for survival and continuity for the sapient species would have been in vain.

But here we all are, some successfully content in self-delusions, some still searching for higher truths or meaning to rationalize life’s pursuits; and some who have managed to create more sophisticated kaleidoscopes through which their own versions of reality are never seen as illusory.

It would be counterintuitive for us humans to accept the idea that life’s meaning and purpose are simply human-specific mental constructs that are necessary for the evolved mind to navigate through the human-specific puzzlements of its existence. Yet, we seldom wonder how billions upon billions of other life forms, past, present and into the future, existed and shall exist without concern for any purpose or meaning in life. For a great majority of those who have pondered such thoughts, the response, as reflected universally in the great religions and mythologies of mankind, is intuitively clear: Mankind is just different, and different in a significant way, from the rest of this creation!

This difference is perceived to be not as much in the physical or biological appearance or functions, but in the level and the kind of our intellectual prowess, plus what could only be expressed in metaphysical terms: the presence of human soul and the sense of spirituality. Our perception is that ours is not just any kind of soul or spirit, as in some religions all life forms possess some kind of soul; but a much more elaborate kind of soul that connects us to our divine origins.

Reaching such a self-redeeming conclusion was not only instinctively intuitive, it must have served as a tool so instrumental in resolving our most perplexing questions, that it had to appear as more than just instinctive and intuitive; it had to be further legitimized by reasoned rationale or logic, more accurately pseudo logic, to overcome skepticism or denial by the more daring inquisitive minds. Therefore, observations and experiences, or even the lines of reasoning, were often reshaped in such a way as to not violate those deeply held beliefs or gut-feelings.

It should not be surprising that for countless millennia it was the instinctive and the intuitive that dominated mankind’s intellectual efforts in resolving life’s mysteries.

Pigeonholes were thus created in mankind’s consciousness in shapes and sizes that conformed to what was believed to be truths or realities. If these mental constructs were to provide comfort for the human intellect and to shelter it from corrosive uncertainty and nihilism, observations and experiences had to somehow fit, or be forced into, the prefabricated pigeonholes of the mind.

Phenomena, or the perception of phenomena, that resisted this conformity were stripped of their incongruous appendages, and then reshaped into compliance with the mind’s requirements. We could of course call it delusion or self-deception, when we reshape or alter realities into shapes and forms that better fit inside the pigeonholes of our minds. The mind’s eye can and does see what it wants to see, and the mind believes what it prefers to believe. Unless the evidence is truly overwhelming, we find it more comfortable to believe what we’d like to believe.

Only within the last few centuries have thinkers been comfortable with abandoning preconceived certainties (the contents of the mind’s pigeonholes), much of which was based on faith, and adopt what is today called the scientific method. This path starts from the opposite direction by working from observations and experiences in an attempt to formulate explanations through experimentations, trials and errors, and always remaining open to further modifications as new evidence might suggest.

A different generation of pigeonholes was thus shaped within the scientific man’s mind. While they served to explain the daily phenomena of life, these new mental pigeonholes remained resilient and flexible enough to change shape and dimension by the requirements of new evidence.

The transition from faith-based belief systems to rational or logic-based reasoning has not been, and could never be, either sudden or universal. The overlap has been extremely long-term. Gaining an appreciation for the rational or the scientific may not, for most people, mean an abandonment of the time-tested comforts of what only the irrational certainties of faith could provide.

Most of us who pride ourselves in our rational, reasoned, secular beliefs cannot escape those instinctive, genetically engrained proclivities that took countless millennia to form. For example, we now live long past the average life expectancy of our ancestors, so we try to avoid excessive indulgence in sugars and fats - vital dietary necessities for our forebears - that now clog our arteries and cause heart disease, weight gain and diabetes as we grow older and become less active. In spite of all that, our taste or craving for such foods has not disappeared.

Similarly, we might consciously reject superstitious beliefs or unreasoned faith in the supernatural; but when our ability for logical or rational reasoning breaks down in dire circumstances or in the face of danger or imminent death, our minds somehow revert back toward the same instinctive or genetically programmed illogic that we’d normally criticize.

There are those who do not require the self-delusion or any concocted meaning or purpose in existence in order to live a fulfilled life during this journey from nowhere to nowhere. But even these travelers formulate concepts such as ambition, motivation, direction and targets of achievement for themselves, without which the self-conscious mind, as well as the very engine of life, would cease to function. While the nihilists among the travelers vanish, the survivors remain engaged and participate in the grand game of life.

For the greatest majority, however, the illusion of some real and not imaginary meaning and higher purpose will play its vital role as a necessary complement to their sapient cognitive faculties; otherwise, the species we know as Homo sapiens sapiens, the anatomically and cognitively modern man, would lose the incentive to endure.

There are many self-proclaimed enlightened thinkers among us who regard symbolisms of a creator god, a divine entity, an intelligent designer or some nondescript universal energy field or overarching consciousness that guides us along, as totally without merit and, in fact, detrimental to human intellectual progress.

There is, of course, little doubt that the integration of religion and government, and its direct influence on the affairs of state have been increasingly anachronistic in our post-modern times. However, the separation of church and state has not been, and could never be, tantamount to a total abandonment of religions in human societies, even in the most progressive or secular systems in the world. As I have tried to elucidate in the following chapters, there are abundant reasons why the faith in the abstract and the irrational is here to stay.

These philosophers seem to suggest that there is, in fact, an alternative path that leads to a more realistic, therefore, a truly more meaningful life. They promote objective realities as the guiding lights along this preferred path at the expense of the irrational, faith-based beacons. Some among them go as far as to regard the believers as intellectually inferior, and view the belief in some god or religion as a hindrance to real human progress.

What they do not seem to acknowledge is the very philosophical or logical self-contradiction in what they profess. In an ultimately and fundamentally meaningless domain, as they also maintain to be the case, concepts such as a truly meaningful life or real human progress, all qualitative and relative terms, sound very much like another set of a-priori givens as though printed in bold letters on the cosmic dome, which should be subject to the same kind of critique!

PERSONAL

My personal reflections are by no means unique or exceptional. Most of us have experienced similar emotional and intellectual stages of growth and development to reach our adulthood. But growing up in an educated upper class and relatively affluent environment in Tehran, Iran, I did have the opportunity and the leisure time to broaden the scope of my thoughts where I found great joy and satisfaction as an explorer with an insatiable urge to dig into whatever fascinated me, which meant almost everything that was the least bit unusual. That annoying habit didn’t make me too many friends or playmates, most of whom seemed much more content spending their leisure time frolicking around or bursting into loud and uninhibited laughter exchanging jokes that I seldom found funny. And, not much has changed to this date.

No, I was not an overly serious or recluse kid wearing characteristically thick reading glasses and parading as a straight-A student with seldom a smile on his face. On the contrary, I was always regarded as a bully, somewhat bigger than my age, who excelled in athletics and never avoided a confrontation, physical or intellectual. My school grades, from the elementary and secondary schools in Tehran, all the way through my college years in California, were never higher than average or passing grades. But even though my grades did not reflect it, I did understand and learn the material being taught at school, to where, even in college, the professor who for whatever reason could not be at the class that day, would ask me to act as a stand-in for him, something that surprised many of my schoolmates on more than one occasion. I used to tutor my schoolmates, both in high school and in college,