So I'm just gonna share some of my thoughts on the things mentioned in the title. I like to get really high and sometimes trip every once in a while, and I think of a lot of crazy shit. It's not really in any specific order or anything, I'm kinda just putting all my thoughts into text as I think of them. To start off, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in a god or an afterlife. I believe that when I die my brain will cease to function and I will no longer have a consciousness or be able to experience and perceive reality. I will fall into complete nothingness. These beliefs impact a lot of my ideas and how I live and stuff. Okay so first thing, here's something I thought of recently and would like some input on. Even though I believe that the brain is needed to be conscious and perceive reality, I sometimes think that maybe consciousness is something separate from the brain. I started wondering things like where was my consciousness was before I was alive? When does it actually kick in when I start to experience existence? Like in the womb still? How did this brain and body get this consciousness? I also think about our consciousness after death. Like when we die, does it maybe expand from our minds into time space and just float around as fucking pure chaos energy until some crazy shit happens and it's assigned to a new body? Consciousness is just so weird and scientists really don't know much about it. I'm really confused about it. What do you guys think about all that? What are your beliefs? It's weird that we have brains, they pretty much control everything we do, all information is stored in the brain, it is responsible for us being able to learn and store memories and come up with ideas, and yet we know nothing about our own brains. We don't know anything about the thing that allows us to know things. Wat. The probability that we're the only planet in the world with living, advanced organisms in the universe is like super fucking small. There are millions of galaxies with tons of fucking solar systems, with tons of planets. Space fucking extends for EVER. We will probably never be able to reach the edge of the universe. Also, the chance that we're the most advanced organisms is also pretty slim. What is consciousness like for say, my pet cat? They would have to think completely differently than we do. They don't even have words for stuff. Like they don't look around a room and go "Okay that's the window, that's the couch.." They just have like instincts and maybe some basic concepts. What about feelings? And then you have animals like chimps and gorillas and shit that we're teaching sign language to. Animals come in a huge array of smartness levels haha. I think humans are pretty much just another animal. We just happened to be pretty smart through evolution. Everything is completely fucking random. Things just happened to go exactly perfect for us to become what we are. All the way from hydrogen atoms up until now. "Given enough time, hydrogen atoms will start to wonder what they're doing and where they're going." I read that online somewhere. Because I think we're just another animal, I also think that makes us pretty insignificant. We're just one type of organism living in a specific time. Millions of organisms have came before us, and millions will come after we're all dead. One day the Earth will be the home to an even more advanced organism that might not look anything like us. One day there won't be anything left alive on the Earth. What really puts that into perspective is that dinosaurs were around for HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of years. Some people don't even realize that some dinosaurs existed. Like 20 fucking million years apart from each other. Humans have only been around for like, what, some hundreds of thousands of years? Even that's a long time. And the average human only lives to be like 70. We're tiny on the grad scale of things. Humans aren't really anything. I have existentialist crises all the time lol. So yeah, that's all for now. Sorry about the tl;dr haha. Lemme know what you guys think. Depending on what kind of feedback this gets, I might post more.
