Is ours a world of fundamental conscious suffering?

Reading | Existentialism

Arthur Haswell, BA | 2025-10-18

In the year 8 Reed of the Aztec calendar, to commemorate the reconsecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlán, Ahuitzotl, eighth King of the Aztecs, oversaw the sacrifice of thousands of prisoners. Their hearts were ripped from their chests; their bodies, drenched in hot blood, kicked down the steep tezontle steps to the festival crowd below (Bellos 2015). As Maffie (2015) argues, the Aztecs’ pantheistic metaphysics was grounded in Teotl: a relentless, savage, insatiable, creative, destructive mania of the worlding world, not unlike Schopenhauer’s Will or more figurative interpretations of the Gnostic Yaldabaoth. In order to appease this metaphysical minotaur and its many incarnations as various gods and goddesses, blood had to be spilt, and still-beating hearts offered to the heavens. While human sacrifice isn’t to my taste, I find this brutal vision of reality compelling. As the author M. M. Owen points out, “We have relics of pessimistic thinking from . . . the Aztec culture, which the French anthropologist Jacques Soustelle adjudged to be ‘soaked in pessimism’” (Owen 2020). But the Aztec Weltanschauung was not merely one of violence and severity, but also subtle beauty and tragic pathos, perhaps best evoked by the following poem: 

We only rise from sleep,
we only come to dream,
it is not true, it is not true,
that we come on earth to live.
As an herb in springtime,
so is our nature.
Our hearts give birth, make sprout,
the flowers of our flesh.
Some open their corollas,
then they become dry. 

(León-Portilla 1992, 153) 

In this essay, I will be suggesting a vision of reality not unlike that of the Aztecs, as an alternative to the apparent “pan-optimism” (Mullen 2025) of philosophers such as Philip Goff, who advocate monistic antiphysicalist metaphysics. I shall refer to this vision as pan-pathism.

There has, of late, been a resurgence of interest in ways of thinking about the world as something vital, responsive, spirited, and even conscious. This has coincided with a careful, rigorous, and persuasive project—led by philosophers and scientists such as Bernard Carr, David Chalmers, Simon Conway Morris, Federico Faggin, Edward Feser, Philip Goff, Alex Gomez-Marin, Annaka Harris, David Bentley Hart, Donald Hoffman, Bernardo Kastrup, Christof Koch, Jeffrey Kripal, Robert Lanza, Michael Levin, Iain McGilchrist, Thomas Nagel, Rupert Sheldrake, and Galen Strawson—to reject the cold materialism, or perhaps more accurately the “hylomania” (Cudworth 1678, 134) that has so long plagued modern society. Given that the physicalist, mechanistic worldview is both catastrophically flawed and a profoundly degrading travesty of life and world, this repudiation is both necessary and welcome. Many of these antiphysicalists have espoused alternative metaphysical systems such as panpsychism, panprotopsychism, panagentialism, cosmopsychism, and idealism. Some have also favoured theological perspectives such as pantheism and panentheism. While each of these concepts is distinct and deserving of serious study in its own right, in the context of this essay I want to address, in broad terms, those perspectives that accept consciousness as fundamental, and reality as, in a basic sense, non-mechanistic and even experiential, purposive, or sentient. More precisely, I want to consider ontologically monistic, antiphysicalist metaphysical perspectives that accept consciousness as fundamental. Where it is useful to do so, I shall refer to them collectively as pan-ist.

It’s easy to see why such perspectives often cast reality in an optimistic light. If you’ve ever found solace in the beauty of a forest or the night sky, you’ve felt an intuition that resonates with pantheism or panentheism: the view that reality is ubiquitously divine. Similarly, if you’ve ever felt a certain kinship for the living world around you, you’ve tuned into an intuition that resonates with panpsychism: the idea that consciousness is not confined to animals but is, in some way, woven into the fabric of creation. Such intuitions suggest a universe less alien than it might otherwise appear, one where meaning is not a mere projection of the human mind but something intrinsic to the cosmos itself. As we shall see, not only do pan-ists often embrace such intuitions, they also commonly seek to re-enchant reality with a Christian sentiment similar to that found in Cecil Frances Alexander’s classic Victorian hymn: 

All things bright and beautiful,
all creatures great and small,
all things wise and wonderful,
the Lord God made them all. 

(Alexander 1848) 

Among the pan-ists, there is a broad range of different views. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that there is plenty of Christian influence. The pan-experientialist and panentheist David Ray Griffin advocated “process Christology,” integrating this view into his broader metaphysics (Griffin 1973, 1998, 2001, 2014). David Bentley Hart, who recently authored the brilliant and deeply pan-ist All Things Are Full of Gods (2024), is a lifelong Christian. The biologist and panentheist Rupert Sheldrake turned to Anglicanism many years ago (MacMath 2018). The palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris, who espouses a strongly pan-ist perspective on the evolution of life and is outspoken in his reverence for the Christian idealist philosopher Owen Barfield (Conway Morris 2024), is also a long-practising Anglican.

