Or am I completely mis-skimming the Wikipedia entry on panpsychism?
The immediate if indirect answer I can give you: I stopped feeling this sense of wonder, mystery, greater purpose of reality, somewhen during my university years. I only ever experience these feelings when consuming works of fiction.
https://andrewmarrosb.blog/articles/baptizing-the-imaginatio...
Mundane, that is even more amazing.
> What is your experience of your own Being-ness?
My electrons and nuclei are arranged in a weird pattern. If you ask them if I'm conscious, they can move another electrons and nuclei to type "yes". If you ask them if I'm lying, they can move another electrons and nuclei to type "no". It's just a strange pattern that simulates a delusion, don't trust them.
What's amazing about the mundane?
The definition of consciousness is very much tied to how humans (or some scientists) perceive consciousness. I'm pretty sure my dog is conscious of itself and its surrounding. It just happens to have a less sophisticated consciousness than the one I have. Some animals might have a pretty high consciousness but they fail to communicate it to the humans.
I especially like the chill-step YouTube videos some people assemble and publish. I download them with youtube-dl and listen to them on my phone at night while drifting off to sleep.
At 61 years of age, the philosophy he describes (Advaita Vedanta / Zen Buddhism / Taoism) brings me great comfort.
Indeed. Hard to find an inaccuracy, even when he's talking about some details of technical subjects. He had an exceptional ability to translate between the spiritual and the technical in a way which seems to make complete sense.
> Such a joy to listen to.
A true spiritual entertainer. Never boring. I imagine he could be a stand-up comedian today.
> I especially like the chill-step YouTube videos some people assemble and publish. I download them with youtube-dl and listen to them on my phone at night while drifting off to sleep.
Similar, I went thru a lot of the material on youtube. High-quality material with transcripts can also be found here: https://www.organism.earth/library/author/alan-watts A lot of it I listened to many times over and I keep getting new insights out of it, it's so densely packed.
> At 61 years of age, the philosophy he describes (Advaita Vedanta / Zen Buddhism / Taoism) brings me great comfort.
Definitely helps to know these philosophical perspectives, especially if one gets tangled up in some harmful model of reality.
Somehow the basic (non-religious, just philosophical) Taoism seems to most align with me at the moment. I credit the Dao for solving a very tough naming problem for me. ;)
I like to think that, somehow, Alan Watts and John Conway were digging the same tunnel, just starting from the two endpoints, and bound to meet at some point in the future. We just need a few more diggers of that stature (tall order, I know).
I have a paper by Anthony Cashmore that I will cite here later.
Does this feeling arise because those atoms move? Or is it the self-assembling behavior? Is this the same feeling some people have when they see a door suddenly close due to the wind, as if some spirit is responsible? I remember feeling like this as a kid. But getting older, I realized that this feeling of agency behind everything is unfounded. And the feeling faded away.
Of course, maybe it is true! (That felt good to say :)
Those two are... sadly quite different than the TFA video. Those are cartoons, steeped in artistic license, accommodation of animation software limitations, and artists regrettably but intentionally prioritizing "pretty" over a misconception-spawning lack of resemblance to reality. Think of a video of Saint Trump's day, with frames selected to show him floating along, limbs unmoving, through a deserted White House. Problematic when learning biology. Not a good source of ground truth.