Monothology demonstrates that ‘God’ can be understood as nature unfolding (or, more accurately, the universe emerging) as we experience and make sense of it as individuals and collectives. Our ‘Sense of God’ reflects an awareness of this process as one cohesive framework. Essentially, Monothology describes this highly evolved emergent cognitive function as an ‘innate awareness of a higher order, interconnected existence’.

By ‘higher order’ we simply mean that forces that are not visible to the naked eye govern the inner workings of the universe (gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear coherence, plus countless other phenomena that we’re not even close to understanding).

By ‘interconnected reality’, we refer to the fact that we take for granted that everything in our universe belongs to the same existence. We all share the same world.

This awareness, or our Sense of God, may sound obvious. However, most people today tend to view themselves as completely autonomous, in full control of their thoughts, actions and outcomes, separate from all other phenomena in the cosmos.

Your sense of self is a highly evolved emergent cognitive function that arises from other cognitive functions such as moral reasoning, creativity and philosophical thought, which themselves emerge from functions like social interaction and abstract reasoning. Despite being comprised of trillions of cells, 206 bones and 11 organ systems that all have specific needs and functions, you perceive yourself as one individual living being thanks to your sense of self.

In a way, your sense of self could be viewed as the ‘ultimate’ emergent function, enabling you to make sense of the countless processes powering you as one individual being. With that said, your Sense of God could be viewed as the ‘other’ ultimate emergent function, allowing you to make sense of your world and everything in it as one cohesive framework (that’s interpretation can take infinite forms).

Just as your personal identity is a construct of the function that is your sense of self, your worldview can be seen as a construct of the function that is your Sense of God. While this view can be influenced or dictated by religion, it doesn’t need to be. And whether religious or not, you still have one.

Humans have always been innately aware that they are not in full control of their actions and, therefore, ‘something else’ is. Monothology posits that this awareness of ‘something else’ is our Sense of God, a concept that transcends and likely long predates religion, science and perhaps even complex language as part of the human condition and experience.

Many elements of this ‘something else’ can now be explained through various fields of scientific study – science is increasingly uncovering the mechanisms of the various forces, functions and principles that describe it. However, science is unlikely to be able to paint a complete picture for various reasons, such as the regress dilemma.

Only recent developments in understanding have resulted in science and religion diverging into separate topics. As humans attempted to make sense of the world long before the scientific method was formalised, science and religion were once indistinguishable from each other in early societies. According to many scholars, they essentially emerged from the ability to ask ‘why’ and make sense of natural phenomena as a cohesive framework. Religions were often intertwined with scientific understanding as a unified framework until the Renaissance planted the seeds for what would become the Scientific Revolution.

The psychological wellbeing of the average person and many societies seems to be tumbling. Whether this has been caused by rapid technological change, economic hardship or an increase in global violence, our degrading mental health seems to be exacerbating these problems on an individual and societal level – much like a chicken and egg scenario.

It seems that increasingly, people are accepting a bleak future as inevitable, with fingers of blame being pointed all over the place. As we struggle to find common ground with each other thanks at least partly to the rise of technology and digital echo chambers, we’re becoming increasingly polarised.

Perhaps by embarking on a journey back to reality, gaining a deeper appreciation for each other, ourselves and our shared existence, and making some simple tweaks to our perception and ‘operating system’, we can improve our mental health and resilience while embracing the future with a healthy dose of optimism.

We like to think life is as simple having thoughts and acting on them based on ‘knowing what’s best’, but our mind isn’t the true controller of the entire living being that we are. The reality of what controls us is complex, which science seeks to uncover. Countless internal processes that operate in tandem with the environment actually power us, just like all other forms of life – and everything else in existence for that matter.

We don’t have a ‘unified mind-and-body system’ in the sense that we’re made up of two core components that power the entire being. The entire living being that we are is powered by a countless array of environmental, bodily and cognitive processes, and our ‘mind’ is an emergent feature of them.

In terms of what really dictates your actions, it’s much like the automation of a sunflower opening its petals on a sunny day – humans are just much more complicated in how their organic processes react to the environment to maximise the chances of survival for the entire being.

We often believe that our conscious thoughts – the internal dialogue running through our minds – are the primary drivers of our behaviour. This perception gives us a sense of control, as if our thoughts shape our actions and determine our outcomes. However, this is an illusion. Our conscious thoughts are not the masters of our fate but rather ‘reflections’ of what our entire body is experiencing and reacting to at any given moment.

In reality, our bodies are constantly responding to our internal needs and environments through a complex interplay of automatic processes. These processes, such as hormonal changes, neural activities and sensory inputs, occur without our conscious awareness and significantly influence our behaviour. Our conscious thoughts are interpretations of these underlying bodily reactions. They help us make sense of what is happening, but they do not initiate or control the processes themselves.

Our perception of complete autonomy is not an innate part of the human condition and in fact represents a relatively recent cultural shift. In ancient times, early humans often interpreted their inner experiences, including their thoughts and feelings, as manifestations of external influences or guiding principles.

