Illusion

It is an old adage that we take life for granted. This in spite of striving for professional and personal excellence. However, to get along in life, one does need to take most things for granted. For example, if you drive up to a stop sign on the street, you cannot wonder about the nature of the stop sign every time you see it. It serves a function. You know that.

You follow the rule that the stop sign implies and you move on. You do not think about it again. But if we did that for all of our lives and all aspects of our lives, we would race to our coffins and be inscribed in epitaph. Surely there is more to it than that. However, for a meaningful rumination on the nature of this question, we need a baseline. Who we are. And what is the reality within which we exist.




I. Deep sea fish

Hairy Angler - A Deep Sea Fish

Not that one can, but suppose man and a deep sea fish share a conversation. (Not the, "you sushi, me eat" conversation, but a different one). The deep sea fish living off the sea floor, with minimal light if any, would not understand the world of man - sight, sound, smell, taste, color. Nor would we know what it means to be a deep sea fish. Our two contexts are different. The world as it appears to a deep sea fish is very different from the world as it appears to us.





II. Perception and Reality


Our view of the world, is shaped by what we see and we are taught to see. It is a perspective shaped by our five sense organs and shaped by our minds which interpret messages from our sense organs. As has been said before, 'perception is reality'. But perhaps the opposite is also true - what we think is reality is our perception. We take for granted things in our daily lives. Think of the stop sign example above.


We categorize the stop sign as a 'signal' and don't think much beyond it. We could extend that mode of living to ideas, emotions and relationships as well.  When we are with our spouse, child, parent, friend or colleague we do not start out fresh and say 'nice meeting you!' but with an expectation of the relationship.


Our minds are conditioned and our perceptions are conditioned. The key question remains, 'conditioned for what purpose'?


III. Survival


It can be a let down at the end of the day to be cynical. But one can get carried away by romantic notions of who we are and our place in the universe, or that we are at least further along on the evolutionary chain, at least on this earth. Perhaps we are merely survivors. Clearly the word 'merely' in the previous sentence does not do justice to the earth's eco-system and the complexity of life. But I use the word 'merely' in the sense that the objective of life is survival. All the rituals of life from birth to death of plants, insets, animals and humans could be hypothesized as tools for survival.


If that were the case, coming back to the thought in the in the illustrative conversation with the deep sea fish, our five senses are for survival. The world we perceive through our senses is not what it really is, or at least what our five senses perceive is only a slice of what it really is.


Think about that. Our eyes are for survival. Not necessarily an all encompassing purpose. But survival.


IV. Limitations


If we are one more step on the evolutionary chain and our eye works better than that of, say the maggot, how well the would the world appear if we advance one more step on the evolutionary chain? Like the bat uses its sonar for navigation, what new sense organ might we develop? If we colonize mars, would we need a new sense organ? (As a dramatic illustration - would we take a desert animal or plant's ability to store food and graft it into the human DNA?)


However, thinking logically through the steps of evolution, we would perceive the world with one more level of complexity - but it would still not be the full picture - only enough to get by (on Mars, as in the above example). We are limited today. And we will be limited tomorrow.


V. Consciousness


That brings us to self-awareness and its higher form, consciousness. A governing principle that appears to propel animate life appears to be consciousness. Perhaps there are orders of complexity in consciousness. My pet's consciousness is perhaps not as complex as mine. Clearly a plant's consciousness is radically different from mine. So different in fact, that we probably should not refer to it as consciousness. Plants and us are both alive, symbiotically alive.


Setting aside the chemical, clinical, psychological, philosophical inquiries into the problem of consciousness (we can leave that for the professionals!) it is worthwhile noting that it is this animating feature of our lives that gives rise to hope that our lives have importance and that it would indeed be a quantum jump over mere 'survival' - as miraculous as survival itself is (think of the penguins in that recent movie - not the dancing cartoons, but the real ones).


Consciousness appears to be the nectar that is the foundation on which we could rest music, art appreciation, rather than survival.


Maybe, the metaphor that we could use is that our lives rest on a three-legged stool. Survival is the first leg. Consciousness is the second leg. How about the third leg? It is, I submit to you both mysterious and inscrutable. I believe I am writing this piece because of this third leg of the stool and you are reading this piece because of it. So what is this third leg? Let us call it the capital I.


