Telos Initiative
Telos is a term used by the philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause or purpose of something. Our telos is to seek truth and cultivate wisdom using dialogue and rational discussion. The podcast will cover a wide range of topics in various genres and we hope to grow with our audience toward our ultimate purpose in this mystifying existence.
Telos Initiative
Episode 7 - Consciousness
Can you imagine navigating life without the guiding light of consciousness? In our latest episode, we embark on an extraordinary journey to unpack the profound mystery of consciousness, beginning with its foundational definition and historical roots. We delve into the intricate dance between conscious and unconscious processes, using relatable examples like breathing and driving to illustrate the fluidity between awareness and automation. By examining how consciousness engages with chaos, we aim to uncover the mechanisms that enable us to transform the unknown into the familiar.
John Verveake’s thought-provoking thesis on relevance realization serves as the centerpiece of our exploration of consciousness. We discuss the mind’s remarkable ability to organize chaotic information into meaningful patterns that align with our goals. Through the lens of flow state and skill development, we reveal how frequent immersion in optimal conditions can heighten our insight and sense of purpose. We also ponder the broader purpose of consciousness, questioning how it optimizes our interaction with reality and enhances our cognitive and emotional experiences.
As we navigate the complexity of focus, attention, and consciousness, we draw intriguing parallels between social media algorithms and the human mind’s salience landscape. Attention is framed as a valuable currency, highlighting its power to shape our reality. By exploring theories like the Global Workspace Theory and Integrated Information Theory, we reflect on the balance between chaos and order, emphasizing stability without falling into authoritarian extremes. We wrap up the episode by examining the rekindling of childlike curiosity through playfulness, the elevation of consciousness beyond basic instincts, and the profound impact of self-awareness on empathy and collective consciousness. Join us for a compelling conversation that challenges conventional wisdom and invites you to rethink the nature of your own awareness.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Telos Initiative podcast. I'm Angelo Cole,
Chris:I'm Chris Vigil
Matt:and I'm Matt Maes.
Angelo:Today we wanted to talk about the concept of consciousness. So this one, I anticipate to get pretty deep and heavy into the weeds, because consciousness is a huge topic. I don't know if we'll really even be able to cover all of the different facets of it today. Plus, let's face it, no one knows what the heck's going on. It's probably one of the deepest and hardest problems of humankind ever. People have been trying to figure out what consciousness is and what it does since the dawn of man, and so I guess let's start with a formal definition. Consciousness is a sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs and sensibilities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group.
Chris:I like how you snuck in that group consciousness in that definition.
Matt:That's good.
Angelo:That's definitely something we'll try to get to later on, okay. But I guess let's start with individual consciousness, with individual consciousness. So, first and foremost, I guess there's really two sides to the consciousness debate. There's like what consciousness is and what consciousness does, right, so maybe let's start with the is part of it and try to figure out exactly what we're talking about.
Angelo:I think consciousness was a discovered phenomenon and not an invented sort of and what I mean by invented is not something that was prescribed by humanity, sort of like mathematics or some sort of system that we came up with. It's something that we noticed about ourselves and that we tried to come up with a definition for. If you look at ancient cultures, they usually associate consciousness with the breath. Of course, the Bible talks about men being made of dust and breath specifically God's breath and I think the reason breath and wind are so closely associated with consciousness is because they are invisible things that move other things, and so, looking at the pattern of there being an invisible part of yourself that makes you move or enacts your will upon the world, that's what people are trying to describe when they're talking about consciousness.
Chris:Okay, so this invisible thing that we call consciousness helps us mechanize, first of all, mechanize our bodies, right, and it's somehow related to our intellects, our intelligence and our emotions. Is that fair enough? Um, I think it is a little bit different than all over brain function. You could say that consciousness lives within the brain, but I wouldn't attribute consciousness to the unconscious functions of the brain, some things like instinct and um you know your heart beating and stuff like that.
Angelo:I wouldn't say that's part of your consciousness. Let's try to clarify something. If we say the word consciousness, are we also talking about cognition, or is cognition and consciousness separate somehow? Uh, I think consciousness falls under the umbrella of cognition, if we have the same idea of what cognition is.
Matt:This is like one of those conversations where the most, the closest, I could relate it to is like when people talk about God and you have preconceived ideas, say, about what God is Like when you say God, then you have certain concepts that you associate with God that are not all necessarily ascribed to what God actually is. Right, they're placed there by you, but as placeholders. Some of those may be true, but they're for you to form a bridge of understanding to, to help you meet whatever that is. You know. So with, so with consciousness, I, I think we actually we may have, actually we may have simultaneously an easier and harder time approaching it because we don't have these preconceived ideas but at the same time, we don't really have much of a roadmap other than the negative space around our language, like when we say subconscious, right, so what is happening beneath? Say forward, forward consciousness. Now we have this orientation, we have like, let's say, conscious consciousness, which is somewhat repetitive, but our, you know, conscious you know prefrontal cortex, the ego, the definable things like that.
