Friday, January 15, 2010

Being conscious

Consciousness is gift, is it? I don’t think so. Especially when one is aware of being aware, conscious of being conscious. Knowledge, after threshold of being aware is dangerous. It ruins happiness and it can take person to ends where it will challenge survival.
Last day I was reading about consciousness. I am curious about how do I understand. The simplest answer is I understand due to my consciousness. If one studies brain, there are partial answers about what happens in memory and other signals when this cognition happens. But this neural-biotic system is so delicately arranged, every small part fits every other tiny part so well, coordination among them which is chief ingredient of ‘conscience’ make me think who runs this system. There is one simple answer is this system runs itself. This circular logic is what we avoid in any logical system. When we understand that there are millions and millions of particles called ‘neurons’ that makes us conscious and there are varieties of these particles which do their assignment almost without error. Does this accuracy exist just by its own? We have been conditioned to seek for reason, for cause and effect and for unique answer. Accepting something can be there just for its own sake is challenge to our ‘rational’ appearances. It is not hint of answer that drives research for ultimate meaning, it is hurt to pride of being intelligent that makes people produce answers for ‘being conscious’.
Though we are conscious, we are not free of biases. Reason does not drive our behavior. If reason is not working in some person, it is instincts and desires that shape our acts. Our senses are at work all the time we are alive. But, apart from this senses, we have one sense of being sensitive. This central sense cannot work on its own. It is supported by peripheral senses. But even though peripheral senses work, person will be unable to sense that they work without this central sense. It is strange balance. Both are necessary but not sufficient. Hence, we cannot reduce human being to set of characteristics. And, this inability to reduce human being to set of characteristics makes any study of human being, by focusing on any sort of behavior, go berserk. Once a limited territory of regulated behaviors is crossed, axioms and theorems are not useful to explain human behavior. We have choice though. We can have excellent explanations of few behaviors or tentative explanations of almost all behaviors. What to choose?
I see one bias working at very high level of intelligence. Bias of belief that whatever question mind raises is appropriate and answering this questions needs further excavation into logical mess. But, question can arise out of inconsistency of possible connections. There is general frame of behavior fitted in our mind and when we get information of any incident it generally fits into this general frame of reference. It makes connection with pre-existing information. When such connections have set of wrong connections, we can feel question. But, then it is just about altering connection of existing information, not inviting new load of information to muddle whatever chaos already existing.
I am not imagining. This happens when we feel questioned about why other person is behaving so and so. We seek for reason in our or other person’s behavior, past or external events. Are the there? My experience is negative.
Such questions are not needed to be answered. They are needed to be dissolved. We have to overcome our pride, though we are not feeling it, of being logical. I need to accept that there is bound, limit to my understanding of myself and hence understanding of anybody else. This view may generate some contradictions. But contradiction can be there. There is nothing saying that logic is perfect.
Uncertainty and randomness have their pleasure. To feel them, one needs to shade habit of seeing everything through imbibed reasoning framework.
Let it be! Let just be fooled by randomness and feel the foolishness. After all, we live for fun, not for answers if they don’t yield fun.

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