Page 18 - The Irony Board

Into the Mind

Find out

First,
You’ve been shanghaied.
Second,
You’re the captain.
Third,
The crew ignores you.

Consciousness, by observing itself over time within its
physiological context, can arrive at certain conclusions. Some of
them are deflating to the ego in the way the discoveries of
Copernicus and Darwin were: “I thought I was at the center of
creation, but now...” Using nautical imagery, this poem describes
three moments on a rather dismaying voyage of self-discovery. To
be shanghaied is to be confined involuntarily to an isolated vessel,
with no chance of escape. To be captain is to hold the highest rank
in the hierarchy of command and decision, superficially
compensating for the first indignity. The final irony of actual
powerlessness is therefore all the more poignant: orders to change
course, to clear the decks for action, to put down anchor, are not
obeyed. It is not even mutiny; the captain learns he is a figurehead.
These attributes of consciousness resemble characteristics of a
low-priority program running in a multi-tasking computer (it should
be recalled that Gluckman spent most of his working life as a
computer programmer). Such a module or subroutine receives its
input, already highly processed, from other concurrently executing
programs with a higher interrupt priority in using the system’s
resources. And, like subordinate software, consciousness cannot
invoke or revoke itself; when and why it comes and goes is not
controllable or explicable by its own instruction set. Thus when and
if the structure of consciousness is understood both logically and
biologically, self-awareness cannot cease to be the experience of an
intrusive amnesiac. That might be the author’s pessimistic or realistic
conclusion about mind and brain.

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