Living a Real Life

The forest is still and quiet. The giant trees stand like stately pillars holding up the roof of green. Among them there is no sign of movement. What light penetrates the heavy canopy of cedar and hemlock is soft like that just before the night. What animals are out there are quietly feeding or resting protected from the rain.

It was raining for a long time before the water began to reach the dry soil. We knew it was raining because we could hear it high above. The rain is beginning to penetrate the forest roof and drop gently on our roof. Gentle rain on a roof can be a soothing sound and lull one to sleep.

I made myself a giant cup of tea. As I looked out at the idyllic scene I began to slip into almost a trance-state while my mind was flooded with thoughts, ideas and passing philosophical questions - not the tough 'what is life?' type of question but the soft 'how am I so lucky to be enjoying this time?' type of question. Such is the philosophical enquiry of a rainy day deep in the wilderness away from the torments of so-called civilization. How could one not be overcome with awe of the gentleness of such great power? How could one not want to be here able to contemplate such beauty and grace? How could one not ask whether they are actually experiencing life as it was really meant to be?

Such a question does not ignore the dangers and frequent hardships of wilderness life. Surviving the winter, for example, is a danger and a hardship. Staying warm and having sufficient food dominates the thoughts and actions of all those spending the winter in the wilderness.

In the wilderness survival is a way of life, a way of behaving, the way of nature. Survival isn't a concept or philosophical hypothesis to be considered. It is a matter of living life. Actually it is a matter of living an uninhibited life, a full life, that is ultimately beneficial to all of nature.

We know that there must be predators. Some predators will die from accidents and some even from the failure to kill food, but their life in unimpeded by a fear of that reality. If a sufficient number of predators don't kill a sufficient number of ungulates the ungulates will over-graze causing plant loss and failure which will effect the flow and clarity of the water, etc., etc., with the end result of a dying ecosystem. Perhaps the best known study that proved this reality was in Yellowstone National Park where all of the wolves had been killed. There was a period in National Park Service history where they thought that they should kill all predators. Yellowstone began dying. It was literally saved by the re-introduction of wolves into the habitat. After the re-introduction streams improved, trees returned, meadows became healthy, and the ungulates as well as the predators had sufficient food.

Real life . . . a good life . . . isn't determined by death. We will hear people say at an old person's funeral that 'they had a full life.' Living a long time does not automatic translate into a good, happy or full life. I have known many people who have suffered greatly to an old age. One could not call their life good, happy or full. Just long. I have known people who have died young but who had died doing something they loved and were happy with their life. I look at myself and realize that there is a third group - viz. those who live into old age and are still experiencing a good, full and happy life. Occasionally I say to Pamela, "pinch me". I need to confirm that this isn't a dream.

I shudder at the word 'civilization' because the mere definition of the word assumes a false superiority of the crowded, artificial city over the rural or wilderness. I would challenge the idea that civilization is the 'real world', but I realize that, for perhaps a majority of people, it would be a fruitless effort to engage in such an argument. In modern society we have been taught that the city, 'civilization', etc., is not only real but superior and necessary. I can not tell you how many people I hear who have fallen in love with the wilderness yet speak of the necessity of returning to 'reality' or 'civilization.' They speak that way because they have been raised to believe that is a true statement. The only truth is that much of humanity must suffer incarceration in cities and densely populated areas because we are like the ungulates who have overpopulated and over-grazed the land because there are no predators.

Nature has perfected itself over billions of years of experience. We know that nature has the ability to recover and adapt. There are many, including many scientists and religious people, who believe that nature will recover and adapt to the destruction by the homo sapiens. It will start by eliminating homo sapiens.

The idea that humans really know better than nature and/or can improve upon nature is beyond absurd. Actually such a belief has proven to be exceptionally destructive. In reality, were it not for our horribly destructive behavior, humans would be a very insignificant part of nature. At this point in earth history we serve absolutely no positive or beneficial purpose. Even the lowly house fly serves a far greater purpose than humans. A cancer cell serves no beneficial purpose to the body but can mean the death of the body. Our bodies fight to remove the cancer cell. The only salvation from the cancer is to kill it.

I do not believe that we were destined to be what we are and I'm not going to bother arguing my case for this belief. I do believe that Dr. Yusal Noah Harari was correct when he said that humans would have quickly become extinct if they had remained the insignificant species of primates in northeastern Africa. He went on to talk about our ability to convince large groups of 'fictitious reality' as the means of our success. But that's a thesis in its own merit. I do believe that by exhibiting basic survival nature; viz. moving into new areas in search of food and shelter, and learning to adapt; we grew into what we are today. However, I do not believe that survival necessitated us purposely alienating ourselves from the nature which sustains us and losing our natural survival skills.

