The Most Important Echo Chamber of All - Musings and Meditations
- filipvk
- Jul 11
- 16 min read
Dear friends,
In this musing, I’m going to make an exception and allow myself just a tiny bit more words than usual, since my New Year’s resolution to keep these Musings short. I’m doing this because this text really does touch on the essence of my project and my goals for the coming years. So please bear with me—it won’t be unbearably long, either.
I’d like to talk a bit more about the echo chamber you don’t even realize you’re in. Since this is the biggest echo chamber of them all, I’ll need a few more words this time—to counterbalance all the words constantly bouncing off the walls of that very echo chamber we’re all in together.
Plus, I’m going on vacation after this, and you won’t hear from me for several weeks. I might send out a Walkie-Talkie or two this summer, but that’s about it. So consider this the season finale! And thanks in advance for reading, and for following the blog and the project!
Let me just throw this out there—a somewhat broad and possibly slightly irritating question (and I apologize if you do find the question a bit irritating):
“What do you actually believe about why there is a universe, and why we are here? ...”
Do you believe there is a reason, a purpose? Or that there isn’t one? Or do you have no opinion on the matter?
. . .
Are you still there?
Or have you already tossed this post into the digital trash can?
Just kidding, but questions like this aren't always appreciated these days.
And you might not be able to come up with an answer right away. As I said, it’s a bit of a broad question. Maybe you’re on vacation, lying on a beach, or enjoying a drink on a sun-drenched terrace, and you have absolutely no desire to think about the possible reasons for the universe’s existence. In that case, I can hardly blame you, but maybe you can keep the question in the back of your mind for a later time.
If you do want to think about it a bit, and if you do have an idea of what you actually believe about this (because our hectic economy and society don’t really encourage us to reflect on it regularly, nor do they leave us much time for it), do you also know why you believe what you believe? Another annoying question.
Did you arrive at this belief based on information? Or rather on intuition or a gut feeling? And if you think your worldview is based on information, do you consider that to be scientific information? How did that information reach you? And are you also certain that all relevant information on the subject has reached you?
Once again, my apologies if you find these questions annoying, impertinent, irritating, uncomfortable, or even absurd.
If you do find the questions interesting, you might want to take some time to think about them and perhaps even jot down your answers in a journal. The questions are indeed relevant to the rest of this post.
Incidentally, I’m not going to try to convince you that there is a single correct answer to the question I posed above. What I do want to discuss is how the echo chamber of our society makes it difficult to even think about this, and to find and integrate all the relevant information on the subject.
In my previous two musings, I have already addressed the issue of echo chambers. In the first of those posts, I pointed out that we can actually view our entire society as a kind of echo chamber, in which dominant worldviews are reflected and amplified, while divergent views are often underrepresented, ignored, or outright suppressed. In the second musing, I discussed how the echo chambers of our mainstream media present a very limited and biased view of other parts of the world, as well as of our own society—something I discovered during my years living abroad.
Now I’d like to circle back to the premise that our entire society can be viewed as one big echo chamber, particularly with regard to the overarching worldview that forms the foundation of a society and a culture.
In more or less free societies, multiple worldviews coexist side by side: in the realms of religion, political beliefs, economics, spirituality, and so on, many different visions and paradigms coexist, ideally in a peaceful manner. These worldviews partially overlap and also allow information to “trickle through” from one worldview (or echo chamber, if you will) to another. That is why you can even be aware of the existence of different viewpoints, opinions, and worldviews in a society: because there is more than one.
It is precisely the difference and the contrast that make us perceive the existence of different perspectives and worldviews. This is true of everything, for that matter. If black did not exist, we would not be able to recognize white as white. Contrasts and opposites cannot exist without one another.
And the extent to which people remain open to other viewpoints and other visions of the world determines, in a sense, the extent to which a society can evolve, adapt to new situations, or formulate responses to crises.
But every society also operates on the basis of an overarching or dominant worldview, which, for all practical purposes, represents that society’s “operating system.”
