Self-awareness is the modern currency because we are inundated with and seeped within and hyper-attenuated to recognition of ourselves; we are hit with how wrong our worldview in an ever-adapting and rapidly changing scope and field of focus, the eventual result in my estimation is that the ability to regale the tale of simply Being will eventually become the key currency; we will see technology usurp every other facet of our life, and consequently be forced to burn away with all our superficial aspects, cherishing our original gift to begin with: the miraculous and inexplicable nature of our own being.

Slavoj Zizek, the misunderstood Hegelian-Marxist philosopher, made a fascinating observation vis-a-vis capitalism in noticing that the strongest proponents of capitalism are not selfish and are instead in a way religiously devoted to the ideals of capitalism. Where this originates, is in our own desire and constant pursuit of self-annihilation. Self-annihilation, I would argue, is our modern boogeyman, whereas our heroic ability for Self-preservation, for the pursuit of our own Being and becoming, is a continual lifeforce that is itself miraculous and inexplicable.

Heraclitus, the Ancient Greek mystic, posited the fundamental nature of reality as flux, constant, fleeting change. It is from this that Aristotle would build the viewpoint of all of physics as being relations, an idea that Alfred North Whitehead would base his metaphysics on. But let's leave the books to the side and think this out.

It is easy to make the case that we can never know the-thing-itself truly, that our perception of the world is different to the-thing-itself (and all our understanding of perception, cognitive bias, personality, seems to support this). What does that mean? That: The world as we experience it originates from the the-thing-itself, which we'll call Reality.

Now -- is how we think and behave at all guided by the processes of evolution? Clearly: the very nature of reproduction, identification of adaptations in human, this shows us that how we think and behave is impacted by what we call evolution, which itself is not a thing but a process. So through modern science we know that at least something about us is shaped by this process of evolution. The implications of this run deep: That our neurology and brain structure, for example, evolved, with lower parts of the brain being more ancient and higher parts newer, and if we know that our neurology impacts our perception, we know that our daily perceptions themselves are guided by this process of evolution. Does this, not, then, extend to every facet of our being? That is, that everything we can identify within ourselves as seperate aspects of ourselves (belief, emotion, thoughts, action, so on) would themselves be in some sense shaped by evolution?

So -- this continual process of evolution, which itself is 'the change in heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations', is itself affecting every aspect of our biology (as being the process by which these characteristics changed over successive generations): physical, mental, neurological (if they are not all construed the same).

When we come face-to-face with the immediacy of the moment, we come face-to-face to the world as we experience it. Through modern science, we know that even this unique world that you are constantly experiencing is itself formed by the physical characteristics of your brain which itself is formed by this continual process of evolution.
If I'm being tedious, forgive me, trying to be specific to highlight something: Where, exactly, do you exist in this image?
This is where the fundamentally spiritual descriptions of reality from ancient Buddhist and Hindu traditions come to meet the fundamentally materialist, scientific descriptions of reality that we've been building up since the days of Plato, in a perfect circle, in a beautiful manner.
Which is to arrive at the same, self-annihilating conclusion: That *you* don't exist. How could *you* figure out that *you* don't exist?

The Buddhist account is straightforward (though hard to grasp): In becoming aware of your breath, you in time learn and see that all of your thoughts are automatic, that they are just happening, that everything about you is just happening and that as such you are not any of the things that are just happening (they are the figures on the projector, the movie you are watching of your life) whereas what you are is the awareness underneath (the screen upon which the movie places itself, awareness of the movie, qualia as modern philosophers would call it). If you are not your thoughts or any of the things you do, and are the awareness of that, there is no cohesive 'you' to speak of,  the fundamental underlying awareness is itself impersonal and common to all of consciousness, it just is, and it is all the same in all of us, leading to the necessary realisation: All is One.

