A BLACK HOLE THEORY OF SELFHOOD
03.2024
THE QUESTION of what happens at the “bottom” of a black hole is relatively arbitrary, currently unanswerable, and too frequently invoked by 2nd date Hinge guys who admire Lex Friedman. Nonetheless, black holes captivate the collective imagination more than any other cosmic phenomenon. This could have something to do with Interstellar. This could also have something to do man’s proclivity for dominating unknown territory of the hole variety, but fucking a black hole is tantamount to a suicide sex mission, so probably not.
For physicists, black holes serve as theoretical laboratories for understanding the nature of reality. They test our limits of knowledge, revealing contradictions between the two primary theories of modern physics: quantum mechanics and general relativity. The former deals with very tiny things, a quantized realm of subatomic particles behaving in a probabilistic manner. General relativity describes the very large, a deterministic universe of massive cosmic objects and curving spacetime.
Usually these theories can operate at an amicable distance, each dealing with their own matters in an unspoken cooperation. But black holes summon a rare encounter of the very large and the very small. When put in the same room, the two theories disagree. General relativity predicts that black holes will eventually evaporate away, losing all information about their initial state. Quantum mechanics requires that all the information seemingly “lost” in a black hole is not lost but conserved, thus defying relativity’s predictions.
This is one overly simplified conundrum among many – the technicalities of which are less interesting than their potential implication: there’s always new questions lingering behind the answers we tell ourselves. Or as physicist Max Planc put it, “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
It’s generally accepted that a black hole bottoms out with a singularity: a tiny point of infinite density wherein all matter collapses in on itself and the known laws of physics break down. But beyond the horizon of a black hole, no light or information can escape. There’s no possibility of knowing exactly what happens at a level of such extremity.
Because we can’t know, because I am a non-physicist with a sympathy for metaphysics, I prefer to diverge from scientific accuracy to do what humans have always done with mysterious cosmic events: mythologize a meaning I find useful.
I like to think of a black hole as an analogy for the Self. Like black holes, a Self’s innermost state can never be fully known from the outside. There is an horizon between our knowing, a thin veil between our experiences of the world. But deep within the Self, there is also singularity – an Ego.
When you get too close to it, spend enough time caught in its pull, the singularity Ego will begin to suck everything in towards itself, closer and closer to a singular point. The content of this point may be grandiosity: a misconceived assurance that you are the center of the universe – more valuable, more correct, more worthy than anyone else. Or the point may be one of infinite shame: a misconstrued sense that you are somehow unlovable, unwanted, and unable to join in.
You can believe the best of yourself or the worst of yourself or flit back and forth between the two, operating from a point of insecurity while still believing yourself to be enlightened to some great truth. Overt self-confidence and crippling self-doubt: two sides of the same self-centered coin.
The singularity Ego is difficult to escape from. It is difficult to see anything beyond your own aura of self-involvedness. The weight of yourself has distorted and warped reality, sucked you deeper and deeper into your own well-defended (often deluded) point of view.
You could stay here for a long time. You could set up shop. You could shop online as a temporary salve. You could scroll yourself into oblivion. You could project your shame onto others. You could criticize your every act. You could build an ego bunker deep inside yourself – tucked away from the world’s ambiguity, from the complexity of yourself, opting out of life and into an eternal shame, a palatable passivity.
This can sometimes feel like freedom, but only the “freedom to be lords of our own little skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of creation,” as D.F. Wallace put it. And there, all alone in our ego bunkers, we could condense further and further into a fixed core of shame and separation until an inevitable heat death swallows us whole.
But there is a possibility things could be otherwise!
![]()
There is a possibility that a singularity is not a black hole's final fate, but rather, a transitory event wherein a quantum bounce leads to the opposite: a white hole. A white hole is a theoretical time-reversed black hole that emerges from violent fluctuations inside the singularity. Instead of pulling and sucking towards a singular determined fate, a white hole opens a portal of sorts – expanding and exploding and evolving into a realm of light and possibility.
Though plausible within the laws of physics, white holes are conjecture for now. As creatures embedded in a universe, there’s no way of observing a potential universe outside ourselves. But in the context of mythology, accuracy is frivolity!