That worldview encompasses, as it were, the blueprint for how we collectively act in the organization of the economy, trade, political institutions, education, scientific institutions, and so on. That overarching worldview also has a major influence on art, literature, and other expressions of human imagination and creativity. It even has a major influence on what we individually think and even feel—or rather, what we allow ourselves to think or feel— because we all gauge this, to a greater or lesser extent, against what people around us seem to think or feel.
And we’d rather not deviate too much from that, because we usually don’t want to feel like the odd one out. Deviating a little from the consensus is allowed, but preferably not too much.
And in secular industrial societies, that worldview is, for the time being, philosophical and scientific materialism or physicalism (very briefly summarized: the notion that matter and measurable elementary forces are the only things that truly exist, and that consciousness is a byproduct of purely material processes in the brain—a byproduct that arose by chance due to an evolutionary advantage).
I’ll be discussing that materialism often, precisely because it is the most important foundation for how we think (or don’t think) and feel (or don’t feel) about the world and ourselves today. I’ve already discussed some of the implications of that materialism in Walkie-Talkie 11. And because that belief is so ubiquitous, it becomes difficult to even notice it. Something that is present everywhere becomes invisible.
Certainly, even in secular industrial societies, there are large groups of people who still strongly identify with a religion, or with another spiritual worldview or tradition. But today, those diverse religious worldviews do not determine how we collectively deal with our economy, with technology, with political systems, with education, or with the organization of scientific institutions. Today, they have little or no influence on the functioning of capitalism as an economic model, on the way we organize and sustain industrial agriculture and livestock farming, or on the arguments used to justify the construction of massive data centers for our insatiable AI models. They are not taken into account in the decisions we make regarding our relationship to the natural world and the biosphere.
In the day-to-day workings of the modern global economy and political order, it is usually a matter of weighing interests and balances of power at the local, national, and international levels—considerations that are often of a “game-theoretical” nature, without any frame of reference to some transcendent reality, ultimate meaning, or value. And this applies just as much to countries where religion does still play an important social role or serves as a major institution.
Game theory is preeminently a materialistic approach to the relationship between the self and the other, from the personal level all the way up to the international level. Its starting point is a kind of amoral reality in which individual actors pursue nothing but their own self-interest—something that is, of course, also reflected in the neodarwinian view of biology. Game theory, incidentally, is a crucial factor in understanding how our world has become embroiled not in one but in multiple arms races simultaneously (for example, the AI arms race), and I plan to share a particularly fascinating interview on this topic soon with social philosopher Daniël Schmachtenberger.
In short, we can therefore say that the blueprint for the practical organization of our society is, for the time being, determined by philosophical or scientific materialism, although we are rarely aware of this.
Capitalism, as an economic model, is also an expression and reflection of the materialist worldview. One could even argue that modern capitalism itself would not have been possible without materialism as its philosophical foundation: if everything is simply mindless matter, and nothing has intrinsic or sacred value, then everything—both nature and people—can be used and abused to one’s heart’s content. The importance of the materialist paradigm as the foundation for capitalism is very well illuminated by Jason Hickel in his masterpiece ‘Less Is More’ . Jeremy Lent, too, in his ‘The Web of Meaning’, establishes the connection between our paradigm and our economic model. Both books are highly recommended reading!
We are very rarely aware of materialism as an overarching worldview precisely because it is so ubiquitous. At the level just below that, we can perceive the existence of different worldviews precisely because there are different ones, but the overarching worldview is so dominant that we take it for granted, just as a fish takes water for granted (I suppose).
And one of the reasons this worldview is so overwhelming and ubiquitous is precisely the profound effect of the echo chamber that is our society.
Its ubiquity is reflected in the extent to which information that confirms this worldview reaches you.
And this happens through just about every channel through which information cán reach you: education, universities, scientific institutions, television and radio programs, newspapers, magazines, YouTube, and social media channels dedicated to science, Wikipedia, and so on and so forth.
