The Big Mystery and a Big Find.

A communication I received today led me off down memory lane to a house in which I lived between the ages of 1 and 11. I have lots of memories from that time and several of them came flooding back, but such is never enough for me. I have to take the process a stage further and consider the question: what is memory? Well, to put it simply, it’s something stored in the brain. Scientists can tell us which bit of the brain stores it, but that doesn’t explain how something which has no form, no material existence, can be stored and accessed at will, even being capable producing false memories from heaven knows where.

And something else which can’t be explained is feeling, which also has no form. Again, science can explain the relationship between brain function and feeling, but it can’t explain what feeling actually is. We feel sadness and happiness, depression and euphoria, pride and disappointment, and many others beside. So feelings have to be real, don’t they? Or do they?

And of course, the more you consider the reality of things like memory and feelings, the more you get steered to the ultimate question which is the root of it all: what is consciousness? Of all the mysteries life throws up, consciousness has to be the most important. Without consciousness – which can include things like dreams, imaginings, and even hallucinations – there is no life, even if the heart still beats and the blood still flows. Consciousness is the root of the whole life phenomenon. We know how it interacts with the brain, but we don’t know what it consists of. Biological science likes to presume that consciousness is a product of the brain, but only because it can’t be explained any other way. Maybe it isn’t (which is s strong suspicion of mine.)

So where do we go from here? I don’t know, except to suggest that we have to accept that the bedrock of the life phenomenon is a complete mystery and keep an open mind. I’ve been doing that for years and it continues to frustrate me. Maybe I’ll learn the secret when I die, but I suspect that mere death is not going quite far enough for something of that magnitude.

And where has this post gone? Nowhere, really, but I felt like saying it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll meet a particularly interesting dog and I’ll be able to write about that instead.

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One thing which did catch my eye today, however, was that an archaeologist – or he might have been an anthropologist – has discovered the 2,500-year-old remains of a large city complex in the rain forests of Ecuador. It includes a complex network of roads, several canals, and very many large buildings. It appears that, at a stroke, he has proved wrong all those archaeologists (and maybe anthropologists) who have been telling him for decades that such a sophisticated complex could not possibly exist in such a place and he should stop wasting his time. I love it when things like that happen, I really do.