CosmiKnot

I now see that, yes, consciousness as self-defined “I” is a necessary illusion. The patriarchal God of monotheist religions is an outward projection of this illusion. Or at least it is a clumsy-complex method of trying to shoehorn spirituality or loss of self into a self-centred universe. This idea of consciousness turns the human body into a kind of armoured vehicle out of which the “individual” data processing machine peers as it trundles through life. Our civilised culture is based on separation. My own frustration is that I have always found this process of viewing life as a separation a rather non-intuitive act that I have non the less persevered with rather too diligently out of duty to the monotheist God that was indoctrinated into my data processing system by table thumping RE teachers. Self-awareness is not an integral part of being human but it strikes me that books such as "I am a Strange Loop" discuss it as if it were. The idea of indi...

Marcus du Sautoy's interactive lecture at the Barbican started with a brief and playful conjecture illustrating the absurdity of the search for consciousness. He joked about the idea of cutting off his hand and whether consciousness might be found residing therein. In terms of "self" exploration it seemed clear that we seem to have remained in flat earth territory since Kant posited that consciousness was located in the pituitary gland. I have written several times (I think) about the obsession with dissecting as path to knowledge that the artists and scholars of the Renaissance rapidly developed and once more I find my self thinking that expecting to find the self by physically chopping up and analyzing the brain in smaller and smaller pieces will not lead to a deeper understanding. We need to make a leap of faith in order to cross disciplines or like children at a party in celebration of our own intelligence we will be left having unwrapped the pass the parcel...