Earth, the Guy

Even 30 thirty years ago in my university residence yearbook I wrote about how people should participate and observe at the same time. They would get the most out of residence life, I claimed, if they fully engaged in, and periodically kept an eye on, what they were up to.

It seems that I’ve always been into this meta-stuff -- like, how at one point in time you are just doing something, such as reading this post, and then at some later moment, such as now, you can attend to (put your attention on) the simple fact that you were/are doing it.

Feel that flip thing going on? Eating this chocolate, I am aware of eating this chocolate. Back and forth we go.

It reminds me of those optical illusions such as the diagram with the old hag and young lady, in which you see one or the other, but not both. I love the flip thing.

Anyway, back to the participate/observe advice. Apparently we humans only have the ability for two kinds of conscious experiences. The philosopher Sartre called them “pre-reflective consciousness” (as in when we participate or are engaged) and “reflective consciousness” (as in when we interpret, or have removed ourselves such that we are able to self reflect). Pretty basic, really.

Buddhists have their own version of it; they say the best way to spend your time is to direct all of your attention to what you are doing -- that the reflective piece is pretty much “nothing”.

Here’s the thing: When I, and Billie-Bob, and Lucille, and the rest of us write our little blog posts and our tweets and our little Facebook tales that tell what we’re up to and what we’re thinking about, when we put our thoughts out there in the instantaneous electronic medium, and when we read the instantaneous reflections of the global others, are we not engendering a global reflective consciousness -- such that there’s this pulsing, growing, global sense of self?

I think so. There could be a NEW being that results from its reflective thought. An “I think, therefore, I am” kind of thing. A “we is”, if you’ll forgive the syntax.

So . . . humanity swooshes into a galactic bar, and the bartender asks him, “New in town? What’ll you have?” “Just got here," he says. "Gimme somethin’ to take the edge off; it’s been a long, boring ride.”