Consciousness

I struggle with the idea of consciousness. It’s a duality issue, I guess. A matter of perspective. This tiny flash of life we get – how does it work? Are we like a short, sharp sound? A click of the finger? Except instead of a sound, we are a consciousness, brought into being through no volition of its own? If so, if we happen to create echoes, those echoes are the things that people find interesting, especially if they’re distorted. A short, sharp consciousness, only aware of itself, its echoes escaping it, a flawed facsimile of itself. All our actions are only a flawed re-iteration of the original mind.


The conscious mind can never directly interact with, and therefore fully comprehend, its own actions, or the actions of others, because of this. There is a disconnect between thought and action because of the divided nature of these two things. Eventually the echoes fade, and the original sound dies, leaving only a situation with no explanation.

From another perspective, are we not like stars, seen through our atmosphere? During the night, some are clear, always. People with adequate vision can all see them, recognise their colour and size, understand the significance. The majority, however, are dim, and distant, quivering through the air to our eyes. Looking at them directly often makes them invisible, removing comprehension. Looking at them indirectly causes them only to appear momentarily, jiggling from side to side. Some lack the ability to see them even in this way. And are those tiny, flickering stars even stars? Are they not clusters of billions of stars, banding together to be more visible, all in vain? On top of all that, the patterns they choose are not what others see. Whilst they choose logical spirals and discs and clouds, what people see in the sky is lines of un-associated stars forming patterns simply due to their position in a two dimensional perspective. Try as they might, these stars will always be mis-associated. Individuality will always be taken from you by the perceiver.

Whether we are heard as echoes, or seen mistakenly as a flickering member or disassociated brethren, consciousness is something that cannot be transmitted; communicated. Our mind is stuck in our head, only observable, truly, by ourselves.

But I wonder if even that is true. Even self-reflection is a method of translating the conceptual, abstract mess that is our mind into a form of language, even if you are not thinking in words. You are trying to create a typology of your own thoughts and motivations, and in so doing are perverting them to fit a framework that you think is logical. Trying to understand the internal workings of the mind is unavoidably the creation of an infinitely reflexive problem. As soon as you try to analyse the mind using logic, you must then ask “why do I think this logical framework is best, and why do I want to know about the internal workings of my mind?” To this, you must then ask “why do I doubt my own internal logic, and my motivation for wanting to know my mind?” Also: “What is my motivation for doubting my internal logic, and for wanting to know the motivation for knowing my mind?” To this, you must then ask “What is my motivation for doubting my motivation for doubting my internal logic” et cetera. It is improbable that there is a logical ‘atom’ of consciousness that cannot be reduced. It is more probable that, like actual infinity; if the number ‘one’ is the expression of a completely certain term, and zero, or a very small fraction of one is our logical starting point, then to create the certain term, we must build it through the endless decimal places that make up any number. This is impossible, as any number can be divided down infinitely.

So exists the mind. Instead of communicating concepts from their core forms, which may or may not exist, and which is impossible, we make imperfect approximations, even to ourselves. To know ourselves is, therefore, as impossible as to know another. Our true selves may, in fact, be an infinite regressive illusion.

Our Children Will Not Curse Us

There's an idea which has been floating around my mind for a while, and it relates to what we are all doing, as a global civilisation. Specifically, what we are doing environmentally as a civilisation. The damage we are causing to our atmosphere, the sea and the land in the interests of our economies and lifestyles and expectations for the future is now fairly unquestionable. Sea acidification rises, sea ice melts, global climate change is becoming more and more difficult to ignore and farming and industry cover more of the land than is necessary or justifiable, taking the place of forests and other pretty useful features of the non-human environment.

This is all reasonably alarming, I have to admit. There is, however, one niggle. We are told repeatedly that our children will curse us for what we have done to the world and they will spit our names as the reason for their ravaged lands, higher sea-levels and whatever else. "Why did they not act sooner?" they will cry over the flaming deserts of Australia. "Those short sighted fools," as they enjoy a glass-bottom tour of submerged Manhattan.
Now I'm not quite so sure that will be the case.
More likely, those alive in 2113 will not give a single flying proverbial. I'll tell you why.

The first, and most plausible explanation for the lack of interest from our descendants will be that, like people of today, they just don't care that much about history. They care more about the here and now. They will have geopolitical fear and they will have terrible pop music and they will need to keep up with the stupid clothing of the day and how do I ask Mandy out and jeez maybe I'm getting a little fat after NeoSaturnalia.
If I was to jump forward in time and fall to my knees, begging forgiveness, I suspect their reaction would be one of bemusement. And possible marvel at my time travelling abilities. But mostly bemusement. Theirs is the real world into which they were born. Mine would be the world of history, that they read about from a book. People become blasé about the most amazing things, such as mini-ice ages, the blitz, horseless carriages. Even if weather remains crazier, or gets crazier, people in a hundred years time will just accept this as normal.

They will exist in a new normal, and our world will be aberrant.

Secondarily, and much more hypothetically, I do just wonder if societies further and further into the future might deal with these situations a little more level-headedly, the further they are removed from our current apocalyptic, post-millennial angst. It is an interesting morsel for thought to think that perhaps a lot of hysteria and mass-panic raging around now might still subconsciously be linked to still being so close to the big 2k. I don't know, perhaps I am over-analysing...

I would like to add that I entirely advocate acting against climate change. It's a big horrendous monster that I'm in no way trying to downplay, but it's a fun little game, trying to jump into the heads of those finding normalcy after all this craziness is done. I'd be fascinated to hear what people out there think.

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