Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
"We are all of us Starstuff...
Life is the Universe, given consciousness."
-Delenn (borrowing from Sagan) to Sinclair, Babylon 5
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Having a vast appreciation of the process of evolution and all that it has achieved, I find it easy to view that generative process as intelligent. But that which we call life is a product of that process. Not all of it is conscious, though we can argue about the nature of consciousness. Maybe it is a sensate awareness of self -- how it feels to be me. We can wonder how far down the phyla this awareness goes. My hunch is that it is restricted to the mammalian brain. Can we claim the universe itself is conscious? I suspect not.
But it is a poetic and optimistic quotation. Do you get a feeling from it? I do. Poetic statements come from the intuitive part of us and speak to the heart rather than the brain. We wonder why we feel something when we read a beautiful passage. We cannot explain it, much as we couldn't explain the "meaning" of a famous poem when we were in the ninth grade.
Personally, I am struggling toward consciousness, having had my first cup of coffee. I am staring at the second cup and enjoying Mobileread.