A conceptual white hole allows for a possibility that a singularity can be transcended, transformed — and thus, so can the ego. Yet to fall through the black hole and emerge in the white hole, a reckoning is in order. The Self must accept its Rilkean task: to go into oneself and bear the weight of one’s solitude, greeting loneliness with open arms. To remind oneself that you’re a spec in the universe and feel the nice kind of small, the kind of calming insignificance that makes you say, “everything is absurd.” To abandon a notion that you are somehow more flawed, less valued. To decipher what you want from what you ought to want. To remind yourself that bitterness is soul sucking and often a waste of time. To convene with yourself in times of pain without fleeing its discomfort for the whims of internet attention or television banality. To get out of yourself. To remind yourself that every wrong will not be made right. To let go of it anyway. To think hard about how others feel. To tolerate the reality that you will not be ‘for’ everyone. To acknowledge your faults without spiraling towards shame. To forfeit your need for certainty and sturdy beliefs. To refuse to see the self as a fixed point of finality or consistent branded identity, but instead, to see the self as a lens of interpretation, unique and valuable in its own right without need for achievement or approval.
The white hole Self has nothing to do with external validation or perception but all to do with one’s inner realm, one’s inner conversation. Opposite of the black hole ego bunker’s pull inward, the white hole Self expands outward and upward, opening to new interpretations, weaving itself into the contingent web of life.
Once reached, this can feel like a new sort of freedom. This can feel like a relief. Like you’re unbound from the nagging sense of paranoia and insecurity. Like you’ve finally reached the opening of a long dark cave. Like you’ve found the answer. Like you hit a resolve.
The sort of Man-who-does-DMT-once might call this phenomenon an ego death. He might tell you with self-assured pride about his encounter with elvish entities who destroyed his vision of himself and left him in a permanent state of high-minded enlightenment. But there’s a lesson to be gleaned from such an insufferable man. Just as the ego bunker’s isolated comfort is ultimately a mirage, the death of the ego is another delusion.To reach a steady state is to cease to evolve. To maintain a total detachment is to contradict all it is to be alive. And though it’s tempting to always believe yourself to be a white hole version of yourself – eternally wise and unshackled from your seemingly petty human doubts – it is not stable.
I find some solace in this reality by returning to the universe’s patterns. Some speculate that our entire universe could be a white hole, that the big bang itself exploded from the singularity of a former black hole. That maybe, this sort of thing is ongoing – the universe expands outward until it all collapses inward, swallowing itself in a massive black hole, then bouncing back and beginning again to start a new draft of existence.
Whether or not this is true is besides the point, but I imagine the Self is bound to a similar fate. That we will oscillate between doubt and wonder, shame and assuredness, feeling small then feeling expansive. To spend a shitty night in the ego bunker, then to have a first moment of brightness in the morning. To wade into times of crisis and then, reliably, to come out the other side feeling new. And moving between the two, this expanding and contracting, this perennial process, this may be the point of being a Self at all – to be a unique corner of the universe following its own cyclical pace, spinning out and spinning in again, a dance of dichotomies, an eternal return.
![]()
For physicists, black holes serve as theoretical laboratories for understanding the nature of reality. They test our limits of knowledge, revealing contradictions between the two primary theories of modern physics: quantum mechanics and general relativity. The former deals with very tiny things, a quantized realm of subatomic particles behaving in a probabilistic manner. General relativity describes the very large, a deterministic universe of massive cosmic objects and curving spacetime.
Usually these theories can operate at an amicable distance, each dealing with their own matters in an unspoken cooperation. But black holes summon a rare encounter of the very large and the very small. When put in the same room, the two theories disagree. General relativity predicts that black holes will eventually evaporate away, losing all information about their initial state. Quantum mechanics requires that all the information seemingly “lost” in a black hole is not lost but conserved, thus defying relativity’s predictions.
This is one overly simplified conundrum among many – the technicalities of which are less interesting than their potential implication: there’s always new questions lingering behind the answers we tell ourselves. Or as physicist Max Planc put it, “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
It’s generally accepted that a black hole bottoms out with a singularity: a tiny point of infinite density wherein all matter collapses in on itself and the known laws of physics break down. But beyond the horizon of a black hole, no light or information can escape. There’s no possibility of knowing exactly what happens at a level of such extremity.
Because we can’t know, because I am a non-physicist with a sympathy for metaphysics, I prefer to diverge from scientific accuracy to do what humans have always done with mysterious cosmic events: mythologize a meaning I find useful.
I like to think of a black hole as an analogy for the Self. Like black holes, a Self’s innermost state can never be fully known from the outside. There is an horizon between our knowing, a thin veil between our experiences of the world. But deep within the Self, there is also singularity – an Ego.
When you get too close to it, spend enough time caught in its pull, the singularity Ego will begin to suck everything in towards itself, closer and closer to a singular point. The content of this point may be grandiosity: a misconceived assurance that you are the center of the universe – more valuable, more correct, more worthy than anyone else. Or the point may be one of infinite shame: a misconstrued sense that you are somehow unlovable, unwanted, and unable to join in.
