Close your eyes and try to image how the world looks when no one is looking. You can’t, of course, because the “look” of something automatically involves you looking. This conundrum has bedeviled philosophy and science for centuries. Some people think we create our own reality. Others think our experience is dictated by atoms, molecules, and genes. But our experience does not depend on one factor only—the subjective self or objective reality—but on both together.

If the grass looks greener in springtime, there must be something about it different than brown grass at the end of summer—and different from the red skin of a ripe cherry. Yes, of course: chlorophyll! But why does chlorophyll produce in us the sensation of greenness rather than that of redness associated with the cherry? This sort of question involves the perceiver’s active role in perception. Perhaps greenness signifies something to the perceiver as an organism, in the way that pain signifies tissue damage and hunger signifies a need for nourishment. But, what?

This is a question that falls through the cracks between science and philosophy. Science has defined itself as a study of the natural world, not of subjective experience. Even psychology often embraces this “objective” approach, so that for decades it was far more about the experimental behavior of rats than the experience of people. Consciousness was an embarrassment, and still is for the physical sciences. Philosophy, on the other hand, is willing to ask silly questions, like: “Could I experience as red what you experience as green?” But the answer is no! You and I can expect to see grass roughly the same way because we are specimens of the same creature. Apart from chlorophyll, there is a reason in evolutionary history why grass looks green rather than red.

Think of experience as a kind of conversation the brain has with itself. Words have meanings, by social convention, which arise through common experience in the world to which they largely refer. Perhaps sensations get their “meanings” in a similar way, by convention that is not social but genetic, arising through experience in the world over thousands of generations. Nevertheless, we have the ability to play with words—and, to a limited extent, with perception. In both cases, we embrace a power to assign meaning and stretch the bonds of reality. Though I cannot will to see green as red, yet imagination, hallucination, painting and stained glass give me access to “greenness” as an experience dissociated from the usual objects.

What the world looks like “when no one is looking” can only mean what it happens to look like to our particular organism. This does not answer the question of why grass looks green rather than red, let alone why the world looks like anything at all. It does not solve the mystery of why consciousness exists, but it may be on the right track. One has conscious experience, in which the world figures prominently, because the human creature couldn’t have arisen and persist otherwise.

This brings to mind another silly question of philosophy: could a person behave exactly as they do, in every detail, but without conscious awareness? Again, certainly not! The fact that we are lit up inside with experience is functional; consciousness is essential to our survival. Not all of our behavior can be automatic or instinctual. If we are to respond to the world in all the sophisticated ways that human creatures do, there must be some particular way that it looks and sounds and smells and feels to us—the story we narrate to ourselves not only in words, but directly in the language of the senses.

The conquest of nature, of geography—and of intellectual, spiritual (and now outer) space—have been traditionally masculine enterprises. The world men created is hardly ideal in a normative sense, as the best possible world. In its shadow, women continue to embody the sustainable values traditionally considered humane and civic. These values now stand against the rapacity of an economic and technological warrior elite, who run the global society of mobile capital and a world arms industry on our behalf.

Historically, masculinity has often manifested as males acting out genetically-determined macho impulses or collective rebellion against nature. This is highly ironic, given the masculine ideals of conscious initiative and individual self-possession. The very essence of the solar, yang energy is supposed to be benignly proactive and protective. If we have not witnessed a world defined by women, neither have we seen one produced by a positive masculinity: one not defined against women, the body, and the Earth, nor one that is not controlled by oligarchs, technocrats, and power-crazed madmen. Surely a new type of advocate and protector is needed, a new vision of masculinity more in balance with the feminine.

Apart from male and female bodies, a feminine principle constitutes a vast untapped resource to nurture a livable human future. The repression of this principle is not a phase modern society has outlived, but is its very foundation, which has served to keep men in their place along with women. Male and female alike have been seduced by the masculine ethos as currently defined, by concepts and values (such as progress, power, success, consumerism) that are against common sense and the common good. Women have relative equality and safety in the modern Western world at the risk of being co-opted within male power systems, which they may embrace for the same rewards that men do.

