Jenna Hymes

This is what I wrote in class for question "What Is Consciousness?". I'm not sure what it says that my first thoughts when answering this question were based in ideas I found to be really deep when I was about ten. I think maybe that makes this a good place to start from. It's interesting to think of the relationship you had with your own mind and the world around you when you were a child. Do we get closer to understanding it as we can study and investigate not only our own minds, but the minds of others? Or were we more likely to understand our consciousness when we were young and ... not simpler, but maybe more in touch with the world inside our heads because we were less able to understand the larger world?

Also, I find "consciousness" to be sort of a difficult word to remember how to spell, even when typing it over and over.

What do I think consciousness is? I don't know. Somehow I have this idea that I have it wrong, that I'm too in my head. Am I conscious? Overly conscious? I remember my older brother telling me that he sometimes worried he'd wake up and everything would be a dream, this whole world, and we were just these blobs (now this sounds sort of like The Matrix, but he told me this in like 1993), but that really struck me when I was younger. I would think about it, falling asleep, my bedroom door cracked open to let in the hall light - I am just a blob, and all of this is a dream. I really could detach myself from reality (perhaps half awake) and worry that this was all in my head. I don't know that I worry that now, though I do think so much of the world is still all in our heads, and if we step back even a little, everything looks so funny.

So far Thinks... has been an enjoyable read. The parts where they basically just describe thought experiments are a little on the nose, but that's OK. It's a pretty good device David Lodge uses to have the one character be the Cognitive Scientist, and the other the Writer, who needs to be educated on all this philosophy of cognitive science. This helps the reader gain an entrance into this world, while still being able to enjoy the novel.

Something I find interesting is that Helen often refers to literature as something that makes people real, that it creates worlds that we inhabit by reading, and that this can be either a good or bad thing. She writes of Edward II, "All I know about him is from Marlowe's play, which may not be reliable, but makes him seem like a real person who once lived and breathed, not just a name in a history book" (88). However, when she is reading her students' short stories, she writes, "... it's just that there are too many of them, too many to take in all at once. Every time I open another folder there's another imagined world to be inhabited..." (82).

Literature can be a burden, just as consciousness can. To read is to inhabit someone else's consciousness, and also the consciousness of the characters. I think this is really interesting-- sometimes that can be great, an escape, a way to connect with history, with other real or imagined people. Sometimes it can be a burden-- to have to inhabit, not just your own world, but someone else's world, to take on a character's struggles, his neuroses, to learn to navigate a new world.

Yesterday I was discussing the TV show Six Feet Under with some friends, and how they had watched whole seasons in one day on DVD, and how that could be really fun, in a "I get to find out what happens next" kind of way, but at the end, it was just really exhausting and sort of overwhelming and (when they watched the final season in one day) a little dissapointing. Granted, TV and movies are different from books, but it's a similar phenomenon. People like to be able to escape into someone else's world, even if it is fictional. But at the same time, this can become emotionally draining. Why do we feel a need to escape or own consciousness and delve into others'?

I changed my blog layout! A small accomplishment that made me feel I was being productive and doing school work, so that's cool.

So what consciousness is there to report on right now? I'm sitting in my apartment, using my newly set up internet and therefore no longer stealing from the neighbors. My boyfriend, Matt and I had been doing that for like two weeks since we moved in, and were always annoyed when the signals we could pick up were blocked with passwords, but then of course when we got our internet installed, we password guarded ours! This seems a good example of human nature somehow.

My apartment has french doors dividing the living room and what we have deemed the office, so I can see Matt out there watching the movie Accepted on HBO, but the sound is muffled, and he can see me sitting here typing. It makes me feel a bit as if I were in a science experiment-- perhaps like Mary? Or maybe Matt is in the experiment, the affect of cable TV on the 29 year old mind. I am proud that I was able to tear myself away and start doing work, and that I'm not even so distracted by the fact that I can still see the TV.

TV is an interesting part of consciousness, why is it so damn entertaining? I am actually something of a couch potato, but am ashamed of this fact, and often wonder how I am able to shut my brain down for an hour (or hours...) at a time, and give into this box. I guess I'm not totally shutting down, I react, I think, sometimes I watch educational programs. But somehow TV gets into our minds, sometimes I find myself feeling emotions involuntarily; I'm sad when the wife dies in a stupid movie I'm only half watching and criticizing in my head for its stupid dialogue.

Anyway, those are my thoughts right now. Don't judge me for watching TV! I'm smart, really. And Matt is too.

