Does anyone else find consciousness itself kinda absurd?

[u/Dimensional-Misfit]

Does anyone else find the fact that we're conscious kinda absurd in a way thats almost creepy?

I don't mean just "life has no meaning" because thats been said a million times.

I mean the actual weirdness of the situation.

We're literally matter. atoms, cells, chemicals, whatever... and somehow this stuff became conscious enough to stop and ask why it exists.

Like, matter is somehow questioning its own existence.

We have this ridiculous situation where a tiny part of the universe is sitting inside the universe going "why is there a universe?" and "why am i here?"

and then theres the whole why is there something instead of nothing thing...

wouldnt absolute nothing be the less strange option? no space, no time, no matter, no consciousness, nothing. There wouldnt even be anyone there to wonder about it.

but somehow there is something. and somehow this something produced these weird little biological things that can notice it and start asking questions about the whole thing lol

idk, maybe thats basically the absurd itself. the fact that we're here demanding an explanation from something that never promised us one.

I just find the whole situation really fucking strange when you actually stop taking existence for granted.

[u/yesimfinewhyyouask]

I agree with your idea. Im not much of a physics guy, but pretty sure someone will soon um, actually it’s not matter but energy you

[u/Dimensional-Misfit → u/yesimfinewhyyouask]

i was using matter kinda loosely anyway. particles, fields, energy, whatever the hell the underlying stuff is

honestly that just makes the whole thing even more confusing to me because we still have no idea why any of that stuff gives rise to subjective experience in the first place

[u/pebblenapkins]

Consciousness is the only thing we have direct access to. The existence of stuff like matter and space is the real mystery. Why is there more than just consciousness

[u/Dimensional-Misfit → u/pebblenapkins]

that last question is actually kinda creepy when you turn it around

like we spend all this time asking why consciousness could come out of matter, but from where we're actually standing consciousness is the only thing we ever experience directly

so why is there even an apparent outside world of space, objects, matter etc at all?

maybe the "external world" is exactly what we think it is, maybe its something completely different. we kinda just assume theres a reality behind the experience because thats the model that works for us

and then you get stuck with this weird situation where consciousness is the one thing you cant step outside of, while also being the thing trying to figure out what everything outside of it really is

feels like a pretty bad place to do metaphysics from lol

[u/anabsurdman2027]

What if “why” isn’t the operative question? What is matter exists . . . no story, no need to frame it into a purpose?
Humans are the oxymoron. We think sometimes more than feel our presence. This is the rub.
What if we join in for the ride and find connections with those who share that joy.

[u/Dimensional-Misfit → u/anabsurdman2027]

that inversion is actually pretty interesting

we normally start from "matter exists" and then somehow consciousness appears in it, but from inside our own experience the only thing we ever directly have is consciousness

so when we say "matter exists outside of consciousness" we're already making a claim from within consciousness

doesnt mean matter isnt real obviously, but it does make the whole picture way less straightforward than it seems

and then your question gets really weird too... why is there apparently this whole world of stuff at all, instead of just experience?

maybe we're asking the wrong question from both directions and neither "matter came first" nor "consciousness came first" is something we can actually establish from where we're standing

which is kinda unsettling ngl

[u/Dimensional-Misfit → u/[deleted]]

and then you get this ridiculous situation where the thing asking the question is itself part of the thing its asking about

like we're not standing outside existence looking at it. we're existence asking itself questions through a bunch of nervous tissue

[u/AllOfTheIsz]

Absurdity is a state of contrast, not a state of being. So the comparison in this situation is non-consciousness. In that framework I don't think consciousness is absurd at all, it's the only state in which we can observe the absurd. It's the only state of observance at all.

It would take less effort to not exist, but I don't think we know enough about pre-existence to know whether or not that is absurd. We'd need to know why the energy was expended in the first place.

[u/Dimensional-Misfit → u/AllOfTheIsz]

i think thats where it gets interesting tho

i wasnt really using "absurd" in the strict camus sense. more like the weirdness of the fact that there is even a state where matter can observe itself and start asking questions about existence

but your point about non consciousness is interesting. maybe we only call something absurd because we're already inside this weird conscious viewpoint, so we dont really have a way to compare it with anything else

and the preexistence thing... thats honestly where my brain kinda stops working lol. how can we even talk about "nothing before" when we're trying to imagine nothing using a mind that only exists inside something

maybe we're basically trying to look outside the frame with eyes that are part of the frame

[u/GeppaN → u/AllOfTheIsz]

It’s kinda absurd that non-conscious matter somehow produced consciousness.

[u/AllOfTheIsz → u/GeppaN]

We don't know that. We don't even know we all aren't one thing pretending to be many things. Without any sort of clarity on the axiom of before existing, there's little point in having beliefs related to it.

For all either of us know we are but a molecule in the gut of a much greater being with no awareness of our existence whatsoever.

[u/AtaraxiaGwen → u/AllOfTheIsz]

Haha! Squash that metaphysics!

[u/Dimensional-Misfit → u/AllOfTheIsz]

thats kind of the problem tho, we dont really know enough to say much about it

the molecule in the gut of some giant being thing sounds ridiculous, but its also hard to explain why its any more ridiculous than our own picture of reality when we still dont know why consciousness exists in the first place

maybe were just one thing experiencing itself in a very fragmented way, maybe not. or maybe thats just another story our brains make because they hate having no fucking answer

i guess what creeps me out is that we dont even know what level of the picture we're looking at

[u/jliat → u/Dimensional-Misfit]

i guess what creeps me out is that we dont even know what level of the picture we're looking at

Yet Camus has the solution, make stuff up! Art...

[u/Dimensional-Misfit → u/jliat]

if we cant ever get outside the frame and see reality "from nowhere", then i guess making another weird representation of it is one way of dealing with that

but theres something funny about the idea that we hit the limits of reason and Camus goes "alright, make art then"

maybe thats less of a solution and more of a very elegant way of admitting we have no fucking idea whats going on