As I look at the forest I feel a sense of oneness. I feel in tune with the deer, bear and other animals I encounter. The other day we stood almost to toe-to-toe with a bear. He wanted to go by us to find food in the campground. We weren't going to let him. I was very respectful of his power and his ability to kill me and so I carried my bear spray. At the same time, looking into the bear's face I did not see anger or animosity. He was attempting to understand and analyze my behavior in the same way as I was trying to understand and analyze his. I never took my safety off my spray. He decided to try to go around me and we met on the other side of the tree.

Human superiority complex would have me believe that I intimidated him, causing him to leave. I knew that I was standing in front of him for his own safety. If he had been successful in passing me and finding human food in the campground it would have been his death warrant. I didn't want him to die that way. I didn't want him to die from being struck by a car. I wanted him to go back across the road and live the good life of a free and healthy bear. Could he understand that? Probably not in the way we think of understanding.

The young bear, moose, deer or any other animal which must be abandoned or run off by their own mothers for their own survival and the survival of the species probably do not understand that behavior in the way a human would explain understanding, but they accept and soon adapt.

In comparison to life in the city of a person with sufficient resources, I'm sure our wilderness life seems quite harsh and uninviting. They live in large areas that are cooled in heat and heated in the cold. There is a wasteful over-abundance of food, total lack of concern to conserve water and no concern for fuels. Only those known as the "haves" would argue the superiority of the heavily populated areas. The poor among the humans is the poorest of the poor in nature. The member of the herd who is not able to care for themselves and/or contribute to the survival of the herd will probably end up as food for a predator but not because the greed of one or more members of the herd. Greed is a human condition. Granted the strongest in the herd will get to breed more and be the first one to eat and eat its fill, but it won't hoard resources. It isn't greed. Many species will actually attempt to protect the weakest as long as possible. Our behavior as a species is definitely not superior to other animals, but I don't want to get started talking about human behavior. The point is, that while there are those who have the resources to enjoy the comforts of the city, that doesn't make the city either more comfortable or safer or more desirable. If one would research the ancestry of people now living in places like Glacier's North Fork, where there are no public utilities and they resist the blacktopping of the one road into the area, I believe you would find that they are the children of people who escaped the city to survive and in favor of a simpler life with the essentials of life.

While those who have the resources to enjoy the comforts of the city will; despite its restrictions, bad air and totally artificial facade; still argue its superiority, no one can argue that such a caged and limited life is our true nature. One can only deny that we are animals that have tried so hard to divest ourselves of our true identity that we are fubar.

It is possible to live in harmony with our true nature but it isn't easy. The only reason that it isn't easy is because we have become so conditioned, so habituated to what we have been taught are comforts that we must re-learn what was once instinctual. At one point in our human history, as an omnivore, we would have been similar to our brother bear. It seems that there is a chemical group called epigenes attached to DNA that may well be chemical memory that can be passed from generation to generation. Since scientists have found the epigene in humans and we are structurally almost identical to other mammals, I am going to assume that bears and other animals also have epigenes. Have we lost the epigene that helped us find our way to a salt-lick or food source? When I was in school in Dublin in the early 1970s there were some English scientists who were doing research to support their hypothesis that humans, at one time, had the navigational skills of other species. The greatest pianist will lose her ability to play if she goes for an extended period of time without playing a piano. The greatest pitcher or football player will lose their skills after a period of not playing no matter how great they originally were. For some time I ran 40-50 mile trail runs. To get so that running all day long was natural and comfortable I ran an average of 80 miles or more a week. After a couple of years I was more comfortable running than walking. When I came to the Rocky Mountains I learned that trail runners are known as 'fast food for mountain lions.' I stopped running 80 miles a week. I can still run but it is no longer more comfortable and I definitely can not do it all day long. As a species I believe that we have learned the hard way that if you don't use it you lose it.

If we accept and work to understand how we have been conditioned to believe that we are not natural animals, we can purposely re-learn skills long ago lost. I believe that I have some fairly good skills for living in the mountains and I am attempting to hone those skills and learn new ones. But I am not sure how long I would live if I were just to walk away into the woods. My intestines are elongated so that I do not have the ability to deal with spoiled food as do other species. I no longer have the epigene information, or whatever, that enables other species to find edible plants or safely traverse mountain passes in search of food and shelter.

Sitting here looking out at the forest I feel drawn. If I were not painfully aware of how much I still have to learn before I could ever consider returning to the nature that beckons me, I would gladly give so-called civilization . . . society . . . the finger and return to my true nature.

The rain has stopped. Watching life around me breathe in the freshness of the rain I can almost hear it give a sigh of contentment. Life has flourished for another day. Undoubtedly there were those who did not survive today but they did not die in vain. They were not sealed in boxes to keep them from being mingled with Mother Earth. Their bodies provide nutrients for the soil and likely food for others. Those who survive have grown and learned and will pass along their knowledge to the next generation. Other species do not want to suffer and do not want to die, but their lives are not tormented by the fear of death. They live with every ounce of their being, neither contemplating their death nor whether there is some sort of life after death.