I leave the cave at night with the rest of them, but find my way own my own, flying, gliding through the air. I am the greatest flyer that ever lived, the other bats, the girl bats, watch me as I dip and dive and nearly hit that tree, but of course I don't! And they wish they could be with me, but next thing they know I am out of their sight, far ahead of the rest and the wind rushes over me and I'm hungrier than I've ever been before. The trees are arms reaching out to grab me, I sense them as I speed past, I soar higher and higher, so high no bat's ever been up so far before.

Suddenly I'm up too high and can't tell where I am. I don't sense Earth, only sky and I've lost all sense of direction. Shit. I descend, feel myself fall, but I'm still in control. But I'm even hungrier now and I think I've lost my way and the cave is far, too far to even fly to. Shit. I try to retrace my steps, but I've got only my senses to go on, and I can't hear any other of the girls around me, they're all gone, off with some other guys probably all feasting together and I'm all alone. I thought I wanted to be alone, but now I'm not so sure. I swoop lower, lower, lower, till my feet hit the ground.

The idea of people being able to see without being aware that they are able to see was something that I found very interesting in this reading. I was born with a cataract in my right eye and had it removed when I was four years old. My sight never fully recovered in that eye, and I went on to become near sighted (or far sighted? crap! The one where you can't see far away) in both eyes. Apparently this had nothing to do with my cataract, because I'm pretty blind in my left eye too, but glasses/contacts can correct my left eye to 20/20. Unfortunately, my right eye can never get up to a perfect 20/20.

Anyway! Throughout my life I have felt anxiety about my sight, for my own seeing purposes, but also because of other peoples' reactions and the visual tricks I could not see. When I was in elementary school I hated when we had to have eye tests in the nurse's office, because the nurse was always shocked by how poorly I saw out of my right eye. I could never really see 3-D with those stupid red and blue glasses, could never get one of those invisible eye posters... and then in class the other day, that yellow dot did NOT go in the box or whatever it was supposed to have done. But when I read about people who are blind being able to see without being aware, I wonder what is going on with me. Is it possible that I could have discouraged my brain from seeing these things? I'm not blind in my right eye, it's just never totally clear... and I know some people with fine vision can't see the ship or the pony in invisible eye posters either.

My question is-- just as people can see something without being aware they see it... can a person train herself to not see? Maybe I could see the yellow dot, but I had felt so discouraged all these years about my sight, that my brain didn't compute it? Or does Carter tell us that I would have seen these things, even if I wasn't aware of seeing them and therefore... I really didn't see it? I am tying myself in knots here a little bit, but I think this is interesting. Can we make our senses purposefully unaware, just as they can be aware without us knowing?

Wow, it's finally turned cool and autumnal! How delightful! Though my computer does tell me it's supposed to be 82 on Friday. Oh well, I'll enjoy the lack of humidity for now.

I've been having some thoughts about collective consciousness, though I'm not sure how deep they are. My parents were in town this weekend, and last night we went to see The Fantasticks. I didn't know anything about the show, but my dad had seen it at his college about 35 years ago, and my boyfriend knew one song, though he had heard this revival wasn't that great. The thing that I did know about the show, and the fact that was displayed all around the lobby of the theater, was that this was the longest running show EVER. It ran for 40 plus years off Broadway. So when you hear that a show ran for that long, you wonder what it's all about, and what made it so popular. And after having seen it, I have to say... I'm not sure! Some of the songs were really beautiful, and I could see that the themes of youth, disillusionment, as well as the sparse sets really struck a chord with people through the decades. But what makes something like that so popular?

How much of what we like and praise is based on what other people think? And why do we care about what other people think? And what is the deal with expectations? I went into this show with certain ideas, and perhaps because of that, I didn't think it was that great. If we are all individual creatures with our own consciousness, then what is this part of us that is influenced by what other people think?

I guess this relates in some ways to what we've discussed about the mystery of consciousness, and the fact that so much of literature is sort of the excitement of exploring someone else's mind. We also, as conscious beings, love finding people who think like us or enjoy the same things as we do. Why does that matter so much?

Anyway, this is my combination consciousness report and theater review. What I really wanted to see was A Chorus Line. A five six seven eight!

You feel like you’ve been riding this train forever. The doors ding and close, then open, then ding and close again. Now the train is moving. You look out the window across from you, avoiding eye contact with that guy with the wild, curly hair and sunglasses on even though you’re in a tunnel, you could swear he's staring at you, though it's impossible to tell. You watch the darkness outside the window, finding it hard to imagine that any human has ever set foot in that tunnel, that this is all man made. How did they ever construct the subway, ever rip miles out of the Earth and throw it away and put trains down here? You remember then that they’re doing it again on Second Avenue. New York City always makes you wonder at human ability. You can’t even believe that anyone could make a skyscraper or these miles of sidewalks or this tunnel, again this tunnel, racing past you, you let your eyes go out of focus and the occasional light in the tunnel blazes past like hyperspace.