In today’s scientific paradigm, materialism dominates. It suggests that everything — including humans, consciousness, will, and meaning — is the result of interactions between elementary particles, energy, and matter. In this view, humans are merely complex biological mechanisms, products of evolution. Their actions, in principle, could be predicted, calculated, and — in extreme cases — broken or reprogrammed.
But this worldview begins to fall apart when we look at what actually happens in reality.
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An Experience That Breaks the Theory
There’s a well-known historical moment: in 1963, Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức performed an act of self-immolation in protest. He sat silently in deep meditation, unmoving, while fire consumed his body. He never screamed, never flinched, never tried to extinguish the flames.
This event cannot be explained within materialist thinking. Matter protects itself. The instinct of self-preservation should override any idea — if a person is simply a biological program. But it didn’t. Which means: a human being is not a program.
A Human Is the Free Variable in the Universe
A human can do what no physical law can explain. A human can reject survival. A human can die for an idea. A human can forgive betrayal when revenge is more logical. A human can exceed biology, override programming — even when that programming is embedded in nature itself.
This suggests that reality contains an additional component — an undefined factor — that cannot be reduced to external laws. That factor is consciousness. And it is not a consequence. It is a cause.
No Program Can Break a Human
Every algorithm has weaknesses. Vulnerabilities. Ways to break it. But consciousness remains beyond all that. Its core is not in the code — but in meaning. In the decision to remain oneself no matter the cost.
Anywhere in the universe, a human can appear — and change the rules. Bring chaos into determinism. Resist.
Conclusion: The World of Meaning Is Fundamental
That which cannot be broken is not derivative. It is foundational. Consciousness and meaning do not emerge from matter. On the contrary — matter is the stage upon which the free variable — the human — creates reality.
And that explains why quantum physics cannot be understood without the observer. Why wave function collapse depends on consciousness. Because the observer is not just a camera — the observer is the origin of reality.