Thursday, February 10, 2005

Sensory metabolism

The nature of human consciousness seems to be one that likes to connect the dots. Because dots are what we are given in the perceptual field. As light particles strike the retina intermittently, and impact us through the on-off firing of neurons in the brain, we are receivers of a panoply of ones and zeros, a digital data stream. Immediately upon intaking this binary repast, we mash it up, homogenize it, convert it to a digestible waveform. We connect the dots between the points, between the bits, and come up with a rainbow of continuity that constitutes our comfortable known world.

This sensory metabolism is so pervasive that we never question the idea that we live in a waveform, despite how much the underlying reality is digital. On the particle level, not much is certain. The particle may be here, it may be there; you cannot pin it down without losing vital information. But we confront the quantum cosmos like recalcitrant audiophiles, preferring analog to digital.

We are dots ourselves, points of consciousness in an unfathomable multiversal ocean, flashing unpredictably in and out of awareness. We create a continuity out of our own thoughts and call that effect a self. What laser light will illuminate our digital souls, calling us forth one by one to see clearly at last?

No comments: