Consciousness before & beyond circuits

God-in-love can’t exist--right?--because the existence of such a being is incompatible with established scientific principles. Is it possible for the concept of God-in-love to be based on “a metaphysics that takes seriously the best known physics,” in the words of Massimo Pigliucci of rationallyspeaking podcast.org, a ‘naturalistic’ metaphysics?

Let's sharpen the point of the problem: can God-in-love have consciousness without circuits, that is, before and beyond brains or computers? This is important because unless consciousness manifests some kind of individual intentionality, memory and thought, a deity is a dull, undifferentiated force field too boring to care about and futile to address. If divine personality is really implausible, then God-in-love must take on the role in our thought of a mere convenience, a reference point, a cipher, certainly not one with whom conversation is possible, much less prayer. Yet, thinking of the bland nullity of space, we ask: "In such conditions, how is such consciousness even conceivable?"

Yes, fools rush in...and me among them. Let me go out on a limb and address this issue.

It's impossible to ignore how our consciousness is dependent on the circuitry of our nervous systems. Today it seems the world of computers is one of circuits without consciousness, but perhaps consciousness is latent in all circuitry and in the future silicon consciousness will arise as carbon consciousness did, an emergent phenomenon like water produced by the interaction of H2O molecules.The fact that new emergent phenomena open new realms of potentiality doesn’t preclude, however, the possibility that these realms have been waiting to be opened, inaccessible until the right preconditions are met. Radios didn’t invent radio waves which had always been there but unsuspected. Perhaps consciousness has always been there waiting for the circuitry to pick it up. If always there, then where and what exactly? 

Cosmic consciousness sometimes refers to an ineffable, content-less awareness. What  I think our consciousness gives us, instead, is access to realms upon realms of concepts, images, memories: mathematics, poetry, music, practical innovations, values, and more, very particular concepts and images that can be realized in actions, emotions, works of art, inventions. The space these things inhabit seems a very universe, immeasurably immense, multi-dimensional, a honeycomb of categories and forms, humming with the conception and formatting of new not-unimaginable but yet-to-be imagined possibilities, suffused with the light of the past, oriented towards an open future. What we can conceive is only part of what I take to be that universe of creativity which is the consciousness of God-in-love before and beyond circuits. 

The consciousness of God-in-love is first of all this reconnaissance of what is possible, this making-space for what can be. Then, it is the hospitality implicit in the initiation of material creation, the making-space for potentiality to be realized. Finally, it is the direct engagement with and participation in the world through the consciousness-capabilities, the circuitries, of embodied beings like us. Throughout, the intention of God-in-love is to bring into being the beloved Other. Before the beginning, the shaping of possibility space; since the beginning, the actualizing of possibility; and now, to us and through us (and whomever else), the conceiving and appreciating of possibilities latent and realized. 

I see God-in-love as both transcendent and immanent, and we as immanent and yet also transcendent, inasmuch as we are participants in the Beloved. The practices of hospitality, friendship and exploration are how God-in-love addresses us and, through us, all others, creation itself. Our responses to Others and God-in-love are energized by that address.

All of my ideas take seriously the best known science, and always should. However, the zone of new discoveries and contested interpretations is broad, and if my speculations go beyond what the scientific community has agreed on, they may still be well inside the boundary of the absurd.

That recently for instance, more or less overnight, the proportion of observable energy in the universe relative to the cosmic total dropped precipitously is a fact that refreshes my readiness for surprise.

Here's a question that's occurred to me, for instance: “How much dark energy is there in this room right now?” An inventory of gravitational, electroweak, and strong nuclear forces in action can readily be made by measuring and counting. Since dark energy is thought to be pervasive but very weak, a vacuum energy density on the order of 10-122, we might assume that right here and just now its significance is negligible. That number, though, is a cosmic average, like the average temperature of the universe--near absolute zero. In my house, however, it’s a little warmer. No authoritative theory speaks about local (or even cosmic) variability of dark energy or its significance. It could be that dark energy is uniform everywhere, but I don't think we can demonstrate or argue that fact conclusively. Of course, scientists and other thinkers are ingenious and passionate of pursuit of such questions and I'm eager to learn what they discover and take it to heart. 

