The Human Song

Firstly, what is consciousness?

The simplicity of this word perhaps hides the expansive, fluid, temporal nature of the 'awareness of being alive'.

Maybe our classification-based language has unwittingly provided a veil over our ability to sense the constantly shifting thinking processes in their most elemental forms?

What happens if we look past the individual senses that we are aware of, and consider that the brain’s function may be to synthesise all those senses into a unified ‘being’ sense - effectively a ‘song’ made up of sensory voices, and past experiences. It's a different way of looking at our mind. In this new model our surroundings reach us in sync, rather than as they do in language - as separated verbal signals.

'All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players' is one of Shakespeare's most famous quotes.

We can turn this around, to complement what he was saying.

Instead of only seeing ourselves as a player on a stage, we can also see ourselves as instruments, played by the world around us, and the people who come into our lives. We can say our memory is then akin to a process of hearing a song, and then storing away as much of it as we need to identify the what we things are the important sections later?

In the realm of our complex thought ability, we can see how our family forms other significant parts to the song, and later, other people, friends, and lovers. And so we experience this multilayered song, and learn it as we go.

But how can we find a way to describe thought using just language?

In so many ways, music provides a better, synthesised reflection of what thought feels like. I think it's probably what makes music so compelling that it is innate to us.


We are a beat, a rhythm, and a voice.


And music like thought, often feels like it falls outside the bounds of our vocabulary. 

If you don't a tiny bit of metaphysics - in this theory, thought can even be easily and usefully conceived as another dimension, along with space, and time.

After all, when we see an object we translate it from space into thought. In the thought-realm we then can compare it to memories, have new related ideas, and then via the process of creating, transfer the information back into the physical world.

In the realm of thought we can even move in time.

When you consider how many things you can recall and be aware of, both around you and inside of you, it becomes obvious that the song of thought is a ever changing array of senses, ideas, connected meanings,  reactions, and actions. 

But it is our song, our unique voice.

Starting to get a mental image in your head of how your thinking works is a good first step to being able to understand why we do what we do. This is especially important in terms of achieving long term mental health and happiness.


*New post shortly. It's school holidays, and we're building a time machine in the kitchen.