And this requires what I’ve previously called “living from the inside,” and “looking out of your own eyes,” instead of only from above. In that mode, your soul is, indeed, its own first principle; what Thomas Nagel calls the “Last Word.” Not the seen-through, but the seer (even if also: the seen).
I like this passage! It seems to me that sometimes I (perceive/reason/act) from within my own skin and perspective: “what do I want now? what’s most relevant? what do I know, how do I know it, what does it feel like, why do I care? what even am I, this process that finds itself conscious right now?” And then I’m more likely to be conscious, here, caring. (I’m not sure what I mean by this, but I’m pretty sure I mean something, and that it’s important.)
One thing that worries me a bit about contemporary life (school for 20 years, jobs where people work in heavily scripted ways using patterns acquired in school, relatively little practice playing in creeks or doing cooking or carpentry or whatever independently) is that it seems to me it conditions people to spend less of our mental cycles “living from the inside,” as you put it, and more of them ~”generating sentences designed to seem good some external process”, and I think this may make people conscious less often.
I wish I understood better what it is to “look out from your own eyes”/”live from the inside”, vs only from above.
I like this passage! It seems to me that sometimes I (perceive/reason/act) from within my own skin and perspective: “what do I want now? what’s most relevant? what do I know, how do I know it, what does it feel like, why do I care? what even am I, this process that finds itself conscious right now?” And then I’m more likely to be conscious, here, caring. (I’m not sure what I mean by this, but I’m pretty sure I mean something, and that it’s important.)
One thing that worries me a bit about contemporary life (school for 20 years, jobs where people work in heavily scripted ways using patterns acquired in school, relatively little practice playing in creeks or doing cooking or carpentry or whatever independently) is that it seems to me it conditions people to spend less of our mental cycles “living from the inside,” as you put it, and more of them ~”generating sentences designed to seem good some external process”, and I think this may make people conscious less often.
I wish I understood better what it is to “look out from your own eyes”/”live from the inside”, vs only from above.