This is a modified version. In the longer versions I deal more thoroughly with the guilt and shame. These are very important in connecton to self consciousness and our social and environmental adaptations.

SELF CONSCIOUSNESS: THE HUMAN ADAPTATION

HOMO spiritualis - In search of meaning <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The miracle said 'I" and then was still lost in the wing-bright sphere of his own wonder: as if the river pause to say a river, or thunder to self said thunder,

As once the voice had spoken, now the mind uttered itself, and gave itself a name; and in the instant all was changed, the world two separate worlds became - Conrad Aiken. Collected Poems.

The most profound evolutionary development for humans is the depth, breadth and energy of our self consciousness. It is a manifestation of the vast enlargement of the human brain. Our technologies, our cultures, our relationships, our darkest nights, our sense of self, our spirituality, our very adaptive survival spring from and reflect the activities of self consciousness. Self consciousness dramatically separates humans from all other life forms. Without the depth, breadth and energy of our self consciousness, we may not be just another monkey, but for sure we would not be human. Obviously, there are many other activities in the human brain. Many hierarchies of functions and processes actively maintain the human organism. Self consciousness is our dominant mode of survival. Self consciousness is the process that allows the child to learn about and adapt to the most necessary, most complicated, and potentially most dangerous component of our environment - other humans. The human child must spend many years learning how to live. Most important is not the raw data of physical survival but the intricacies of social behavior and acceptance. Self consciousness is a very powerful tool. It is the outgrowth of a long line of evolution. Feedback systems have been evolving from the beginning of the first single cell organisms. These systems tell the organism what is going on inside itself, what is going on outside itself and what should be done to accommodate the information it receives. Ongoing feedback loops check how things are going and regulate the organism in order to maintain order. The feedback system is self referring and self organizing. Life, internally dynamic, in a changing environment must have these feedback loops in order to exist. As life has evolved these feedback loops have become more sophisticated. Animals have developed complex chemical processes to maintain a dynamic internal balance and to react to external activities. Animals have also developed a complex system of nerves that assess and regulate internal activities and react to outside encounters. These two systems, chemical and electrical, mesh to keep the animal in dynamic balance. The senses (seeing, hearing, taste, smell, touch) have developed as extensions to assist these feedback loops. The human brain is designed with many feedback loops. A simple example is that our brain is composed of earlier brain structures. On top of the spinal column is a structure similar to that of a reptiles brain. Covering the reptilianlike brain is a structure similar to very primitive mammals brains. On top of these two more primitive structures is the neocortex which is found in higher mammals and is most highly expressed in the human. The reptiles brain is primarily a stimulus/response reactor. If the snake is hungry, it seeks food. There is no modification of this response in the natural environment. With the advent of the paleomammalian brain, responses came under some modification, i.e. protection of the young could modify food seeking. This newer brain development acted to modulate the simple stimulus/response behavior. This occurred through a feedback system in the brain itself. This modulation and feedback activity was further elaborated with the development of the neocortex of the higher mammals. The feedback system works by exchanges of information within the organism and between the organism and its environment. Both the chemical and the electrical processes have evolved to provide more refined information. Communication with the environment by animals has also evolved. Most animals have a way of communicating a warning. They have a way of communicating sexual receptivity. Social animal have developed even more complex communications. Human language is an outgrowth of this refinement. The development of a complex and learned communication system in humans coupled with the highly developed feedback systems of our brain has made us a highly adaptable animal. Humans can be placed in any wide variety of environments and a way will develop for surviving in that environment. Along with learning a physical survival system, a way of human interaction will also arise. So often the importance of language is placed solely on the exchange of information between people. This is only one side of the coin. I want to emphasize that the internal monitoring that our language ability allows is an equally important adaptation for human survival. Self consciousness allows the developing human to learn acceptable ways of being and to have an internal monitor to regulate our behavior. For adaptive survival, the eagle has the talon and keen eye sight, the porcupine its quills; we have the internal dialogues that are a coupling of our complex feedback systems and language. We have self consciousness. Self consciousness is the process that allows the child to learn about and adapt to the most necessary, most complicated, and potentially most dangerous component of our environment - other humans. The human child must spend many years learning how to live. Most important is not the raw data of physical survival but the intricacies of social behavior and acceptance. Early in human life, we learn in many ways and on multiple levels acceptable social modes of behavior. Self consciousness is the comparative process that allows us to monitor, mediate, modify or inhibit our individual behavior to obtain social membership. Self consciousness generates guilt when our individual