On Scientific and Cynical Materialism
Two parallel roads to metaphysical nihilism
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: what you call “love” is nothing more than a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, and then slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage.
If you don’t know where that line comes from, I envy you. If you do, allow me to explain why I’m referencing what is possibly the most over-rated not-for-kids cartoon ever made. Strict empiricists do not seek complex explanations for perplexing phenomena, but rather simple explanations that can be framed in the most reductive of scientific terms, even concerning things that are outside the realm of science. To the strict empiricist, there is nothing that cannot be quantified, and therefore anything that cannot be quantified is imaginary. The absolute extent of Rick and Morty’s genius (thus why I consider it over-rated) is an accurate portrayal of a strict empiricist technological wizard as a reductive-thinking nihilist. Rick Sanchez is the quintessential scientific materialist.
But Sasha! You keep saying that there’s no such thing as scientific materialism! How can a person be a scientific materialist if their philosophy is not real?!
Because Rick Sanchez is a cartoon character, not an actual scientist. Anyone who has actually worked in a scientific field can tell you that scientists are generally the most inaccurately-portrayed characters in entertainment, the single most infamous example out there being The Big Bang Theory. The actual philosophy of science is not strict empiricism. Empirical data is important, never forget that, but the actual philosophy is objectivism, or scientific realism, rather than any form of materialism. Scientific materialism, rather, is a strawman parody subscribed to by worshippers of science, better-known as scientism…
…and denounced by anti-science intellectuals, most of whom know fuck-all about science, and have only been exposed to what the popular press says about it. Unlike scientific realism, scientism is a “theory of everything,” and because science concerns itself only with objective reality, anything that falls outside the realm of objectivity is outside of the unified scientistic theory, therefore the scientific materialists don’t believe in it. Most human emotions are like this, incidentally, thus confounding the materialists; “facts don’t care about your feelings” is a perfectly valid statement, but it may be easily countered with “feelings don’t care about facts,” thus turning any argument into a zero-sum game.
A zero-sum game is precisely what cynical materialists believe already exists, and that there is no escape. The answer to the soul-crushing existence in service of The Machine is to become one’s own Machine. No better is this illustrated than with the breakdown of human pair-bonding in western civilisation, which began with the “liberation” of women from their families. We’ve all heard the saying by now that feminism convinced three generations of women that working for a loving husband was somehow slavery, but that working for a soulless corporation was somehow freedom. This comes from a strange notion that wives and children were not people, but property, in pre-modern culture viewed through a modern lens. In this particular modern lens, we have moved beyond viewing things in terms of feelings, emotional attachment is not real, therefore all relationships are entirely transactional. Dating is nothing more than legalised prostitution, see, so any kindness that a man shows a woman cannot possibly be genuine, and instead must have an ulterior motive. Another way to put it is that cynical materialists view all people of [insert collective boogeyman here] as narcissistic, treating all others based entirely on their material utility.
After three different waves of feminism in the west finally managed to achieve female supremacy (no, really, I can prove that, in fact
already has), a cynicism in the opposite direction finally managed to gain popularity, though I can tell you from personal experience that it already existed. This is the narrative of the manosphere, and in fact, this conversation…
…responding to this article, which I know to be a parody only because I was reliably informed so…
…is precisely why I decided to write this little piece in the first place. The cynical materialist view of human pair-bonding is that of the zero-sum game of exploitation. Where feminists view men as would-be slave masters, the manosphere views women as parasites. No, really. Imagine, if you will, being told that your purpose is to apply yourself more than necessary to get qualifications to slave away at a job you hate, just so that your hard-earned money can be spent by a permanent house-guest who gets to have all the fun at your expense, simply because you had the misfortune of being born male. Happiness, for you, must be entirely vicarious, assuming you even have the energy to do anything other than sleep at the end of the work-day. See? I basically just repeated myself, didn’t I? That’s because they are already two sides of the same coin, with the manosphere being an unwitting parody of radical feminism…
…so any deliberate parody of the manosphere in the opposite direction is virtually indistinguishable from actual radical feminism. Give it enough time, and the pendulum of parody will swing back in the opposite direction, and just as now, only those in on the joke will actually find it funny. Even then, plenty of examples of the cynical materialists’ claims exist; they are called “living strawmen,” and for those of us who have a little too much experience with them, they are the reason that we generally don’t like people. I’d tell you not to end up like me, but none of us get to choose our parents.
The best example of cynical materialism, however, is being anathema to aesthetics, or disdaining decoration. To provide “basic needs” while maximising efficiency, therefore, means eliminating all the things we “don’t need,” and the first to go is art. No-one “needs” art. Yeah, well…
Earth without art is just “Eh”
In any materialist world view, art is superfluous. Humans don’t need it to survive, at least not in a biological sense. And yet, evidence of art pre-dates evidence of civilisation by about fifty thousand years. What gives? If the Stone Age was a period of brutal struggle for survival, why would anyone waste valuable resources, such as time, on something that isn’t “needed”? The answer is fairly simple: humans need a reason to live. There is no reason to go on living if there is nothing to live for. Pure efficiency, that is to say the maximisation of productivity and the minimisation of waste, is a great way to run a factory, but not a great way to run one’s own life simply because it gets boring after a while. It’s also not a great way to run society, as I’m sure we’re all aware.
Unfortunately, even those disgusted by materialism sometimes find themselves hopelessly mired in a materialist mindset. This is the type that denounces greed and material inequality, yet focuses entirely on the material needs of people, rather than any higher purpose. Think of this type as the person who hates the Matrix, but is incapable of grasping the idea that there is a world outside of it. Their “escape” is simply another program in the simulation, and it leaves such a person always craving more. Even the ancients noticed this, though they framed it in a very different manner. That, however, we shall dive into another time. For now, let me know if this was any clearer than a whirlpool in a mud puddle. Vale!
"why would anyone waste valuable resources, such as time, on something that isn’t 'needed'?"
I would go even further and say that beauty is as necessary as air and food, although its lack leads to a more subtle problem: we go insane. And we're mired in a century-long experiment to prove this point, in the worst way possible.