Page 23 - Ruminations

21. Four states of awareness and objectivity

The course of human lives could be considered as varying periods
of objectivity-subjectivity and awareness-unawareness. To define these
dimensions, consider that one is a subject when directing or
controlling one’s own activities, an object when unwillingly
constrained or restrained; aware means self-conscious, paying
attention to one’s own mental content.

In combination, these two scales yield four states:

The actor: an aware subject. This is probably the sine qua non of
humanity, the reflexivity that evolved to give an advantage to self-
examining intelligence. It can help, by directing feedback of ideas
into the brain through selective association (“What if...?”); or
hinder, by distraction from a task best performed unaware (“Now,
where was I?”).

The natural: an unaware subject. Here is action as reaction to
uncontemplated internal or external stimuli. It is the state to which
athletes and artists aspire, and may also describe the highest level of
meditation. But it is also unmediated by anything resembling a
conscience. Machines, until and unless they attain awareness, are
universally in this condition.

The victim: an aware object. The curse of consciousness is in
knowing when one’s freedom has been curtailed, turning from
frustration to terror upon the realization that a restriction is open-
ended or increasing. It happens when external forces are
overwhelming, leaving one at the mercy of physical law or personal
attack; when social repression imposes self-suppression; and when
the presence of real or imaginary pain and disability will not leave
consciousness. But this combination is not exclusively unpleasant:
ecstasy belongs here, too.

The sleeper: an unaware object. Unconscious or comatose
existence is not easy to describe, by its nature. Natural sleep, deep
anesthesia and profound dementia are cases in point. One might
conclude that suicides have lost hope of attaining the freedom of a
subject, and prefer not to live as painfully aware objects.