Common Sense Doesn't Have The Last Word

Without Consciousness The Mind-body Problem Would Be Much Less Interesting. With Consciousness It Seems Hopeless.

Each Of Our Lives Is A Part Of The Lengthy Process Of The Universe Gradually Waking Up And Becoming Aware Of Itself.

The Great Cognitive Shift Is An Expansion Of Consciousness From The Perspectival Form Contained In The Lives Of Particular Creatures To An Objective, World-encompassing Form That Exists Both Individually And Intersubjectively. It Was Originally A Biological Evolutionary Process, And In Our Species It Has Become A Collective Cultural Process As Well. Each Of Our Lives Is A Part Of The Lengthy Process Of The Universe Gradually Waking Up And Becoming Aware Of Itself.

The Point Is... To Live One's Life In The Full Complexity Of What One Is, Which Is Something Much Darker, More Contradictory, More Of A Maelstrom Of Impulses And Passions, Of Cruelty, Ecstacy, And Madness, Than Is Apparent To The Civilized Being Who Glides On The Surface And Fits Smoothly Into The World.

Perhaps The Belief In God Is The Belief That The Universe Is Intelligible, But Not To Us.