Let’s start with our mainstream media: newspapers, television, and radio.
There, an overwhelming majority of scientists and philosophers who endorse the materialistic worldview invariably have their say. Virtually all “television scientists,” such as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Cox, operate on the basis of materialist assumptions. Whether the topic is biology, physics, the study of consciousness, astrophysics, psychology, and so on, almost always those who endorse and promote the materialist view of reality will be featured.
Rarely, if ever, will you come across an interview in a mainstream medium like television or radio with, say, Iain McGilchrist, Bernard Beitman, Fritjof Capra, Alex Gomez-Marin, or Bernard Carr.
Have you ever spotted Bernardo Kastrup in the weekend edition of your newspaper, or on the radio?
Have you ever seen Amit Goswami or Frederico Faggin featured in the science section of your newspaper?
Have you ever heard Ervin László explain his vision on cosmology during prime-time television?
No, what you’ll be presented with in the mainstream will, for the most part, be the usual materialistic and mechanistic view of humanity, the world, and the universe.
Also popular YouTubers who blog about science (Veritasium, Kurzgesagt, etc.) almost always assume a materialistic worldview—although this is never actually stated explicitly. As mentioned, once something becomes ubiquitous enough, it goes unnoticed. It seems like common sense itself, no longer questioned.
You might ask: perhaps that’s because almost all scientists are staunch materialists? Contrary to what you might expect, that’s not the case: a recent survey of scientists conducted by the respected Pew Research Center, for example, found that about 51 percent of scientists today identify as religious—not exactly a hallmark of materialism—and that’s a (albeit narrow) majority. This shouldn’t surprise us all that much, given that about 60 percent of 20th-century Nobel Prize winners described themselves as religious. So the idea that nearly all scientists are materialists is simply not true. It is true, however, that they are often better off keeping quiet about their faith, as the prominent mathematician and philosopher John Lennox of the University of Oxford discovered on several occasions when he spoke openly about his faith early in his career.
But more on the relationship between religion and science another time, because there is, of course, a great deal to say on that subject.
Our educational curricula also reflect the fundamental assumptions of materialism. Universities and scientific institutions guard the materialist worldview like a sacred dogma (as John Lennox discovered early on), and sometimes literally declare other views to be heresy (as biologist and philosopher of science Rupert Sheldrake found out when the editor-in-chief of the journal Nature called for his books to be burned (sic!)). I have already featured a number of scientists in this blog who spoke about the taboos in the scientific world regarding this subject. In the post ‘Five Sigma,’ I also shared a video of a lecture by Dean Radin for Google Tech Talks on the results of the research conducted by IONS and the taboo that prevails in the scientific world regarding research into PSI phenomena. In the Musings,'A Blind Man Sees??,' Alex Gomez-Marin spoke out about the opposition to any research that contradicts materialistic assumptions. More testimonies along these lines will follow on this blog, so stay tuned. Scientists these days no longer end up burning at the stake, but they do risk their jobs, careers, reputations, or research grants.
Or take a look around the science section of a typical bookstore: it’s always the same old fare. You’re much more likely to come across books by Robert Sapolski (who denies the existence of free will) than to find the book Irreducible by Frederico Faggin (who considers free will not only real, but even the foundation of reality down to the quantum level).
You’ll likely find books by philosopher Daniel Dennett, who argues that our consciousness is an illusion, but not the books by philosopher Bernardo Kastrup, who argues that everything, including matter, is a form of consciousness—a position known as idealism in philosophy and which can be described as the counterpart to materialism.
You will most likely find several books by Richard Dawkins, the uncrowned king of the neodarwinists and the “new atheists,” but not the books by biologist Dennis Noble (one of the many leading biologists who recognize that neodarwinism is on its last legs), or those by philosopher of science David Berlinski (who likewise argues that our theory of evolution is currently built on quicksand), or by the aforementioned mathematician John Lennox on the relationship between religion and science.
