Presenter: Nicholas Matthew Smith
On Saturday, May 20th, I will be discussing some of the theories behind my recent book titled, Exul animarum – To Philosophize is to Free Consciousness and make an attempt to describe the multi-dimensional realms that constitute the όλο (whole, wholeness, total) of human existence.
The book is a continuation of the talk I presented at The Lectern Series in September 2022.
Much of what I will discuss is based on empirical phenomenological observations and my goal or expectation, for myself, is to reveal my interpretations of what I have studied and ask questions, seek answers, but not to apply blanket truths to my statements.
Although I question ego-dominance, it’s important to specify that both ego and consciousness engage through unification — while residing in different dimensions — and both are unequivocally necessary. The multi-dimensional unbalances and effects, socially, are the concern I have and seek to explain.
“The ability to understand how consciousness works is to understand the multi-dimensional experience of existence. This ensures the capacity to transcend each level, forming a unity, and repairing the fractured states of being so that they can pass through and collectively communicate and respond to one another.”
– Excerpt from Chapter II
The purpose of creating the geometrical construct below is to help the reader or listener understand my vision of the different levels or possible dimensions of the human experience. Though theoretical, the visual provides me with a foundation to formulate my thoughts on the subject of consciousness and its ambiguity. I must state, again, that I am not concerned with defining truths. Nevertheless, my hope or goal is to provide another perspective and to avoid falling victim to the areas beyond fences. The graphic isn’t to be used for solely the subject or collective experience. Rather, it is meant to display unification within all aspects of nature, therefore, its usage is diverse.
- One-Dimensional: Ego
- Two-Dimensional: Knowledge
- Three-Dimensional: Body
- Four-Dimensional: Consciousness
The English word “conscious” originated from the Latin word “conscius” meaning, “to know together,” (con: “together” and scio: “to know”). The definition, though, has metamorphosed into an experience explaining that of only subjectivity. The conundrum I face is reverting to what consciousness previously was before the emphasis on the ego took hold in language. Consciousness is how the ego achieves reflective thinking and accomplishes both cognitive and affective empathy. Yet the ego’s main purpose and use, in my view, is only for the body to maintain instinctual demands to remain objectively living through physiological processes; As Marie François Xavier Bichat stated, “A set of functions that resist death.” To achieve the όλο, i.e., by not abstracting it and isolating the parts which results in polarizations within societies and/or nature, while remaining ένας (one), requires a liberation of consciousness from the confines of the ego’s exuberant shadow; a unification of dimensions. Since consciousness is still an unknowable (or noumenon using Kantian terminology), while the ego is an object for it (objectified, defined, separated, and isolated), consciousness is feared, its freedom restricted, and exiled.
“Because we have to be stable in our beliefs if we are to prosper, we have made the ‘real’ world a world not of change and becoming, but one of being.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
At this moment, we have yet to discover and understand the inner workings of consciousness. I do not currently possess the objective tools or machines to uncover, scientifically, what causes consciousness or what parts and processes, neurologically, are necessary for it to reveal itself to us—that very well might not be possible. Therefore, my approach to understanding this phenomenon is founded on a relationship with it (as opposed to only a priori presumptions), through the use of simple observation and creativity; philosophy and awareness.
The desire to fabricate artificial intelligence is perhaps the reason why the urge to unveil consciousness persists more so now than ever among the scientific community. I see no benefit in duplicating (not simulating) consciousness within the objects of our own creations. The very fact that we do not know what it is seems to prove that our information-only approach to this nefarious goal, or that the hope is it’ll reveal or spark itself through a multitude of communicative processes, will most likely be unsuccessful.
Nevertheless, the desire to create consciousness thickens ego-superiority and god-like behaviors, and whatever gains these same qualities beyond humanity will likely not simplify, but accelerate our overtly maniacal and complex objective reality. We should approach with suspicion any scientific truth (or gadget) that is adopted in haste without knowing the effects it’ll have on nature (unless the end of the scientific truth is nature, other than just our own existence, rather than the means). This may sound like a spiritual or Luddite argument, but I say it not to protect the adopted dogmatic ignorance of a superstitious or anti-technological belief system, but rather to lessen the dominance of the ego and its suffocating consciousness.
“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”
– Simone de Beauvoir
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Recommended Reading:
The list below are works that have heavily influenced my thought processes. They aren’t necessary to read before the event, but will help to provide some insight and further learning opportunities.
- The Transcendence of the Ego – Jean Paul Sartre
- The Phenomenology of Spirit – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- The Human Condition – Hannah Arendt
- Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals – Immanuel Kant
- What is Called Thinking – Martin Heidegger
- The Ethics of Ambiguity – Simone de Beauvoir
- The Age of Disruption (Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism) – Bernard Stiegler
- The Gay Science – Friedrich Nietzsche
- On the Aesthetic Education of Man – Friedrich Schiller
- Conversations with Goethe – Johann Peter Eckermann
- The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Event Details:
Saturday, May 20th @ 6:00pm (social hour at 6:00pm, talk begins at 7:00pm)
Address: 507 Record St. Mankato, MN 56001