Matt:So it's interesting to me when you say that our internal functions, or involuntary functions, are not conscious, if I am understanding correctly, yet they are animated, you know, without our conscious awareness, right Without our you know, without our conscious command of them to perform as they do, Like our heart beats, without us having to like, tell it to beat, you know.
Matt:So it's like it's the mystery behind our understanding
Angelo:Isn't it funny how there's a sort of interplay between the conscious elements of your psyche and the unconscious ones. There's like levels, right? So a lot of times I'll be breathing unconsciously. It just happens I even while I'm sleeping. I don't know, but if I want to consciously hold my breath. I can.
Matt:I can.
Angelo:If I start thinking about my breath, I can literally breathe exactly in and out how I want to. That's sort of a system that I would consider in the middle ground between the unconscious and the conscious, where you can switch your consciousness on and off. And it makes me think, if that system is like that maybe a lot of systems are like that and maybe that gets into more of the function of what consciousness does. Maybe the idea is your consciousness is trying to figure out things that you are not in control of, the chaos, the things that you don't understand. It's trying to get a grip on them and then, as soon as it feels like it's got a good framework around the situation or the context in which you're in, you'll move that to a different part of the brain. Or and a different side of the brain.
Angelo:I think if you
Chris:well it becomes part of the subconscious, like I don't need to
Angelo:sure
Chris:consciously learn how to walk anymore. That's just part of my right being.
Angelo:Or think about even driving how, when you know where you're going, how often are you actually consciously driving? You're just like, oh, in my head I'm just, you know the route, you've been there, but if you're lost now you really have to pay attention. Interesting, you turn the music down so that you can see better
Matt:why do we do that?
Matt:why do we do that shit? It's weird.
Angelo:It is weird, but you know, I think it has to turn down the music because I could see better I think it's funny because maybe it has to do with, you know, uh, dimming the other senses so that one sense is heightened, or something. It's interesting.
Matt:Well, it's like I think Alan Watts put this really well where you have the spotlight awareness, like, say, you have the. You know. Floodlight awareness is like the you know the wraparound, the, you know the collective awareness. Spotlight is the direction, it's the thing that we're consciously focusing on. Yes, right, so that's like the headlights, you know. Okay, so if we have these things in our muscle memory, say, you can drive to somewhere and you don't have to think about what it is that you're doing, every single action, then that seems more efficient. That seems something that you don't even have to. You can concentrate on well, hopefully keeping your eyes on the road, but you don't have to think about every single thing that you're doing so, uh, let's be honest.
Chris:You know, angelo and I kind of cheated a little bit. We listened to a John Verveake's podcast on consciousness right before matt arrived cheating cheaters and so what we're talking about is, uh, what he would call a salience landscape. So if something's salient to me, it's like right in front of me, I can understand it.
Matt:And then you know, so we're getting a feel for what's around us.
Angelo:Salience is, for those of you who don't know, is sort of like the foregrounding of something from the background. So when you make it relevant to your situation, you're aware of it. And if you've ever seen an experiment where they have a bunch of people tossing a ball around and they ask you to count how many times the ball's passed around, and you count. And then at the ball's passed around and you count, and then at the end of the video they'll say, did you see the gorilla? And be like what, what are you talking about? What gorilla?
Angelo:And you re-watch the video and while you were sitting there counting the ball being passed around, a guy in a big gorilla costume came in front of right, in front of the camera, and shook himself. And there's a good chance that if you were actually watching the ball and counting how many times it was being passed around, you didn't even notice the gorilla. The gorilla wasn't salient to you. And so John Verveake's idea or thesis behind what the function of consciousness is has to do with something he calls relevance, realization, where our consciousness, what it's trying to do is take things from, take this information from a chaotic background and bring it into the foreground, realize it and make it relevant to what we're trying to do, or frame it in a way where we can accomplish certain goals so it seems to me that the more that we're talking about consciousness in this context, some other words that we could describe are like focus right and so we could say you know, we, on one hand, we started with, like, the mystery consciousness, the problem of consciousness.
Matt:Well, it's like we're talking about focus. Well then, it's almost like well, what's so confusing about that? But it has to be more complex. It has to be more complex than that.
Chris:The real problem of consciousness is. I mean, it's the mind-body problem. It's it's the mind body problem. It's like, how do our, how exactly do our neurons interact with reality in such a way that I have this salience landscape of that reality constantly and I can bring back memories of my past self, or you know, the? The driving one's really interesting because I had a psychology professor who and maybe you notice this but sometimes when you arrive at a certain place you're like I don't remember any of the actions I took driving here because they were just so automatic to me. So how does your neurology become my consciousness?
Matt:I think there's a seems like there's got to be a relation between the focus, the efficiency, the navigating your landscape in such a way that it makes things optimal for you, right, landscape in such a way that it makes things optimal for you, right, so, like moving around, like what is like, what are the optimal moves, say on a chessboard, to create the type of situation that you want.
Matt:And you know, when we're talking about consciousness, I could hardly, uh, you know, be remiss not to talk about something like flow state, right, right, oh, yes, we're getting into that, you know, for our listeners, like, flow state is considered the optimal state of being.
