Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Being aware of other people heightens my sense of being. There are many reasons for me to think this way, but two reasons I feel like sharing are because I am self-conscious too much and because of my consciousness. To make this entry an existentialist text and not a therapy session, I will explain the latter reasoning. I believe that everything in the universe is composed of waves of consciousness. Consciousness exists everywhere, and it is through us and every other living, or non-living, thing that consciousness is able to experience itself. This look on life makes me grateful for being alive and all that I do because the opposite would mean that I am not aware of life and I would not exist without consciousness. You can find so much inspiration in life by being able to fully experience it. I mean, thank consciousness or a higher being for manifesting you into a human and not a rock or part of a dust cloud in space. So with my deep love and respect for consciousness, my sense of self is heightened and I am made aware of other people. Other people are a reminder that we are not alone and that consciousness runs throughout everything. Seeing other people live their lives and the fact that they are able to get through their life with all the troubles that tag along reminds me that I am not alone. I guess you can say that other people help me to be who I am, whether I get ideas from somebody or if I can model myself after the goodness I see in them. Therefore, this brings up a question of whether or not I am authentic. I believe everyone is authentic. Yes we can copy each other, but we are all so different. Consciousness is the same in everything and everyone, but it’s through the vessel (human, animal, object, deity) that consciousness is different. We carry out our ideas and our values differently through consciousness, which makes us unique and authentic. The fact that we are alive and can exist right now makes us authentic because this world is full of change and destruction that might not give us the chance to live on it anymore.
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I really enjoy how enthralled you seem to be with the concept of consciousness, I too believe that questions concerning consciousness are of particular interest. I particularly enjoy your definition of an authentic being, that of consciousness occupying different “vessels”, as you said, and I am very interested in this concept you seemed to propose of consciousness being something that every physical object possesses, although in varying degrees. Certainly, Heidegger’s definitions and hypotheses concerning being and Da-Sein fit quite well with a reality where consciousness is universal, however I am not sure that consciousness is universal in the reality in which we exist, although this disagreement that we seem to have on the nature of consciousness may in part be due to differences in definitions. While I have typically defined consciousness as the higher level thought that humans and some animals possess, I have also heard consciousness as being defined as the sort of reactions that an entity has to the world around it. When a gust of wind hits a leaf, the leaf has no other reaction but to be swept into the breeze. If a gust of wind were to hit a normal human, that human would have a much wider range of potential reactions. Although both the leaf and the human reacted to the wind, the human is able to react in a much wider variety of ways and thus demonstrate a type of ‘higher’ consciousness. With those definitions in mind, how would you describe your definition of the term consciousness?
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