We are a part of the nature and life of this magnificent planet. I feel so sad that so many people do not understand this or do not choose to believe it. As I gaze at any wilderness area; whether the heavily forested Pacific northwest, the badlands, the swamps of Florida, the great plains or desert; I see life and find peace. I want to walk into it and become whole again. But I realize that I can not do that. I must content myself with living close to the wilderness, spending as much time as possible in the wilderness trying to learn what my species has forgotten, doing my best to protect the nature I love, and endeavoring with my whole being to lead others to love, cherish, protect and live in peace with their true nature.

Wilder

My friend, Wilder, left last week. He had told me that he might, but I didn't believe him. I had gone by his camp earlier in the morning and we had talked a long time over coffee. He was quite calm and we had a good time. We talked about the seasons, the animals, and the mountains. We had a good time, but Wilder's face was lined with sadness and worry and this morning something in his eyes told me this was the day.

I saw his backpack leaning up against a tree with his poles. He took his pack anytime he hiked. He always said "you don't have to be twenty miles from the trail head to need this." Normally the pack he carried on a day hike contained only food, water and basic survival gear and weighed less than twenty-five pounds. One look at this pack and I knew that it was packed for a long trek. It had a sleeping bag and had to weigh in at forty pounds minimum.

I didn't say anything to him and I didn't ask any questions. He knew that I noticed his pack. Any other time he would have been anxious to tell me where he was going. If he had wanted, he would have told me. I usually give him a bear hug when we part. At our age we never know if we'll see each other again. I gave him a particularly tight squeeze and he did the same.

I don't usually stop by Wilder's place in the late afternoon. You don't just stop by. It's one of those places you must be intentionally going to. I tried to come up with all sorts of reasons I was stopping by so late, but it didn't matter. Wilder was gone. His camp was, as usual, pristine - no animal attractants and no rewards left out. Wilder and his pack were gone.

As I slowly walked back to my car I wondered if I would ever see him again. No, I concluded, not likely.

What could ever drive a man to shun society, scoff at many pleasures and luxuries, and purposely disappear into the wilderness? For most people to encounter such a man would be unbearably perplexing. Such a man must be mad. Would you not agree? Look at what he is abandoning. He totally divested himself of everything that humanity had spent centuries obtaining and developing. How was he to survive? How can any person live apart from civilization. Just consider the definition of civilization - "the stage of human social development and organization which is considered most advanced ... the comfort and convenience of modern life, regarded as available only in towns and cities." Besides the question of survival how could anyone stand living outside of society? Human society is the greatest thing on the face of the earth.

One man. Well, at least one man of whom we know . . . the one man about whom this is written, doesn't believe that. When we would talk he would actually express shame at being a human.

For his entire life Wilder had worked in what is called, by Americans, a helping professions. He had been at other peoples' beckon call twenty-four hours a day for his entire work life. He confessed that he was very naive. Despite how well he knew the human animal, he attempted to find and expected the best from them. The extent of his disappointment was unfathomable. You see, Wilder was 99% Buddhist.

The Dalai Lama once said that Buddhism is 99% philosophy of life and 1% religion. If anything could describe Wilder it was the 99% of Buddhism that is philosophy of life. He knew religion well and had studied it for decades before concluding that religion is one of humanities biggest evils. Buddhism teaches that humans are, by nature, good. Wilder wanted to believe that in the worst way.

Wilder grew up post World War II. He grew up during the escalation of the cold war where they had regular atomic bomb drills hiding under their desks at school. Anybody, even a grade school student, knew that the stupid desk wasn't going to protect them from the blast of an atomic bomb. He also had to contend with Joe McCarthy and 'a communist in every closet.' What a crock! But Joe was a Senator According to Wilder, he was fubar. Wilder was at the point where he felt that human society was fubar.

Wilder also had to deal with Viet Nam, civil rights, and other issues from the 1960s. Like hundreds of thousands of other men his age Wilder had to participate in an absurd war in which he not only had no desire to participate but a war which he felt was totally unjustified. Wilder didn't like any war but that one was just the first of a string of wars based solely on a profit motive. No matter how much the politicians tried to convince the population that these wars were patriotic, Wilder wouldn't buy it. Politicians were and are killing young people for political power and wealth.

I don't really have time to tell you everything about Wilder's life. Apart from being one of the lucky ones, his life wasn't particularly noteworthy. It was Wilder who would point out how lucky he was. He had a good education - a PhD - and was able to earn more in a day or two than most people around him could earn in a week. However, he was still far enough down the chain of command and power that he only ever saw a fraction of that. He would tell me how he tried to be a good Buddhist and be optimistic but the ugly reality of humanity would always drag him down. When he left he had accepted life in a fatalistic way. Early on he was aware of the true nature of the homo sapiens but every time he tried to work and make a difference he was beaten down. Each time he was beaten down it took more and more effort to get up and do it again.

