Becoming part of the solution

7 minute listen / read

In this section of MBT Tom Campbell discusses the potential consequences of misunderstanding life’s complexities and being unable to distinguish between beneficial and detrimental experiences. It highlights how such confusion can lead to purposelessness, frustration, and a lack of progress. Using the analogy of rats in a maze, it suggests that individuals who cannot discern between positive and negative outcomes may resort to destructive coping mechanisms and become driven by immediate needs and fears.

Furthermore, it implies that evolution operates without sentimentality, pushing individuals towards growth and adaptation regardless of their struggles. Campbell emphasises the importance of understanding the game of life, making informed choices, and evolving consciousness to navigate challenges effectively. Ultimately, it suggests that while evolution is indifferent to individual suffering, there is potential for growth and support from nonphysical entities for those who seek it.

Click on book cover to find text in MBT
P312 Chapter 36 Minute 22:00 to 27:17

You can be confused and non productive (perhaps fail) if: (1) you do not understand the game and therefore do not know that your reality is actually an amazing maze of many choices that is driving the evolution of your consciousness – therefore remaining purposeless, pointless and without focus

– not even trying. (2) your taste buds are so twisted and confused because of beliefs, self-absorption, attachments, needs, and fears (ego) that you cannot, or will not, taste the difference between miserable, arrogant, unproductive pudding, and loving, growth inducing, delicious and satisfying pudding. In other words, you cannot differentiate between electric shocks and fine white-cheddar cheese. You therefore lose your sense of direction and have no means to distinguish up from down, dark from light, or progress from regression.

If an individual rat in the maze sees no point in exploring and cannot differentiate between electrical shocks and cheese, it is in for a long and difficult training experience. Poor rat! What a miserably frustrating life! Not much progress is expected. Shocks become an ordinary accepted part of life and are no big deal! “That’s life,” says this rat with resignation. To this particular rat, the world (life within its local reality) may seem random, existential, nihilistic, mystical, or driven by an unfathomable, jealous, vengeful, or demanding god.

To a collection of such rats, cynicism, self-pity, anger, victim-hood, resignation, escapism, recreational drug use, as well as a fascination and obsession with sex and the symbols of power (including vicarious violence and domination through entertainment, competition and sport; conspicuous consumption; macho-vehicles and aggressive driving; and the ownership of weapons) become common personal strategies to deal with the anxiety (inadequacy, insecurity, and powerlessness) generated by fear. Value, purpose, objectives, and goals of being are lost in a confusing whirl of fine shades of relative, meaningless gray, while the original concepts of black and white are lost.

These hapless rats will be driven and animated by their ego – their immediate needs, wants, desires, fears, and beliefs. Does this description (driven and animated by immediate needs, wants, desires, fears, and beliefs) remind you of anyone you know – a distant acquaintance, a least favorite relative, or perhaps your evil twin? You might be tempted to surmise that these rats are obviously too dumb to play the game and that it is cruel and unusual punishment to put these stupid, lost, and confused creatures in such a complex maze in the first place. Unfortunately, evolution shows little compassion and weeps no tears for its failures or slow learners. Goodbye dodo birds, adios dinosaurs, so long trilobites. Your concept of “fair” is a function of your ego and belief systems and mostly irrelevant.

Reasons and excuses for not making it or getting it fall on the deaf ears of the Fundamental Process of evolution. Making it and getting it, within your given set of possible interactions, are the non-negotiable requirements of evolutionary progress. An evolving system is either unprofitable (say goodbye if that condition is not turned around in time), profitable (progress is being made), or neither (an astable condition that is hanging around waiting to see which way it will go).

Cruel and unusual? Too difficult? Do you sometimes feel that unreasonable conditions for growth are forced upon you? Sure, like bad weather at a picnic is forced upon you by mean old Mother Nature. The Fundamental Process, as it applies itself to an individuated consciousness, is not personal regardless of how helpless resignation, ego, anger, paranoia, cynicism, or self-pity might construe it.

If you think it is personal, you are probably placing yourself” too high up on the consciousness chain. Bacteria are extremely important to us, our life depends on them, but what we do that affects bacteria is usually not intended to be a personal affront or reward to any individual bacterium. I am describing the general case – there are always exceptions, but they are much, much fewer than a poll would indicate.

Nevertheless, evolution is patient. Patient enough to let that rat suffer in confused discomfort until it eventually progresses its awareness and ambition to the point it can evolve a solution. The rat has free will and some basic intelligence, while evolution has all the time in the world. This rat is on its own to sink or swim by its choices. It does have one advantage, however: It gets (as most rats do) all the help it can profitably use from its nonphysical friends who do care and understand the significance of individual progress.