Part 4:4C Thirdly, we have had to live in denial of what consciousness really is

A phenomenon that should become abundantly clear by the end of this book is that wherever there is polarised debate, it is a sure sign that the issue of the human condition is involved. The subject of ‘consciousness’ is one such example, for it has caused as much polarisation as any issue debated by humans; indeed, anyone who has searched the term ‘consciousness’ will have found it to be a subject surrounded by extraordinary controversy, confusion and mystery. BUT, there is a very good reason for this, and it is not because consciousness is an impenetrably complex subject, as we are often told—it is because consciousness raises the unbearable issue of the human condition!

The truth is, the subject of consciousness brings our mind so quickly into contact with the unbearably depressing issue of the human condition that ‘consciousness’ has become synonymous with—indeed code for—the problem of the human condition.

In his book Complexity, the science writer Roger Lewin described the great difficulty humans have had trying to ‘illuminate the phenomena of consciousness’ as ‘a tough challenge…perhaps the toughest of all’ (1993, p.153 of 208). To illustrate the nature and extent of the difficulty, Lewin relayed the philosopher René Descartes’ own disturbed reaction when he tried to ‘contemplate consciousness’: ‘So serious are the doubts into which I have been thrown…that I can neither put them out of my mind nor see any way of resolving them. It feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top’ (p.154). Yes, consciousness has indeed been a fearful realm in which to delve!

Exactly why the subject of consciousness raised the hitherto unbearable issue of the human condition and therefore why it caused such a fearful, all-our-moorings-taken-from-under-us, ‘deep whirlpool’ of terrible depression can be accounted for by two very good reasons.

The first reason is that trying to think about consciousness meant trying to understand what—when we humans are the only fully conscious, reasoning, intelligent, extraordinarily clever, ‘can-get-a-man-on-the-Moon’ animal—is so intelligent and clever about being so competitive, selfish and aggressive, in fact, so ruthlessly competitive, brutal and even murderous, that human life has become all but unbearable and we have nearly destroyed our own planet?! Any contemplation about the nature of our conscious intellect invariably brought us into contact with the unbearable conclusion that it was the most destructive force the world has ever known. Yes, that our fully conscious, reasoning, intelligent, insightful, aware, knowing, understanding human mind has, it seems, unconsciously, irrationally, unintelligently, unthinkingly, indifferently, uncaringly and stupidly almost destroyed the whole planet we live on, and also brought human existence to a state of unbearably lonely, alienated, egocentricity-crazed, aggressive, hateful dysfunctionality, has been an extremely confronting matter to think about. No wonder, as it says in Genesis in the Bible, having taken the ‘fruit’ ‘from the tree of…knowledge’ (3:3, 2:17) that was ‘desirable for gaining wisdom’ (3:6)—that is, having become fully conscious, thinking, knowledge-finding beings—we humans became so destructively behaved, so apparently lacking in ‘wisdom’, that we seemingly deserved to be condemned and ‘banished…from the Garden of Eden’ (3:23) as defiling, unworthy, evil beings!

So while our conscious mind or intellect is, without doubt, the culminating achievement of the grand experiment in nature that we call life, it also appeared to be the most destructive and thus seemingly evil force to ever have appeared on Earth. Our conscious mind appeared to be to blame for all the devastation and human suffering in the world! Instead of being wonderful, our conscious mind appeared to be the plague of the planet! That is how ‘serious are the doubts’ that thinking about consciousness produced within us!

The second reason why the subject of consciousness has been so unbearably depressing to confront was because thinking about the nature of consciousness quickly brought us into contact with the unbearably depressing truth of Integrative Meaning. The explanation of what consciousness actually is will reveal the problem because as we will see, while consciousness itself is actually a simple and obvious phenomenon to explain, its meaning has very confronting implications.

As briefly explained in Part 3:3, and this will be more fully explained in Part 8:7A, nerves were originally developed for the coordination of movement in animals, but, once developed, their ability to store impressions—which is what we refer to as ‘memory’—gave rise to the potential to develop understanding of cause and effect. If you can remember past events, you can compare them with current events and identify regularly occurring experiences. This knowledge of, or insight into, what has commonly occurred in the past enables you to predict what is likely to happen in the future and to adjust your behaviour accordingly. Once insights into the nature of change are put into effect, the self-modified behaviour starts to provide feedback, refining the insights further. Predictions are compared with outcomes and so on. Much developed, and such refinement occurred in the human brain, nerves can sufficiently associate information to reason how experiences are related, learn to understand and become CONSCIOUS of, or aware of, or intelligent about, the relationship between events that occur through time. Thus consciousness means being sufficiently aware of how experiences are related to attempt to manage change from a basis of understanding.

