Controlled Hallucinations

     The Consciousness Community is forever talking about the "hard problem" and the "easy problem", generally referring to inquire about how the human brain directs complex phenomenal experiences (easy), and how this molecular process could possibly explain why humans have this subjective experience called consciousness (hard).  It is, as most agree, the most important question in the world. It has preoccupied humanity unceasingly since the beginning.  The Neuro's, the Philo's, the Theo's, the Psycho's, the Bio's, the Physio's, the IIT's,  and virtually every other academic discipline, is hot to be a part of the answer to this ultimate question.

     For most of us, reflecting on the wide range of Consciousness Commentary,  produces little more than a headache. However, recently I came across a simple phrasing that, at least for me, (whoever and or whatever that me is) yielded a spark of clarity, I think.  Again presuming that there is a me, the insight that the reality which surrounds me provides only very fundamental sense information, i.e. sight,sound, touch, etc., that which I experience as consciousness is my  cumulative and evolving memory, priotized as to relevance, by current sensory input.... hence the "controlled hallucination" characterization.

     Although, I do not know that I experience hallucinations, nor has anyone suggested that I appear to hallucinate, I have experienced a lifetime of dreaming, and the occasional remembrances of dream content.  It seems palpable that the dream state and the hallucinatory state are very similar except for the obvious "navigation engaged/sleep walking" attribute of what we call hallucinating.    If then hallucinating is a state in which memory being accessed randomly, with little sensory input, then normal waking consciousness, it seems,to follow, is the same, but just more structured. Specifically, the consciousness state seems to be when sequencial memory is selected, cohered and constrained by my changing sensory field. 

     Yes, I am a zombie, just wandering around all day remembering memory vignettes of memories of previous memories. Fortunately these memory vignettes are being sensory played according to a "real time playlist" being imposed by external events in my sensory field.  In this, for now postulate, for sure I have to add that these external events include sensory input from the body most comprehensively remembered by my brain...."the body me"  What turns on and off this memory loop and where in time/space this memory loop can be located is too hard to think about.  Long ago, I came to  conceptually understand "emergent phenomena", as in "where the hell in this piano is that chord?"  Further, me sayeth not, except to acknowledge that I do enjoy this ongoing fantasy minimally influenced by whatever is really out there.

Is & Ought

     Across the consciousness spectrum, humanity generally agrees that "we is".... but as to what "we ought", well, not so much!  Indeed in today's entitlement culture the "ought spectrum" seems to have as many unique points as the human sample.  We are now no longer catholic, nor polarized, nor really even tribal.  We are approaching maximum divergence as to what "oughts" should mandate/constrain virtually every imaginable human initiative. The resulting complexity has produced a kind of "destiny gridlock". This gridlock is significantly slowing the evolutionary progress of what we commonly believe is the highest intelligence in the universe.

     So is there a trick to achieving enough coherence to move the "enlightenment index" forward without undermining the consciousness freedom from which genuine enlightenment must arise?  Likely no!  Yes, there are, as always, proponents of the two perennially contending schools, i.e. God and Reason.  It is generally accepted that, during the most recent few hundred years, the Reason protocol has gained favor as the more likely cohering strategy, but just look at the "is"....it "is" less coherence than ever before.  Harris, Dawkins, Pinker, et al are convinced that the "sacred" arose within the "ancient is" and is long overdue for an overhaul.  They argue further that "ought systems" naturally arise in the "is" without a progenitor, such that religion is either superfluous, or at least redundant  Shapiro, Peterson and to a less  palatable degree a thousand Theologians maintain that there "would have been no "ought in the "is" except for "divine revelation" This conviction is followed almost to the absurd conclusion that had Zeus, Yahweh, Krishna and Jesus not actualized, these same Theologians would have, no doubt, lived there lives as rapists and ax murderers.   Oh well, I guess we are lucky they arent our political leaders......ohmygod!

"Live-Well" Senior Support

     For too many years I have noted instances of how Senior Community aides, aid supervisors, and their supervisors are negligent in providing the "live well support" needed by the elderly. The older I get, the easier it is to see the obvious shortfalls in job description requirements. What most facility residing seniors get is compliance with a generic list of "to do tasks", which by definition, exclude all tasks/courtesies not on the list. As such, senior's "live-well support" is almost entirely dependent on the sociological profiles and personality attributes of the individuals composing the care team. 

     Caring for Seniors, unlike caring for children where adults having experienced childhood and are instinctively more discerning, no adult has directly experienced advanced age.   They simply have no personal experiences stored in memory to trigger  senior need recognition.  Compounding this unavoidable disconnect, most low paid care givers have sociological histories woefully deficient in general compassion and communication.

     Consider how perplexing, disturbing and frightening it would be for the typical job seeking caregiver to be  told that their job would be to, for 40 hours weekly, share residential space with 12 advanced age persons during which time they had no task assignment except to help the women and men "to be the best they can be".  Likely, not a successful recruiting strategy.  I have tried.....they just run out the door as if I had asked them to sign up for a 50 year mission to Mars

A Strange Loop

        Sam Harris `offers a start point for reflecting on being.  My personal best understanding is the tech metaphor likening the "me" to a "smart-phone always recording video and audio" programmed to direct  the device's attention by a memory cache prioritizing and informing pursuant to a very simple program. My meta-program expression reads that "the me/ the device", always expends energy in the direction for which the probability of ego satisfaction is highest.          That's it....well except that my corollary sense is that ego satisfaction is just another way of saying love.  Which brings me to this Christmas Day and the trans-rational attention we save for the sacred.  My best guess is that in earliest human history  ego satisfaction lead directly to significant others whose eventual death would have been confounding.  That the loving other was indeed not gone, but just in another realm, was likely an easy work around for the single minded smart memory cache.  It seems plausible that this loving the unseeable dead evolved into the loving of the realm where the dead must be.... a place called God.  From that leap of creative ego satisfaction the evolving of the Trinity, or it's parallels, at least to me, seems fairly straight forward.  They were refinements in the learning memory cache's instruction as to what a consciousness should pay attention. Today, we are paying attention to that realm from which love flows, perfected over evolving consciousness time to be that perfect significant other bringing comfort to our grieving souls...or at least to our smart memory caches containing the latest emotional memory chip that this Darwinian Universe  currently supports.

Danger Will Robinson

     Morning after morming Internet News announces the latest threats from all of the polarized  leaders/celebrities.

          Trump warns North Korea: US    military 'locked and loaded'
     

President Trump Received DirectWarning   From Obama’s Attorney General

 All of this "little boy crying wolf" BS is just about gaming we the droids