The fact that we're here is fundamentally mysterious, despite the fact we know more and more about
how the universe came to be and how life emerged and
evolved and how minds appear on the basis of
information processing in brains of the sort that we have.
We're learning more and more every day about all of that mechanism and yet consciousness itself is still fundamentally
mysterious. And, the fact that you are you, the fact that you have this theater of
phenomenology, the fact that it's like something to be you, the fact that the universe is illuminated where you sit that is
worthy of being called a miracle of sorts.
One we don't understand it, so it's inscrutable in that sense, as any miracle would be. But also it's just
it is the thing that brings value, consciousness is the thing that brings value to the universe. Without the lights being on
it would just be you know
a gaseous mess of rocks and plasma and even complicated phenomenon
which if there's nothing that it's like to be those processes
nothing and can't be valued by anything because there is no point of view
in a universe without consciousness, so it is
It's the most important thing that can happen anywhere because it is the context in which anything can be valued
Or you know suffered or enjoyed
and
It is what we are in each moment. We are conscious minds
integrated in some way with a
physical world which
we
alone among all the species we know of are in a position to understand, however
imperfectly, and that's that's an amazing situation to be in and we are in the best possible moment to have a rational
well informed conversation about what's going on here on the basis of all the work that previous generations have done and
You know this is this is not the time to be tempted by
An Iron Age conversation about what's going on here
- from The Search - Manufacturing Belief