Recently, this warmth towards Christianity has only grown. The polymath Iain McGilchrist, who identifies as a panpsychist and panentheist (McGilchrist 2021, 1059–1062, 1193–1266), has become increasingly inclined to praise Christianity as the profoundest of spiritual traditions, stating, “The mythos of Christianity is to me the richest one that I know in the world” (McGilchrist 2024). Philip Goff, whose book Why? (2023) defends a form of panpsychism called “pan-agentialism,” has recently announced that he wishes to identify as a Christian (Goff 2024). In Why?, he also speaks warmly of his Catholic upbringing (Goff 2023, 143–147). The idealist philosopher Bernardo Kastrup often expresses deep admiration for Christianity, claiming that “Christianity became the foundation of the West’s spiritual life not on account of its dogmatic prescriptions, but because, originally, it touched something alive deep within us,” and that “I am thus very interested in the survival and revitalization of the Church” (Kastrup 2019). Moreover, in the information space where pan-ist discourse thrives, Christians abound, and pan-ist philosophers are warmly received on Christian podcasts such as Unbelievable?, Homebrewed Christianity, and The Symbolic World, where figures like Goff, McGilchrist, and Kastrup have been featured.

Current pan-ism tends to be rich in a kind of Christian-inspired hopefulness and benevolence. McGilchrist is often adamant in his optimism, regularly asserting statements such as, “I think life is wonderful” (McGilchrist 2024, 2:23:32). Hart, in the final pages of All Things Are Full of Gods, sides with the idea that the world is ultimately good: 

Still, when I consider the incomprehensible vastness of it all, I find myself naturally assuming that the power that creates life—the infinite act of mind in which all things exist—is forging souls in the fires of nature, and I can’t help but believe it’s all coming to a good end, more beautiful than gods or mortals can imagine.

(Hart 2024, 469) 

In the last section of Galileo’s Error, Goff expounds on how a panpsychist understanding of the world can make one feel more in tune with it and more compassionate towards the environment. He asks us to 

imagine how our children’s relationship with nature could be transformed if they were taught to walk through a forest in the knowledge that they are standing amidst a vibrant community: a buzzing, busy network of mutual support and care.

(Goff 2019, 194) 

This sentiment of “all things bright and beautiful” is certainly lovely—and one I hope is true. But are there other conclusions that could be drawn about a pan-ist world? Must it necessarily lead to such joyful appreciations of the world? After all, perhaps the trees are miserable, right down to their piths, and only wish they could scream so that someone might fell them. Perhaps the bees merely wish to exploit the flowers, and the flowers to exploit the bees. Perhaps, if David Benatar is correct that conscious existence is weighted more towards suffering than joy (Benatar 2006), a conscious reality might primarily be a sorrowful one.

Does a universe imbued with mind, or even purpose, necessarily translate into one that is benevolent or meaningful in the way we might wish, or purposeful in a way that is conducive to joy? Surely, if consciousness is ubiquitous, then the problem of suffering may be expanded rather than alleviated. Of course, it is necessary for there to be strife in order for qualities such as trust, loyalty, courage, fortitude, or magnanimity to emerge. Yet there is far more strife than would suffice, albeit spread unevenly. Even today, a great many people experience enough misery and suffering to cripple their spirits. In the past, when the death of children was common, this must have been closer to the rule than the exception.

If there is such a thing as unconditional love (and I am open to the idea that there is), then few people are able to express it. Everyone struggles to understand their kith and kin, but to express love unconditionally one would have to understand when one does not understand, accept that fact fully, and then act with love regardless—an almost impossible feat. Usually, love merely glimmers through a churning morass of vanity and pride, regret and self-loathing. What kind of world must we find ourselves in, where love struggles so vainly to be expressed in its full lustre?

Such a spirit as the God of the Old Testament is profoundly familiar to anyone who is honest with themselves about nature’s ways, but believing—as traditional Christians typically do—that He is both omnipotent and purely good seems rather bizarre. Neo-Scholastics such as Edward Feser may claim that they arrive at this conclusion not via the Old Testament but from a ground of solid logic, although they will stress that they do not mean “good” in a univocal sense, but only analogously (Feser 2017, 70–71). Presumably, just as we can talk about a corrupt and tyrannical administration of authority as a system of “justice,” or speak of a powerful poison as “good,” so too we can use the word “good” to refer to a God who is jealous and maniacal.

