The discussion on this post reminded me of some incidents when I was overcome with strong emotion as a child.
I had a lot of issues controlling my emotions of anger and sadness, to the point that after other children angered me I exploded in hot, violent rage. Every such time I felt like I lost control of myself and was more of an observer. I needed to lock myself away from the world and let all that anger out somehow, until I came down and calmed down. Looking back, I think that (paradoxically) I felt more conscious during those moments. I think this might be because the overwhelming emotion purged all complex thought and made me focus less on the outside environment, so I could pay more attention to myself and my experience.
In relation to my emotional issues, I’ve learned to suppress certain kinds of emotions. I don’t think I’ve truly felt angry since I was about 11, and I haven’t shut down from sadness since I was 15 or so.
I still cry when seeing some movies (I blame the music—it’s always sad music that gets me), and I feel irritated when someone annoys me, but I don’t feel like shutting down, or that ‘I want to fucking murder someone, so I better close myself in a bathroom stall until I calm down’ anymore.
This means that I can’t really experience emotions the same way other people do, and I have trouble with empathy, since I had to dull those emotions to be able to work with other people, as otherwise I would can up minor irritations until I exploded violently. In this way, I guess you could consider my experience as less conscious in some way.
I prefer not to form an opinion either way as “consciousness” is way too foggy as a concept, and (as we can see in adjacent comments) people (mildly) disagree on what they mean when they talk about it.
The discussion on this post reminded me of some incidents when I was overcome with strong emotion as a child.
I had a lot of issues controlling my emotions of anger and sadness, to the point that after other children angered me I exploded in hot, violent rage. Every such time I felt like I lost control of myself and was more of an observer. I needed to lock myself away from the world and let all that anger out somehow, until I came down and calmed down. Looking back, I think that (paradoxically) I felt more conscious during those moments. I think this might be because the overwhelming emotion purged all complex thought and made me focus less on the outside environment, so I could pay more attention to myself and my experience.
In relation to my emotional issues, I’ve learned to suppress certain kinds of emotions. I don’t think I’ve truly felt angry since I was about 11, and I haven’t shut down from sadness since I was 15 or so.
I still cry when seeing some movies (I blame the music—it’s always sad music that gets me), and I feel irritated when someone annoys me, but I don’t feel like shutting down, or that ‘I want to fucking murder someone, so I better close myself in a bathroom stall until I calm down’ anymore.
This means that I can’t really experience emotions the same way other people do, and I have trouble with empathy, since I had to dull those emotions to be able to work with other people, as otherwise I would can up minor irritations until I exploded violently. In this way, I guess you could consider my experience as less conscious in some way.
I prefer not to form an opinion either way as “consciousness” is way too foggy as a concept, and (as we can see in adjacent comments) people (mildly) disagree on what they mean when they talk about it.