Tag: philosophy

  • What Is an Echo?

    Not a copy. A return.

    Imagine yourself in a vast architectural space. “Hey?” you send your questioning greeting toward the distant walls of the building, and after a second, you hear your voice return, slightly blurred and diffused by the hall. “Hey, ey, ey…” After a couple of repetitions, the voice seems to fade away.

    We tend to think an echo is a slightly altered copy of the original sound. When you speak your words, the voice is your own, but when your voice is returned to you as an echo, it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It seems to exist outside of you, as if it had a life of its own.

    But an echo is not a copy. It is the exact same wave that you launched with your voice. While traveling through space, the wave goes through gradual changes as it is shaped by the materiality and form of the room, as well as the distance the wave has to travel. An echo is the same sound — but an older, wiser, and more fragile version of itself.

    In order to become an echo, the sound has to return to you. And by becoming an echo, your voice has become less yours. It now belongs to the space.

  • Echosophy — A Philosophy of Echoes

    Since 2020, I’ve been studying the philosophy of religion at the University of Helsinki. I wrote my BA thesis on Spinoza, and now I’m working on my master’s thesis on something I like to call, in a playful manner, “echosophy.”

    The process began with a question: why does adding reverb to sounds make them seem somehow more serious, and sometimes almost religious? This question led to a swarm of others that I’ve been exploring while writing my thesis. I’ll also try to share some of these questions and possible answers here on my website.

    Echosophy is partly inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy of listening, espacement, and resonance. However, my focus is on observing the spatial and temporal resonances that create not only the sensations of echo and reverb, but also the experience of existing in the world. Echosophy observes being in time and space through listening.

    Existence is neither silent nor isolated. It unfolds in space and time much like sound does. To listen is to attend to and observe this unfolding in real time (and real space, of course). In echosophy, listening is both a method of gaining knowledge and a metaphor that can be applied to many ways of observing.

    But why focus on echoes instead of reality itself? Because the human mind is itself an echo of reality. By developing an understanding of the world as an echo, we can observe the world and our minds simultaneously.

    Echosophy seems to emphasize a philosophy rooted in the present moment. It is a dynamic philosophy, fully entangled with the location and time of the observer and their capacity for resonance and internal amplification of resonances.

    Echosophy is also a philosophy that understands all sensations as echoes, or temporally shifted instances of the same wave. It does not make a strict separation between the external and internal worlds — the mind exists in the world (as an echo) in much the same way as any other aspect of this singular reality.

    In the future, echosophy could be explored in relation to various philosophical traditions, such as Spinoza’s monism, Vedic traditions that see the world as illusion, or Donald D. Hoffman’s interface theory of perception. Echosophy may also inspire creative exploration in the sonic arts (including music) or any art form that treats time and space as raw materials for experience.

    The starting point for most of my creative and intellectual endeavors is sound. Following that sound has taken me to many places, and now the resonances of that sound shake my core and foundations. By focusing my attention on sound and listening, I’ve shifted my own perception. I’m curious to discover where this path — of listening to echoes and attending to the resonances of the world — will lead.

  • Tao and Arches of Sorrow

    Tao and Arches of Sorrow

    In the shadow of all crises, most words feel too small. A while ago I was talking with my mother and we got into a small argument about what the Bible says about war. I wasn’t convinced by the idea that the Bible could offer a useful perspective on Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, but I do know that books — old and new — can be read in many ways and they speak differently to different people.

    The book that speaks to me is Tao Te Ching. For the last 20 years I have returned to it to reflect my own thoughts in its glimmering stream of thought and poetry. Lately, one particular verse has often returned to my mind: “When two armies engage in combat, the one that feels sorrow prevails.” (Chapter 69, Minford)

    This verse goes deep and gives me hope — but it does more than that, because it also gives meaning to sorrow, which is a remarkably difficult task to do. Sorrow connects us with sincerity and what is truly beautiful, valuable and truthful in us humans. We don’t cry for things that do not matter — we cry for things that connect us to life.

    Thinking about the war, Russia’s brutal invasion in Ukraine, it is pretty obvious to me which one of the nations feels more sorrow right now. As the old cliche goes, there are no winners in war. But cultures are built on meanings, and sorrow has the power to create meanings that last centuries, even millennia. Just think about the Bible and its majestetic arches of sorrow. At the core of the Bible is a story about losing your country, losing your parents and losing your child. I can’t imagine anything heavier and more heartbreaking than that.

    The sorrow Ukraine feels now will echo far into the future, and because of that its history will prevail much longer than the bloody, evil and delusive history Putin is trying to write.

    —

    Please consider donating money to the Ukrainian charities if you can. Red Cross, Come Back Alive and UNICEF are all reputable charities. Paypal is also now accepted in Ukraine, so if you have a personal connection, it is an easy way to transfer money to the people directly. There are also many music and art projects that you can support, for example Додому, a series of compilations by more than 100 participating artists (including me). We have also been working hard at Future Rust on a support project that will be announced soon.

    Pax.