behavior is incongruent with the social behaviors we were taught. Guilt is a powerful regulator of our activities. The human child is taught these ways of being through the family. The primary teaching begins in earnest with the arrival of language ability around two years of age. A child is taught how to be angry, how to display their gender, what is valued, what is acceptable. This teaching is both verbal and nonverbal. The monitoring and constricting of behavior to conform to these teachings is accomplished by our internal self-talk feedback system. Thus it is the convergence and coevolution of the brains feedback activity and language that allows for our wide range of adaptability. Do other animals have something akin to self consciousness? Perhaps. Do other animals have communication? Yes. It is the evolutionary leap of our sophisticated language that makes such a huge difference. Whether other animals are self conscious they dont have the power of a language to put that learning into meaningful form and to be able to generalize from the specific experience. Their learning is more akin to the learning of riding a bicycle or type. They dont have the power of a language for internal brain chatter (as it might be called). Survival information for all lifeforms is stored and available through genetic inheritance and mutation. Language metaphorically becomes the genes of a new evolution. Language adds a new dimension to this process of storing and retrieving information. Language does not supersede the genetic information system but mediates, modifies and extends. How do I propose that spirituality arises from self consciousness? The truly revolutionary aspect of self consciousness is that it allows us to step out of the moment. In essence, it allows us to alter our involvement with time and space. We can shape in our imagination the past or future and we can rearrange or recombine our mental contents in space. Self consciousness is experiencing the experience. If asked, are you happy? you must step outside whatever your particular state at the moment in order to assess that state. Self consciousness puts us beside our self, looking at our self. We interrupt and manipulate time and space. In doing this we seemingly step outside the flow of life, outside the immediate. We live not in the moment. Using our self consciousness we can rekindle and resentiment the past or we can dream and project the future. We are the director and producer of our own dramas by manipulating the sets of events, people and things. Being in the flow (grace) is the necessary state of life. Time and space are outside the awareness of other animals. They are enmeshed within it. They have no codifying language system to couple with their feedback processes to be aware of time or space as we know it. Self consciousness appears to be contrary to being in the flow. The very functioning of self consciousness interrupts and manipulates time and space. Our mental mediation of time and space seemingly outside the flow of life generates at our core a sense of separation. We are beside our self. This sense of separateness is subtle. If unchallenged it is at the very most a nagging feeling - a predisposition. It is a seed of doubt. This feeling of being outside is illusory; we cannot be outside the flow and be alive. Illusion or not, this does not keep the seed of doubt, the sense of separateness, from being a main experience of all humanity. In the best of all possible worlds this sense of being disconnected would remain subtle and far from awareness. However, the necessities of socialization amplify the aloneness. The growing child can hardly avoid dissonances and contradictions in the learnings of the social environment. Parents are not necessarily consistent either individually across time or between themselves. Depending on the individual and the environment, this illusion of disconnection is magnified in our attempts to fit into the social environment. Self consciousness is a double edged sword. It is our tool for meeting our need to belong in the social fabric. It allows for the monitoring of the behaviors that support membership in the social setting. On the other edge in functioning to allow us to step out of time and space it generates at our core a feeling of separateness at best, alienation at worst. So our most powerful adaptive tool, self consciousness, drives us to seek unity. It drives us to find the present moment, a place without time or space. It moves us to search for the experience and the experiencing of unity with the cosmos, with the whole. This feeling of separateness, of being outside, comes up against our broadly defined living need of being in the flow. Energy and tension are generated. Human life becomes a search, a quest towards being back in the flow, towards belonging, towards unity. This is the root of spirituality. Often in evolution, functions or structures evolve that are not the unfolding direction of a particular line of development. Self consciousness developed a highly versatile, adaptable animal. Spirituality appears to have arisen as a outgrowth of this development. As is often the case, such outgrowths can trigger a new line of evolution. I believe this is exactly what will and is happening with spirituality. (It must also be cautioned that such outgrowths can become unresolved survival baggage that leads to extinction as well.) It is entirely possible and evidence from mystical experiences suggests that the feedback mechanism couple with language opens doors inward that allow experiencing the universe at very various levels/dimensions/pathways. In this experiencing, we appear to move beneath as well as expand beyond the five senses to encounter the cosmos. Recent advances in theoretical physics mirror attemps to explain the experiences of mystics from around the world. The ineffable is filtered through the culture, language, and mindset (religion or science) in attempt to describe. Whether it is the experiencing/description of multiple universes or wave dynamics or the interwoven connection of all, these attempts from all times, all places and all orientations mirror each other.

