On providence and karma

The promise of divine providence is, for the faithful, a guarantee that there is purpose in lives and for the events that befall us. However inscrutable their purpose, we are assured they are according to a plan for us and the universe. We each individually have purpose, insofar as our capacity for action—to act upon the world and others—gives us a vital role to play in the fulfillment of providence. Many find this reassuring, and I argue a great deal easier to accept than the cold, nauseating implications of the alternative. The alternative to providence is a chaotic universe in which God does not exist, or at least does not intervene. In such a world, we may find no solace that some greater purpose justifies tragedy, nor may we relish with pride our small victories as affirmations of our virtue.

Rather, the universe is indifferent to our mortal, vain preoccupations. Without pomp or prelation, the events of our lives are merely haphazard draws from a cosmic hat of possible events, some good and some bad. To quell our hankering spirits, we are only permitted to ask whether there is inherent, systematic bias of the world—i.e., whether the distribution of possible events is, on average even, meaning that good or bad things are equally likely to befall. Perhaps, in this question we might take more than a consolation, but find the opportunity to create purpose for ourselves. Does is not stand to reason that if our societies are just and our relationships harmonious that the distribution of events will be skewed in the direction of Goodness? Alternatively, would not injustice and discord foster resentment and ultimately push the distribution toward Badness?

Therefore, to those among us having deep internal struggles to find the solace of purpose in a world without providence, take heed that our actions, deliberate and otherwise, are necessarily reflected to us. For to the degree our actions promote a general beneficence, we push the distribution of events positively, and increase the likelihood of good things in return. At the same time, when our actions decrease the general welfare we contribute to a preponderance of bad events and so render ourselves more likely to experience them. We may call this karma.

A non-Western conception of Self

I will share a bit of personal experience that may help to elucidate a conception of the Self different from one we, as occidentals, tend to hold. I regularly engage in meditation. Specifically, I practice Buddhist meditation. Buddhism, in my opinion, is fundamentally concerned with the experience of consciousness. While pain is an inevitable consequence of life, Buddhists hold that suffering isn't. Suffering is an outcome arising from a psychological attachment between the 'self' and the pain. E.g. "I am hurting", "I am dying". Language here is somewhat ineffective, but they mean to describe a kind of unity, or oneness between the experience and the self, where selfhood, or consciousness, is constituted/indiscernible by the experience. Through rigorous practice, Buddhists believe that the various 'attachments' between the self and experience (several such attachments are usually enumerated) can be severed. Contrary to the Western expectation, this does not "liberate" the soul/mind/self, it obliterates it. Once these attachments to experience are broken, the mind is induced to a seemingly untenable condition of existence and non-existence. This they call 'sunyata'. My own personal trials with meditation suggests a certain plausibility to this view.

Here is a little anecdotal example: Imagine you're sitting on a bench in a park, when an attractive woman (or man) just your type takes a seat at the other end. Your heart beat accelerates, fingertips moisten--all sorts of physiological responses to her arrival. As you know, these physiological changes generally occur below the "level of conscious awareness". Consciously, you feel nervous, excited, and giddy like a school boy (girl). You actually feel somehow drawn to her physically, like something invisible tugging at your insides in her direction. "I like her!," you exclaim to yourself in an internal monologue. You're paralyzed, but hyper-focused on these feelings. Whatever you were thinking about is gone, intellect is debilitated, "hello" is at the tip of your tongue, but you cannot speak. From a Buddhist's perspective, your psychological attachment allowed an external event to transmit and exert a force upon your mind, momentarily generating chaos.

Richard Dawkins, of course, would tell you that these are your genes taking control of you for their own selfish purposes. You're being manipulated like a marionette on endocrinary strings to mate with this fit and fertile female. The genetic lingo is new, but more or less this is what Western philosophers have called 'passions', and have invented various philosophies and religions with the notion of mastering them, subjugating them to the rational mind and thereby restoring this drooling schoolboy to his 'free will'. Buddhism, I think, may be closer to Dawkins in that they see such 'passions' as an inescapable aspect of our nature. We can no more subjugate the passions than we can our need for oxygen or nourishment. But we can be aware of them, and their power over us understood as an external force. This is called 'mindfulness', and is the basic form of meditation, involving slow, methodical, and non-judgmental reflection on sensations from the body. One by one, each sensation is bracketed off as separate from the mind, a force acting on it, not out of it, and summarily released back to the ether from which it came. Contrary to the Westerns, when the less sensation is externalised there is nothing left: no purified soul-mind. Just sunyata, or emptiness.

In sum, I've explored some possible insights into a view of consciousness inspired by Buddhist philosophy and practice, as well as by natural philosophy. The position is that what we call 'consciousness' is really just a kind of visuo-linguistic account of the things we're doing and an essentially arbitrary sense of why (e.g., "I like her!"). It is such, presumably, because it served some adaptive function that was especially useful for a highly-social, savanna primate. Had circumstances (selective pressures) been different, perhaps the experience of consciousness would be quite different. This is, of course, essentially the same reason why we have difficulty recognising consciousness in other animals (perhaps aliens eventually), even ones we know are highly intelligent.