Matt:Or, you know, another term would be being in the zone, right, where what you're doing is immediately rewarding, the activity seems to come automatically for you, something that is is, you know, automatically enjoyable and you're doing, hopefully, you're doing well, you're doing well and it's, uh, it's, it's a level of challenge, let's say where, or a match for your skill, where it's not too boring for you, like, it's not too easy that it's boring, and it's not too hard, that it's overwhelming, but it's kind of right on the cusp, where you can, where you can be learning and you can be growing Right, so so that's, that's just a really really good mode to be in, and this can apply to any different activity, whether it's whether that's uh, whether that's, you know, drawing or socializing, snowboarding, bowling or whatever you know. So, um, and you know, we could say that it's, it's optimal for the development, the cultivation of that skill, but I think it also teaches your system how to be in that state in any given situation, like what the blueprint is for being in flow.
Matt:So your system is like oh, I know what this feels like. Okay, so I can take this formula and sort of map it onto these other situations right.
Chris:I think there is actually a direct correlation to the more often that a person enters into the flow state by, by whatever your means is, if it's art, if it's chess, if it's music or mathematics or something else. If you enter into the flow state more often, your capability of insight increases in any types of situation.
Angelo:I think it's fair to say whatever you're calling a flow state has to be in reference to your framing of the world and what you consider your ultimate goal. Right If you find yourself moving towards that ultimate telos or that ultimate goal, totally, you're in the flow state. Right If you're aimless you are not going to be able to consider yourself in a flow state because you're going to be like well, maybe I feel jazzed for a second, but you can.
Matt:I mean you can still enter into a flow state because you're going to be like well, maybe I feel jazzed for a second but you can.
Chris:I mean, you can still enter into a flow state even if you personally don't have a purpose. But maybe the idea would be that the more you enter into that flow state and gain insight, you can find your purpose.
Matt:Is there something salience right Goes? Goes right back to not to interrupt, like it goes right back to salience, right, like what's important to you and what is what's driving you, what's driving your focus right salience is is what's right in front of you.
Angelo:So you, you have a situation like, if you're um, I don't know, it's, it's awareness, right. So if you, if you buy a certain type of car, you're like, oh, now I've got a Volkswagen Beetle. Now, when you're driving around on the road, you're going to start noticing wow, I see so many more Volkswagen Beetles all the time.
Angelo:And it's because that car is more salient to you because it matches your car Versus before. It's not that all of a sudden everybody started driving those cars more the day you bought your car. It's just more relevant to you. So our consciousness and our cognition is capable of some pretty incredible things like we can enter into states of zen, meditation and increase our focus ability. We can construct words in such a way that we write grand philosophy books. We can enter into a flow state. We can create art and kind of play with concepts and help ourselves gain insight. That's really cool, that's life right, what do?
Angelo:you think consciousness is for what's the function?
Matt:what is it for? Well, I just, I just had this, this, what I just had, a wild thought to me where, um, let's take social media as an example, right where, where you have the algorithm and it's basically showing you things that are relevant to your interests, right, so say, you're looking at a lot of, you know this celebrity where they're talking about, or whatever you were, you know, pursuing things around wisdom, stoicism, you know, yeah and attention becomes a currency, right, right so and so the more of that that, the more of that that you're seeing, the more it goes.
Matt:Oh, okay, I want to show more of more of that, right? So, like when you're talking about, actually, this is what you open, what opens up when you said this right, when you're you're focusing on something and you see more and more of it. What it's like, that happens in reality too. You know, like, the more that you're seeing something, the more that it starts showing up in your awareness, right, and so then it becomes populated in your awareness. You see more and more and more of it, and then not only does it, you know, your focus on it expands the actual presence of it in your reality, right? So the more that you're focusing on it, the more it actually shows up, right? So, and it's a choice, there's a choice there, right?
Angelo:you can choose to focus on something more and make it more salient. Oh yeah, and that could even be a negative effect. Right, you can really, really focus on something that you're afraid of or something that gives you anxiety, and it's just a negative feedback loop. A hundred percent. So our consciousness also manifests things into reality. Ah, you know yes.
Matt:Might be one way to put that yes.
Angelo:Yeah, because you can, totally. You know there's people who make those. I forget what you call them, those manifestation boards, those dream boards where they'll put up a bunch of things.
Chris:Oh
Matt:, vision boards, yeah, vision boards. There you go.
Angelo:They'll put up a bunch of pictures of things that they aspire to or they want to be, and they'll try to sort of bring that energy into reality. Or you might even have heard of the saying uh, dress for the part that you want all right, right, yep, it's like dress for the job you want. Yeah yep, if you put your mind and say in a certain state and say I'm already there, maybe it will make the universe.
Matt:Work in your favor, tilt the scales.
Angelo:I'll tell you what if I dress up in a kimono and start wearing a samurai sword everywhere? People are not going to treat me well.
Matt:I'll treat you well. I'll treat you very well.
Angelo:I think you would get a lot of positive feedback to be honest, I think you'd get some pretty awesome comments.
Matt:Oh yeah, you're going to be on the internet for sure, that's dope. I think you're getting some pretty awesome comments. Oh yeah, you're going to be on the internet for sure, that's dope.
Angelo:As far as the function of consciousness goes. So there's a theory called the global workspace theory. It's kind of this idea that your brain works like a computer, which makes sense in modern times because we see computers and they really are sort of an imitation of what we think our mind does Like when we built computers. We're trying to organize it in such a way that it makes sense to us, and what better way to do that than organize it like a mind? Right yeah, and by the way, greetings to our future robot overlords.
Matt:It's an honor to be listened by. Yeah, to be listened by you hi guys, we're on your side.
Angelo:Don't kill us, we're coming picked but yeah, global workspace theory is something like you take information, you bring it in for processing, um memory and framing and all of that. You kind of put certain things together, discard other things and then you put it back out into a new sort of product and your consciousness is the thing that continuously does that. At least that's one theory.
Angelo:So it's like recycling and re well, it's configuring information reconfiguring, making it into something else yeah taking parts, putting them together and creating a sort of uh framework, trying to put the puzzle together. And that's just one idea of what it could be. There's another where it's a sort of I think it's called integrated information theory, where it's a sort of complexification system. It's taking information and just increasingly complexifying it. But that one doesn't really answer the question of like, well, why would your brain want to do that? Well, there could be complex frames, right? Sorry, I did not answer that last question you had, but there are complex frames, right. So the more information I have, I can complexify that. Complexify that to the point that the framework at which I am viewing reality is more on encompassing of of that complexity.
Angelo:So maybe my purpose of consciousness is to encapsulate as much of the chaos as I can and transfigure it or transform it into order. Hey, there's a, there's an idea. We are beings trying to take chaos and convert it into order. But too much order and you end up with fascism, right? Yeah, authoritarianism, yeah, authoritarianism. But I think that's fair, considering you know, we are beings that crave stability. A lot of our goals have to do with making something or integrating something and making it something that we understand and have dominion over, so that we don't have to think so hard next time.
Matt:Yeah, it seems it has to do with synthesizing. You know, we're talking about like, we have our perception of the problem of consciousness and then we have, say, a problem that consciousness itself may be trying to solve, like two polar opposite things, that one you have imagine. Imagine this has a telos over here and this has a telos over here, and it's like, how do I make this shit work together? You know, how do I synthesize this to make this, uh, to make this work together? Right, because there's a point of entropy.
Matt:There's like, there's, you know, there's like, even if we look at, you know, mythologically, if we look at, you know, the triad of, you know, vishnu, shiva and Brahma, right, you have the present, you have the creation, you have destruction, right, like, why all three three?
Matt:Right, it's not like the, it's not like the point of creation is to, um, be the antithesis of destruction. It's like you need destruction in order to break things up, in order to recreate, right, like, if you, even you think it, if you think about the word recreation, right, right, like to recreate, right, so that's a fun one to play with. So it's like this whole drama playing out, we're kind of in the eye of the storm of it, you know, and trying to move through it and figure it all out. And what if we were conscious of all of this happening at the same time, you know? Would we play out our parts in the same way that we need to? If we knew, if we were totally omniscient, if we are totally conscious of every single thing that was happening, you know, like would anything get done? Or would we be sitting there trying to analyze all of it and getting, uh, analysis, paralysis over everything?
Matt:rather than simply moving, moving forward and be and embodying what it is that we need to embody as human beings.
Angelo:You know, I think we are limited beings and there's literally an infinite amount of information to take in and most of it's unnecessary. And that's kind of what your brain's doing it's discarding, it's an information discarter. You are not so much gathering things in as filtering out, if that makes sense. Yeah, like, when I'm looking at an object, I'm, when I focus on it, I'm getting rid of everything outside of that object. When I focus on a conversation, I stop listening to everything else, except for that thing. I gotcha, you know.
Chris:I'm gonna dial it back just a little bit because, matt, what you just did was kind of like what alan watts did when he said that a person's ability to have pleasure and engage with his desires is so limited that if you were able to enter into a dream state and have the fulfillment of all of your pleasures and desires, eventually you would get so bored. If you had an infinite amount of time, you would get so bored that you'd actually just end up being in the place where you are, and there's almost a peace in that. Now, if we understand that the limits of a human consciousness can never encapsulate the infinite in every regard, like I, at least in this plane of existence, in this plane of reality, I cannot be omniscient. Um, what are the other ones? I can't be omnipresent. What's the third one? Angelo, I'm missing one.
Matt:Omniscience, and I can't be omnipotent.
Angelo:There's also omnibenevolent, but whatever.
Chris:Yeah Well, I can't be that either right, I can't be all good and I can't be all evil. It can't be that either. Right, I can't be all good and I can't be all evil. But yeah, you know, and I can't help but think about the buddha's state of meditation. You know, there's a youtuber and he had everything. He had the job he wanted, he was earning good money and he turned away from it to enter into a buddhist monastery because there was something about having the world that he wanted to turn away from. It wasn't, wasn't?