Our inner monologue may be a reflection of intricate brain processes, but the form it takes is a cultural phenomenon rather than an accurate representation of reality. The automatic processes and instinctive behaviours that govern our survival operate independently of this internal dialogue.

It may seem as if we have full control over our thought processes and actions. But like all other living organisms, we’re constantly reacting to internal states and our environment. We don’t perform random activities with no prompt, even if that may appear to be the case. We just think we act purely of our own volition because we don’t give credit to what our bodies are constantly doing in the background.

The nature versus nurture debate delves into whether genetics (nature) or environment (nurture) plays a more crucial role in shaping behaviour and personality.

While both elements are interconnected and influence each other, evidence strongly supports that environmental factors often have a more profound impact on behaviour than genetic predispositions. After all, even language is acquired rather than inherent.

Genetic predispositions can influence the likelihood of developing certain behaviours or mental health conditions, but they do not predetermine outcomes. The environment in which an individual is raised dictates how these predispositions manifest. For instance, a person with a genetic tendency towards anxiety may only develop an anxiety disorder if their environment is stressful or unsupportive. On the other hand, a nurturing environment may mitigate these genetic risks, leading to healthier behavioural outcomes.

The fundamental mechanisms that drive what you perceive to be bad behaviours in others are the same fundamental mechanisms that drive what you perceive to be your good behaviour. During our formative years, while biology plays a role, the environments we’re exposed to largely dictate what we find rewarding as adults – unless we intervene and expose ourselves to new information and perspectives with an open mind.

Our existence is deeply interdependent with Earth and all the diverse ecosystems that make up our biosphere – we are completely dependent on the planet’s specific conditions and its position in the solar system to survive. Every aspect of our solar system, from the lengths of day and night to temperature and gravitational force, have been fundamental to the evolution of what we are as individuals and a species.

Our solar system only remains stable enough for complex life to thrive on Earth due to its position in the Milky Way, whose position in space and time provides the conditions for it to remain stable – the galaxy merger with Andromeda in 4.5 billion years could change the nature of our solar system (and other cosmic events like the brightening of our sun will likely make Earth unhospitable long before then anyway).

Life on Earth began billions of years ago, evolving through natural processes that intricately tie all forms of life together. But our intelligence and technological advancements do not exempt us from the fundamental biological and physical laws that govern life. We evolved alongside other species, developing within the same ecosystems, and our survival and wellbeing depends on the delicate balance of these ecosystems.

No form of intelligent life has ever been immune to trauma. While Monothology primarily discusses trauma in terms of human abuse and neglect, psychological trauma can arise for all sorts of reasons. Even before life diverged into social species, the unpredictability of nature itself ensured life would be continuously exposed to traumatic events, such as predators, injuries, natural disasters, disease, loss, etc.

And this exposure to trauma – and the resulting instincts that drove life to find ways of avoiding, adapting to, fighting and overcoming it – has been a major driving force of evolution and natural selection. If bad things never happened, the diversity of life as we know it couldn’t exist today. In fact, life as we know it wouldn’t exist.

This is not to suggest that we should overlook, downplay or accept our trauma as fair. Actually, we should allow ourselves to feel how we really feel about our trauma instead of trying to alter our opinions based on perceived good attitudes and subjective expectations.

But perhaps understanding the role that trauma has played in the evolution of life itself can help us objectively process our emotions and memories, freeing ourselves from the illusory belief that we were deserving on a personal level. We can better understand that our trauma does not define our worth as a person or our outcomes. We may even eventually be able to empathise with and help those who caused us pain for the betterment of ourselves and the collective.

Most importantly, we can see that adversity allows us to emerge as better, more-grounded, more empathetic people, which in turn could enable humanity to emerge as a more caring and capable species in the future.

When we think about the meaning of life, we tend to apply it to fundamental instincts, such as reproducing, or to our own subjective goals, like becoming wealthy. But this is largely based on our illusion of autonomy and ignores the fact that life on Earth, as an entity, began over three billion years ago.

Perhaps by logic of the emergence principle, life itself will contribute to the evolution of the universe in fundamental ways that we’ll never understand.

Just as a flock of birds creates perfectly choreographed patterns in the sky, no individual bird is aware of the larger dance.

Maybe the shared survival instincts that all living creatures possess stem from the need of life itself to continue indefinitely. The need of all living creatures to adapt to changing ecosystems, ensure the longevity of the species, consume energy, and avoid predators could all fall under the umbrella of environmental analysis. The competition between different offshoots/species of life might be concerned with ensuring that the general trend of increasing physical and cognitive abilities continues.

From the perspective of Monothology, viewing life as a process makes logical sense. What the ultimate function of life is open to speculation. However, the fact that ‘behaviours’ like environmental analysis, reordering matter, and creating order from chaos have remained consistent among all species (all offshoots of life that began 3.7 billion years ago) suggests that the ultimate function of life might be about more than human ambition and individualism.

From the Monothologic perspective, we do not have the free will to choose our conscious thoughts in real time. Our inner monologue is an emergent function that allows the living being we are to interpret trillions of internal processes as one cohesive narrative. And just as the past has determined our present, what we do now determines how our future will emerge.

