Re: Questioning Consciousness
Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 12:24 am
Something happened while I was painting the picture at the bottom of this commentary, something I've experienced many times before. My studio is in the flight path(?) of a hive of wasps one of their favourite routes. It's quite a well established route of many years I was told by the owner of the house. In the attic room, if the window is opened on one side of the roof, the corresponding window on the opposite side also has to be opened. In which case the wasps simply zip straight through, in one side, out the other. If not they tend to become confused and rapidly accumulate in numbers making a nuisance of themselves.
Anyway, last summer was sweltering and while my studio has two sash windows both on the same wall, there is no other exit besides the door, apart from the way they came in. And come in they did, almost invariably ending up batting themselves against the far window, sometimes the top section of the window they entered by. Even worse, getting themselves sandwiched in the little gap between the two panes once the lower half is slid open. It became quite a chore to stop work and free them each time they became stuck.
I remember how hard I laughed when my little brother ran into a wasp nest once and danced like Thom Yorke as they swarmed and stung him all over. He hated them after that. Over the years I've gotten on quite well with bees and wasps, been stung a few times but usually only when I've done something stupid. I never took it personally. I think calming thoughts, gently cup my hands around them, which doesn't seem to bother them (or me) and release them outside. Anyway they kept coming in, attracted by the vase of Sunflowers set up exactly as in the painting. I began to visualise how I might see the window through their eyes and how I should move if I were them, in order to fly to the open section of window from wherever they were. After a few attempts something seemed to gel and almost all of the subsequent wasps changed in behaviour from frantic lunging against the glass to a steady tentative flight directly toward the exit once they'd satisfied themselves with the flowers. This happy circumstance continued until nearly the end of the painting. I was thinking about placing one of the fallen petals on the nearest rams horn when one fell off and landed on it rather provocatively. Then a wasp came in the window and slowly approached me, hovering in front of my right eye for a short while as if regarding me, or perhaps, trying to get my attention. Then it flew to the petal, landed on it and turned to face me exactly as if posing. Little bastard flew off almost immediately. I put a wasp in the title though.
I've experienced this kind of interaction most of my life but seen it as a sort of imaginary dialogue, a fancy, until recent years. I never imagined that I could for one moment apprehend the mind of wasps, as such, or any other animal except imaginatively. Now I imagine that sometimes we can accommodate each other if we choose. If we learn such accommodation by chance or inclination. We've always done it apparently, some tribes adopt other species (or vice versa) as a kind of family member and flourish together, able to warn each other of potential dangers and alert each other to opportunities. We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. And it doesn't stop at the animal kingdom, it reaches up and down the chain of being. I never try to convince anyone of this, it's merely part of my experience and theirs if or when they choose it, but sometimes I wish we'd snap out of the machine metaphors and profit motives and simply reach out beyond our fears. Saint Francis had something of the right idea, but time is running out so fast.
What all of this implies about mind, about consciousness is really quite profound. We may well be destroying not only a 'support system' as some see it, in the present ecological catastrophe we may be destroying a fundamental part of our own mind. How would we know if we weren't? What might we expect to happen to our conceptual powers if it were so? If our dream is not merely ours, as a species I mean, then how might the slow loss of our dreams appear to us? Very much like madness I would suppose. Like the slow withdrawal of inspiration. Who's to say where I begin or a bacterium ends? Who's asking such a question seriously? And if it were true in whole or part, the implications for our future are equally profound. We have a choice to make.
Anyway, last summer was sweltering and while my studio has two sash windows both on the same wall, there is no other exit besides the door, apart from the way they came in. And come in they did, almost invariably ending up batting themselves against the far window, sometimes the top section of the window they entered by. Even worse, getting themselves sandwiched in the little gap between the two panes once the lower half is slid open. It became quite a chore to stop work and free them each time they became stuck.
I remember how hard I laughed when my little brother ran into a wasp nest once and danced like Thom Yorke as they swarmed and stung him all over. He hated them after that. Over the years I've gotten on quite well with bees and wasps, been stung a few times but usually only when I've done something stupid. I never took it personally. I think calming thoughts, gently cup my hands around them, which doesn't seem to bother them (or me) and release them outside. Anyway they kept coming in, attracted by the vase of Sunflowers set up exactly as in the painting. I began to visualise how I might see the window through their eyes and how I should move if I were them, in order to fly to the open section of window from wherever they were. After a few attempts something seemed to gel and almost all of the subsequent wasps changed in behaviour from frantic lunging against the glass to a steady tentative flight directly toward the exit once they'd satisfied themselves with the flowers. This happy circumstance continued until nearly the end of the painting. I was thinking about placing one of the fallen petals on the nearest rams horn when one fell off and landed on it rather provocatively. Then a wasp came in the window and slowly approached me, hovering in front of my right eye for a short while as if regarding me, or perhaps, trying to get my attention. Then it flew to the petal, landed on it and turned to face me exactly as if posing. Little bastard flew off almost immediately. I put a wasp in the title though.
I've experienced this kind of interaction most of my life but seen it as a sort of imaginary dialogue, a fancy, until recent years. I never imagined that I could for one moment apprehend the mind of wasps, as such, or any other animal except imaginatively. Now I imagine that sometimes we can accommodate each other if we choose. If we learn such accommodation by chance or inclination. We've always done it apparently, some tribes adopt other species (or vice versa) as a kind of family member and flourish together, able to warn each other of potential dangers and alert each other to opportunities. We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. And it doesn't stop at the animal kingdom, it reaches up and down the chain of being. I never try to convince anyone of this, it's merely part of my experience and theirs if or when they choose it, but sometimes I wish we'd snap out of the machine metaphors and profit motives and simply reach out beyond our fears. Saint Francis had something of the right idea, but time is running out so fast.
What all of this implies about mind, about consciousness is really quite profound. We may well be destroying not only a 'support system' as some see it, in the present ecological catastrophe we may be destroying a fundamental part of our own mind. How would we know if we weren't? What might we expect to happen to our conceptual powers if it were so? If our dream is not merely ours, as a species I mean, then how might the slow loss of our dreams appear to us? Very much like madness I would suppose. Like the slow withdrawal of inspiration. Who's to say where I begin or a bacterium ends? Who's asking such a question seriously? And if it were true in whole or part, the implications for our future are equally profound. We have a choice to make.