Matt:him I don't know, but I think he realized his limitedness and wanted to be part of what of the divine in the way that he saw it's it funny, and if we look at a lot of biblical examples where God will choose someone who, on the surface, seems the least capable of accomplishing the task, like Moses, for example, he's like I can't go speak, I'm you know, I'm not very good at speaking, I would. He may even have like a speech impediment or something like that, but he says no, it's got to be well. Like why? Why would you not choose the most capable possible person to go and do the task? Maybe because it would be that much more fun and interesting to choose someone who's the least capable, level them up and so like, yeah, watch what I can do with this person who thinks that they can't do it, and gloriously go on this journey and bring out something that's inside of them, something I put there and something that could only be uncovered through that particular challenge plus, moses had a memory problem.
Chris:That's why god gave him tablets.
Matt:Yeah, gotta write it down for him. There you go. How many of us write shit down, man? How many of us?
Angelo:write shit down, man. Well, that's nice man.
Matt:Yeah, that was nice when Moses tried to back out.
Angelo:You know what God said to him. He said who made the blind man, who made the deaf person? I did. I am the creator of the world, sir.
Matt:Go out there and do it. Get your ass out there, dude. Get your ass out there, dude.
Angelo:So, um, we were talking earlier about cycling through, like recreation, right, recreation, we're destroying, we're creating constantly and I don't know. I just came up with this diagram of two arrows that are encircling each other like a cycle, but their destruction and creation, or destruction and recreation, are pushing upwards, like trying to transcend towards something you know. Just thinking about recreation makes me think of piaget and his studies on children and how children play. And you got to think about why do we play? Why do we, um, try different things? And I think it's our consciousness trying to frame things.
Angelo:I think you ever see kids pick something up and they'll tap the table and throw it, and then they'll repeat it over and over and it's like they're trying to figure out what that thing is, what its use is. And the older you get, the less you play, because you feel like you've you've really built a framework you have.
Angelo:So you've had so much experience with a lot of things that you don't really try to restructure as much as you used to, because your framework is so embedded. That brings us right back to the topic of the flow state, because that's what you're doing. You're playing with your musical instrument, your art, you're playing with these things. That optimizes right, your ability to frame. Wow, there you go, you know. I even think.
Matt:So get a wholesome hobby. Yeah, get a wholesome hobby. Like I even think of the Big Bang, right Like, let's say, that's like at the very origin. Like, let's say, you like at the very origin. Like, let's say, you know, children running around have all this energy, all the curiosity, all this like bam, all this right, all this combustive energy, right, that that seems to diminish over time, right, but how do you recreate that? How do you recreate that bam, that, that sense of aliveness and the like, the awakenness, right is, you have to, you have to get into that state of playfulness, you have to get into that that state of of flow and like, remind your system, like, like, resuscitate that part of yourself so that you can, so you can feel that again you're like, oh, this is what this is what alive feels, like, this is what this is, what like awareness, not just, not just looking around.
Angelo:Yeah, I'm aware now this is like oh, like, ah, like this is what awareness, ah, feels like man, yeah, taking all this stuff and framing it in such a way like you recognize that as life living. Yes, um, like we can, right, we can recreate our bodies through recreation right, exercise, um, our intellect, like the paradigm there's that word right paradigm, the way that, through recreation right, exercise Our intellect, like the paradigm there's that word right Paradigm, the way that my intellect or myself views the world, is one way you can break that. It can collapse and then you can restructure it into a broader or maybe even a better paradigm for looking at reality. Yes, we can emote, right, emote right, emotions, huge, that's a huge part of life. And actually, you know, and you said that this was all like a breath, right, our consciousness is like a breath earlier I think yes, it's a metaphor, something like oh yeah yes, like um the ancient cultures would.
Angelo:they would relate, relate consciousness and spirit to breath. Why? Well, because for one it's an invisible thing that moves.
Matt:Okay, so, it has something to do with our will, an invisible thing that moves.
Angelo:Our psyche. Psyche is the Greek word for soul and for another thing when you die, your breath stops. That's probably how they would check to see if you were dead. They would be like his breath is gone, meaning your soul is gone or your consciousness is gone.
Matt:And going back to the biblical right In the statement that the word was with god and the word was god, like the breath, being and the thing that's created as being of the breath.
Angelo:You know what's interesting is in hebrew? They have um characters the, the letters that they use each represent a purpose, and the h letter, hey in hebrew um, often represents the spirit of god, and so when abam changed his name to Abraham, it was because the hay was inserted into his name so the spirit of God was with him.
Matt:Nice.
Angelo:Fun fact Wow, you even got a little phlegm in there when you said it. Abraham, you've got to do that, you've got to do the.
Matt:You've got to do it or it doesn't count. You gotta do that, Gotta do the. You gotta do it. Do it or it doesn't count.
Angelo:You know, a few weeks ago I was just, I was just reaching out. I was just reaching out to God and I wanted to bring the order right, god's order, into my life, and I just prayed God, give me the breath of life which you gave to Adam. And I don't know. It's just like what did Adam experience with his consciousness? I mean, that's a huge history question right there, like where do we come from and what makes us human? That's something I'm trying to, you know, ever since I picked up this really good history book at the bookstore a few weeks ago, I've been really challenging myself with that question, like you know what brought us up? I think if you want to know what something is, sometimes you got to talk about what it's not, and so you eliminate the things that you would consider not human. Right? What is the thing that makes us different from the animals? Right?
Angelo:Animals might be subject animals might be subject to their instincts and we aspire more to our rationality right. Right. We can override our instincts. We can do things like fasting. We can cooperate on another level. We have language on another level. The further away you push from your immediate desires and you go more towards your long-term teleological orientation Right, the more human you are. I think that's from Socrates. If I remember Aristotle yeah, you're pretty sure.
Matt:Aristotle, one of those old Greek.
Angelo:Some ancient Greek philosopher.
Angelo:One of those dudes Didn't have nothing to teach us. So, um, I'm glad you mentioned fasting, because if we're trying to transcend our I guess freud would call it the id right, the, the desires and the visceral desires of ourselves and, I guess, build or recreate ourselves into a form of transcendent consciousness, right, maybe that's the goal somehow that then our religion of choice being brought into our salience landscape has a huge impact on our ability to do that. Like fasting, we have this visceral animal instinct to eat right and do other things that animals do, but we can fast and abstain from that and hopefully recreate ourselves into a better form or formula of the human being mode of being.
Matt:Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting that, like this thing with with creativity as well and they've done studies on this where, paradoxically, like the, the less resources that you have, say within a certain range, I would think right then, the more creative that you have to become with them very true.
Matt:If you have more resources and there's like, oh my god, there's so many choices, you know, and maybe you know what to do with that, maybe, maybe you see that as like, oh my god, I'm like a kid in a candy store, I have all these options, right, but uh, but that doesn't challenge you. That doesn't challenge you in the same way as say, you know, I've, I've definitely experienced this where I have like five things in the pantry and I'm like what am I gonna do with these five things? You know?
Angelo:what am I gonna do? With syrup and peanut butter and all the whatever, whatever you know and maybe you've had that experience where the teacher gives you an assignment and they'll be like just pick anything, whatever you want, just some sort of topic, and then you're sitting at home for like an hour Like what the heck am I going to write about?
Matt:I have no idea.
Angelo:But if she's like, okay, you can choose between these three things, you're like, oh, I already know which one I want Boom. And I also think that's probably why a lot of big businesses try to make your choices seem more limited. I always call it like the pepsi coke phenomenon if you can limit things down to two choices, people are much more inclined to make a decision.
Matt:Yeah, actually it's two-part systems, so, like a parenting system that we use, airhouse is Love and Logic and basically what that does. It's an emphasis on choices and agency for the child, right? Okay, so say it's time to go to bed pretty soon. It's like you know. Would you like to go to bed now? We're in 15 minutes, right?
Angelo:Oh, and you give them a choice.
Matt:It's a simple thing, but it empowers them to make a choice between those different things. Right, it's not much different here.
Matt:No, it's actually really smart, yeah, but it's really yeah, it's like it's really, yeah, we, we really enjoy it and so so you know, they get, they get to choose within uh, you know, within a certain range. It's like you know you can't just choose really whatever, um, but also it's an emphasis on natural consequences for things. Right, so say like you know, act in some sort of way that's really draining. It was like you know I would love to be able to do that, but I'm just, you know, I'm feeling some sort of way that's really draining. It was like you know I would love to be able to do that, but I'm just you know, I'm feeling, feeling energetically burned out right now. It's, you know, it needs to recharge that sort of thing. So they can, they can make these associations between you know, between actions and natural consequences. So then it's like you know, then there, you go, then it's learning and you don't have to.
Matt:I think if you have to really think about what a consequence should be, then it might just be invented punishment in a lot of cases, you know.
Angelo:But anyway, it's a good framework that we use for sure. Yeah, so I guess another topic I wanted to start talking about was collective consciousness or the collective unconscious. So, before you get into that, I was actually reading or revisiting, was actually reading or revisiting the doors of perception by aldous huxley, which, if you're maybe unfamiliar with that, it's his uh, the, the psychoactive agent of the peyote cactus is mescaline and that's what he ingested and he wrote about his experience. So it's his trip report. And the first thing he writes is he comes to an understanding that any person's consciousness or cognitive functioning is extremely individualistic. Like the metaphor he offers is the Christian martyrs. They go hand in hand into the Colosseum to be martyred, but they're crucified alone and they experience their death and the pain on their own. And we can use metaphors and we can use language to connect with each other, to connect with other consciousness, but the raw experience of your experiences belongs to you and to you alone.
Matt:You'll always die alone. Thank you.
Angelo:Anyone who wanted to be uplifted by this podcast you're going to have to go somewhere else. Sorry, thanks, chris Bummer. Chris, that's too bad? No, anyway, so tell us how we're not alone or what we're doing.
Angelo:Well, no, I was thinking that well, you touched on the idea of psychedelics, and that brought me back to the idea of play. I think the reason people are even inclined to do psychedelic substances in the first place is because they're trying to play with their consciousness. They're trying to create affordances in their salience landscape, yes, and they're trying to maybe create a disruption in their mental framing and restructure it, reframe it in a new light, so that's got to be something to do with the function of consciousness.
