Planet Qualia

Welcome to Planet Qualia.

It is my goal to get people to focus on qualia instead of matter. Everything our senses pick up is qualia — color, sound, texture, etc. — and it sends us chasing after matter. We evolved that way. A finch sees red and it leads him to his favorite berries. All qualia is a gift from ecosystems — ecosystems are full of gifts, gifts that go way beyond the bounty of forests and rivers and mountains and oceans.

Our senses face outward, and they detect qualia on the surface of things. But there is an inner qualia, too, within matter, like the hexagon within a snowflake, or the mind within a person. The inner qualia of things makes them greater than the sum of their parts, just as ecosystems are something more than collections of landscapes.

The outward facing senses reflect the landscape, but the inner landscape, the mind, reflects ecosystems. Ecosystems, if we pay attention to them, flow through us. If we care about the source of our gifts, we shall tend to ecosystems; their preservation flows naturally out of our happiness, and their gifts, therefore, return to us, naturally.