Consciousness gives us the ability to change reality

Date:   6/4/2008 12:39:45 PM ( 16 y ago)

Thought for the day:

Humans have a unique ability to fantasize, an ironic companion to consciousness [where we are able 'to know that we think' - to know that we have a brain and that thinking goes on there; that we know it is ourselves we are looking at in a mirror].

The ability to fantasize means that we can construct a world that is outside of reality, and we can believe it is real. This means that we have to make an effort to keep a grip on reality, but then reality can change and we find ourselves on the outside of it, believing in a fantasy that does not exist.

Humans create their own world, both physically and in our opinions on how to see various issues. No other creature so changes the world around them in a conscious manner as humans do. Sometimes we have to pause to take a look at what we have created, and wonder if it is real or are we just looking at our own fantasies.

I would do well to end this right there and let readers ponder that much, but here goes, I will try to give some examples:
One way that "reality can change" around us is that the world is flat no more. Also, that God is created by man. Perhaps the most startling to some people is that the hippies of the '60s were our best chance to save the world from our own excesses that have created global warming and food shortages, invasions of soveriegn nations that were no threat to us, and epidemics of homelessness and a lack of health care within the wealthiest nations. OR, that leftists and socialism that were the "them" in the "us and them" cold war that lasted for 50 years - the Russians and Chinese - are now the bastion of capitalism and that the American president has become dictatorial and undemocratic.

So, for those people such as the earliest of the Baby Boomer generation, who held tightly to the idea that God was on the side of the Western world and was helping us crush the hippies by attracting people to employment in the free market economy that was empowered by fossil fuels, they now find themselves clutching to drought-withered straws in a rising ocean, or if they have a boat they are paying $5 per gallon of gasoline [which is still plentifull because there is no shortage of oil], or fighting in a war of choice that almost nobody believes in and killing the world's most devout religious people.

Who woulda thunk it?? Reality changes, and we make those changes happen by our choices, and if we cling to our old beliefs instead of being willing to change our opinions, then we lose our grip on reality. We even have to ask if there is a reality - if it can change, then what can be believe in?

We can believe in CHANGE, thats what.


 

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