Matt:Something that is universal and, don't worry, I'll tie this into collective.
Angelo:I'll tie this back to collective Tie it up, tie it up.
Matt:I've noticed in going deeper into self-awareness over many years, is the more I'm able to understand myself, the more I'm able to also understand others. You know, and I can simultaneously say this is where this person, matt Mays, begins and ends, and this is where I connect with others. And this, you know, this is like where the unknown begins, this is where and you know, maybe that's part of consciousness as well, part of the. I like to think about the, the. I keep going back to that, the problem of consciousness. I I try to empathize with the problems consciousness itself may be trying to solve, like for the unknown.
Matt:Unknown like what you don't even know, that you don't know, you know. So if we're conscious of that, if we're constantly conscious that there is, like this, vastness that we don't even understand, right, then that helps to put a lot of things into perspective, right, and you know, going back to, like our conversation about the archetypes, right, so we talked about that in terms of our own psyche. Think about the universe itself as formulae, formulated in such a way that there are archetypes, right?
Matt:wow, so like there's a universal sovereign, there's a universal okay, magician warrior well, and that's what I think, the greek gods were supposed to be yeah, and it's like, if you think about yeah, yeah, it's like, you know, metaphorical representations of these different sides, right, so like for, you know, for the warrior, for example, there are aspects of life that are challenging, that bring that out of you, that speak to the warrior. Right, there are elements of life that are flourishing that are abundant.
Matt:And you know, with a magician I mean, let's be honest, like how complex the universe is, absolutely complex in so many different ways, right, and then there's the sovereign. There is a, there's universal sovereignty. That also we have that personal sovereignty in ourselves for sure, you know. So it's. It's like it's mirrored. You know it's shapes within shapes, or you know like candles, fractals, or, like ken wilber would say, like holons, like holes within holes within. Oh yeah, holes, holes, as in w-h-o-l-e, not h-o-l-e. You know like whole things within whole things within whole things within whole things within whole things that carry a unified type of formula.
Angelo:And that's, by definition, complexity, right when you've got a bunch of structures, individual identities that do something on their own, but they all come together, working as a greater identity, which brings me to the collective. So I have this theory that really the human species is doing the same thing that single-celled organisms did when they were turning into multicellular organisms. I think we have this inclination, um, that we're maybe not so overtly aware of. We think of ourselves as just individual, um egotistical identities, but really we're part of this greater body of things, or and we participate in larger patterns than ourselves, trying to, uh, do lots of different things. You know, if you're part of a religion, you're all aiming towards some sort of ethical mode of being. If you're part of a corporation, you're trying to come together to produce something or to bring a complicated service to to the rest of the, the, the rest of humankind. If you're just like a scientist and you're working as part of this greater body of scientists, you're all working together just like a network of neurons discovering the unknown. And I just think it's such a fascinating idea that, hey, at some point we were all. There was just only single-celled organisms and they had to figure out how to come together and become one big thing over time.
Angelo:Like what the heck is that? And I think we're doing that. I think that's what this internet thing is about. I think that's what all of this like. Like we're the species that has progressed the most in communication and, if you think about it, we need communication. If you're on a desert island and you don't have these interrelational connections, have these relationships with other people, that you will go insane, literally. You need some sort of network consciously, and so there's something to connection. There there's something to, and I think that's what this whole like. If you look at a lot of these different religions at the basis of their ethic, is something like love or altruism or community, because it's so ingrained into our very being that we need to collectively participate in something. That's just Did either of you read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
Matt:I've seen the movie. I have the book.
Angelo:I read Hitchhiker's Guide. I read the next one, restaurant at the End of the Universe, and the third one, which might be called so Long and Thanks for All the Fish, or it might be the fourth one, I don't know it's one of those.
Angelo:Douglas Adams purports the theory that all the fish, or it might be the fourth one, I don't know, it's one of those, but um, uh, douglas adams purports the theory that, uh, one of the main characters somehow activates this time space warping wormhole that trajects back and forth through reality and back and forth through time and it hits earth and the, the primordial single-celled organisms. They see it, they freak out and they come together into a single multicellular organism because they're scared shitless of this wormhole that they saw.
Angelo:They don't know, they're like ah, and then they just become the first multicellular organism so yeah, are we motivated by fear or are we motivated by love and altruism? I I hope it's love. I do think a lot of uh, darwinian philosophers probably focus on the competition aspect of it, but I do think you gotta talk about that.
Matt:But I do think it's motivated by cooperation.
Angelo:Because when two things come together and we talked about this in our Power of Three podcast when two things come together in cooperation, a lot of times something greater than the sum of the parts comes out of it.