To see the nature of our reality as somewhat Dionysian (chaotic, mad, insatiable, and lurching between ecstasy and despair), as many pagan traditions indeed have done, seems more in keeping with the experience of living in this world to the pan-pathist. Indeed, perhaps ironically, such an understanding is what gives Christ’s Passion its plausibility and makes it so powerful. If there were a divine, equanimous being full of love and compassion who tried to save humanity, it seems entirely likely he would be tortured for hours and then trussed up on a crucifix. But this is not evidence of all things bright and beautiful.

Instead, it rings true in a world in which about 105 billion people have lived (Haub 1995), with around half of them dying as children (Roser 2019), the other half carrying in their hearts the deaths of loved ones. This is not a matter of the human condition, social inequality, or anything political; it is about nature itself. After all, humans have had it relatively easy compared with our fellow species. For sea turtles, fewer than one percent of hatchlings survive to adulthood (NOAA Fisheries 2022). Even for the African lion—an apex predator—only one in eight cubs will make it beyond those first few perilous years (Environmental Literacy Council 2025). Where the world is safe and hospitable, it is because we have made it so. In green and pleasant England, there are no more wolves and bears to devour us on our country walks. We have created a sanctuary for ourselves in a maniacal realm.

None of this means that beauty is false, or that the world is devoid of meaning. Someone who tells themselves that reality is meaningless is like a mother who receives a call informing her that her son has died in an accident, but then puts the phone down and pretends she heard nothing. It is a mere coping mechanism for a world that is always disclosing its nature, in the infants who scream as they are torn from the womb, in the sullen expressions of commuters stuck in daily traffic jams, in the birds that warble to warn others away from their territory, in the lines of worry that mark our brows, in the vines that twine and choke the trees, in the bouquets of flowers placed on the sides of roads, in the networks of sewers swamped with the putrid remains of once-living organisms, in the black holes swallowing up the stars. Ah, but isn’t there also love and beauty and kindness? I mentioned bouquets of flowers left for the dead. Aren’t they also evidence of precisely such virtues? Yes, of course. Love and beauty and kindness are real. But, down here, they are like the odd rays of sunlight that flicker in ocean depths. Some might object to how I have used the word “meaning” here. But to say that a tragic vision of the world renders it meaningless—perhaps because “meaning” usually has positive connotations in our culture—would imply that cultures like the Aztecs, who embodied such a vision (Maffie n.d.), found their world meaningless, a conclusion that would be both ignorant and false. The Aztec Weltanschauung was evidently brimming with meaning, value, and purpose.

Perhaps you are wondering: if the world is to be taken as permeated by consciousness, or as nothing but consciousness, or as grounded in consciousness, why should we wish to imagine that this living reality is in such a funk? How can someone accept such a notion, and given that it might be false, why not just imagine that our world is full of joy? The problem is that the latter view can become quite disconcerting when one is consistently confronted by a world so relentlessly ill-starred. But being honest about this should not cause us to lose all hope. Instead, it makes one feel profound gratitude for those things we have to be thankful for. The Aztecs liked to think of our world as slippery, as if life is like walking along a wet and narrow mountain pass on the edge of plunging cliffs (Maffie 2015, 525). But on our journey we find other beings who we can help and who can help us to make our way. We can also learn to discern beauty in even the most terrible of turmoils, and on rare occasions the world thrusts upon us beauty that we can’t but see. Many mythic traditions view the current aeon as one that has long since left a golden age behind. There is a deep nostalgia and yearning for home. It is as if a beautiful summer’s day has ended and we are left in its chilly dusk. But dusk of course is beautiful too, in its bittersweet way.

Perhaps we can gain perspective by considering the accounts of those who have had the impression of passing out of this realm during cardiac arrest. A common theme among people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs) is that it seems as though they are returning home, and they do not wish to come back. They experience pure bliss, total clarity, perfect understanding, and infinite peace. This life, by comparison, feels unreal and deeply flawed. Yet when they return, they almost always feel happier and more positive about living, now that they know they have such bliss to look forward to. They cherish every moment and become more accepting of life’s trials (Kelly et al. 2007, 367–421; Parnia 2024; Greyson 2021). Perhaps, then, we might look upon life as a troubled but beloved friend.

Schopenhauer insisted that metaphysics, as a form of philosophical inquiry, must remain uncompromising in its pursuit of truth (Schopenhauer 1909, 367). Many pan-ists seem to assume, seemingly prima facie, that they remain cleaved to this principle when speaking evocatively and poetically about how pan-ism can make the world seem more joyous, or how it dovetails naturally with Christian tradition. Perhaps they are right, but the pan-pathist finds such sentiments difficult to swallow. So she is left with a pan-ism that finds the world full of life, meaning, and feeling, but also profoundly tragic and drenched in pathos. Still, she finds herself better placed than the materialist—particularly of the eliminativist bent—for this world is not one of blind, meaningless mechanism, but phenomenal presence. And amidst all the toil and relentless violence of creation and destruction, she might not wander in vain in search of the eternal realities of love, beauty, and the divine. 

 

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