Some friends wanted me to guide them on a hike a few days after Wilder left. I took advantage of the situation to track Wilder. All the way up the mountain, after we passed his camp, I told them stories of his love for all nature and how he worked to keep his own species from destroying the world.

"All animals desire and are entitled to the same things - peace and freedom from pain". For Wilder this meant the ability to survive and raise young without fear. It didn't mean that if you were a deer you wouldn't end up dinner for a mountain lion. It did mean the ability to live life to its fullest without someone or something destroying your food sources and slaughtering your species.

"Humans have a unique ability to rationalize and abstract," Wilder would say. "but it seems that this unique gift was more Pandora's Box."

A few hours above Wilder's camp we came to a Y in the trail. Knowing the trail I figured that Wilder probably took to the high country, but I couldn't be certain. The other fork of the trail led even deeper into the wilderness. I looked around carefully. It had been dry since Wilder would have passed this way but dry can also make tracking difficult. As the others watched me with curiosity, I noticed small holes in the earth. Wilder never hiked without his poles. He had turned north-east. There was a back-country campsite some miles up. Wilder never camped in the back-country without the proper permits, but since he had now been gone several days, I figured that he wasn't worrying about protocol any more.

As we followed Wilder's marks I shared how he did follow rules. Wilder felt that good order was beneficial to the entire pack, herd, tribe or species. He would point out that if you studied the social structure of other animal species you would find good order. There were rules but the rules always provided for the survival of the species not the pleasure and/or benefit of a few.

Wilder was appalled and ashamed of the way humans treated one another as well as other species. He would point out how we devise rules most often for the benefit of a few. He would talk about the social structure of species like mountain goats and point out that despite how difficult their society appeared there was no cruelty for the sake of cruelty. There is a hierarchy based upon strength and power among other animal species, but the power struggles are so that the strongest bull gets to breed first or most often. The strongest and most powerful eat first and eat their fill but still do not hoard food and keep it from the others. Carnivorous species kill other animals for food, not for pleasure. One of Wilder's favorite stories is about the grizzly bear who was drinking from a lake. Three ducks sat on a log within easy reach. The bear was evidently full. He did not need to kill the duck so he didn't. Wilder didn't believe that is true of humans.

About five miles further up the trail we arrived at a back-country campsite. I was looking around for signs of Wilder when one of my hiking companions held up a zip-lock bag containing sheets of paper. "It's addressed to you," he said. "It was here under a rock."

My pulse raced as I removed three sheets of lined paper from the bag.

"My dearest Othel, I knew that you would not be able to resist following me. Good job on the tracking. Omahkap'si would be proud of you."

Omahkap'si is the Blackfeet word for wolf.

"I'm sure you know what I'm doing. At this point in time I have no intentions of returning. I'll either die of old age or because my skills are not sufficient to the task of survival. Either way I will be where I want to be.

"I know you understand how disenfranchised I feel in my own society and how ashamed I am of my species. We create deities in our own image to justify rape and slaughter. You know that I have tried to either physically be a part of efforts to repair the damage we've done and educate people about the consequences of our behavior, or supported those who are doing so. But I'm afraid that I have finally lost hope.

"The affairs of the world and our society in specific drive me to believe that there is no turning back. There is no way to sufficiently reduce our carbon footprint, to reduce our population enough that we stop destroying the life sources of other species. To repair what we have done to date would require sacrifice that most humans would be unwilling to make. I no longer have the physical or emotional strength to endure. I look at the politicians who now want to govern our nation and am aghast. One preaches hatred and his only skill is corporate rape. You know that he will sell our beloved wilderness to some oil company for the profits. Even our best choice thinks that the only species entitled to life is homo sapiens. Humans do not want to accept that the world would be better off without us. We are the most destructive invasive species ever known and soon you will not have to believe in some archaic religion to know the meaning of hell.

"But, dear friend, I am like the old warrior who must pass the gauntlet. I do not know how my idols like John Muir continued to fight until death. It is not dying for the cause that is so repugnant. It is seeing how so many politicians are anxious to give our natural treasures to their rich friends to exploit and leave useless to any animal species that is so repulsive. It is seeing people willing to let them do it because they say 'you won't have gasoline or air conditioning if we don't do this.' It is religion trying to justify the rape of Mother Nature by saying some deity they fabricated told them humans can do that because they're the most important animal. I can handle people calling me names and ridiculing me because I don't think humans are the most important thing in the universe. What I really find hard is that it seems that so few people really care. They don't believe that they could actually see their children and grandchildren die because of human destructiveness, and when we do win a small victory, or even a big one, realizing that it isn't enough.

"No, dear friend, I have run out of hope and strength. I need to get to spend some time before I die in the wilderness I have worked so hard to protect and to die in its peace. I would rather my body feed brother Kiaayo than separated from the earth by boxes of metal and concrete like some relic.

