If matter were the basis of life, including human life, no
understanding would be possible. First of all, we could never grasp ourselves,
because human mind doesn’t do matter. Matter
is alien to us: we don’t think in particles, chemical compounds and electric
charges, so the very core of our mind, if it were matter-based, would be for
ever beyond our intellectual reach*. That would be very sad, but we’d probably
learn to live with it, or get used to living with it.
The other major consequence apart from being sad would be simply
scary: we would never understand others. As each body is different and each
body keeps changing, all communication
would be superficial, all understanding illusory – and we’d never even know how
superficial or how illusory: there would be no reliable way to discuss it. The
others would be using similar words and their minds would seem to operate in similar
notions, but what exactly those words would trigger in them, or what exactly
triggered those notions in them – we’d have no clue and we could never hope to have any
clue.
The unfathomable others would at times seem reassuringly similar, at other times unsettlingly similar, but all the time they’d remain ubridgeably strange, which in the long run would make us frightened, demotivated and depressed. Like in those disturbing scenes from Disney’s take on Beauty and the Beast, which must scare the shit out of any metaphysician worth his salt, we’d find ourselves talking, arguing, singing and dancing with things that through some absurd (as everything would be absurd; matter never makes sense and matter, remember, would be our arche) miracle spookily began to act like we do. However, no matter (no pun intended) what we'd say, no matter what we'd sing, no matter what we'd cry, no matter who we’d love I’d always be just a freakish candlestick to you and you’d always be just a freakish kettle to me.
The unfathomable others would at times seem reassuringly similar, at other times unsettlingly similar, but all the time they’d remain ubridgeably strange, which in the long run would make us frightened, demotivated and depressed. Like in those disturbing scenes from Disney’s take on Beauty and the Beast, which must scare the shit out of any metaphysician worth his salt, we’d find ourselves talking, arguing, singing and dancing with things that through some absurd (as everything would be absurd; matter never makes sense and matter, remember, would be our arche) miracle spookily began to act like we do. However, no matter (no pun intended) what we'd say, no matter what we'd sing, no matter what we'd cry, no matter who we’d love I’d always be just a freakish candlestick to you and you’d always be just a freakish kettle to me.
*this is all assuming that in some mad and absolutely impossible way it were possible for matter to be the basis of though, which it evidently is not, as we know (or bloody should know! or at least shouldn't tell Innocent pupils and students that we know when we don't bloody know.) Treat this post then as an odd Gedankenexperiment, which no serious civiliation would choose as a mainstream view, not to mention the main view, and teach it in schools, discuss in serious books published by respectable houses and promote in the media - surely.
Illustration: courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, if my candlestick memory serves me right.