VI. The I - problem


I don't know when this quandary occurred to me. It might have been in the late 70s. But it seemed peculiar to me that I as an individual had to be involved in the affairs of the world at all. The world could get along just fine without me. It was not as though I was a Gandhi or a Lincoln. In fact it was perhaps citizens like me that a Gandhi or a Lincoln were tending to. I was part of the flock. I followed.


Followed strictures, rules, guidelines, norms, mores, customs, expectations - a million things of how to be.


Fantastic! The whole world can go ahead and have a ball. Knock yourselves silly. Why me? Mind you, I am as aspirational as the rest when it comes to putting quality food in my or my family's stomachs and quality clothes on our bodies. The weird aspect of my thought was, even that aspiration of wanting food and clothes was different from who I was. Food and clothes, to come back to the model of the three legged stool had more to do with the first two legs - survival and consciousness.


But being me, was altogether different. So I had, it appears an 'I-problem'


VII. Animation


What animates life? You are sitting in front of the computer right now reading this note. What animates you? This enormously complex organism, what animates you to get up and perform your next task (walk all the way over to the refrigerator and grab a beer)?

I have this image in my head that I cannot shake. I think of a glass tube enclosed on either side with a few light colored balls inside it. The glass tube is vertical and all these colored balls are resting on the bottom. Suddenly the balls rise in the air in a column, start spinning and floating in the air and they also rotate randomly as a mass - a feast for the eyes. To me, the act of getting up from the computer and going to grab a beer represents these balls suddenly going up in the air and spinning. (I like this image because it reminds me of the DNA and how it is represented in models - think of the double helix. I am thinking of an animated double helix in this illustration). What animates these balls?


In other words, why should my body (as complex as it is) function at all? What if, whatever it is that is animating me (food, energy etc) suddenly says, 'that's enough"!


Think about that. In fact, please allow me to suggest a test/exercise. Sit still for five minutes. Absolutely still. No movement, no ambient sound, no TV. Just quiet. Now ask yourself in the moment between you sitting and you about to stand - what prompts that animation?


What.....is......that?!


VIII. Adding up the parts


What is causing this I-problem? The DNA? i.e. is it a formula? Is it the sum of my experiences? If I did not grow up in the city I did, would I be different? Am I who I am because of what I was taught? So if I were to be a Chemistry major rather than a Business major, would I be different? If I add up the contributions of nature, nurture, experiences and education - is that who I am? Is that who you are?

It is fairly evident, that if you were asked to describe me to someone, you would say, "works here, lives there, went to school here, likes that". And you would be right. If someone asked me about you. I would say something similar. And I would also be right. But it seems to me that there could be a clone of mine with all my attributes and the world would get along just fine. Except the 'I' appears to be an actor in it. Even the three legs of the stool appear not to be a satisfactory explanation of the I-problem.


IX. Abyss


It is worthwhile quickly stating some points from above:


- What we think is reality is perhaps a narrow view of the world, our perception 
- Our sense organs happen to be five in numbers. But there are other organisms like bats that use different organs.
- Even if we evolve and develop new ways to operate in this universe, we would as a species still be limited
- We are wonderfully complex creatures that survive
- We are self-aware
- We are 'cultured' ( i.e. educated, appreciate arts, do good works - things beyond survival)


What the above points add up to is that we are admirable living organisms. Only that there are several billion of us on this planet! There were several billion before us and there will be several billion after us. But it is in this time and space that I am operating in. It is in this moment that I am writing this piece and you are reading it. This seems entirely separate from the broader milieu. It is not that my body has not contributed to this task of writing. It is not that my brain did not conjure
up these thoughts to put into this essay. It is not that I am not happy or motivated (indeed I am thrilled) to write this piece. I am. It is that all this is entirely separate from 'me' as a writer and 'you' as a reader.

That 'I' (and presumably that 'you') seems to be involved but not committed to this enterprise. An old joke to make this point. The difference between being involved and being committed at breakfast is the difference between being a chicken and a pig. A chicken is involved but a pig is committed to our breakfast. The chicken is involved because it provides the egg for the omlette. The pig is committed because it is bacon!


Using that hilarious analogy to ourselves - my body, consciousness, brain and motivation are committed. However, 'I' am merely involved. 'I' appears to be of the abyss. The rest of me, however complex and however striving in professional and personal achievement, seems rather limited, almost operating in an illusion.