To me, Consciousness is and always has been. It's that part of us and all that's in our world that is animated. It's the energy that powers the action of cells, amoeba, bacteria, holds together molecules, makes new babies-thereby reproducing itself.. etc. We are only like a grain of sand in that Consciousness as a whole. It has a purpose, and that is for evolution to have it's way-even if that means humans snuff their own existence out. If humans are to stupid to live together, Nature will take us on out. It is the Universe in action. It shows Itself through nature and manifests in human will/energy that helps it on it's way-and that is further evolution in expanding. I think dinosaurs were just one step in that chain. It could be that evolution of organisms beyond our own-easily probable-has happened already in the Universe. We are something more, but not even close to the most. I think humans are tiny little babies in perceiving Consciousness-(wars fought in 'God's name, murders, need for power, etc)-but it can be sensed/elevated/allowed to flow through if the brain is trained or in the right mode. I think maybe our specific Consciousness moves on into someplace-not like a heaven-but someplace to grow into something new. It's always growing and it doesn't stop. Whether it's reanimated into another body here on Earth to perform the function better-create better energy for Itself...who knows...it doesn't stop. I don't think about that part too much because it's just inevitable and I don't have any control over that. What I do have control over is what I do right now-am I going to live and positively give back to It and enjoy it-or not. 'Or not' leads to misery and death..haha. If find the Eastern thought/points of view conducive to making life better, so I am drawn to studying those ways of being. It's a very positive and peaceful and helps perception. If others want to go sing about It, or light candles and pray to It, or call It a different name, or refer to It as 'Him', whatever floats the boat -that's all good. The place where humans' continually bang their heads against the wall-is that their way is best. Its none of their fucking business what anyone else does that doesn't involve murder, rapes, and shit like that. People don't need to make war over resources if they would just work it out without picking up a gun-man's better weapon than the spear. With the development of technology to help us kill each other better-I am reasonably not optimistic. Sorry for ramble-3 cups and a puff will do it. lol. TLR: Consciousness is a positive thing. People need to butt the fuck out of other peoples' business when it comes to their beliefs, then maybe we will live long enough to evolve more. Who knows what's over the rainbow, I'm not there yet..haha
sounds like you're describing "self-awareness". The constant bombardment of experiences reinforce you are your own entity, further reinforced by obvious things like you don't feel what I experience, only what you experience. From there you also have a strong sense of past, present & future, perhaps it's memory that gives us this "sense" / "concept". What I find intriguing, is as complicated as humans are from a physical perspective, all these chemical reactions seem to sum at a specific point in spacetime, that is at a specific point in location & time, to which we have consciousness. To word that different, we are very complicated chemically, what the hell kinda of "sensor" can sum all these different compounds into a coherent sum we "feel" as "consciousnesses". We are so good a placing a present context the phenomena of deja vu exists. Where it's perhaps our subconscious feeding an erroneous "sense" of "this is familiar" yet we can know full well that it is a unique situation, though perhaps slightly similar to a past experience. Point being we are "conscious" enough to discern the "context" provided by the sub-conscious from the reality, lest one be crazy lol From that, us conscious things have a remarkable physically ability. In a world where all physical happenings, like human bodies, have a very specific cause-effect past, conscious beings seemingly "break" this with our "free-will" accelerations. By that I mean we move as we choose. It seems from a physical perspective my conscious tells my body what to do. Like the pilot of a craft. Historically speaking, from a cause-effect perspective...what physical happening had me lift my arm just now? Does the cause-effect history start at the beginning of the universe, or was it a "magical" physical occurrence that popped into the universe when my arm lifting happening was initiated by my thought to lift my arm? tl;dr - until it's possible to separate consciousness from physical happenings, it's easy to conclude we are just along for the experience, and are a "self" only because of those experiences.
Me personally everything can be explained as its seen in nature. Such as the facts known about evolution speak for themselves. The differences in races, languages, culture, physical attributes all logically explainable via the enviroment, trade routes, oppurtunity, wars and the intergration of races and culture. Our connection with the earth and our location in place and time is the reality of who we are today. No offence peter but the universe outside our solar system doesnt provide a clue to who we are as people in comparison. Now conciousness is a bit of mystery in sum ways and potentialy interconnected with something beyond our comprehension. Life and death like any other animal if we live we die. A totally natural experience in any physical sence of the word.
I find it funny when people declare "consciousness" to wholly be a physical phenomenon, but the very things by which one rationalizes and comprehends reality are not physically nor three dimensionally extended in space... thoughts are not physical nor is the experience of them. The answer to consciousness is not outside of us... rather, it's inside of us. "What light is to the illumination of the external world, intellect is to the internal."
It's easy to separate consciousness from physicality... Leibniz provided the answer a very long time ago. "One is obliged to admit that consciousness and what depends upon it is inexplicable on mechanical principles, that is, by (physical) figures and motions. In imagining that there is a machine whose construction would enable it to think, to sense, and to have consciousness, one could conceive it enlarged while retaining the same proportions, so that one could enter into it, just like into a windmill. Supposing this, one should, when visiting within it, find only parts pushing one another, and never anything by which to explain a consciousness."
that was a good read, we have these thoughts in common. i often find myself getting high, or staying sober, and theorizing about consciousness, death, the origins of existence, etc etc. i could go on and on as you did here, but it would be easier to just spark a bowl, crack a beer, and say cheers.
