Open Individualism (Part 4): Loneliness, Psychosis, Ecstasy
Channel: Andrés Gómez Emilsson
Date: 2020-06-07

I address some key considerations when investigating Open Individualism:

1) It is crucial to distinguish between our human feelings about a certain idea and the merits and drawbacks of that idea on its own. 
2) Open Individualism tends to cause a lot of bliss at first (caused by defanging death).
3) But Open Individualism can often take a turn for the bad. 
4) It makes you realize that you won’t only not die, which is good, but also be forced to experience all of the suffering of the world (or multiverse).
5) More so, it can make you feel “cosmically lonely” - a feeling typical of bad trips where the focus is the pursuit of oneness. 
6) While the increased sense of responsibility caused by Open Individualism is good, it is important not to be overwhelmed by the suffering of the world. As they say “one day at a time” and perhaps we could extend that advise to “one lifetime at a time“.
7) The feeling of loneliness is likely the result of mixing deep brain circuits evolved to track things like one’s place in the tribe via feelings of belongingness and togetherness, which can get deactivated or over-activated when fully internalizing otherwise-neutral philosophical viewpoints. In other words, those feelings are reflections of our mammal brain's response to Open Individualism rather than inherent to the philosophy in and of itself.

I also briefly mention the interesting relationship between the ways we represent the world and valence (i.e. the pleasure-pain axis). Given the Symmetry Theory of Valence, which claims that more “consonant and symmetrical” states of consciousness feel better, experiencing “unitive states of mind” usually come with the “dissolution of internal boundaries”. Therefore, to actively simulate a world where we are all one is likely to come with very positive feelings (perhaps even orgasmic, and ecstatic). Yet, this is not intrinsic of oneness as such - rather, it’s an artifact of the way valence is implemented in the brain! Subtle, but key, distinction.

Finally, I also explain that “the highest truth” is not oneness:

In some sense, Open Individualism is “level 0” - it is the start of a journey of self-discovery. We STILL need to address things like eliminating extreme suffering, understand how physics describes patterns of qualia, the binding problem, how causality interfaces with consciousness, what makes consciousness have an “arrow of time”, and so on. While oneness is a piece of the puzzle, it is by no means “the final answer”. To think otherwise leads to mental pathologies that constrict, rather than expand, one’s understanding and engagement with the world.



For more, see:

- https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/12/17/ontological-qualia-the-future-of-personal-identity/

- https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/07/23/open-individualism-and-antinatalism-if-god-could-be-killed-itd-be-dead-already/

- https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenIndividualism/wiki/reading