Particles is just result of [self-centric] human perception bias and the resulting naive concept of matter or a substance as perceptual conditioning, evolved in a certain physical environment (everything what we are, including our mind and consciousness is shaped by the environment, and our perception of reality, in turn, is shaped by our mind, conditioned by perception).

We think that there are solids and atoms - grains of matter - basic building blocks. This model corresponds to what our sense organs give us. It is hard to convince oneself that there is no matter at all, only energy and our perception grossly zoomed out of what is really going on.

Matter is an appearance to perception. A wrong model due to limitation of the sensory system. There is no matter when there is no observer, only states of energy, or fields, which is a better concept, but still mere concept. We could say that atoms are "stable" fields, but it is much better to do not apply "human" predicates to the nature.

Particles is a good-enough model, which allowed us to sequence a genome or build a CPU, but it is only a crude model nevertheless.