"One thing I ask. Tell my story. If it helps one young person realize their oneness with all living things, my life will not have been in vain."

I stood looking at the paper and the small group stood looking at me. My eyes filled with tears. I scanned the forest that surrounded me. Wilder might be miles away or he might be watching. I held Wilder's letter high in the air and blubbered like a baby.

On the way back to Wilder's camp where we spent the night I took the first step at fulfilling his last request of me . . . "tell my story".

Pandora's Box

The Truth of Pandora's Box

Russell E. Vance, III PhD

with Pamela S. Smith, MS (i)

Most people - scholars to the "average joe" - view Pandora's Box as a myth. Rightly so. The scary thing is that I believe that there is some truth to the myth, which is not infrequent, and I think I know what happened.

Myths - gods, creation stories, etc. - are created and told in an attempt to explain what we do not understand. In this case, I believe that I have discovered the source of our own destruction and our attempt to destroy the world in which we live. It all happened in one of the frequent philosophical or scientific conversations that Pamela and I so enjoy.

Assuming that you agree that homo sapiens are destroying themselves and the world that supports them, what one word would you use to describe the cause? Greed? We do not seem to be happy with a most magnificent planet and the means to live and be happy. We want more wealth. We want to indulge ourselves with what we call luxury. We want more power. We want it all at the expense of our planet and other equally deserving species.

To have some idea of the extent of our lives in relationship to the world today, it would be less than a blink of an eye. Yet we believe that that infinitesimally small amount of time is more important than the existence of the world. Why?

This is the result of Pandora's Box. I believe that the content of Pandora's Box was the ability to abstract.

Pamela's input and argument is very helpful in such situations. My original idea was that Pandora's Box contained both greed and the ability to abstract. Pamela challenged that and after some lengthy discussion we came to the conclusion that the real cause of greed, among other things some of which are good, is the ability to abstract. Abstract thought can be used to consider complex phenomena in the universe and it can be used to justify an evil deed.

Let's use a standard definition of abstract - "existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence." (ii) Now we can consider that, through the complexity of abstract thought, how the homo sapien conceives of a deity who makes the human the most important animal on the planet. We have no physical or concrete evidence. We have only the complexity of abstract thought that concludes that we are the most important species on the earth because some homo sapiens created a deity to justify such a belief. We completely ignore the evidence that, if we were to suddenly disappear from the earth, the world would not miss us. To the contrary, the world would heal and prosper. Therefore we are not the most important species on the planet. As Pamela said, "cynano bacteria would be," because that is the most basic and oldest source of oxygen on the planet.

Hold your arms out to the side. Now consider that the finger tip of your right arm is the beginning of our planet and the finger tip of your left hand is current time. All of human existence would be in the last cell on your left finger-tip. We, as individuals, are on a microscopic part of that. How can we argue that we are more important than the whole or the future?

Analytical thinking might well be our salvation. Analytical thinking is what enables us to realize that the abstraction we use to justify our superiority complex and greed is full of shit.

Greed goes far beyond wanting whatever it is to survive and prosper. We don't find greed among other animal species. For example, they kill to eat, procreate and survive not for fun or a trophy.

I believe that we can make a convincing argument that greed is dependent upon the ability to abstract. As far as we can tell, no other animal species abstracts. Other species may manifest what we call selfishness, but we soon realize that their selfishness is different than ours. Their selfishness is dependent upon survival and the survival of the species. They put their survival above that of others because that is a natural part of survival of the species. Greed is very different. Greed does not care whether it promotes the survival of the species. When humans are greedy they do not care about the survival of homo sapiens. It is all about the comfort and pleasure of the individual for their insignificantly small existence on earth.

Whatever in the world could be the up-side to this? I ask this question so that this entire monogram isn't just one big downer. We are a part of nature. Everything is a part of nature. It just happens that, at this moment, we are a destructive part of nature. We do have the ability to be a productive part of nature. We can use both our abstract and analytic skills to find ways repair the damage we have done. We can use those skills to figure out how we can be a positive, not negative, part of the world - not believing that we are superior but accepting our place and living in concert and union with the rest of the natural world.

FOOT NOTES:

(i) for those of you who do not know Pamela, she is a biology professor who has a passionate love of nature and natural sciences - a true naturalist. She will climb a mountain to see stromatolites that billions of years ago were at the bottom of a shallow sea. She takes pictures of plants and searches the forest for specific plants such as an orchid that grows in the northern Rocky Mountains. She will stand toe-to-toe with a young black bear if it means his survival. We are the only couple I have ever know to take 5 hours to drive 40 miles of the Going-to-the-Sun Road because we stopped everywhere we were allowed and got out our topographic maps along with our natural history and geology books to study what we were seeing. Whether we are talking philosophy, quantum physics or natural science, our discussions are priceless.

(ii) New Oxford American Dictionary, third edition, 2005, Oxford University Press, Inc. eBook copyright @ 2008.