The feminine is a worldview that has gone underground in the patriarchal era. While recessive, it remains everywhere potential. It is a sensibility, a mode of thinking, feeling, being, perceiving, acting—or not acting. It is as easily eclipsed by the masculine as silence is by shouting. Unless we consciously intend otherwise, it will always be dominated by men who are ruthlessly good at imposing their will, just as nature will continue to be overrun by technology, the passive by the aggressive. While the feminine is not better or worse than the masculine, there is an intrinsic imbalance between them because of their utterly different natures.

Apart from changing sexual and social identities, masculine and feminine are forces within the human psyche. Individuals participate in the dialogue between these forces, by communicating and cooperating with each across gender lines (or by obliterating such lines). Yet, there remains the task of an alchemical synthesis of masculine and feminine within the individual— and also, most urgently now, within society. Men must refuse the conventional attractions of money, power, sex, and violence, to become more original in their definitions of masculinity and success. Women must channel the feminine principle, as well as feminism, as a vision for the future. Neither sex must be a caricature of gender.

The ultimate defense of the dominated is to refuse to participate in the games defined by the dominant, and to be clear about the games worth playing. Rather than rush to a new frontier in space, or to some cutting edge of technology, we could pause to establish social equilibrium. “Growth” could slow, not only to regain equilibrium, but also because it is not what it seems; for, the promise of an expanding economy lies always in creating future wealth rather than redistribution now. Similarly, gratuitous novelty in technology (such as we see now in AI) masks ancient social problems which the technology could be used to solve, were it properly motivated. Perhaps the right motivation can only come through an integration of yin and yang.

How do we know what goes on inside the body? Medical science proposes ways to know. While diagnostic tests have a scientific basis, however, their evaluation often depends on judgment calls and statistical probability. The only way to have true certainty is to actually create either the condition that is desired or the condition that is feared. This follows from a general principle whose implications are little recognized: that the only certain knowledge is of humanly defined systems. This is why the truths of mathematics are abiding while scientific theories about nature are provisional. I suspect it is the basis of religious faith. It is certainly the basis of digital computation, where a state is simply yes or no.

Western medicine does not pretend to create a state of health, which could never be absolutely verified in any case. The problem of induction is that one cannot prove generalizations like “all crows are black” (whereas it only takes one crow of another color to disprove the claim). Similarly, if health cannot be verified, it can at least be disproven. This is the inevitable logic of diagnosis, which does not look for health but for disease. If you undergo a biopsy, for example, a “clean bill of health” is not a realistic outcome to expect. If the test fails to indicate suspicious tissue, it may be repeated until it does, or lead to other tests. The way to diagnostic certainty, therefore, is to find the disease that is feared. The outcome that best satisfies diagnosis is bad news, because it leads to further action. The diagnostic interventions themselves may be harmful, and the procedures to follow have their own risks.

The body is a “black box,” in the sense that, without disturbing its integrity, we observe only what goes into it and what comes out. Medical science proposes to observe what goes on inside as well, through x-rays, magnetic resonance images, biopsy, laparoscopy, or literally opening it in surgery. It is worthwhile to distinguish these technologies, for they may vary greatly in their effects upon the state of the tissues investigated. A varying price is paid for the view.

Knowledge is never free of consequence, and never free of interpretation. Modern x-rays may be relatively harmless, but they are not quite the same as direct inspection in ordinary light. Doctors may feel around inside you or look around with some device, which may entail little risk to your health. The consequences of biopsy, on the other hand, could be riskier. What the doctor recommends will be a matter of interpretation and guesswork as well as of what is objectively there. Your prognosis, as well as your diagnosis, may rely on statistics—that is, on average outcomes for other people. Those are probabilities, not certainties. Yet, the patient must come to a definite decision. Even with expert opinion, we hold our lives in our own hands.

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