You’ll likely come across books by Giulio Tononi or other materialist neuroscientists on consciousness as an epiphenomenon of brain activity, but not the books by Marjorie Woollacott, Michael Egnor, or Iain McGilchrist—some of the leading neuroscientists who view consciousness as ontologically fundamental rather than as a product of brain activity.
Not to mention books by Stephen Meyer, Ervin László, Bruce Greyson, Ed Kelly, Jim Tucker, Raymond Moody, Amit Goswami, Sam Parnia or Serena Roney-Dougal. If you’ve never heard of these people, I don’t blame you: they, along with countless others, largely fall outside the echo chamber of our bookstores, educational institutions, media, and scientific institutions and publications. Not because they aren’t good scientists, but because their theories run counter to the dominant view within that echo chamber.
Of course, you might argue that in that same bookstore you’ll also find an “esotericism” or “religion” section, where you can discover all sorts of books on dowsing, shamanism, astrology, or aura reading. Certainly, but those subjects aren’t considered genuine sources of factual truth and knowledge—that honor is reserved almost exclusively for science today. That’s why it doesn’t really matter that you find those things in the esoteric or self-help sections; for our culture, they are no more important to the actual organization of our society than the cookbook or gardening sections—if anything, less so. No, for what we consider to be real knowledge about the world, we turn to the “science” section in the bookstore.
Only science can provide us with true knowledge—that is an ideology that has essentially become our modern-day religion and is called “scientism.”
You could also argue, incidentally, that people today don’t even go to bookstores that much anymore, but are more likely to search online for reading material. I haven’t looked up any data on that yet, but I suspect it doesn’t matter because the algorithms of online bookstores will exhibit the same kind of selection and bias: what’s popular and already well-known is amplified, and what’s unknown you have to go looking for yourself. The echo chamber, right?
This monoculture of information and worldview isn’t the result of deliberate and organized censorship by some central committee that decides which books are on the shelves, unless you live in a dictatorship (or in Florida).
There is no truth commission issuing decrees from an imposing building in the capital about which scientists may be interviewed on television or radio. No, it’s a much more subtle process than that, and it has to do with all kinds of social dynamics at all kinds of levels, as I already pointed out in my first musing on echo chambers. No one is driving this bus; the one-sidedness of the information that reaches you is an emergent process that has everything to do with conformity, fear, the need to belong to groups, and the desire not to be the odd one out. And it’s not that easy to change the course of an emergent process with such momentum.
I could go on for a while longer giving examples of how the channels through which information reaches us exhibit a bias that promotes materialism or physicalism as the only “reasonable” view of reality, but I think the above will suffice.
I’m not even talking yet about the other views that exist regarding the nature of reality—views that propose radically different perspectives than materialism. For now, I simply want to illustrate how few of those other perspectives reach the general public, due to the effective operation of the echo chamber.
The information that reaches you without much effort on your part will, in all likelihood, have materialism as its unspoken foundation for thinking about humanity and the world.
If you do make an effort and want to explore a different perspective, there are, of course, more opportunities and channels than ever before to do so.
The infinite amount of information available online truly offers many opportunities to seek out information outside the mainstream perspective—information that would have been virtually impossible to find in the past. Whether it’s books, websites, papers and publications, interviews on YouTube and Vimeo, and so on: there has never been more information available from outside the echo chamber, but you do have to actively seek it out yourself, and you have to know how to separate the wheat from the chaff: junk information, conspiracy theories, fabrications, and outright nonsense—you have to navigate your way through many “rabbit holes.”
What’s more, you might be tempted to dismiss valuable information as nonsense too quickly, precisely because of the lifelong indoctrination we’ve all been exposed to within the echo chamber that is our society. It’s an undertaking that makes up a large part of my activities, and it requires a lot of time and energy—something not everyone has to spare in our hectic rat race, which is only getting more hectic. And on top of that, it requires a willingness to question much of what you’ve taken for granted up until now—and that, too, isn’t easy. Certainties give us comfort, and sometimes it’s nice to stay within the safety of the familiar echo chamber. And so it takes a certain amount of courage to leave that familiar chamber—or even to question it—especially when that echo chamber turns out to be our entire society.
