We have a pretty good and intuitive explanation of what a photon (or other particles) is. It is an excitation of a quantum field and quantum fields stem from th

We have a pretty good and intuitive explanation of what a photon (or other particles) is. It is an excitation of a quantum field and quantum fields stem from the underlying symmetries of space and time. It is incredibly powerful, incredibly simple, and incredibly illuminating idea, but it requires you to learn a couple of new words that humans did not need in their vocabulary when they were inventing agriculture. I am very comfortable claiming this is much simpler than any particle-related intuition as it requires way fewer "axioms". The difference is that you arbitrarily happen to have a mental image of what a particle is, but that does not make particles simpler. As a mental exercise, try to rigorously define what a particle is according to your intuition and explain why we should expect them to even exist.