Meanwhile, we all live in many communities; we encounter Others within and between each of them. Each community is to be taken seriously, its issues and ideas taken into consideration, our thoughts and actions modified in response. Each encounter is an opportunity to practice hospitality, friendship and exploration. This complexity constitutes the richness of our consciousness, and across the cosmos, the richness of the consciousness of God-in-love.

Dare to Look, Part 2

Wait a minute: maybe my revulsion is due in part to the fact that my daily environment, comfortable and manageable as it is, seems inevitable, natural, a circumstance to be taken for granted. Perhaps these photos make me suddenly aware that the absence of such perverted

2nd person actions in my daily experience has to do more with my good luck living in a place of social courtesies and legal protections, and less with the intrinsic impossibility of such horrors. 

I'm a privileged person, the heir of a long heritage of activism, political and educational, that has made forms of hospitality, friendship and exploration the institutional and cultural norms where I live. My risk is to imagine that this all is spontaneous and not the result of human determination; permanent and not in need of continual nurture; secure and not in need of protection. 

However, history assures me that in any particular place or time, these Other-oriented practices are not inevitable and not invulnerable. Champions are needed to encourage, enable, support and protect hospitality, friendship and exploration on the level of institutional policy or public perception. Policy and social habits are not necessarily encounters but can assist them.

At any moment, anywhere, each of us can risk these practices in our encounters, and to do so may be heroic. Such individual heroism is admirable; the ambition of God-in-love and the Beloved, however, is larger: a world where such practices are not isolated, but pervasive in the relationships of people with each other and the world. 

An encounter may champion hospitality, friendship and exploration locally by example or instruction. The concept of encounter does, however, also include engagement with the public to influence behavior and with decision makers to influence policies. Dealing with the public and policy-makers quickly brings us face-to-face with what is Not-us, with what we don't know, what we don't suspect we don't know, things that baffle, disappoint and delight us.

In short, being a deliberate champion of 2nd person practices will burst the bubble of ingenuousness engendered by our society with its wide-open shop doors, subway forbearances and lightning-fast search engines. Perhaps I don't have to contemplate those awful images (though I may), but I do need to join the long tradition and be actor and activist. 

There are many worthy endeavors to pursue. Perhaps going to the Ward 18 Democratic caucus this weekend is part of one. Let's see.

Dare to Look, Part 1

Advertisements for Death by Susie Linfield, NY Tiimes 1.23.14, demands that I respond. Perpetrator photography has come to the fore most recently in the just-released archive of Assad’s torture victims. “Some of these photographs are disgustingly graphic and reveal the ways in which the human body can be undone; others...quiet portraits of terror and powerlessness in the face of death.”

“There is a double horror,” she says, in the act of looking at perpetrator images. "First and most obviously, they show repellent things, fearsome things, unbearable things... But this revulsion is intensified by the knowledge that these images were made not as protests against viciousness but rather in celebration, or at least documentation, of it.”

“The very existence of such photographs testifies to the fact that such acts can be cause for satisfaction, for pride, for glory--or even for amusement. (It's striking how many smiles appear in Nazi photographs and those from Abu Graib.)”

I don't, don't, don't want to look at these images. I never do. I'm afraid of my own reactions, the disgust, the fear, the horror--the memories lingering, my sleep disturbed, my equanimity upset. I argue that such images are better ignored--after all they were created to produce in me the effect they do. What if I become inured to this “torture porn?” Will my hopefulness become ridiculous and be replaced by a disgusted despair? Out of fear, out of self-protection, I cannot look.

Yet somebody must. These acts are outrageous; we must be furious at them. Everything that represents hospitality or friendship is violated. What is the expression of the mutual affection of God-in-love and the Beloved is befouled and corrupted. Healing, hosting, helping, companioning, conversing, all the 2nd  person deeds are inverted and mocked.We are called to practice these with particular Others, but perhaps we're also called to act for hospitality itself, friendship itself, on behalf of all Others everywhere. 

Perhaps my challenge is not to avert my eyes, but to look and be aroused to act more creatively and courageously than ever before against these kinds of torments and the systems that foster and promote them. To absorb these images, however, without a vehicle for taking action is too scary. Is this what risking is all about? Getting ready to do what I don't want to do, then doing it, all for the sake of honoring that which I feel is central to the significance of life. The  point of the poniard is touching my heart. Dare, Peter.