Zombies, Transhumanists, and the Meaning Crisis

Why the materialist worldview is so entrenched but also past its expiration date

For years I’ve been trying to talk about the worldview crisis and our collective loss of meaning in a way that’s interesting, accessible, fun, and even transformational. It’s difficult because providing the necessary background and context takes time and requires a review of history, philosophy, and quantum physics. In other words, it’s complex, and runs the risk of being boring to a lot of people. I’m doing my best to make it interesting.

And it also matters, deeply. It affects everything from technology development to our political and economic structures.

I very much want to talk about what it means to be human in the age of AI—or what Sam Altman is now calling “The Intelligence Age”—and to contrast that with the transhumanist ideology of prioritizing future humans who live in a disembodied simulation of pure information.

But, in order to get there, I first need to explain our predominant, scientific materialist (or physicalist) worldview, and especially how it’s all based on a series of unproven assumptions. So that’s what I’m attempting this week. We start by exploring the zombie myth as an entry point to the meaning crisis.

I started talking about this in a post a few weeks ago. Today, I want to expand on it a bit. As usual, there is a YouTube video version if you prefer multimedia to text. This one is a bit longer. So kick back, get some tea, and enjoy.

Zombies: Our Only Contemporary Myth

There are more zombie movies and TV shows in the 21st century than alien and other monster movies combined. I saw a stat from 2017 that over 600 zombie movies have been made since 1920 and more than half of those in the past 10 years.¹

As the French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari put it, our only modern myth is the myth of zombies. Although zombies have historically been seen as an allegory for rampant consumerism or a thought experiment in service of debates between philosophers, the mythology and symbolism goes much much deeper. As John Vervaeke points out, zombies represent our worldview crisis in the postmodern world—our deep unease about the loss of meaning and purpose in our world. Zombies after all, lack culture, consciousness, and community—they mirror our growing alienation, disengagement, and existential angst. 

Not only that but they gorge themselves on brains! 

In our post-modern world, the brain is the seat of intelligence and meaning-making. Vervaeke suggests that zombies’ insatiable appetite for brains represents culture devouring culture, and mind devouring mind. I would add to that a suggestion that, no matter how much we double down on reason and rationality in our society, what zombie tropes are telling us is that it will never get us where we want to go; a diet of intellect alone will not reanimate meaning for humanity. Not only that, but more brain matter doesn't lead to more consciousness, self-reflection, or wisdom.

There is some special significance to the fact that zombies come out of the ground. In today’s society, our alienation from nature manifests in a tendency to eschew all things corporeal, earthy, and mucky. In this sense, zombies represent our view of nature and matter itself as devoid of intelligence or consciousness, and even reprehensible. 

Digging even more deeply, zombies are the living dead, underscoring our collective fear of death and the mindless emptiness that awaits us within the depressing and distorted vision of death that arises from within our physicalist, scientific materialist worldview. 

In short, the zombie mythology is doing a lot of work, carrying the entire burden of our unmetabolized angst as a society. And, from consciousness to intelligence, to the corporeal and fear of death, the zombie myth touches on many themes I will be highlighting in this video series, as well as in my forthcoming book. 

In fact, we will come back to the zombie metaphor when we talk about the transhumanists and mind uploading because, if we do ever manage to make a copy of our minds in the cloud, I (and many others) think those copies will lack self-reflective consciousness, making them zombie-like as well.

Superheroes as Pseudo-Religions

By the way, Vervaeke also points to the popularity of superhero movies and comic books as another symptom of our intense yearning for myth and meaning, calling them “pseudo-religions.” 

Tilda Swinton’s character “The Ancient One” in Doctor Strange holding what appears to be some Eastern spiritual text about chakras.

As far as myths or sacred archetypes go, superhero stories are empty calories; they tantalize with the promise of archetypal meaning but always fail to provide any lasting sustenance. After all, superhero stories are devoid of comprehensive spiritual frameworks and only offer over-simplified, black-and-white stories of good versus evil. There are no spiritual texts, or sacred practices to provide the super fan with wisdom, self-realization, or lasting transformation, not to mention the direct experience of unity.

What Paradigm Shifts Feel Like

Imagine what it must have been like to live through the Copernican shift in the 16th century, from a geocentric model of the universe to a heliocentric model. To go from being the center of the universe to just another planet among the other heavenly bodies, orbiting the sun, adrift in a great void. That must have been deeply disorienting. That level of destabilizing worldview shift is hard to imagine today.