That fear is comparable to the fear of sailors in earlier times who were afraid of falling off the edge of the flat earth if they sailed too far from home—a comparison that Robert Pirsig also made in his philosophical novel ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,’ which is preeminently a philosophical treatise on leaving the largest and most important echo chamber of all.
Moreover, many people immediately dismiss you as a “conspiracy loonie” if you so much as question any mainstream paradigm. Or you’re quickly suspected of wanting to promote a hidden classical-religious agenda and of wanting to lead us back to theological dogma.
Presenting information from outside the echo chamber that is our society is therefore often not exactly appreciated—quite the opposite. People quickly become uncomfortable, or downright hostile, when generally accepted “truths” within the echo chamber are questioned.
There is much more to be said about the various layers of the largest echo chamber, and the limitations on the information that reaches us extend beyond the examples I’ve given so far. But I wanted above all to illustrate the limitations regarding scientific information, because that currently has the greatest impact on our worldview—and on what we can or are willing to believe about the world and about ourselves. That is why I also like to focus on science and the philosophy of science in this blog: science has an aura of truth about it, and therefore it can be an excellent starting point for questioning precisely those beliefs about the world that we consider “scientific,” because those beliefs so often are not based on scientific data.
In any case, I want to do my part to help spread and “signal-boost” reliable and sound information that might help put aspects of our materialistic echo chamber into perspective and call them into question. Information that can help create a crack in the certainties of this extremely nihilistic worldview we inhabit—a worldview that is partly responsible for the deplorable way in which we abuse and deplete our natural world.
To that end, I not only write these musings but also collect links and information about scientific institutions working toward a “post-materialist” science—something of the utmost importance in this age of scientism, in which science alone is credited with the power to enable true knowledge of reality. If science itself now seems to be moving beyond materialism, I think we all need to pay close attention: that is the beginning of a major paradigm-shift, far greater than you might currently imagine due to our lifelong immersion in the echo chamber of our society, to which you, too, have been subjected.
You will find these links on the corresponding page in the menu at the top of the website: 'Science and the New Paradigm.' You’ll also find relevant sites and people on the 'Philosophy and Worldview' links page.
I would therefore like to invite you to take a look at these pages more than once and follow the links to the relevant organizations and individuals. You might find it an extremely fascinating journey!
To return to the question with which I began this somewhat lengthy musing: “What is the reason that there is a universe, and that you are here, that we are here?”
In the materialistic worldview, which profoundly shapes our society, the answer to that question is simple: there is no reason. The universe is meaningless, and so are you, basically. Everything is a stupid accident, without reason, meaning, or purpose. The American philosopher Norman O. Brown already back in the 1950s called this a “sadomasochistic” worldview , and he was absolutely right. And a sadomasochistic worldview does not foster a fruitful, loving relationship with the natural world, with the miracle of our biosphere, and with the miracle that is ourselves.
Our echo chamber, therefore, reverberates with information that shapes a worldview that is masochistic and ultimately violent in nature. Materialism or physicalism is not a neutral view supported purely by scientific evidence; it is a view based on power politics rather than science—a worldview that is neither innocent nor value-free, but is partly responsible for the chillingly rapid destruction of our environment and of everything that makes being human worthwhile. Materialism has itself become a religion—a religion of meaninglessness and worthlessness, a masochistic religion indeed.
But from outside the echo chamber, other sounds reach us, and if we are quiet, we can already hear them: ideas that herald a completely different worldview, and that worldview will differ in every way from the one we currently inhabit.
To be continued!
I wish you all a wonderful summer, hopefully without too many heat waves, flash floods, or other extreme weather. The fact that we wish such things for one another already shows how far we’ve come down the path of climate disruption—a path that has everything to do with our worldview and the echo chamber we’re trapped in.
Thank you for reading this rather lengthy musing, and until the next episode,
All the best to you,
Filip
