195,000 years is still a very short time, geologically and evolutionarily speaking. I too have a feeling that many civilizations, maybe an advanced one or two, could have come and gone before recorded history -- I'm not sure how that helps, though, since it implies that yes, we've been evolutionarily unchanged for a slightly longer time, but that change still occurred very recently.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chimpertainment
Agreed. Except that sentience isn't a mirror of consciousness, it is our acknowledgement of the reflection. The difference is significant, I think, and how we acknowledge that reflection is determined by our level of self-awareness. I also agree that self-awareness was an inevitable result of evolution -- an accident of evolution that DNA cannot account for, perhaps, but still inevitable. What we do with that self-awareness is where we define ourselves; we can either ignore it or suppress it (which is what I believe our genetic nature is insisting we do), or we can ascend consciousness and view from its peak at what more there is. I'm a big fan of the latter, aspiration and exploration being much more exciting than cold comfort.Quote:
I think all of this evolution would happen the same way anywhere it took hold. And I dont mean humans would always be the result. But every species utilizes the same attributes of consciousness that lead to sentience. So I am saying it was inevitable that we were going to become self-aware. The sentience is like a mirror of consciousness.
Modern man might put a lot of emphasis on sentience, but he seems to get it wrong almost all the time; does that count? Also, remember my opinion of modern man -- as long as we're still quoting Plato or Aristotle to make a point, or stealing our fiction ideas from Homer and the Druids, we're still betraying that our minds are working about the same now as they ever were -- we may have filled them with fantastic amounts of information, with more available at our fingertips than any human could have imagined a century ago, but we're still producing wisdom at about the same rate we ever did.Quote:
Also, modern man puts a lot of emphasis on sentience. When you look at "ancient" civilizations, their conscious mind is heavily externalized. In our modern societies, all that consciousness has been repressed, and systematically bound like a mummy. The ancient man still expresses sentience in art, tools, language, the usual, but they had a very equalized relationship with nature.
I think technology is a big part of this conversation as well. Now that we have developed technology that reaches back inside the mind, we are slowly realizing the truth. Technology is just a mirror.
I wrote an article about a decade ago called "DNA's Revenge," I think, where I described how DNA has been struggling (non-sentiently, of course; no theory of mind intended on DNA) for millennia to curb our self-awareness, and get us back to our pre-sentient ways. These "ways" included a complete lack of interest in controlling (and subsequently trashing) our environment. It may have finally succeeded with our innate lust for technology, which may be less a mirror than a magnet, as it fully externalizes pretty much all of the intellectual exercises that we once struggled with internally, and by that struggle defined ourselves, and grew our Selves.
Why do we love technology? Because in our deepest genetic hearts we are like those lions lazing in the grass I mentioned above, and anything to let us "sleep" 20 hours a day with a minimum of work is most welcome -- whether we consciously know it or not. In a sense, if DNA gets its revenge, then consciousness would also prevail, because any regression from self-awareness is a return to natural consciousness ... right where we were when we lit that first fire, and where we still intuitively acknowledged having been just a few thousand years ago. And yes, there are still peoples on earth who hold onto that ancient acknowledgement ... maybe they're waiting patiently for our return, again?
That, I think, is what I'm saying as well, and adding that that externalization has levels of quality, self-awareness being currently the highest (technology being the lowest). Sometimes deconstruction is fun, though. It makes us think!Quote:
Ya know, it seems like im saying sentience is a matter of externalizing consciousness. Its an interesting idea. That would suggest everything expresses consciousness, but at different levels. Perhaps I just enjoy deconstructing things too much, lol...
I'm counting on that, and doing what I can to revise away; we all should.Quote:
Maybe our rules need some revision then...