Science and logic has, through a path up the mountain starting on the other side, reached the same pinnacle of a conclusion. What is your brain? A complex organism, yes, a physical thing with physical characteristics that itself is in constant flux from a variety of constant changes. Your brain is never the same one second to the next. No physical thing remains the same: a chair itself is defined by constantly changing characteristics (density, viscosity, any measure you can think of). As Heraclitus would say, no man crosses the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. The philosophy modern science is quickly lending itself to necessitates that there was really no 'man' to speak of, rather a constant flux of characteristics that appeared to us as a 'man'.

Why and how did this appear to us characteristic of qualia itself emerge? We have no clue - the hard problem of consciousness - and this problem is itself analogous to the problem of why it is that we developed self-identification with our thoughts in the Buddhist spiritual perspective -- the Buddhist perspective would itself admit that Enlightenment, Self-awareness can never be achieved, willed, thought, made to happen for there is no thinker, doer, to make those things to happen in the first place, yet how the delusion itself appeared is the big mystery.

The materialist account of reality is a comforting blanket just as the absence of thought is a much-sought nirvana from action in the Buddhist context. Both philosophies end up running from the real questions. It's like we discovered that we didn't have to ask the question in the first place, that you can just opt out of the game of thinking about or for yourself, the purest self-annihilation! In discovering the beauties of nonthought, of meditative bliss, the Buddhists manage to opt out of life itself. The modern scientific viewpoint, in denying free will (Robert Sapolsky comes to mind), or handwaving the hard problem of consciousness away (Daniel Dennett) and this new union with the spiritualists of the East (Sam Harris), has successfully, totally, annihilated the self for the Self, we've bit down on the juicy apple that Nietzsche correctly analysed as the death of God (which Heidegger reworked as the death of metaphysics). The exact endpoint for both trees of thought is that self-awareness itself is simply a mistake. Denial of Life!

What do "you" do after you reach Nirvana, Enlightenment (que the: there is no you, to reach Nirvana) -- what happens to this physical person that we all perceive as having a unique personality and will and being, what happens to the appearance of that, then? Harmoniously, apparently, will the Enlightened Boddhisattva use the faculties of thought. There it is, that's where to press down: Harmonious. Enlightened state. The proposition that all of experience is mere illusion, that all our self-identification is just an illusion, that the highest state of being is 'enlightened'. The ultimate form of the Yogi in Tantric Buddhist thoughtlines is beyond all conceptions, pure awareness, no thought, an implicit moral denigration of any form of thought, self-identification, self-Being.

It's a moral-driven desire for Death. They experience Nothingness, thoughtlessness, Death, and they go 'this is good, this is what everyone should do'

For a mentality transcending Duality, the mentality itself reverts back to expressions of Duality (the veil to unveil all the other veils of Maya), but likewise originates as a manifestation of wanting to avoid thought, the instinct for self-annihilation. The Enlightened view is total detachment from the world, and in exactly the same fashion the scientific view is that self-awareness itself is a weird byproduct of evolution, that our freedom is illusory just in the Buddhist sense. I would argue that both are true but mistaken: That all they posit is a simple statement of fact: That things are what they are. That this does not itself tell us anything of our concepts as we use them of freedom, the self, personhood, individuality, and that in attempting to define these things out of existence, we've created a philosophy that will always necessarily first deny all other philosophies, and then deny itself, lending itself back into nothingness, a comforting return to philosophic death. That in our linguistic hang-up around the semantics of Self-identity, in trying to define the Self, we have failed, given up, and concluding therefore that the Self doesn't exist, ignoring one very crucial point.

And it's really simple.

All of us, after we are done reading for the day, will go about our day, thinking of the people in our life and what we want to do and what we should do and what we're worried about and what we think of this and that and so on. Well I'm sure we act like we don't, but we do. If you don't, great, but as the Buddhists necessarily concede: the realisation of nonthought is itself at best random or determined, and is itself meaningless (as negation of meaning, and all other concepts). In a state of pure awareness, you are a vegetable. As you are living, you are dealing with, living in, interacting constantly with, the objects and creations of thoughts. As Hegel would put forth, every experience of self-awareness and the world is itself already mediated by the structures of thought. The adherents of the meditation-based Enlightenment practices are hoping for momentary glimpses into nonthought, whereas the depth of the philosophy calls for the total annihilation of the continual creation of self-identity, utilising thought and identity only harmoniously (they can never define this as a method or a system, for it is on the other side so to speak, but they sure do think it is good and they will certainly set up temples, cults and ways of thinking that will indoctrinate everyone into this Sisyphean task of not being themselves).

