I had an argument with someone who thought that maybe consciousness was somewhat like a flame but I disagreed with him.
These are my thoughts.
There are the earthy types.
“People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.”Ancients before Plato 428-348 BC
There are flowing conciousnesses, glacial as ice and boiling hot in their wrath. (I can of think of one person.)
There are those whose lofty company, mere mortals look up to but envy not their airy-fairyness.
I would rather be grounded in my common-sense and folk wisdom.
So you could say I am an earthy type.
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I then replied to the opening premise about people more fire-like in their awareness in his opinion.
I replied that for fire, he has explained a type of person that either burns brightly and explosively for a time, then suddenly burnt out or one that is like a candle, constant but faint, easily blown off. For people to be like this it means that at the slightest setback their consciousness can be just as easily snuffed off. How can that be? People are more resilient.
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The thing about fire is it can't exist without the air around it. It is not fuel that makes it burn. It is oxygen that makes flame flammable not fuel in itself. If you go by your metaphor or analogy, fire types can't exist without air types. What does it mean? It means that brilliant minds are not original at all and that great minds burn brightly but they owe their existence to hot air and baloney.
I think that consciousness might be closer to the royal family of metals, gold, silver and copper or just metals in general.
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I said the royal family because these three are not ferrous (no iron in them), they don't rust but oxidise like any other thing.
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The greatest minds among us are golden of course, they shine more brightly and they last forever.
Like metals, consciousness go through a cruscible of fire (strength in adversity), water (openness and resilience), earth (longevity-they rust if they don't have it) and air (every other essential qualities).
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Like the diversity of people, consciousness is made up of different alloys (personality, backgrounds and experiences).
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The golden minds endures, people remember them. They would last for as long as people exist.
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Golden minds are also spread as dust. An ounce can be extended as fine as human hair. The body of golden minds can turn into ashes but the conscious being in it is indestructible due to their being golden. We are talking about a unique conciousness - a type of consciousness that last in books, in memories of other people.
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Flame might be a better metaphor for life, organic life.
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When the last of us are turned into ashes, then they would would last for as long as what they created lasts. Their created things could be civilizations, worlds, myths -their material artifacts etc.
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Being golden can also be a matter of degree. There are alloys of gold, silver or copper. Platinum, Rhodium etc.
Golden ideas are precious, people die for them.
Transmuting base metal into gold is a myth.
Minds can acquire something but their essential qualities remain the same. A consciousness can be more learned, more anything but it is not transmuted but alloyed.
Knowledge is not a liquid you pour into a consciousness.
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Fire is not consciousness because flame is too volatile. . For instance there are idiot savants that are really very stupid but they are very brilliant in a one thing. They can't be explosive and then a candle at the same time. They are either one or the other.
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Here I went to answer his questions in the inital premise I disagreed with that consciousness is a flame. He cited the firing of neurons in the brain but he misunderstood what this firing means. As he said it is the 'bindings of chemicals that makes think' but it is an error. I explained what this process involvesusing grid iron football as a simile.
Synapses is a kind of auto-pilot, think of this process like a grid iron football. It just happens because mithochondrial DNA/coach tells these neuron transmitters and receptor guys to bounce with each other so that these guys runs with the ball/releases sodium ions, so that the 'ball' can get through the goal line (synaptic cleft-channels) and score.
If it doesn't happen there's brain death- no game. We think all the time. We only know things went wrong because one these guys don't do its job properly or no relay happens. Thinking is not all about the synapses. If there's a chemical imbalance (maybe toxic metal like cadmium got in there someplace that inhibits/stops the bouncing balls), its not the person's fault for failing to think or for choosing to think the wrong things. Shit happens someone said and there's very little we can do about it except pray it fixes itself or kick start those guys so they do whatever it is they are meant to do.
He supported this synapses example with the light spectrum phenomenon but he didn't know how light is perceived for the analogy to work. So I explained how we perceived light.
I got you there up until the white light bit. White light is composed of all the colours of the spectrum but we don't perceive them as colours individually. We perceive them as light waves. Different colours have different wavelengths. A coloured fire cannot be applied to people's consciousness because if we really think and know what light is, it would mean that Einstein had the whole gamut, from the complete inutile to the genius.
Yet you posit the Einstein was the latter. He was no person with disabililty, Was he? He couldn't tie his shoe laces properly but who cares, he was great at Physics. Mileva Marić, his first wife was a brilliant mathematician, so who knows... where his ideas really came from.
The sad part is that he implied that people with disability are somehow weak-light individuals whose light are like 'dull embers'. This is totally unacceptable to me.
So I answered, albeit condescendingly,
Oh Uh.
That is very naughty of you, what do you think we should do with them then? Handi-cap? Sorry, is that the golf term?
People with handicaps (they are people first- then the issues come second) might be fantastic mathematicians, see equations everywhere but we normals just can't see them. Their bodies might not be pretty or sweet smelling though.
I have worked with (for a couple of weeks) some and boy, are they far from dull. How do you know they are dull embers, have you 'been' like them before
He then asked if there is a spectrum of consciousness- highs and lows and I replied that,
'No sir.' There are different TYPES of consciousness, no degrees or heirarchies (superior or inferior). They are either conscious or brain-dead. We are equals. But someone with a brain age of a child would be immature, naturally would behave the same way. However, they have a consciousness that been deformed or undeveloped. If it was you, you would act or say the same things not because you have inferior consciousness or just close to charcoal as you like to put it.
He closed with the idea that we might urge people to burn more brightly. I again think this is distasteful and unforgivable. I said, 'Why? Everyone has the right to be who they are. We can't force them to be not what they are. Let people be.'
I was not sure if he remained convinced that consciousness is like a flame because as far I am concerned I know that the metal
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