The Story We Choose

Cetaceans Change Everything

For millions of years, cetaceans have evolved sophisticated minds organized around principles entirely different from our own. Their existence challenges our most basic assumptions about consciousness, intelligence, and what it means to be a thinking being in this universe.

Prologue: Questions of Consciousness
Tahlequah’s vigil and what we choose to see
Chapter 1: From Cosmos to Machine
How we inherited a worldview that struggles to explain minds
Chapter 2: Three Ways of Understanding
Examining the foundations beneath our frameworks
Chapter 3: The Limits of Language
Why our vocabulary constrains what we can think
Chapter 4: Consciousness Across Evolution
Evidence from corvids, elephants, octopuses, and beyond
Chapter 5: The Marine Peak of Consciousness
What cetacean neuroscience reveals about alien minds
Chapter 6: Mind-Body Integration & A Participatory Universe
Mind-body phenomena that challenge physicalism
[Chapter 7: Living As If]
A pragmatic epistemology for choosing frameworks
[Epilogue: What Remains]
The invitation to experiment and judge by consequences

About This Project

This book offers a framework—not a metaphysical truth claim—for understanding consciousness as fundamental rather than derivative. Using cetacean cognition as primary evidence and drawing on philosophy, neuroscience, and physics, it presents an alternative to both the modern scientific worldview and traditional theism.

The framework is offered pragmatically: judge it by its consequences, not by claims of metaphysical certainty. The question is not only “Is it true?” but “What happens if we live as if it were true?”

The Story We Choose

Table of Contents

About This Project