Or to live through the Darwinian shift two centuries ago, from thinking humans were god’s chosen ones or the focal point of creation—the central focus of the cosmos—to just a random endpoint in the long chain of mindless evolution of matter. It must have felt utterly disorienting, and possibly quite depressing. To the extent that god was still relevant, he was drifting further away.

I think humanity went through a similar series of paradigm shifts a century ago with quantum physics but, for whatever reason, the philosophical implications for our worldview were never fully absorbed by our culture, our media, or our institutions. And I think our failure to incorporate and integrate those discoveries is finally catching up with us. 

In other words, we are living through a paradigm shift every bit as disorienting as the Copernican or the Darwinian. But, even though it is happening with great intensity, almost nobody is talking about it.

Last time I talked about physicalism, and a little bit about idealism. Recall that “scientific materialism” or “physicalism” is the idea that the universe is entirely composed of matter / energy, and that all life simply arises out of random combinations of this matter / energy, purely by chance. It divides the world into subjects and objects and sees the cosmos as a “spiritually empty vastness, impersonal, indifferent to human concerns, governed by random processes devoid of purpose or meaning.”² Under physicalism, mankind and all of life is nothing more than a curious accident. 

Within this worldview, science holds all the answers to the big questions about the world. Questions like: what is nature? where did it all come from? what does it all mean? Today, scientists alone are the arbiters of truth. Philosophy is considered essentially irrelevant. 

Today, I want to dive more deeply into the anomalies from quantum physics that are incompatible with physicalism. But first, a bit more about the assumptions underlying physicalism.

The Assumptions of Physicalism

Once the Copernican shift to a heliocentric model of the solar system allowed us to improve our mathematical predictions of planetary motion, and Galileo and Newton perfected the laws of motion and gravity, we became more confident in our ability to understand the world. Darwin’s theory of evolution furthered this confidence. Suddenly, reason and empiricism ruled the day, even though the individual architects of Enlightenment science were all still quite religious. 

This was a period when fundamental science led consistently to technological marvels, like electricity, steam trains, the combustion engine, radio, photography, television, computers, vaccines, etc. As science allowed us to create new machines, this started to influence how we saw nature. The machine metaphor began to replace god, in an early example of the Marshall McLuhan feedback loop of technological innovation: We shape technology and then technology shapes us. 

It’s not that nature is a machine but that we desperately want it to be.

By the late 17th century, influential thinkers like René Descartes and Robert Boyle were promoting the idea that natural phenomena could be understood purely in terms of mechanical interactions of inert matter. In fact, Descartes thought that animals were complex machines, and that the human body is like a machine. 

Newton’s description of planetary orbits in particular bolstered this image of a clockwork universe (set in motion by a clockmaker God of course). Even Darwin’s theories fit into this mechanical metaphor. As we can see, this mechanization of nature was a driving force behind the Scientific Revolution.

But the underlying metaphysics of empty matter as fundamental is still just an assumption.

As scientists furthered their understanding of nature and began viewing it as a mechanical clock, the Abrahamic gods faded into the background, briefly retaining relevance as a distant clockmaker no longer involved in the world, before being snuffed out entirely. 

Once Nietzsche pointed out that we had killed god in 1882, the secularization of modernity was complete. But, again, the view that nature is governed by mechanical processes devoid of purpose or meaning was never proven empirically. Until the early 20th century, it was a well-fitting framework for scientific discoveries—science and physicalism were mutually reinforcing. But physicalism was and still is merely an assumption. 

But what if the nature of reality is far more mysterious than that?

The Two Suitors Parable

Cosmologist and philosopher Richard Tarnas has argued that the cosmos is essentially what we make of it. In his parable of the two suitors, we imagine that the cosmos is a mysterious cosmos of “great spiritual beauty and creative intelligence.” When she is approached by a hyperrational materialist scientist as lacking in intelligence, purpose, and interiority, she will happily oblige in affirming his view, revealing only those qualities. 

A cosmos of great spiritual beauty and creative intelligence

But when she is approached by a suitor who sees her as deeply intelligent and noble, permeated with mind and soul, imbued with purpose, and endowed with spiritual depths and mystery, she will open herself up more deeply, with greater beauty and rapturous bliss. 

