ephemerology - n. - the study of the unreal

For a long time, I’ve held the belief that most of the things that are important to us don’t actually exist. While there is an objective reality that is at the base of our existance (all you solipsists out there, sorry to have to break it to you), the majority of what drives us as human beings is not these physical things, but the intangibles. What drives the human condition are things without material reality.

Politics is driven by ideology. Religion is based off of belief. International boundaries are lines on a map. Economics is a web of agreements called stocks and credit. Wars are fought over conflicts in meaning, whether they be religion, boundaries, ownership or ideologies. Science is the extrapolation of patterns, and technology the application of these patterns in novel and useful ways. There are physical realities involved in these things, and are often at the base of them. But the layers of value, interpretation and extrapolation pile up quickly. And as humanity progresses, we focus more on these intangible layers than we do on the underlying matter.

It boils down to the fact that human beings are a symbol-using animal. Our brains excel at modeling the universe using the data we encounter, and thus we create maps of the universe. We are beings of abstraction and these abstractions are our tools for grappling with reality. And in order to utilize abstractions, we make judgments based off of perceived meaning. In the end, it is the meaning that is as important as the actual reality. And as humanity has continued to grow and expand, it is our universe of meaning that has expanded far beyond our universe of form. In contemporary society, the Information Age has given us the ability to tackle this world head on. Virtual worlds, online communications, and more highlight and accentuate this mode of interaction. From there, it seeps into all levels of our experience.

The human condition, more than anything, is based off of compelling ephemerality. It’s this world of the unreal yet vital that interests me the most, as I am humanist at heart. And I can’t think of anything that is more uniquely human.

I hope to talk about that on this blog my exploration of ‘ephemerology’. I’d like to approach it from several different angles, from the personal to the philosophical to the technical to the fantasic. It’s not intended to be a scientific survey, but rather a continuing exercise in “reflective attentiveness” from my own point of view. Nor is it intended to be an impartial exploration. As such, I plan to include topics such as metaphysics, spirituality, religion and occult as areas of the ‘unreal’ that drive who we are in one way or another.