what is consciousness?

[bambooneedle]

Wassup, Ropeeey?!?


Not very appropriate, is it?

[A rope leash]

It is if you're drunk.

You know what that's like, right?

Anyway...fuck appropriate.

[bambooneedle]

Sorry Rope, that other post of mine was shit, which you didn't deserve.

Yes, I enjoy being drunk. It's about the only reason I drink. I'm not one of those guys who just wants to maintain a mild buzz for hours at the bar careful not to overdo it so they can be "sociable", or who sips slowly savouring the flavour and all that. I want to fly. That's why I go for the higher % beers like Coopers (don't drink much beer) or spirits. I like something to happen - altering my consciousness, yes, but also finding some sense of resolution or release.

I might go to a bar but I don't like hanging around leaning on the bar or something. Or loathsome loud clubs. I don't care if I'm there with friends, if I can't stand it I have to insist on leaving. The people who "hang" in these places must think it's a real privilege to pay so much for alcohol so they can pick up or whatever. At my normal drinking rate (and constitution) I have to be careful not to be refused the "privilege" after 3 or 4 drinks... as WSS could attest.

About 6-8 standard drinks over 2hrs is about enough for getting well drunk for me. But what about YOU..?

[bambooneedle]

So yeah, I'm in a higher state of consciousness at the moment. I'm keeping my eyes at kind of half mast, relaxing, letting my right brain unhinge, directing my attention to things more wholesomely. The "controller" is at rest and I want to venture to limits.

It's a hazy although quite switched on feeling where my front brain cognizance is fully available, but with significant unleashing of more primal energies that is hard to explain. Something resonates more truly in the whole organism, there's a powerful unity from the baser energies to the pinnacle of mind, and there's an unlocking that occurs.

You realize how stuck you can be otherwise, in your "normal" state, an it's disturbing.

[adge]

ha ha, you 'drink therefore you are', bambooneedle, I love to drink too, though i think i'm a lightweight compared to you.
But it strikes me that there's a kind of inevitable trade off between the amount one drinks, and the extent to which it can be maintained as an altered state. If a person were a full on alcoholic, then that state becomes the norm, and sobriety becomes the more rarefied state.
Drink's capacity to obliterate the 'normal state' is well documented, and couldn't it be that which motivates you to drink, rather than the desire to 'fly'?

[bambooneedle]

I don't think that would be a problem per se (a different state becoming the norm (until yet another does)), consciousness is always in flux, expanding and contracting. One state is never the same as the next so you cannot ever return to a previous state that you may idealize somehow.

Attempting to do so is probably more that which will lead to repetition and stagnation, not so much the alcohol, etc, itself. But that is no different to what occurs when people start to think old.

[adge]

i'm not sure consciousness is always in constant flux, the 'i'm a million different people from one minute to the next' dictum,
is inherently contradictory, if we're different 'people' from one minute to the next, how can any concept of mind or personal identity make sense at all?
To understand consciousness as ephemeral or meaningful only as the sum of many different states, defines the idea of an altered state out of existence, since there could be no permanent state to alter.
I think we think and feel differently, and undergo certain changes though the day, but the state of existence, is itself constant. If we take prozac or alcohol, even coffee, those physiological stimuli alter our mood, or feelings, or our way of thinking, to varying degrees, but we still maintain the idea that it is 'our' mood or feelings that have changed, the 'i' may be ineffable, but that doesn't refute it's existence, or it's permanence.

Just a side note, it's interesting that physical substances, like alcohol, drugs etc, do effect our mood, but they interact with the brain in a way which is the stuff of chemistry, and this is where one of the analogies with computers, that is sometimes made, breaks down. I know no one has made that comparison here, but it's amazing how often the computer metaphor crops up, in relation to human consciousness.

[bambooneedle]

You look to be responding to your own suppositions that you just pull out of somewhere, not mine. While trying to impress with big words. Like, I never knew that was a "dictum". Looks like a misquoted and out of context The Verve lyric.

So YOU figure it out... Don't waste my time.

But, obviously the "i" has NO permanence.

[adge]

I’ll keep this simple so you can make sense of it,
lay off the booze mate, it’s clearly fucking with your brain-hey look, no long words, i hope you appreciate
my condescention!

[bambooneedle]

I do appreciate your stupidity, but only to a point. It is of very limited comical value to me.

The only real question is how does something come from nothing.

Like thoughts. They come from nothing. If you think of biting a lemon your mouth waters. Similarly, wet dreams occur. Everything has an opposite, right? pleasure/pain, dark/light, order/chaos (relative disorder), solid/non-solid, so something can only originally come from nothing. Ideas also dissapear into nothing, the reverse, only remaining a memory. Jung described how collective human thought or consciousness (or memory) (of whatever kind - human, animal, plant...) reaches a certain strength, a critical mass, to remanifest in a new way. So a baby is born (Alan Watts said the world 'peoples') and it gets the wisdom of previous people that is just waiting in the ether. It must just be a cycle, thoughts come and go - nothing to something to nothing, etc.

Humans have undividable dual nature (individuality), composed of opposites as well - physical/non-physical, male/female... this is the only thing permanent. The fact that we are self conscious means we construct ever-evolving personas as well, and that we can warp memories, but these things don't last. They are not as true. That is why it is the people who study their true nature rather than worship ceaselessly at the altar of their egos who become the most memorable - they are the truest individuals. The smartest and best looking. A lot of posters here know that I speak with authority on this subject.

As to HOW something comes from nothing -- in light of the awe produced by the fact that it just does the mechanics of it are just technical. Countless scientists' lives over the decades have been tragically consumed pondering such things when they could have enjoyed themselves a lot more. Even if you have a satisfactory answer you are still always going to pursue pleasure and try to avoid pain and prefer beautiful things to ugly things.

[adge]

[quote="bambooneedle"]I do appreciate your stupidity, but only to a point. It is of very limited comical value to me.

it wasn't meant to be comedic, it's a comment on the state of your sobriety or inebriation and your obvious inability to be coherent in either state.
You're way out of you're depth with me intellectually-even if i was as pissed as a duck, fed on alcohol rich urine for five days, I'd be a thousand times smarter than you, at your most sober, even if you had Stephen Hawking and Noem Chomsky to back you up.

Put down that lager chaser, and smell the humiliation.

[bambooneedle]

Adios, loser.