In short, the cosmos responds to whatever view we approach her with.

The discoveries of quantum physics indicate that there is more to this parable than mere allegory. Some quantum physicists acknowledged that.

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. — Werner Heisenberg

The point I’m making here is that assuming that the human mind is the sole source and arbiter of meaning is an extraordinary act of hubris on our part. An act of cosmic proportions, and act worth questioning. 

Let’s take a brief detour to understand why “quantum weirdness” undermines the physicalist worldview. 

The Quantum Measurement Problem and the Role of Consciousness

Recall that one of the foundational assumptions of the physicalist worldview was that nature consists of an objective reality that is independent of human observation. There are subjects and objects and never the twain shall meet. Science has long strived for this Archimedean point of complete objectivity. But, because we are in the world, this is simply not possible. Quantum physics confirms this. 

At the quantum level, the act of measurement by an observer influences the system being observed. Up until the moment of observation, quantum particles exist in a fuzzy, indeterminate state full of probabilistic distributions, until they are observed. Schrödinger’s cat is both alive and dead until we open the box. Consciousness collapses the wave function, as they say. 

Nobody can explain this in terms of the physicalist worldview. Idealism—the view that everything is ultimately consciousness—offers a satisfying and simple explanation (which we will explore next time). But physicalism has to pretend this didn’t happen. 

Interpretations of Quantum Weirdness

To avoid having to acknowledge that consciousness may play a role with subatomic particles, and to avoid having to revise our worldview, scientists offer several unsatisfying interpretations of this so-called “quantum weirdness.”

The first is simply to ignore the philosophical implications of this and stay focused on doing science, performing experiments, etc. This is known as the Copenhagen interpretation. Nothing to see here; carry on. A sort of metaphysical shrug. Leave those question to the philosophers, who we have deemed irrelevant. 

The second is the many worlds theory. Under this theory, consciousness doesn’t actually affect reality. Instead, the universe continually branches or forks into multiple parallel realities. All possible outcomes occur simultaneously in different, non-interacting parallel universes. 

This illustrates the strong tendency within science to seek explanations that fit within the existing paradigm. Do you see how, rather considering an alternative metaphysics, scientists would prefer to hypothesize a extravagant explanations that sound as plausible as alternative metaphysics? Many worlds, dark matter, dark energy, string theory. None of these has been empirically verified, at least not yet. 

Scientists would rather propose additional dimensions or multiple universes than to consider an alternative metaphysics, to reevaluate the long-standing assumption that matter is fundamental! 

Nonlocality and Entanglement

Another quantum anomaly that has never been sufficiently explained by science is quantum entanglement. You see, there are several ways to bind two subatomic particles to each other. Once they are entangled, the state of one determines the state of the other. You could then separate these entangled particles by miles or even light years and they would remain entangled. This has been verified experimentally many times since the early 1970s. 

This creates problems for physicalism because it violates what's known in physics as "local realism." In physicalism, it is essential that all forces acting on an object be local to that object, such as gravity or electromagnetism. In addition, according to Einstein, nothing in nature can travel faster than light. Nevertheless, entanglement over great distances seems to indicate instantaneous communication traveling faster the than the speed of light. 

This is what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance," because he was deeply troubled by the idea.

Wavicles

Another strange feature of reality revealed by physics is that matter has both a wave nature and a particle nature. Yet it is not either. It is more of a wavicle that can take different forms depending on how a particular experiment or observation is performed. 

Nature seems to respond to our inquiry. 

In short, quantum physics has shown us that nature responds to the kinds of questions we ask, and the experiments we design, just like the parable of the two suitors.

The Mystery of Consciousness

Finally, speaking of consciousness, one mystery that science has not explained is precisely how consciousness arises from matter in our brains. Nobody knows how this might work. It is known as the "hard problem of consciousness." 

So much of transhumanism rests on the assumption that consciousness arises from matter. Our ability to upload our minds into machines and make copies of ourselves requires treating consciousness as an epiphenomenon of the brain. Also, the simulation hypothesis assumes that consciousness arises from matter. Otherwise, how could simulated humans have these rich, conscious experiences inside a machine? 

