Our Assimilation of the World

We comprehend something (X) when we approach it as one would catch a fish using various nets. Our most basic net consists of our personal worldview. Understanding X means you personalize it, integrating it into your cognitive framework through a process akin to osmosis.

When our individual network of concepts, assumptions, and memories aligns with a broader collective framework—be it from a group, political party, nation, ethnicity, or religion—we understand X through aggregation.

For instance, if you analyze a social issue using the beliefs imparted by your religious community, you grasp X not solely as an individual but in collaboration with others, bolstering that mode of conceptual assimilation with a shared sense of conviction.

Objective knowledge reflects the humanization of X. Scientists manipulate facts to reveal their truths, placing them within the most expansive framework we possess to interact with our surroundings—one where we exert control over facts, uncovering their mysteries through logic and experimentation. This transforms an indifferent nature into an artificial environment designed to cater to our needs.

The deeper our familiarity with our symbols and cognitive tools, the more complacent we may become regarding what we encapsulate. To understand X grants us a semblance of power over it. We become privy to its workings, knowing its nature and how it reacts under various circumstances.

However, cognitive assimilation remains potential; knowing the sky is blue does not equate to fully absorbing the sky into our beliefs. Yet, our knowledge allows us to filter and neutralize facts, enabling us to engage with them intelligently. Typically, human intellect aims at the artificialization of nature, commencing with the organization of symbols in our minds and culminating in technological or social applications that pacify or enrich our understanding of known facts.

Our primal mammalian lineage suggests that this assimilation is a form of enslavement, positioning ourselves and our kind above everything else that is objectified or rendered manageable, akin to mechanisms and systems we can decode. In this way, we optimize our surroundings, erecting a throne upon which we prefer to sit.

Nonetheless, the master may grow weary of their servant. The personalized, aggregated, or humanized world reflects our own image, corrupting us much like Narcissus. We become ensnared in our symbols and assumptions, affirming our centrality and significance.

Paradoxically, as we capture more of the world, it appears less vivid and real, for our knowledge gives an illusion of control and safety. Even when aware of potential threats—be they diseases or flaws in our plans—knowledge allows us to devise solutions to these challenges.

As we inhabit this subdued world, molded increasingly by our models, we engage in our smoothly running projects, adjusting them as we learn from our missteps, casting wider nets and automating our actions according to our knowledge.

Ultimately, we might find ourselves ensnared in our own nets.

The World’s Assimilation of Us

We often overlook that knowledge-as-assimilation implies a desire to control X. The second form of knowledge is revelatory, involving the humble realization that X transcends any of our filters, inferential principles, or aggressive tactics. Encountering the unassimilated X leads to a sublime recognition of the futility of human absorption of reality.

Being part of X implies that it transforms and manages itself through us. Conceptual assimilation pales in comparison to the cosmic flow of events that overshadows our personal, collective, or human concerns. As we dive deeper into our techniques of belittlement and domination, we become increasingly desensitized to the facade of our mastery, breeding a greater fear of unassimilated reality.

This fear may begin with an existential acknowledgment of our inevitable mortality, suggesting that our memories and personal worldviews hold little centrality. Alternatively, we might adopt hypermodern skepticism, realizing that if every society and religion regards itself as supreme, none can genuinely be of ultimate significance, as those civilizational judgments conflict. The relativity of knowledge implies it cannot be as authoritative as it appears to the unwary observer.

When we philosophize, ascending to a meta-level of inquiry that examines not only the facts but also the nature of our cognitive processes and our fixation on assimilating nature, we become alienated outsiders. From this vantage point, we stand apart from our systems and interfaces, leaving us vulnerable to a direct confrontation with X, which can then dominate us.

These encounters are often termed “revelatory,” “religious,” or “apocalyptic.” In such moments, we perceive things as they truly are, as the universe would view them if it could see. We dissolve into X, through alienation, relativization, cynicism, or humility, understanding a fragment of X in light of our acknowledged insignificance in the cosmos.

In contemporary culture, the allure of conspiracy theories offers a similar opportunity. These subversive speculations allow us to experience a gestalt shift. We often interpret facts in a conventional manner, but radical revisions of these facts challenge our commitment to mainstream perspectives.

Imagining what it would be like to perceive the world from an alien viewpoint—believing in hidden lizard aliens, 9/11 being a false flag, or the existence of angels and demons—immerses us in what Robert Anton Wilson described as “Chapel Perilous.” We may find ourselves suspending disbelief, questioning whether the facts are as benign as they seem when we operate on autopilot, entrenched in our social routines.