Matt:And if you're just conflicting all the time, well it's just divisive, you know yeah, by the way, when we're talking about the, the fear and love thing, you know, like tim ferris has this frame he calls fear setting, where, you know, he has all these different like very, very adventurous, very, very smart person right and he'll weigh his decision making on whether or not to do something based on the potential benefits and the potential like drawbacks, or like what could happen if this, you know, if I end up doing this, right, and so he'll like write out what are, you know, what are the things I'm afraid of, like, what are the things that could happen if I go and do this, what are the potential benefits if I do go and do this and then away those and say, like is it worth it to go? And you know, to go to do whatever it is like just, does the benefit outweigh the risk? Right, and so it's like fear is an indicator. It's. It helps us make decisions, it helps us to avoid the safe right.
Angelo:You keep the safe. Yeah, it helps to helps to navigate, helps.
Matt:You know, we shouldn't be taken in emotionally by fear, like crippled by fear, right, but listen to what it has to say as one of the voices yes, ultimately, move towards love, encompassing that.
Angelo:And when you say love, what do you mean by love?
Matt:We could say that it's a catch-all term, but I want to go into into more you got me no like.
Matt:Well, let's let's try some other words again, like define the thing by the adjectives or negative space or whatever you know, but the like, flourishing, growth, what is connected, when you know a lot of words that we can just feel in them, that there is love in them, like connection, like growth, like uplifting, you know things that are generally flourishing, things that are generally life-giving. That's it life-giving, yes, I think life-givingness. It life-giving, yes, I think life-givingness. And we're talking about with another person, say, interpersonal love.
Matt:I think at the core of that is caring, you know, because a person can be in grief, a person can be, um, heartbroken. They could be, they could be, you know, they could have had something very good happen to them, right, and you can be there and you can, you can care with them if they're, if they're like feeling down, you know, and you don't want to be hold down, but you want to, but you want to be there, you want to be, or you want to be able to display kindness and compassion and the connectivity with them and, by the opposite token, something really good happens. It's like how long, how often have we had this happen, where you share something amazing and the person is there. It's like no man, I want to, we want to celebrate, we want we, you know, we want to. We want to feel that there's life in that moment, that's life in what just happened.
Angelo:That's amazing with this person so I was going through a really hard time and someone who is now a former associate of mine plainly explained that this situation I was going through was evil because it was life-taking and not life-giving. And if we're gonna run with that life-giving idea, that's the good, that is goodness. Yes. So I think, drawing from saint tommy quine quine, or more formally, thomas aquinas, yeah, uh saint tommy, you're being reverent or irreverent right now.
Matt:You'll never know but thomas aquinas defines love as willing the good of another which I think is a really fair and now this, this, this can be complex too because, like you know, my wife all the time with, like movies and shows and stuff like that, it's like, it's like when you let the villain survive.
Matt:This is where you have to be very careful about, like, what actually are the rules? Right, because, like, we're just watching, you know, the show rings of power okay, not to spoilers or whatever, but somebody dies, okay, so you have, you know, so you have the characters who you could see as good, you could see, as you know, the rebellion, or on the good side. Then you have this character who is like kind of a kind of a kind of a weakling ruler. Right, he has that weakness of character. He's very fearful and he's also kind of like you know the character, kind of like, oh, pompous on his thing, you know, and, um, what would be, would be good analogy, like what was his face from Gladiator the emperor, the player. Oh, commodus, yeah, the guy who the evil emperor, commodus, yes, the one who Joaquin Phoenix played.
Angelo:Yes.
Matt:Yes, that guy, that same kind of character, right? So anyway, in this show the good guy lets that character live, right turns around what happens he gets stabbed in the back because he like he let him live and he put his sword on the ground and they got. Then what the hell? You know, you're the good guy and you let him live and then he's. So it's like that's where it can really it, the that's well, I guess this will.
Matt:This will go more into our goodness talk, right, but but what actually? You know, what actually do you do in the situations like you have to bind the evil, be able to infuse good, whatever that means. Like maybe that meant throwing the the damn sword in the water there was water nearby, by the way like throwing the sword away, like binding the evil so it can't um so it can't harm you in some way and being authoritative in those moments.
Matt:But it's complex because evil is shifty, it's manipulative, I think we have elegantly segwayed into the goodness podcast for the next episode. There we go.
Angelo:We'll pick it up. I'm surprised we didn't touch on everything on consciousness right. We didn't even get to group consciousness? I don't think. Well, I lightly touched on collective consciousness, but we didn't talk about the hard problem of consciousness, we didn't talk about the mind-body problem. We didn't talk about qualia. We didn't talk about the mind-body problem, we didn't talk about qualia. We didn't talk about a lot of stuff. So we could totally do a whole other episode on this.
Matt:Alright.
Angelo:If the powers that be, will it? That means anyone who donates money to us can decide what the next topic is.
Matt:Yeah, we'll never know the answers until you give us money Just kidding, or is it?
Angelo:That's the?
Matt:problem of consciousness? You don't know.
Angelo:Well, thank you all for listening to our goofy podcast. I really appreciate you for sticking around this long. If you made it this far, please like or comment or subscribe or whatever you can to help us out, and we greatly appreciate your viewership.
Matt:That's right, it's been real. Right on. Thank you everybody. It's been a lot of fun. Until next time.
Angelo:Love it, take care.