Consciousness - Search for a definition

CONSCIOUSNESS - Search for a Definition

Russell E. Vance, III, PhD.

I do think that I put the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse when I wrote about whether consciousness creates reality. As I became more serious about my investigation I realized that such a question is several steps advanced of those questions which have yet to be answered. One such question is 'what is consciousness?' Here I am not talking about a simple definition of a word which we casually apply to being aware of oneself and the phenomena around us. I am talking about the definition of a process or a condition. You see, I'm already in trouble. Perhaps I should state the question "what is consciousness? ... really!"

Facing this question I have, at this writing, identified seven (7) assumptions, six (6) questions, and concluded that none of it can be tested because the tested and the testor would be the same. Further there is no physical and objective way to test anything because whatever we "observe" is a matter of how our brain interprets the sensory input. We don't really see, hear, feel, taste or smell. Our brain interprets electro-chemical signals. The label or definition which we apply to whatever we think we see, hear, feel, taste or smell is something we have learned from some source. Well, you see the problem. I won't belabor this problem further, at least at this point.

After reviewing a number of different definitions of consciousness I realized that I didn't like any of them. They are all based upon an assumption(s) which I do not believe can be made. Since this paper is merely a preliminary report of progress, which is actually being written more for myself than for a reader, I'm not going to take the extensive amount of time required for a review of literature. Since I'm not writing for a faculty committee, you, my willing reader, must be my committee and judge whether skipping the review of literature at this point is acceptable.

I must share my list of assumptions to date.

Firstly, only a living organism can be conscious. Based upon current definitions of consciousness, which I have already confessed I do not like, only a living organism can be aware of itself and/or its surroundings. This obviously requires a lot more investigation. This can never be more than assumption because there is no way to test or prove that only a living organism can be conscious. In fact, I can only assume that you are alive and/or conscious because you tell me which is dependent upon my brain's interpretation of sensory input. There is no objective test because there is no test that is not dependent upon this interpretation.

Second assumption - consciousness is real. This is a true, unsubstantiated assumption. What I am calling the "matrix theory" would challenge this assumption. Laugh if you like, but the "matrix theory" is based upon the movie "The Matrix" where people only thought they were conscious. Please forgive me if I don't take the time, at this point, to explain further. I will clarify this soon. I think you get the basic idea and the basic challenge to our assumptions about consciousness. It seems obvious that I am thinking but how do I know that I am actually conscious? But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The third assumption is that if only a living organism can be conscious and an inanimate or dead organism can not be conscious, then consciousness must be related to being alive. If consciousness has anything to do with awareness, a rock, for example, has very little change of being conscious. While most have little objection to this assumption, there are those who believe that objects such as rocks have, for the lack of a better term, metaphysical or magical properties which could imply or require consciousness.

My fourth assumption is that the only evidence we have that we are alive is that we think. You will quickly learn that I don't think anyone has improved upon Descarte's "cogito ergo sum". By the end of this monogram I will find my way back to Descarte. I will end up agreeing that because I think therefore I am, but what am I? But again I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Fifth. Something somewhere must be real otherwise there would be no foundation for my thinking. Whether there is universal consciousness or, as humans currently believe, we are individually conscious, I can not help but feel that there is something real behind it.

Assumption six might appear a bit self-centered but because you are merely the interpretation of my brain as a result of a variety of stimuli, I can only consider whether I am real and/or conscious. I can not speak for you. While I do believe in the interdependence of all things in the universe and the basic oneness of all things, which is a totally other discussion, I can not deny that my only evidence of your existence is the electro-chemical stimuli which my brain must interpret. This is, of course, assuming that my brain is physically real. If I can come to some concrete conclusion about my own reality and consciousness, then I can apply that to you, if you want.

You are going to laugh at assumption seven. It comes from the movie Star Trek IV. Spock is being tested by a computer that asked for Kiri-Kin-Tha's first law of metaphysics. The answer was "nothing unreal exists." This is my seventh assumption - nothing unreal exists. If nothing unreal exists, then all things real can, do or did exist. If we are real then we exist. As silly as this may seem, and whether or not Leonard Nimoy who wrote Star Trek IV, meant to be truly philosophical I believe that this could be an important premise.

This brings us to six questions : (1) how do we know that what we think, experience, etc., is real? (2) Am I conscious or do I just think I'm conscious? (3) Which came first consciousness or awareness? (4) How do I know that I'm aware? (5) Are sentient beings the only ones who can be conscious? (6) can any of this be tested?

I have no delusions of this being the final list of questions, but it is where I am beginning.

The first question goes back to the Matrix Theory. How do we know that what we think, experience, etc., is real? Reality is in my mind. Some people believe that gods and devils are real. It is in their minds. There is absolutely no way they can prove their reality and there is absolutely no way I can disprove it. They can say "but look at this miracle" or "so-and-so saw him", but that is still all in their minds, the result of electro-chemical stimuli interpreted by their brain. I can say "there is no physical or scientific evidence for a god or demons" but the same limitations apply to me. Bottom line . . . this is all a mind game. Sorry! Someone can say "but I saw ..." to which I must gently and as diplomatically as possible respond "your brain interpreted the electro-chemical stimuli as ..."