You can believe the best of yourself or the worst of yourself or flit back and forth between the two, operating from a point of insecurity while still believing yourself to be enlightened to some great truth. Overt self-confidence and crippling self-doubt: two sides of the same self-centered coin.
The singularity Ego is difficult to escape from. It is difficult to see anything beyond your own aura of self-involvedness. The weight of yourself has distorted and warped reality, sucked you deeper and deeper into your own well-defended (often deluded) point of view.
You could stay here for a long time. You could set up shop. You could shop online as a temporary salve. You could scroll yourself into oblivion. You could project your shame onto others. You could criticize your every act. You could build an ego bunker deep inside yourself – tucked away from the world’s ambiguity, from the complexity of yourself, opting out of life and into an eternal shame, a palatable passivity.
This can sometimes feel like freedom, but only the “freedom to be lords of our own little skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of creation,” as D.F. Wallace put it. And there, all alone in our ego bunkers, we could condense further and further into a fixed core of shame and separation until an inevitable heat death swallows us whole.
But there is a possibility things could be otherwise!
There is a possibility that a singularity is not a black hole's final fate, but rather, a transitory event wherein a quantum bounce leads to the opposite: a white hole. A white hole is a theoretical time-reversed black hole that emerges from violent fluctuations inside the singularity. Instead of pulling and sucking towards a singular determined fate, a white hole opens a portal of sorts – expanding and exploding and evolving into a realm of light and possibility.
Though plausible within the laws of physics, white holes are conjecture for now. As creatures embedded in a universe, there’s no way of observing a potential universe outside ourselves. But in the context of mythology, accuracy is frivolity!
A conceptual white hole allows for a possibility that a singularity can be transcended, transformed — and thus, so can the ego. Yet to fall through the black hole and emerge in the white hole, a reckoning is in order. The Self must accept its Rilkean task: to go into oneself and bear the weight of one’s solitude, greeting loneliness with open arms. To remind oneself that you’re a spec in the universe and feel the nice kind of small, the kind of calming insignificance that makes you say, “everything is absurd.” To abandon a notion that you are somehow more flawed, less valued. To decipher what you want from what you ought to want. To remind yourself that bitterness is soul sucking and often a waste of time. To convene with yourself in times of pain without fleeing its discomfort for the whims of internet attention or television banality. To get out of yourself. To remind yourself that every wrong will not be made right. To let go of it anyway. To think hard about how others feel. To tolerate the reality that you will not be ‘for’ everyone. To acknowledge your faults without spiraling towards shame. To forfeit your need for certainty and sturdy beliefs. To refuse to see the self as a fixed point of finality or consistent branded identity, but instead, to see the self as a lens of interpretation, unique and valuable in its own right without need for achievement or approval.
The white hole Self has nothing to do with external validation or perception but all to do with one’s inner realm, one’s inner conversation. Opposite of the black hole ego bunker’s pull inward, the white hole Self expands outward and upward, opening to new interpretations, weaving itself into the contingent web of life.
Once reached, this can feel like a new sort of freedom. This can feel like a relief. Like you’re unbound from the nagging sense of paranoia and insecurity. Like you’ve finally reached the opening of a long dark cave. Like you’ve found the answer. Like you hit a resolve.
The sort of Man-who-does-DMT-once might call this phenomenon an ego death. He might tell you with self-assured pride about his encounter with elvish entities who destroyed his vision of himself and left him in a permanent state of high-minded enlightenment. But there’s a lesson to be gleaned from such an insufferable man. Just as the ego bunker’s isolated comfort is ultimately a mirage, the death of the ego is another delusion.To reach a steady state is to cease to evolve. To maintain a total detachment is to contradict all it is to be alive. And though it’s tempting to always believe yourself to be a white hole version of yourself – eternally wise and unshackled from your seemingly petty human doubts – it is not stable.
I find some solace in this reality by returning to the universe’s patterns. Some speculate that our entire universe could be a white hole, that the big bang itself exploded from the singularity of a former black hole. That maybe, this sort of thing is ongoing – the universe expands outward until it all collapses inward, swallowing itself in a massive black hole, then bouncing back and beginning again to start a new draft of existence.
Whether or not this is true is besides the point, but I imagine the Self is bound to a similar fate. That we will oscillate between doubt and wonder, shame and assuredness, feeling small then feeling expansive. To spend a shitty night in the ego bunker, then to have a first moment of brightness in the morning. To wade into times of crisis and then, reliably, to come out the other side feeling new. And moving between the two, this expanding and contracting, this perennial process, this may be the point of being a Self at all – to be a unique corner of the universe following its own cyclical pace, spinning out and spinning in again, a dance of dichotomies, an eternal return.