The Implications of Quantum Physics

In modern physics, the image of the universe as a machine has been replaced by that of an interconnected, dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interdependent and have to be understood as patterns of a cosmic process. Here's Fritjof Capra on this point:

As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated “basic building blocks” but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. . . . This means that the classical ideal of an objective description of nature is no longer valid. The Cartesian partition between the I and the world, between the observer and the observed, cannot be made when dealing with atomic matter. In atomic physics, we can never speak about nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves.³

But it’s like nobody told us. Nobody talks about this. I mean they don’t teach this in school today, do they? You only hear stuff like that if you hang out with spiritual people.

Thomas Kuhn, the great historian and philosopher of science, has described how scientific paradigms change through a crisis that results from an accumulation of anomalies in the current paradigm that can no longer be ignored. Quantum physics has given us several of these anomalies. Yet somehow we have successfully ignored them for a century.

Why Quantum Physics Hasn’t Changed Our Worldview

Physicalism makes a certain kind of intuitive sense: Things are roughly where we left them when we wake up in the morning, and we all seem to share the same reality made of solid objects. But we've also been living within the physicalist worldview for centuries. We have been conditioned to see the world this way. 

Physicalism is also deeply embedded in our institutions—universities, the mass media, etc. It exists in the realm of dogma. Anyone who challenges it is laughed at, ridiculed, and excluded from mainstream discussion. For example, when celebrity physicists like Brian Cox are dismissive of someone like Deepak Chopra, it's because Cox lives in a world of practical science and Chopra is attempting to have a conversation about metaphysics. They're talking past each other. But, because celebrity scientists like Cox are able to dazzle us with fascinating factoids and mind-blowing conjectures about the cosmos, we don't question their authority on matters of philosophy or metaphysics. 

Doesn’t Advanced Technology Prove Physicalism?

An argument often mentioned in defense of science is the broad and impressive effectiveness of technology. We’ve got iPhones and Instagram, vaccines and electric cars, nuclear energy and ChatGPT. But remember that today’s technology is only designed based on the forces and laws of nature we are aware of and understand. If scientists allowed themselves to explore the realms forbidden by physicalism who knows what kinds of new technologies would be possible! 

Again, being critical of the metaphysics of physicalism is not a critique of science or the scientific method. Nor is it some sort of luddite ideology. It is merely pointing out the ways that physicalism fails to answer some big questions raised by quantum physics, and consequently limits our imagination and our potential as a humanity.

Unconscious Psychological Factors

In addition, Bernardo Kastrup has suggested that there are unconscious psychological factors driving physicalism. Physicalism is sustained, in part, because it functions so well as a neurotic ego defense mechanism. 

One way to put this is that if there is a separate world of stuff out there, unconnected to us, then we don't need to feel responsible for it. And there is no need to find meaning because meaning doesn't exist. We are simply ghosts in the machine. And we are subject to forces beyond our control.

There is a certain lightening of personal responsibility with physicalism. To hear materialists or behaviorists tell it, you are simply a series of deterministic responses to stimuli without any control over your actions. Sam Harris has talked about choices being illusions, explaining that choices are part of long chains of effects in our brains and we are just along for the ride:

Did I consciously choose coffee over tea? No. The choice was made for me by events in my brain that I . . . could not inspect or influence. 

Science views the brain and the mind as essentially a machine, a machine that tricks us into thinking that we are conscious and have free will. 

Also, the idea that we will soon have total mastery over nature grants people a sense of control over their own lives and makes their challenges and our challenges seem manageable. It satisfies our need for order, stability, and control. This is why we put so much faith in science and technology to solve all of our problems. If we can just think harder and invent faster then we’ll be saved. This is what drives transhumanism. 

These psychological factors are powerful sources of resistance to seeing the world outside of our physicalist conditioning.

Physicalism Determines Our Socioeconomic and Political Systems

Another reason physicalism is so deeply ingrained in our society is how its emphasis on matter has given us the consumerist ethos and secular society. You could even go so far as to say that it is the underpinning of capitalism and democracy, not to mention communism. All of those ideologies arose within the physicalist epoch. 

So the cracks we are seeing in the façade are much bigger than it seems at first. Moving beyond physicalism may also mean moving beyond the economic and political structures of the past two centuries. 