This, of course, leads us to the second question . . . am I conscious or do I just think I'm conscious? This seems like an absurd question if you are unwilling to consider the matrix theory. Again we must realize that everything is in the mind. What we see, hear, etc., is totally dependent upon sensory stimulation. What about what we call a dream? The dream is the mind at work. How do we test the difference between a dream and what we call reality? There is no test because it's all in the mind. I dare say that every person who reads this has, at some point in their life, dreamed that they were awake and it seemed real enough to believe while their bodies lay blissfully asleep.

I'm not going to spend any time here on the third question of which came first consciousness or awareness since this question is directly related to one of the definitions of consciousness. Since I haven't been able to define consciousness it is impossible to determine whether something I can't define came before awareness. Likewise I'm going to skip question four - how do I know that I'm aware? - because I haven't had time to consider the definition of awareness and my knee jerk reaction is that this can't be tested.

Question five - are sentient beings the only ones who can be conscious? This question led me into an area which I have at times considered but didn't expect to arise here. The basic accepted definition of sentient is "able to perceive or feel things". Okay, let's push this. Plants perceive their surroundings and changes in their environment as evidenced by adjustments they make. Plants can be said to feel as evidenced by their reaction to various stimuli. Therefore plants, it could be argued, are sentient. Are they therefore conscious? With the little argument I've provided it is hard to say they are not sentient. Botanist can make a convincing argument. I would love to follow this train of thought further but there isn't time here and I haven't had the opportunity to investigate. You can bet that I will.

The last question is the most important . . . can any of this be tested? Try as I might I must admit that the answer is "no". To test requires that we be both testor and the subject. It is totally dependent upon our own interpretation of the electro-chemical signals which constitute the answers. That's unacceptable. I can't test my own consciousness for this reason. If my brain's interpretation of electro-chemical stimuli is all that convinces me of your existence, how can I adequately test your consciousness?

This leaves me in a very bad position. Here I am searching for an explanation of the process of consciousness and I can't come up with an hypothesis that suits me. And even if I could come up with an hypothesis, I've concluded that there is no way to test said hypothesis. Time to call in the big guns. The Nobel Laureate in physics, Richard Feynman, said of scientific enquiry "First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step."

I'm sure that Dr. Feynman is much more qualified to guess than am I, but people have been guessing about gods and all sorts of things since the beginning of recorded time and then selling it as 'truth', so I figure that if I'm honest about guessing, it's at least a start.

As I stated earlier I would find my way back to Decartes and here we are. "I think therefore I am", to which I added 'but what am I?' Whether individual or part of a universal consciousness. Whether independent, according to traditional physics and Abrahemic religions, or interdependent and impermanent as per quantum physics and Buddhist philosophy, Descartes' premise holds its own which is more than I can say for other hypotheses and definitions of consciousness.

I don't actually view Descartes' premise as a definition of consciousness but as a foundation or starting point for a definition. The other modern definitions all talk about awareness of self. There are a plethora of objections to and problems with this. The greatest stumbling block is that any definition of awareness must address or include consciousness. If you read these definitions you soon realize that to be aware you must be conscious, therefore how can you argue that to be conscious you must be aware? You have a circular argument. Then they add awareness of external phenomena. That runs head first into the problem of human sense and dependence upon the interpretation of electro-chemical stimuli by our brains. We could make the argument that whether or not the interpretation is accurate or verifiable it does indicate awareness which, in turn, indicates consciousness. However, it does not account for dreams and what psychology calls hallucinations. In medical school I was taught that the reason for an hallucination is a chemical breech across a hypothetical barrier between two portions of the brain. We still have no idea why that chemical imbalance causes one to see, hear, feel, taste and smell things which the external sensory organs of an observer do not see, hear, feel, taste or smell. In short, one can only assume the presence of external objects based upon the belief that our brain's interpretation of the electro-chemical stimuli is accurate. Although we do not really understand the process of a dream or hallucination we do have evidence that they exist which challenges all of our assumptions and raises the question of reality.

While I do believe that consciousness is a process unique to living organisms I do not believe that we can have a definition of consciousness that is dependent upon self-awareness. As I have briefly demonstrated, awareness is fraught with problems and I maintain that we have no viable definition for "self". The only reason that I believe that other homo sapiens have a sense of self is because my audio sensory receptors have sent electro-chemical stimuli to my brain which I have interpreted as telling me this. Since my belief that all homo sapiens have an awareness of self is an assumption which is not testable one can see how impossible it is to speak of the self-awareness of other animal species who do not send signals that are collected by my auditory sensory organ and interpreted as telling me yea or nay.