Experience doesn't exist without sense objects to facilitate it. Consciousness isn't A result os physical phenomena, but one wouldn't experience it without sensory perceptions. What does it nean for a present moment to exist? We aren't the physical structure which we identify with, we are timeless being with no temporal landscape existing in the formation of our thoughts. Thoughts are not bound by time, nor space, yet we experience them as a true ans real phenomena. We cannot prove that we have these thoughts and ideas in the physical world. We can prove that outwardly, these thoughts and ideas have an incredible influence on the physical world, but our ability to conceptualize isn't limited in any way. One can imagine any sense object, from smells to sounds to tastes and the rest. Our very dreams themselves are a fragmented sort of imaginary experience With little to no bearing in our physical reality.
"Death will give us back to god just like the setting sun is returned to the lonesome ocean." It's hard to wrap your mind around consciousness because it is all we are familiar with. Just like scientists can't tell what happened before the big bang. Existence will continue long after death. The mediums change but the artwork represents the same anguish.
Maybe missed my point with Historically speaking, from a cause-effect perspective...what physical happening had me lift my arm just now? Does the cause-effect history start at the beginning of the universe, or was it a "magical" physical occurrence that popped into the universe when my arm lifting happening was initiated by my thought to lift my arm? It's a confusing way of asking "Is consciousness governed by cause-effect like the rest (majority) of physics?"
Cause-and-effect is a old, outdated, and atavisitc philosophy. "Cause-and-effect" are merely conceptual forms imposed onto the world for our interpretation of it, and not something that's an indisputable and axiomatic fact which explains reality as it is. "Cause-and-effect" is literally the cornerstone for the fallible materialistic/physicalist doctrine... "One should not wrongly reify ‘cause' and ‘effect', as the natural scientists do (and whoever, like them, now ‘naturalizes' in his thinking), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it ‘effects' its end; one should use ‘cause' and ‘effect' only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication-not for explanation. In the ‘in-itself' there is nothing of ‘causal connection', of ‘necessity', or of ‘psychological non-freedom'; there the effect does not follow the cause, there is no rule of ‘law'. It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed ‘in itself', we act once more as we have always acted-mythologically." - Nietzsche
Its possible for someone to form a reasonable opinion on what "consciousness" is to them. There is a heap of info on "wiki" etc and advances in neuroscience can help to visualize how the brain creates the physical sensation of awareness of self. I can see why there is still sum confusion regarding the matter. Human "consciousness" can only be one thing to everybody as its not a subjective spiritual or mythical entity that cant be proven or dismissed based on evidence such as a belief. If we ask a question "what is consciousness" then we end up looking for a personal response which includes our own biases as to why it exists etc etc and what it means to us as individuals. The information already known today is also bias based on the scientific field that presents it. What and how it exist's today is a combination of many things it just needs to be defined within a singular modern context.
Why did evolution eventually evolve into human intelligence, conscious awareness, and the development of feelings with love/belonging being the most attractive to most of us? We can only produce scientific explanations, the how life happened can be explained, the why (it's own desire to exist in the first place) can not. The big bang happened, then the cooled magma rocks started spontaneously coming alive as a "desire" to exist using the suns energy from the original bang. I know the elemental combinations of how it happened, but I don't know why there's this self propelling desire for this process of life to spontaneously occur in the first place....and neither do any of you. Why did bacteria desire to all of a sudden come together to form more complex forms of itself over billions of years, why this constant desire for such vast complexity of itself? Could it be the same reason why the singularity (first atom) of the original big bang exploded into many expressions of itself with this same desire to experience itself through infinite galaxy's throughout infinite space? Think about it..
I personally dont beleive in love. If you break the concept down and filter out your personal neediness. All that remains are basic emotions. Same as wanting to belong. Can be seen in animals who dont experience conciousness although concious.