As Bernardo Kastrup has said:

[Physicalism] survives partly because of inertia, but mainly because of its symbiotic relationship with our economic system. By linking consciousness and personal identity to limited and temporary arrangements of matter, [physicalism] inculcates the following subjective values in our culture: life is short and you’ve only got one to live; the only source of meaning lies in matter – after all, nothing else exists – so the game is to accumulate as many material things as possible; we should consume as fast as possible, even at the expense of others or the planet, for we have nothing to lose since we’re going to die soon anyway.⁴

So perhaps a shift in our collective worldview will allow us to imagine and create new forms of living together that haven’t yet been imagined. Structures and models that transcend capitalism, communism, and anarchism. Maybe. 

The Age of Reason and Intellectual Fundamentalism

It’s worth mentioning that the scientific age elevated reason to special status, above all other human faculties like intuition, imagination, emotional intelligence, and wisdom. The Copernican revolution did spark the Age of Reason after all, and we’ve been living in its shadow ever since. I talked about how we overvalue intelligence in my video about artificial general intelligence. Bernardo Kastrup calls this overemphasis on rational intellect “intellectual fundamentalism.” 

As I said, Sam Altman just published a blog post titled “The Intelligence Age,” where he framed AI as a messiah once again, and suggested that we may have superintelligence within “a few thousand days.” Watch my video on the hurdles facing AGI for my detailed argument that this is unlikely. I could be wrong. 

Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is paved with compute, energy, and human will.

He goes on to say that the AI of the future, this superintelligence, will not only “fix the climate” but will discover “all of physics.” I wonder if AI can discover “all of physics” when our physics has been written with physicalism baked in—where AI has been trained on that worldview. But, perhaps AI can help us to acknowledge the limits of the physicalist worldview! Maybe that’s what it will take to make the shift: being told by a machine that it’s necessary. Now wouldn’t that be humbling!

Conclusion

Worldviews matter because they shape culture and set the parameters for what is possible and acceptable in science, the humanities, art, and even politics. Worldviews determine our relationship with nature, and our relationships with each other. In short, our worldview is the DNA of our culture and its institutions. 

In short, as Richard Tarnas says, worldviews create worlds.

To be clear, physicalism was an important improvement over the dogmatic, organized Abrahamic religions that preceded it, especially Christianity. It was also an improvement over undiscerning superstitious views that saw elemental spirits everywhere, or desired to escape reality into some heavenly realm. But physicalism is not the end of the road. It was just a necessary course correction from the Middle Ages in Europe.

One downside to looking to science alone to set the parameters of what’s possible is that this then artificially limits what’s worthy of study by science. For example, near-death experiences (NDEs), parapsychology, or homeopathy. 

Of course the bigger downside is that it strips the world of all deeper meaning. 

At the very least, I think physicists owe us an explanation for the quantum anomalies I listed above. We should demand it.

A Wisdom Void

Before modern times, we used to look to priests, rabbis, monks, and gurus for wisdom and guidance. Now we have scientists who are not only narrow specialists but have reached their station because they are good at math, not because they have cultivated wisdom. We have very few wise elders anymore. Wisdom is out of fashion. 

Brian Cox says that the greatest threat to humanity is stupidity. I disagree. I think the greatest threat to humanity is ignorance, scientific dogma, and a lack of wisdom.

Imagining a new kind of wise elder, part scientist and part spiritual mystic

Implications for Transhumanism and AGI

What's exciting about all the hype around artificial intelligence and AGI, and especially the transhumanist ideologies, is that it gives us an opportunity to talk about alternatives to physicalism. You might even say that it forces us to! 

In terms of transhumanism, Silicon Valley, and technology innovation, a shift from physicalism to something like idealism would mean that we would stop wasting our time on things that are unattainable, like mind uploading. And, instead of worrying about living in a simulation, we would begin to find meaning in our lives for the first time in three centuries.

I think healing the divide between reason and our other valuable human faculties, and finding a new worldview that ensouls the world once again is the key to healing ourselves as a humanity. More on that in my upcoming posts.

1. Vervaeke, John, Christopher Mastropietro, and Filip Miscevic, Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis (Open Book Publishers, 2017).

2. Tarnas, Richard, Cosmos & Psyche.

3. Capra, Fritjof, The Tao of Physics (pp. 68-69).

4. Kastrup, Bernardo, Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism and Culture (p. 148).