Even though I do believe that other species of animals do have self-awareness I believe that I would be wise to not have self-awareness as a requirement for consciousness. Apart from all the problems already indicated I believe that, to arrive at a general definition of consciousness, we must consider plant consciousness. Even though the process must obviously be quite different I do not see how I can consider one without the other. At some later point it would be appropriate to differentiate between animal and plant consciousness.

Many, if not most or all, scientist, philosophers, psychologists, researchers, et al., would contend that one is unconscious during sleep. They would also likely talk about the person who is rendered unconscious from a blow to the head. The state which they are calling unconsciousness is similar to sleep in that the unconscious individual does not interact with the world around them in a manner expected which is commonly called "conscious" or "awake". In this way common English vernacular uses 'conscious' and 'awake' interchangeably. Since we can not differentiate the process of thinking between when one is "awake/conscious" and "asleep/unconscious" I feel that I must assume that the process of thinking is the process of thinking whether awake or asleep.

We know that people dream and that dreaming appears to be some sort of thought process that can challenge our traditional definitions of consciousness and reality. Likewise I have known multiple patients who have been "rendered unconscious" yet report dreams and thought. Some have actually reported listening to the conversation of those who thought them unable to hear because of being "unconscious." For several decades first responders have been taught not to talk in front of an "unconscious" victim because they are known to hear and remember.

I had a situation many years ago where a patient appeared to be at death's door. They were not "conscious" and the family was called. The family sat at the death bed for an entire day. Obviously they talked about the dying person. Fortunately everything they had to say was loving and complimentary because the person did not die. When they "regained consciousness" they were able to give a running account of everything that had been said about them.

Unless we can identify different types of thinking - e.g. a difference between conscious-thought and unconscious-thought - we are confronted with a significant challenge to the very idea of unconsciousness while one is alive. Since we have no real idea of the actual physiological process of thinking we have no way to make such a differentiation, which would mean that we would be wise to discontinue the use of "unconscious". Further, from what we know about the brain as an organ, it will continue its transfer of electro-chemical signals, chemical exchange between cell transmitors and receptors, interpretation of signals, etc., until death. In short, death is the only point at which the thought process ceases.

As far as consciousness is concerned, it seems that we are forced to admit that we are only unconscious when we are dead. Otherwise we might be in an interactive state, a dream state, or a neutral state. The interactive state is that state where we are interacting with external phenomena and stimuli . . . kissing your lover, eating ice cream, looking at a beautiful landscape, listening to birds as you smell the freshness after a rain. I picked the word "neutral" to identify that state in which our brains are neither interacting with the external world nor actively dreaming. This is the state during which the brain is actively monitoring the various signals coming from sensors and organs and making decisions about how the body is to react to changes. For example, the brain might sense a drop in temperature and cause your body to curl up to conserve heat. It might sense a drop in oxygen level and cause you to take deep breaths. It might sense danger and cause you to awaken and taken protective action.

The dream state is that state in which the mind deals with internal constructs which we generally hold to be unreal. This forces me to spend at least a few moments considering reality. Even the famous philosopher, Martin Heidegger, in his equally famous work Being and Time, had to face the relationship between reality and consciousness. "In so far as Reality has the character of something independent and 'in itself', the question of the meaning of 'Reality' becomes linked with that of whether the Real can be independent 'of consciousness' or whether there can be a transcendence of consciousness into the 'sphere' of the Real." (1) Of course Heidegger was working at a disadvantage because he was still trying to make an ontological argument. Reality and consciousness, among many things, defy ontological definition or argument.

In their book Quantum and the Lotus, co-author Trinh Xuan Thuan noted the ancient Buddhist notion that "'reality' is never totally distinct from consciousness." (2) His co-author, Matthieu Ricard quoted renowned physicist, David Bohm, who concluded

Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality. (3)

Ricard concludes that "no matter how complex our instruments may be, no matter how sophisticated and subtle our theories and calculations, it's still our consciousness that finally interprets our observations." (4) That does sound a lot like what I've been saying.

All of this leads to my definition of consciousness.

animal consciousness =df the brain function/activity that (i) interprets and reacts to electro-chemical stimuli from sensory organs, initiates response to that stimuli, (ii) initiates and manages the thought process whether in interactive or dream state, (iii) ultimately determines what, for the individual, is real; and (iv) exists, functions or is active until the animal dies.

The next step is to subject this to extreme scrutiny to see if it can pass muster.

FOOT NOTES:

(1) Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (An electronic edition without eISBN number. Location only - 6795)

(2) Ricard, Matthieu and Trinh Xuan Thuan (2001).Quantum and the Lotus. Three Rivers Press, NYC. p. 119 eISBN: 978-0-307-56612-6 (Originally published in French as L'Infini dans la Paume de la Main)

(3) David Bohn, lecture given at UC Berkeley in 1977.

(4) Quantum and the Lotus, p. 120