Suddenly, the world appears strange and foreign, evoking childlike wonder as if we are seeing it anew. This suspension of disbelief can rejuvenate us from our monotony.

Even when engaging with lofty philosophical ideas like those presented here, we often merely entertain ourselves. On autopilot, transitioning from one adult responsibility to another or navigating various social systems, we seldom express our true thoughts or feelings, as that would be socially inappropriate. Furthermore, our perceived control as participants in human civilization—especially in postindustrial societies—results in encounters primarily with filtered, assimilated representations of X, the simulacra of our collective hallucinations.

Only the jarring impact of the real world's inhumanity can jolt us from our complacency. When mystics assert that reality is ineffable, it is only partially due to the inadequacy of language; the essence of the matter is that the appropriate response to the nature of existence begins with terror and concludes with sorrow or grim resolve. Descriptions and justifications are insignificant; what truly matters is the visceral encounter, reminiscent of what ancient heretics referred to as “gnosis” or profound knowledge, which ignites the cosmicist realization and the removal of the scales from our eyes.

Enlightenment and Alienation

However, this sense of revelation can be re-assimilated by others or by the more timid aspects of ourselves. As long as we prefer to identify with our cognitive filters rather than perceive ourselves as extensions of the vast, impersonal X—be it God, atoms, or the universe—we fall prey to our personal or collective efforts to suppress or co-opt that surge of sublimity.

We trivialize the prospect of the world’s assimilation of our humble selves and the entirety of the human experience. We downplay mystical insights, often sacrificing them for profit and recognition. Perhaps we align ourselves with self-help movements that promote spirituality while simultaneously perpetuating the unspiritual delusions of capitalism and consumerism.

Crucially, we choose to forget the eeriness of that alien encounter because we want to forget it; the act of remembering X is an act of assimilation. We reshape our memories to tame and contextualize any unfamiliar elements of our practices, personalizing the unknown or encasing the inhuman Other in a net as we navigate our existence.

To confront the strangeness is to relinquish our individuality, nationality, and humanity. The courageous outsider melds with the inhuman other, detached from all nets and networks, stripped of faith, and bereft of cognitive defenses. This person perceives the futility not only of knowledge but also of the natural flow of events.

The world’s assimilation of us represents the ultimate act of subversion. The wilderness, as the impersonal, noumenal X, disrupts our plans. We seek to create an artificial paradise, avoiding the consideration of the unassimilated terrestrial, galactic, or universal X that remains indifferent to our achievements, failures, and aspirations.

Recognizing a larger, impersonal world can temporarily blind us to what previously occupied our focus. The enlightened, nullified self becomes indifferent to morality and mundane expectations, mirroring the larger world’s indifference towards human actions, as the cosmos overwhelms our filters and consumes the observer.

If prehumanized reality appears comforting only when our cognitive filters simplify and idealize it, an unmediated confrontation with X cannot be expected to be pleasing. Furthermore, if nature were inherently pleasant, we would not have systematically retreated from the wilderness to our artificial, humanized habitats—our cities, institutions, and schemes for domination. We flee because the real X embodies a horrific, inhuman absurdity, an indifferent yet awe-inspiring monstrosity, and we have evolved to socialize with other clever, rebellious primates.

There is no socializing with an unclouded mind, just as one cannot befriend a mountain, the sun, or the cosmic winds. Socializing is a form of assimilation, a self-indulgent response to the mindlessness of the real world. The true X evolves intelligent beings like us, tricking us into believing our mastery over natural processes holds significance or dignity, while our engineering efforts are mere pinpricks against the backdrop of the universe. The true X facilitates the humanization of X through an indifferent development of our planet’s or solar system’s larger narrative.

We aspire to subjugate the world, to become gods or transhuman inheritors of perfected technology, yet even the mightiest kings and billionaires are mere players in nature’s inscrutable drama. The enlightened outsiders who align with X against humanity become horrified, deranged, ascetic spectators, no longer part of the human narrative.

Thus, nature undermines us in two ways: first, by ridiculing human progress with the eventual extinction of our species and overshadowing our technological advancements; second, by confining those who possess too much knowledge to the margins of society, paralyzed in the face of the true X’s alien nature compared to our naive ambitions.