NOTE: The following essay is excerpted from the incomplete, as-yet-unpublished treatise entitled “A Manifesto on Time, Mathematics, Infinity, and Related Issues”, authored by Fred Blahnik.
A human egg cell and sperm cell unite in a female’s birth canal—inarguably a purely biological act—yet somewhere during the midst of this strictly procreational requirement sentience is magically created and a soul—sentience’s inseparable hand-mate—likewise forms from what was previously nothing.
How can this be??? How can this “miracle of life” occur?
Scientists struggle mightily to discover the source of consciousness, but their determined effort is invested far more in academic duty and vanity than pure logic. They will never succeed in this quixotic quest. They will never find the “source” of consciousness, never succeed in solving this most transcendent of “puzzles”.
How do I know this?
Because the weapons they employ within their arsenal–mathematics, metrics, equations, rational thinking–are not relevant when one is talking about emotions, feelings, and inscrutable human urges. Emotions are not quantifiable. Feelings are not quantifiable. Loyalty is not quantifiable. Melancholy is not quantifiable. Happiness is not quantifiable. Hatred is not quantifiable. LOVE is definitely not quantifiable. Thus these pompous ignoramuses who continue to stubbornly pursue the source of consciousness in concert with the tenets of consciousness are no more learned or insightful than Ponce De Leon was when he swept through the swamps of Florida grandiosely pursuing the Fountain of Youth. Consciousness is a metaphysical entity, a cosmic mystery; it is not bound by the strictures of science.
Why is this so?
The more appropriate question to ask would be: Why should it NOT be so???
Why must we as human beings feel an obsessive compulsion to know the answers to everything that impacts our daily lives?
Why indeed?
For certain seminal things there are no true answers, nor should there be. Some issues are just better left unquestioned. Appreciated, yes, but unquestioned. And once an individual realizes and accepts this overarching fact, life automatically becomes considerably easier to accept and, in the process…..more endearing.
We do not need to know all of the “answers” attending our collective daily existences, for the simple reason there oftentimes are none. Just accept life and be appreciative for it. Maintaining ignorance on the origin and reasons for consciousness is perfectly okay; it is laudable even.
Fred's Soapbox 