The argument 'that you are not your thoughts' is basically the pernicious root of this philosophy, it usurps the realm of the subjective to non-existence (by first, ironically, dealing with its existence, how clever that an individual would make the statement 'I don't exist'): Presupposing a you that is in every sense constructed by, through or with the use of thought, to construct a denial of thought. This is the very nature of a life-denying philosophy. Does it actually matter -- in the sense of how we deal with the concept of meaning? Obviously not, for any denial of meaning itself cannot lend itself to creation of new meaning, any advent of thought from an a priori stance that nonthought is good will fail. That is why no method to Enlightenment is possible, but also deeper than that, why Enlightenment can never be considered good.

Here is what I think is happening: That the cleverest people of the ages would, through all their thinking, be struck (lightning bolt style) with the miraculousness and the inexplicable nature of Being: you know those moments where you suddenly realise you are alive, can do anything, that dizzying sense of freedom that Jean-Paul Sartre loves? Yes, that; and that in being unable to define it, explain it, conceptualise it, without being able to put it in a box, they defined it out of existence. In those moments between sleep and wakefulness, before your brain has quite fired up all the relevant neural processes, where you are kind of just aware but not really thinking, consciousness hanging on by a limb so to speak, there's your much desired Nirvana (I am sure that eventually technologically will be able to induce that meditative-zen state at will, many people whether they know it yet or not would embrace the absence of drama in favour of the calm, the nothingness of technological-meditation -- is that not what heroin does? All opioids? All benzodiazepines? Shutting down your brain, reducing all the 'chatter' to nothing?) that is the God of the East, and it's quickly become (has become) our new God too.

Well the best thing that can happen for all of us is to create the technology that can give us that option on a silver platter: Enjoy nonthought, pure awareness, as much as you want for as long as you want. Those of us that choose that path will love the bliss of nothingness. In every city of every country people search for that sweet bliss of nothingness. Meanwhile, the rest of us, those interested in greatness, beauty, adventure, self-glorification and idealisation and the creation of new meaning and new ways of living and being and thinking, we'll stick to our mere illusions.

The only thing to left to do is to radically affirm every aspect of your Being, personhood, experience, individuality, sense perceptions, your impressionistic gaze of the world as someone that experiences desire, want, need, beauty, love. As questions of AI cause increasing fear, we are in an extraordinary position to re-affirm and re-value every aspect of our subjective existence and experience. If we accept that we can never know Reality itself anyway, that all our thoughts are but mere (I really wish to highlight the incessant moralisations of the materialist and spiritualist positions) illusions: Wouldn't you want to create the most beautiful illusion possible?

What I perceive is that we've all become philosophically lazy and inert, that we've denied Life, that we've robbed ourselves of our own individuality, and that continued attempts to usurp individuality in global politics, economics and culture are themselves reflections of this pernicious philosophic death. The Buddhist and the Materialists may claim that they are not nihilists, but I would argue that from the propositions they've put forth it would be mere illusion to put forth anything but nihilism, which itself indicates to their desire for and insistence on meaning. We've very cleverly refuted any explanation of life offered to us, and denied our own, and have nothing in our hands, though we still passionately insist on meaning. This is our hidden power, the beautiful gem core to the human spirit: That against the odds, against all that we know and understand, there is self-awareness, self-consciousness, thought, the experience of will, personhood, identity, and all that entails. That, despite not knowing how or why, you can and will decide to do something today, and you will think it valuable. It's terrifying to realise, don't run from it, don't deny it, embrace the freedom of your perceptions before they fleet away.