The Delusion

In the treatise “About the Universe,” we arrived at the rather unpleasant conclusion that a significant part of the world around us probably exists only as a convenient human conception. We learned to doubt that an ordinary table exists, then, to our own satisfaction, restored its existence, since sitting at a nonexistent table would prove somewhat difficult.

There is nothing objectionable about this. Our consciousness continually simplifies reality, singles out individual objects, assigns properties to them, and establishes relationships between them. This enables us to act in a world whose fundamental nature we apparently do not fully understand.

But there are other misconceptions.

Unlike useful conventions that help us navigate reality, these notions can hinder our understanding of it and lead us to act against our own interests. Some arise naturally from the limitations of human thought. Others are passed down from generation to generation, gradually becoming traditions and social norms. Still others are deliberately created and spread by people who have quite specific reasons for wanting those around them to believe what they are told.

And the latter are not necessarily the most dangerous.

A lie that a person recognizes as a lie has limited power over them. Far more interesting is what happens when a false claim becomes so familiar that it is no longer perceived as a claim at all. It turns into something taken for granted, part of the social order, an obvious truth that does not even need to be proved.

This is how entire systems of belief arise, within which a person can live their whole life without ever asking where they came from.

And yet it is especially remarkable to see this in a civilization that has science.

Humanity has learned to investigate the structure of matter, reconstruct the history of our own planet, alter the genetic material of living things, and send probes to other celestial bodies. We can detect processes taking place billions of light-years away and study structures smaller than anything the human eye can discern.

One might think that possessing such means of understanding the world would have profoundly changed people’s relationship with reality.

In some ways, it has. People are happy to use the fruits of science. They take medicine, fly in airplanes, use communication technologies, and trust devices whose operating principles they often do not understand at all. They are not particularly troubled by the fact that all this took centuries of scientific research, highly complex mathematics, and many discoveries that run counter to everyday intuition.

Yet our relationship with the scientific method itself is somewhat more complicated.

Ordinary people are often quite content with science as long as its findings do not demand anything unpleasant of them. They may marvel at technological progress while rejecting research findings if these conflict with their habits, political convictions, or religious beliefs.

Scientific knowledge is admitted into everyday life as a useful tool, but is far from always being allowed to change a person’s own views.

Of course, this attitude is not universal. Many people are genuinely interested in science and willing to reconsider their own beliefs. What is more, even scientists are not immune to prejudice and error. But we are less interested in how many people are mistaken than in the mechanism that allows a civilization to use the results of scientific inquiry without extending its principles to the other areas of its life.

This contradiction is especially clear where scientific knowledge comes into conflict with social interests.

I remember how, even in school, we were regularly taught to be environmentally responsible. We were told that we needed to conserve resources, use reusable bags, sort our waste properly, and not throw food away. All of this was presented as an important part of caring for the environment, and of course there was nothing wrong with the advice itself.

Something else caught my attention.

Why was the discussion of environmental responsibility so readily confined to such small things? Why were we told about plastic bags but given disproportionately less attention to animal agriculture, which uses enormous areas of land, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and has a substantial impact on ecosystems? Why, instead of an in-depth discussion of private cars, their environmental consequences, and possible alternatives, were we mainly told to remember to turn off the lights?

After all, switching to a plant-based diet and giving up regular use of a private car where suitable alternatives are available are among the most significant changes many people can make to reduce their own environmental impact. These are not the only measures that matter: air travel, household energy supply, overall consumption, and many other factors also play a role. But that is precisely why we should compare their actual effectiveness rather than simply list the least challenging recommendations.

Instead, environmental responsibility often became an activity perfectly compatible with keeping almost all of one’s old habits.

You could keep consuming animal products, drive everywhere, buy endless amounts of unnecessary things, and still feel satisfied that today you had managed not to take a plastic bag at the checkout.

Of course, it really is better not to take a bag when you don’t need one.

But what a strange picture of the world must a person have for them to start thinking that such actions are an adequate response to the environmental crisis?

That contradiction made a particularly strong impression on me at the time. I could not shake the feeling that I was being taught not so much environmental responsibility as its outward signs. That the task was not to provide the necessary knowledge and let students draw conclusions from it, but to give them the impression that they already knew how to do the right thing.

Perhaps some teachers sincerely believed that this approach was sufficient. Perhaps the curricula were shaped by the students’ age, political compromises, social habits, or a desire to avoid topics that were too contentious.

But that does not make the result any less unpleasant.

People were told about a problem, offered a few convenient ways to address it, and allowed to feel that the matter was largely settled. The most significant contradictions in their way of life could remain untouched.

And this practice is by no means confined to environmental education.

In economics, we constantly encounter notions that seem natural only because we have long been used to them. Economic activity is assessed in terms of monetary indicators, profit, production, consumption, and growth. All of these can indeed measure certain aspects of economic life. But increased profit does not necessarily mean increased social well-being, and increased production does not necessarily mean improved living conditions.

