Everything is Meaningless
but we humans add meaning to it.
In a brain changing (quite literally) book titled ‘Deviate’, Beau Lotto, a professor of Neuroscience who specializes in biology, philosophy and psychology of perception, writes that all information is meaningless.
He writes, ‘To understand human perception, you must first understand that all information in and of itself is meaningless’. Which means — we do not have access to reality. What we think is reality is in truth just our perception.
Wait, what?
Well yes! And Lotto’s explanation is plain simple. We humans have 5 major senses. All the information we receive are received by these 5 senses and it could literally mean anything — because everything is energy or molecules.
‘The photons entering our eyes, the vibrations through the air that enter our ears, the breaking of the bonds of molecules that creates friction across our skin, the chemicals that land on our tongues, and the compounds that enter our noses — all are just electro / chemical energy of one kind or another.’
So technically, we are unaware of the source of this energy, yet we sense this energy and we perceive it as reality. None of the information we receive comes with any instructions, so how do we understand it? How do we add meaning to it?
Our ‘ecology gives it’.
Our interaction with this world that adds meaning to the raw information we receive; but the belief that the meaning is ‘reality’ is only our perception. So, as Lotto connects perception to reading poetry — we interpret what it (the information or poetry) means, because it could mean anything.
But then why do we perceive reality the way we perceive reality? Well I guess that happened over time? But to summarize, our brain functions to help us survive. If you think about the first generation of humans — they perceived all the energies through their senses and attached meaning to it within their context. And they survived, not for forever of-course! Their perception however, was passed on and developed further to build the reality that we have today. That said, reality is not the same for everyone.
Food for thought? Well there’s more to come. In a follow up blog to this, I will summarize the work of an 18th century Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop George Berkeley as written by Lotto and get into the depth of understanding why the ‘reality’ is only our perception. I promise I will attempt to make it as simple as possible!