AN ASIDE The creation myth in the Old Testament is a beautiful metaphor for the spiritual quest that self consciousness brings to us. With the eating from the tree of knowledge, we come to know of ourselves. We see our nakedness. We are beside ourselves. We are banished from the garden. This is the ultimate not belonging. This is descriptive of the existential and illusory separateness that is particularly human. This has been called original sin. Adam and Eve are exiled before finding and eating from the tree of immortality, eternal continuity. Humans are forced to face limitations, losses and death. The unfolding, evolving self can become and may continue to become more self-aware as we learn to pass through life's transitions and changes. Not belonging with its painful feeling of shame is both bane and blessing. Shame is both hurtful and hurting, often destructive. Arising from our very human need for belonging, shame can create new forms of belonging, supporting our survival and continuity. In a relevant and soulful statement, John Lee Hooker, the blues singer and musician, said that the blues began when God told Adam and Eve to get out of the garden. Thus begins our search; a uniquely personal and human quest towards unity, towards soul.

SELF CONSCIOUSNESS AND TECHNOLOGY

The ability to step out of time and space allowed and demanded by self consciousness not only creates our spirituality. It also creates the other highly human activity - technology. Self consciousness seemingly allows us to step out of the ongoing experience of time and space. Whether we ruminate over a recent slight or recall in joyful detail a long past pleasant experience, we have removed ourselves from immediate time and space. I believe the ability to as it were step out of time and space and mentally manipulate structures and functions is at the root of technological developments. I am defining technology as a process of modifying time and/or space by structural transformations, functional analogs, and inputting energy. These modifications are usually compressions of time and/or space but may involve expansions. As an example, gathering and hunting was a means of subsistence for 99% of human history. It required space in square miles and fluctuated with natures rhythms across time. With the development of agriculture, space requirements became measured in acres and time was bounded by a specific growing season. Transportation technologies are also easily seen as examples of this definition of technology. Technological development can be social or physical and usually involves both. Technology is one of the identifying characteristics of humanity and is a result of the same activities of manipulating time and space that underlines self consciousness. As with spirituality, technology is an outgrowth and offshoot of self consciousness. It remains to be seen if it is a blessing providing great living or a curse leading to annihilation.

-- Anonymous, May 27, 2000

Answers

John,

Is there a full version of this posted somewhere? If not, how about giving us the pieces you cut out in another thread. I feel like I am waiting for the punch line. Where would you take us from here? (please not into the cold.)

By way of nit picking, elephants and whales might find your estimation of our neocortex as "most highly expressed" a tad self-serving. "the elephant is the wisest of all animals becaues only he remembers his past lives----and stands for hours contemplating them."

In our butchery we spend little effort evaluating compartative interspecies nueurology/theology/philosophy. From a technology standpoint, both whales and elephants are at a marked disadvantage with respect to manipulting mass and energy. (As are the hairy apes when it comes to working fire. Very tricky or its flaming monkey!)

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2000

David - Not sure what you mean by punch line. I feel the proposal for self consciousness (as I have defined it) as our survival tool and the arising of spirituality and technology as a result of this function certainly could generate discussion. I will send the other thoughts later since this is my busy day. I did not mean to imply that humans were the only or the best way that the universe is using to know itself. (or ultimately a successful way) I don't know very much about elephant past lives. I am sure they were all Rajahs in the past. If sitting around doing nothing in apparent contemplation is the criteria, lizard are right up there with the best. And I am sure they were each T.Rex (it appears that in most past lives people were princes and princesses, there being so many of them there were really no commoners in history). Actually if this sitting around doing nothing in apparent contemplation is the criteria, some of my neighbors must go all the way back to amoebas. So do you have some thoughts on the proposals about spirituality and technology? John

-- Anonymous, May 29, 2000

I have a sense that there should be a conservation law of spirituality similar to mass/energy.

The human envirnoment must be contained. Drop a bell jar over our activities---curtail them and make the technical'economic system turn inward and seek growth as maturation or metamorphosis. Don't have a clue how to do it.

I'm not very spiritual. Technically inept too, but I do have fun.

Gad, its Friday again, already. Gack!

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2000