A business can make money successfully while imposing substantial costs on society that are not reflected in the price of its products. A country can show economic growth while some of its population suffers material deprivation. Producing unnecessary goods or goods that quickly break down can generate income and increase the volume of economic activity without necessarily making anyone’s life better.

What is more, destroying something and then rebuilding it can produce quite positive indicators of economic activity.

We are not claiming that existing economic indicators are useless. They measure precisely what they were designed to measure. The problem begins when what is measured is mistaken for what is desirable, and the means for the ultimate goal.

In politics, things are not much better.

Governments have entire agencies devoted to gathering statistics, conducting research, forecasting, and assessing the consequences of policy decisions. At the same time, political activity is inevitably bound up with the struggle for power, economic interests, public opinion, and the need to retain popular support.

The result is a rather curious situation: a society can know quite well that a problem exists and still take no action commensurate with its scale for decades.

Climate change, environmental pollution, the destruction of ecosystems, and the spread of preventable diseases have all been studied for many years. Reports are published, conferences are held, and governments announce new targets and commitments.

But scientific knowledge does not automatically become political action.

Of course, science alone cannot determine which goals should be considered right. That is a question of values and social choice. But science can help us study the consequences of different decisions, compare the effectiveness of different means, and identify a gap between stated intentions and actual results.

If a government claims to be pursuing a particular goal but systematically rejects the most well-founded ways of achieving it, a perfectly reasonable question arises: is that goal really a priority for it?

Companies are an even more interesting case. It would be strange to expect a commercial enterprise that exists to make a profit to voluntarily give up a profitable activity simply because scientists disapprove of its consequences. This sometimes happens, but it would be rather naive to rely on it as a universal means of promoting social well-being.

Meanwhile, advertising, corporate statements, and public campaigns can present economic self-interest as concern for consumers, society, or the environment. Companies are happy to talk about their responsibility, governments about their achievements, and religious organizations about the moral truths they supposedly exist to defend.

Yet each of these institutions has interests of its own, and these do not always coincide with the interests of those to whom such statements are addressed.

We should not, however, imagine that there is some grand conspiracy whose members have divided among themselves the task of deceiving humanity. No such coordination is needed to reproduce false notions.

All it takes is for some people to have an interest in spreading certain ideas, others to have an interest in preserving the existing order, and still others simply to feel no need to check anything. Add to this the habit of deferring to authority, the reluctance to cause conflict, economic dependence, and the natural desire to avoid unpleasant conclusions.

The result is a system capable of existing and reproducing itself without any central control.

Some of its participants really do lie. Others sincerely believe the claims they spread. Still others understand the limitations of their own views perfectly well but prefer not to discuss them publicly. Finally, a vast number of people do not think about what is happening at all, because they are occupied with more immediate concerns.

That is precisely why such a system is much harder to fight than a single liar.

A liar can be exposed. Their claims can be checked and their motives examined. But what do you do with a society in which a misconception is passed on in all sincerity, from one person to another, from parents to children, from teachers to students?

We are dealing with a false world that does not require a false universe in order to exist.

The ancient Gnostics imagined material reality as the creation of an imperfect or malevolent demiurge, and associated human liberation with the acquisition of special knowledge. In modern interpretations of this idea, the world is sometimes depicted as a vast artificial system that conceals the true nature of things from its inhabitants.

Yet people can build an entirely satisfactory prison on their own, using only the known properties of the human psyche and social institutions.

And this prison has one exceptionally convenient feature: its prisoners often defend the way it is built.

A person can defend a political order that harms them, justify economic relations in which they are at an obvious disadvantage, and protect traditions that restrict them personally. They can hate people who have never harmed them because they once learned that those were the people they should hate.

That does not mean they are necessarily stupid. The human intellect is perfectly capable of serving false beliefs. What is more, advanced reasoning skills can sometimes help a person come up with especially elaborate justifications for what they have already decided to believe.

Reason can not only set us free; it can also defend our own chains.

The current state of the world leads to an unpleasant conclusion: most of humanity lives in misconception, and only a few have managed to free themselves from it completely.

Of course, even these few live in society, are subject to its institutions, and have a human psyche with all the limitations that entails. Their views, too, have been shaped by circumstances they did not choose. They, too, can be mistaken, deceive themselves, and take what they wish for reality. What is more, the conviction that one is free of misconceptions strikes us as one of the most convenient ways of falling under their sway.

We are not particularly pleased by this.

But we are not surprised either.

After all, being freed from one misconception is no guarantee of being freed from the next. Behind one shattered picture of the world, another, no less mistaken, may appear. Behind that, a third. It is entirely possible that this process has no final end at all.

The existence of such an endless sequence does not mean that all notions are equally false or that searching for truth is pointless. On the contrary, some descriptions of reality are clearly better than others at explaining what happens and predicting the consequences of our actions. That is why we prefer inquiry to faith, evidence to authority, and correcting errors to preserving them.

But before a person can consciously begin this process, they must discover that there is anything in their own views that needs reconsidering.

Most misconceptions do not require a person to be blind.

It is enough that they see no need to look.

And this is where Awakening begins.