26. CONSCIOUSNESS — Part Two
Andrew Frawley is a writer, photographer, and “noisemaker” who works to discover the timeless principles of life that are most likely to ensure a life of effectiveness, impact, and quality. From his Scratchpad, we can draw some interesting clues in his essay, “The Curse of Consciousness.”
“Consciousness has granted humans the awareness to solve problems, think abstractly, and to even realize our place in the universe. However, it’s also given us a stunningly inflated sense of entitlement that we use to justify our destroying the planet and slaughtering of everything living in the name of our own comfort and pleasure. … But, this essay isn’t even about the entitlement and destruction that comes from consciousness, it is instead an investigation into the world of internal chaos that it has catalyzed.”
“If you connect the dots on the many different things humans love to do, you’ll quickly realize the one thing they all have in common is that they make us stop thinking. That’s right. We spend our lives being drawn to activities that help us avoid our consciousness and to not think.”
Frawley documents our preoccupation with “engaging” activity. As we choose to be fully immersed, lost in the moment, out of our heads, and focused on our exploding senses, we leave our conscious mind completely. We like to be in a euphoric autopilot. As he grew older, Frawley noticed that all of his favorite activities had a similar thread: “They were just things I found myself deeply immersed into. And that’s the whole point. Immersion is out of the head.”
He looked at the ways that other people spent their time and found them similar to his own. “It became clear: what we truly desire as people is to be immensely present. And the reason we love being present is because we want to escape consciousness.”
“Immersing yourself into your thoughts on a problem in your head is no different than immersing yourself into a math problem on paper. Both equally remove the self from consciousness. The important note here is that consciousness and thinking are very different. I have to think to write this sentence, but talking to myself and becoming aware of myself in relation to other items is consciousness.”
“Let’s not forget how evolution works. A random mutation in the genome happens, that mutation sometimes gives a creature an advantage to survive. Because of that, it survives and reproduces. That’s it. Nothing within evolution accounts for the quality of life of that creature. Consciousness was a mutation that helped us realize we can make fire and use words. That made us great at not dying. That’s why we have it. I think a lot of us forget how possible it is to have a feature on our body that developed for survival and exists with literally zero consideration for how much we smile.”
“From what I have shared, consciousness sounds more like a neutral agent that exists in our life. But, unfortunately, that’s not the whole story. … While we might not have hard data on it, it’s no secret that the average human spends lots of their life insecure, sad or depressed. … This is how we begin to not just illustrate consciousness as a neutral agent, but instead as the active antagonist to our existence. … This is what I mean when I say truth-seekers, who love thinking, experience intense unnecessary pain for their ‘love’ of thinking.”
“I suppose it just points us to the philosophical question, ‘what makes life worth living?’ … be it truth or flourishing? Does truth enhance flourishing? … If we are to tout consciousness as man’s greatest asset, we’ll need to find a good way to explain and offset the conscious mind’s ability to make itself so miserable that it wants to blow itself to pieces.”
“I am happy I’ve learned the basics of science and predict benefits to come from it, but even still, that’s a lot of hell and for what outcome? Truth? … But what good, really, is the truth? … The argument is basically that the truth reduces suffering in the long term. Learning science, etc., helps someone be calm about a human’s place in the world. Or conversely, the truth helps us find cures for physical pain like cancer. … Even through the lens of reducing physical pains, etc., it really only puts us in a philosophical debate about what is life and what’s the purpose of extending it?”
“But that just brings me back to my point, does consciousness really reduce suffering? Or does it increase suffering? … It all depends on what barometer you are measuring consciousness up against. If you measure it against truth and knowledge, consciousness is a grace and miracle. But if you measure consciousness up against quality of life, that’s a more challenging argument.”
“It makes me think of an old cartoon where an image is shown of humans full of ego and self-worth pushing themselves with great stress to fulfill a modern world of an ideal life. Meanwhile, in the second frame, a couple of dogs look on laughing at our naïveté for what really makes life worth living.”
Q: With these sobering thoughts, what makes your life worth living?
