Quintessence of Dust?

What is a sunset? Is it only the refraction of a star’s light, or is it something more? Is beauty real or only a pattern of electrical impulses sparking in the matter behind our eyes? Does the how of something displace the why?

Of inscrutable subtlety are the lies told to us in childhood. They are pernicious. Our teachers, our television, even the books we read, often contain the poison of materialism. This ideology makes of any media it can a host to spread itself.

Even now, marching against this foe with knowledge and reason, I find assumptions of materialism always maintain a foothold in my mind. The true genius of this ideology is that no one believes in it. It is a mask worn in empty words only to be set aside when the time for action arises.

In truth it cannot be lived out due to its fundamental contradictory nature, but it has this one value for its adherents, that of providing a covering from certain intellectual, moral, and metaphysical questions. They perceive wonder and credit psychology, rapture is only physiology, and love a concatenation of chemicals.

It is a marvel to me how long it took to see through this façade, for materialism never provides proof. It is presented as assumption, ignored when inconvenient, and only ever directly encountered when that true question arises: What does this mean?

The question takes many forms, all of which, dangerous to the ideology, can be shot down by the assertion that it means nothing, you have reached the end of questions, the material is all. That was my first clue that materialism was a lie; it only obfuscates.

I cannot end this rant without presenting at least one argument against materialism, but I have found that one argument is all it takes. If materialism is true then we, everything we are, is causal—that is, everything about us is predetermined reaction—including our thoughts and beliefs, our reason. This reaction is not inherently true or false, it is matter as dust is matter, and subsequently materialism throws into doubt our ability to reason. Reason transcends the material and thus strict materialism excludes it.

So you can cast away materialism and embrace reason, and all the awful implications that come with it, or you can embrace madness.