In the context of explaining the human condition, what is so significant about this process is that once our nerve-based learning system became sufficiently developed for us to become conscious and able to effectively manage events, our conscious intellect was then in a position to wrest control from our gene-based learning system’s instincts, which, up until then, had been controlling our lives. Basically, once our self-adjusting conscious mind emerged it was capable of taking over the management of our lives from the instinctive orientations we had acquired through the natural selection of genetic traits that adapted us to our environment. However, it was at this juncture, when our conscious intellect challenged our instincts for control, that a terrible battle broke out between our instincts and intellect, the effect of which, as explained in Part 3:2 using the Adam Stork analogy, was the extremely competitive, selfish and aggressive state that we call the human condition.

The problem with admitting this, in truth, obvious explanation of how our conscious brain works is that it meant admitting information could be associated and simplified—it meant admitting to insight—which was only a short step away from realising the ultimate insight, which is the integrative theme or meaning or purpose or direction of existence, which in turn immediately confronted us with our own inconsistency with that meaning.

Yes, as just explained in Part 4:4B, to admit to Integrative Meaning meant having to face the fact that our competitive and aggressive behaviour is seemingly totally at odds with the integrative direction of life, no less. The development and maintenance of the order of matter requires that the parts of developing wholes cooperate not compete. Integrative meaning confronts us squarely with our divisive human condition. Better to deny the existence of purpose in the first place by avoiding the possibility that information could be associated, refined and simplified. Admitting that our brain can associate information, reason, and become insightful about how experiences are related, learn to understand and become conscious of the relationship of events that occur through time and refine those insights further, leading all the way to the deduction of the meaning of all experience, which is to order or integrate matter, was not something the upset human race wanted to do. In short, admitting that information could be simplified or refined meant admitting to an ultimate refinement or law, confronting us with our inconsistency with that law, namely with the law of Integrative Meaning.

Demonstrating our masterful evasion of the nature of consciousness we used words like ‘conscious’, ‘intelligent’, ‘understanding’, ‘reason’ and ‘insight’ regularly without ever actually identifying what we are conscious of, intelligent about, understanding, reasoning or having an insight into, which is how events or experiences are related. The conventional obscure, evasive definition of intelligence is ‘the ability to think abstractly’. The other imprecise, obscure, evasive phrase used whenever we wanted to refer to the uniqueness of our intelligence without actually saying what our conscious, understanding, insightful intelligence is, was to say that ‘We are the species that is able to reflect upon itself.’ So to name the area of the brain that associates and simplifies information as the ‘association cortex’ was, in fact, a slip of our evasive guard. Of course, when we weren’t ‘on our guard’ against exposure few would deny that information can be associated, simplified and meaning found. In fact, most of us would say we do it every day of our lives—if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have a word for ‘insight’. That is the amazing aspect about our denial of anything that brings the dilemma of the human condition into focus: it is not unusual for us humans to accept an idea up to a point, but as soon as it starts to lead to a confronting conclusion, pretend it doesn’t exist—and do so without batting an eyelid.

So, unable—until now—to answer this deepest and darkest of all questions of our species’ consciousness-induced, ‘good-and-evil’-afflicted, less-than-ideally-behaved, seemingly-imperfect, even ‘fallen’ or corrupted, human condition, we learnt to avoid the whole depressing subject of consciousness and the issue it raised of the human condition. In terms then of the task of finding understanding of the human condition, it is clear that if you can’t think about what consciousness really is—again, recognise that the nerve-based learning system, unlike the gene-based learning system, can associate information, reason how experiences are related, learn to understand and become conscious of the relationship of events that occur through time—then you have not even arrived at the starting blocks in terms of thinking effectively about what produced the human condition.

A great deal more will be said in Part 8:7A about what consciousness really is, and why we have had to live in denial of that simple explanation. The other important question of ‘How did we humans become fully conscious while other species didn’t?’ was briefly answered in Part 3:11 and will also be fully explained in Part 8:7B.