Understanding Consciousness and Broadening the Scope of Our Existence

We can never truly get outside of ourselves to see an unadorned objective truth. Every experience of the world and of ourselves is utterly imbued with the hidden history of our own personal and cultural past. I marvel at how utterly different the world must have looked, across time and from different nooks and crannies of human culture. From the Medievals, who’s earth was stationed mid way in a hierarchy of celestial and infernal dominion, to the Moderns, feeling themselves to be a subjective mind in an otherwise objective and mindless universe.

At this time, research and understanding and about the brain, consciousness and our own sense of self is changing and growing with as much break neck speed as the culture at large. Is the brain a machine? Can consciousness be uploaded into a computer? Does the brain generate consciousness or is some sort of proto-consciousness already accomplished by the time nature produces the humble amoeba? These are exciting times because as our understanding of the brain and of consciousness grows, we broaden the scope within which we can conceive our own existence.