However, Monothology takes the position that while the future is deterministic, an infinite variation of futures has the potential to emerge. We may not be initiators of our conscious thoughts at will, but we can expose ourselves and others to new information, changing our perceptions in the process. A change in perceptions can improve our overall operating system, improving the quality of our automatically generated conscious thoughts and potential future outcomes.

Just because our mind doesn’t control the body doesn’t mean that we, as living organisms, are not in control of our bodies. As the late neuroscientist and philosopher Walter Jackson Freeman stated, we are dynamic systems that are constantly shaping – and being shaped by – our environments. And as Chaos Theory demonstrates, tiny tweaks to a complex system can result in profound changes.

As we explore in our book on Monothology, the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that the future is predetermined – but our branch can take infinite predetermined ‘routes’ through the multiverse. Even if 99.999% of our outcomes are already set in stone due to the conditions of the past, the 0.0001% of the outcomes we do have control over could make our future look very different – both for ourselves as individuals and for our globalised society.

A growing amount of research in neuroscience explains how and why our ability to create and make sense of narratives is integral to our wellbeing. For tens of thousands of years, our ability to tell stories has enabled us to pass on traditions, retain knowledge over generations, build connections, and make sense of the world.

Many non-religious people believe they live their lives based purely on logic and fact, free of delusions. Yet, religious or not, people will gather to sing and dance at concerts based purely on the belief of that genre being the best. Fast fashion is arguably a major problem, yet many of us are highly conscious of how our clothes make us appear to other people – as if there’s an inherent ‘right and wrong’ to it. Many people attempt to avoid being considered mainstream by ironically taking on a style targeted towards a niche yet predictable audience.

While religion is exemplary in its dogma, almost everybody is willing to bend or hide their opinions at least slightly depending on the social situation – it’s just instinct. And rituals that could be considered ‘pointless’ from a rational perspective, from birthdays to weddings, are the norm.

If you ask yourself why you do the things you do, you’ll be faced with the regress dilemma. “I like this because this person showed me, and they learned it from so and so, who copied it from an inspirational person who adapted it from this other person…”

Whether we accept it or not, we all live by a relatively delusional belief system. As a social species, we have historically tried our hardest to align our belief systems with those close to us. Now, we increasingly attempt to perfect our own unique belief system and expect others to follow suit, lest feel invalidated and lacking worth or originality.

As discussed in Monothology, we all accept certain things as ‘true’ just because ‘that’s the way things are’ – it’s an imperative and unavoidable survival mechanism. Religious or not, Monothology argues that we all have a Sense of God – a framework that makes sense of our interconnected, higher-governed reality. Being a social animal, we will always attempt to reconcile our Sense of God with others. And they will likely all be almost just as subjective in nature.

Nobody chooses loneliness or narcissism, but factors ranging from individualism to digital echo chambers are exacerbating both.

While we attempt to blame each other and other groups for the world’s problems, we neglect to realise that we don’t choose our problems or the situations we’re faced with during our formative years, which largely dictate our perceptions, thought processes, behaviours and outcomes.

By realigning with our Sense of God as described by Monothology, perhaps we can reduce perfectly natural but currently inflated narcissistic attitudes, fight the loneliness epidemic, and find common ground by recognising that we really are all in this together, even if we so often take our interdependence for granted.

Understanding your Sense of God, yourself and our shared reality as explained through groundbreaking and established scientific concepts does not require believing in religious doctrines – or rejecting your faith if you have one.

As explained by Monothology, realigning your view of yourself, others and the world with a more accurate perception of reality can work wonders for your mental health and our collective outcomes.

Monothology doesn’t undermine any scientific research or attempt to invalidate religious faith. It can be a useful bank of knowledge and information to use alongside therapy, support services, and much more.

In short, Monothology aims to help you:

• Unlock true self-awareness
• See through the dangerous illusion of autonomy
• Embrace self-compassion without abstract spirituality
• Objectively reflect on your life experiences
• Come out of a state of denial that may have gripped you for decades
• Deepen your appreciation for yourself, others and the world
• Accept and intelligently react to your true thoughts and feelings
• Become self-reliant, emotionally resilient and interdependent
• Learn how to satisfy your fundamental human needs
• Eliminate the feeling of perpetual incompleteness
• Take setbacks in your stride
• Appreciate material gains as happy ‘bonuses’
• Regain a healthy sense of optimism

Separate your sense of self from your personal identity. Protect your sense of self from genuine dangers – bond with people over your personal identity and the differences between yours and theirs. Avoid seeking validation from others and feel grateful when you do receive external validation for simply being yourself. When others attack, belittle or berate your views, recognise your personal identity does not depend on their validation, and your sense of self is not in real danger. See through the autonomy illusion, and use your Sense of God to quickly understand that those who try to cause genuine offence are masking their own insecurities and inner pain. How you respond (or don’t, as is often best) is up to you, but realigning your perspectives with a more accurate understanding of our shared existence will undoubtedly alter your reactions for the better.