{"id":10499,"date":"2026-07-22T02:20:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T09:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/?p=10499"},"modified":"2026-07-22T02:20:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T09:20:36","slug":"whos-askin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/2026\/07\/22\/whos-askin\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s Askin’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One other thing that occurred to me while continuing to listen to an interview with Sapolsky. He is sort of the Ultimate Materialist, and I often ‘choose’ (I use the term advisedly) to think of myself as the Ultimate Idealist. So philosophically, he should be my arch-nemesis. <\/p>\n

And yet, out here in the extremes, there is common ground … or … Ocean?<\/em><\/p>\n

It can feel like an arch-nemesis situation on paper, but in practice Sapolsky and an idealist\/non-dualist mystic can meet on a surprisingly shared experiential claim, to wit:<\/p>\n

The \u201cI\u201d that thinks it is an independent origin of actions is not what it seems.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even if their ultimate metaphysics differ (matter-only vs mind-only \/ mind-ground), both approaches can land on points like:<\/p>\n

Authorship is undercut.<\/strong>
\nSapolsky: behavior is the output of causes you don\u2019t command (brain, history, context).
\nIdealist\/non-dualist: the \u201cchooser-self\u201d is an appearance, not a real self-existent agent.
\nThe self as controller is a model.
\nIn both cases, \u201cagency\u201d is reframed: either as an illusion produced by natural causal machinery, or as a projection\/appearance arising within consciousness.<\/p>\n

Compulsion\/automaticity becomes visible.<\/strong>
\nMeditation\/inquiry can reveal that intentions arise, pressures arise, thoughts arise\u2014without the \u201chomunculus\u201d that\u2019s supposed to be steering them.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a kind of \u201cOcean-level\u201d meeting: not necessarily in what the universe is made of, but in what it feels like when you look closely at the agent-appearance.<\/p>\n

The likely split that keeps them from being the same<\/strong><\/p>\n

They diverge most sharply on what ultimate explanation is:<\/p>\n

Sapolsky typically treats causal explanation as ultimately grounded in the brain-world story (even if he\u2019s careful about what that does\/don\u2019t prove about free will).<\/p>\n

An idealist\/non-dualist tradition treats the \u201cground\u201d as consciousness\/divine reality, with brain and body being appearances or modalities within that ground.<\/p>\n

But notice: you can still share the phenomenology of \u201cno inner controller\u201d while disagreeing about the \u201cmetaphysics of what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why \u201cOcean\u201d can be a bridge<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your Ocean metaphor is basically a third option: both \u201cwaves\u201d (mental experiences) and \u201cdrips of causation\u201d (neuroscience mechanisms) are surface patterns of one depth. In that view:<\/p>\n

Sapolsky is right about the causal story within the wave-world.<\/p>\n

Idealism is right that \u201cthe wave that thinks it owns the ocean\u201d is a mistaken self-model.<\/p>\n

The ocean itself isn\u2019t captured by either side\u2019s preferred language (matter-only, mind-only), because it\u2019s prior to the split.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t require you to make Sapolsky spiritually agree\u2014just to recognize that, at the level of what is seen, their debunking can be an instrument that points toward the same ungraspable depth.<\/p>\n

One sharpened question for your meditation test. When you\u2019re watching \u201cchoosing\u201d arise (or not), ask:<\/p>\n

Is there an experiencer who owns the will?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the answer turns into \u201cno,\u201d both materialist debunking and non-dual dissolution have found the same target.<\/p>\n

***
\n
\nSo to boil it all down and come full circle …<\/p>\n

All I know for sure is that Experience Exists.<\/p>\n

And the next question, a potentially unanswerable one, is whether that means that an Experiencer, a “Self”, also exists, and if so: What is that Self?, out beyond the hopelessly dopey and crippled conception of the everyday narrative ‘self’ we all take for granted just to get through the day and the week and the year … <\/em><\/p>\n

There is no god and Mary is his mother
\nHer passions shining petrichor and white …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One other thing that occurred to me while continuing to listen to an interview with Sapolsky. He is sort of the Ultimate Materialist, and I often ‘choose’ (I use the term advisedly) to think of myself as the Ultimate Idealist. So philosophically, he should be my arch-nemesis. And yet, out here in the extremes, there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10499"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10504,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10499\/revisions\/10504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}