I read a very good book: Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained. |
One of the things the work made me realize is that I'm not always as conscious as I think I am. |
My inner voice, literally the voice in my head that I used to identify as "me", is often silent-- |
the systems that are always buzzing my head don't always marshal themselves up into a distinct speech pattern. |
In fact, I'm running on autopilot most of the time-- the pandemonium that makes up my mind isn't always- as a 'group', or at least on the level that makes itself known to itself as a whole- aware of what it's up to. |
The book makes a very good case for a view of the mind as this series of competing/co-operating systems |
(and argues very strongly against the idea of some 'inner-self' where the self and thinking 'really' happens, serviced by all the outer processes of subconsciousness and perception), |
sometimes using language as a framework, |
sometimes using other methods of imitating our sense-impressions to take advantage of our specialized perception systems. |
My own introspection goes further, (though of course one of the points of the book is that we should take our own internal observations with a large grain of salt,) and says that I'm not always aware of what's going on. |
If I desire to, I can think metathoughts- thoughts about my thoughts- and metametathoughts, and metametametathoughts, and so on all the way up-- that's what consciousness is all about. |
But I usually don't. |
And, like all you other mammals out there, I sleep. |
Perchance to dream-- but only sometimes. |
Sometimes I'm "out like a light". Well, not completely-- I'm sure that some one could hook up some sensors to my head, and clearly see a fair amount of happy neurochemical humming and bopping, even when I'm in deepest of deep sleep. |
But not to me-- I may not be dead to the world (as long as the world has sufficiently sensitive instruments) but I'm dead to myself. |
So what's the point? It's like Poe said: "Sleep... those little slices of death; O how I loathe them!" |
He was expressing a frustration with having to spend so much of his life in a comatose state. |
And he has a point: sleep seems to make our finite lifespans even more finite. |
And yet-- and yet, it's a safe way of practicing for what we all will finally come to. |
Yes, the idea of "death as sleep" is hardly new, but I hope by pointing out how it won't be a totally new experience, |
how even when we're awake and about we aren't necessarily awake in the ways we find most important to our sense of selves,that I can make the lack of our selves in the universe less frightening-- |
especially given the fact that, by definition, we won't be there to be scared at that time. |
