Thinking about the truly universal characteristics of human
beings…obviously food, shelter, clothing with shelter being in need of further
elaboration. The one that seems to be bearing fruit in terms of a blossoming
thought is communication. I find myself considering the innate need for human
beings to connect with the world around them. This need for connecting is
manifest in art and language most powerfully. Searching for exceptions I find
myself thinking of the sociopath or the mentally disabled. I think though that
mental illness can possibly be understood as the brains self-correction
mechanism when a void exists in our innate need for connecting with the world
around us. The brain creates an internal network of connections whether its
among multiple personalities, or voices one hears or perverted impulses to harm
others. I think possibly these phenomenon can be understood as an attempt to
fill the void left by an inability to connect with the world around someone. As
for the mentally disabled the first thing that comes to mind is that
consciousness is the operating variable in our desire to connect with the world
around us. Maybe it is that consciousness by its nature has a tendency to
disassociate oneself from the greater universe and it is that space between our
true selves and the ego which we are seeking to fill through communication. We
have evolved to think so that we may adapt more dynamically to the world and in
becoming capable of thought have simultaneously distanced ourselves from the
world. The result of that distance is the nearly universal phenomenon of
loneliness. People feel lonely as a result of consciousness which insulates us
from the world around us. I arrived here from the starting point of mentally
disabled because their diminished consciousness seems to me to correspond to a
diminished need for communication and a diminished sense of loneliness. These
are infant thoughts which have not been fully considered but they were birthed
in a feeling of rightness which leads me to believe there is something
important here worth considering at length. Why does consciousness seem to
correlate with skepticism? For instance why do we assume that others do not
care about us? Do others assume that or is that my own ill temperament? Is the
nature of consciousness such that the propensity to see what is lacking in any
given idea is a manifestation of the purpose of consciousness to be a self-correcting
mechanism? In other words consciousness evolved in human beings to allow us to
quickly (relatively speaking in terms of evolution) identify and correct
threats to our own survival. As such consciousness is not purposed towards
recognizing that which helps us survive a.k.a. that which feels “good” to us,
but rather is purposed towards the end of recognizing that which threatens our
survival a.k.a. that which feels “bad” to us. Therefore the nature of
consciousness is to be skeptical, questioning and generally negative so as to
identify and hopefully correct threats to survival.
The history of humanoids contains significant evidence that
the phenomenon of consciousness has been massively successful to this end.
Consider the strong correlation between the development of the human brain
(which reached an important milestone seventy four thousand years ago with the
super volcano explosion in Indonesia which reduced the human population to a
mere several thousand but from there only the most highly evolved humans
created the modern human race) and the population of humans on the planet. As
consciousness advanced the human population grew eventually hitting the point
of exponential growth. This was not without cost though. At the heart of a
conscious experience is a necessary disconnect from that which is being
experienced. Meaning that in order to think about something it is necessary to
freeze it into a mental abstraction. It isn’t all that different from taking a
photograph which captures a particular moment in time. When we set about the
business of thinking we necessarily must disconnect from the dynamic nature of
what we are thinking about. We do so through the formation of abstractions
which allow us to mentally manipulate the subjects of our thought. My contention
is that this process of disconnecting from that which we are thinking about has
the effect of isolation. We feel that disconnect and express it as loneliness,
a phenomenon which seems to me quite universal. As such we strive to connect
with each other and larger energies of the universe in order to heal the wound
of consciousness.
Ironically, perhaps
the phenomenon of consciousness has led us to a point in human development
wherein consciousness itself has in some ways become a threat to our survival.
What I mean by that is the tendency to think which is itself accompanied by a
feeling of loneliness has led more and more human minds to the existential
conclusion that we are alone, that are lives are without purpose, that we are a
random mistake of the universe that will go unnoticed and have almost no impact
on the history of the planet, never mind the solar system, galaxy, galaxy
cluster or universe at large. Perhaps purposelessness is the inexorable result
of consciousness. Perhaps though the station of purposelessness is but one stop
on the track of consciousness and what is necessary is further adaptation.
Particularly in the area of embracing intuitive intelligence in an effort to
broaden and expand the power of consciousness while simultaneously helping to
diminish the accompanying sense of loneliness. In understanding the intuitive
axiom that we are all connected to each other, to the physical earth and to the
mysterious energy spiritual or otherwise which binds everything together. That
we are happy and filled with purpose when we are connected to that energy and
we are miserable and consumed by the existential crisis when we are
disconnected to that energy.
