Humphrey Bogart in the famous scene in Casablanca, 'of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine'

I’ve researched consciousness and the human experience for the last 3 decades. I’m convinced: Among the thoughts that crowd the mind, few matter.

Here are 9 proofs that we’re clueless:

Visible light, our primary source of information about our shared reality, is only 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum. What are we missing?

Confirmation bias ensures we only believe or even notice what fits our current belief system.

History, evolution, and the advancement of science disprove much of what we accept as true, eventually. What will we know in 500 years? In 2000 years?

The only instrument we have to assess whether our own consciousness is reliable is consciousness itself. So we’re stuck. What do we do if the ice scraper is covered in ice?

We create or control none of what defines our existence: the fact of our existence, life, awareness, animation, information, inspiration, and the presence of intention.

Our entire reality and all that we can know is forever locked and contained in subjective experience.

As the mystics and simple meditation demonstrate — any honest, rigorous search for the self and free will comes up empty.

Consciousness appears to be the fabric of dynamic, aware existence. But we cannot know if some other form of existence is possible beyond or outside consciousness.

Perception and perspective define our reality, they are the lens separating us from what is. We can only know those, and we can never experience truth directly.

In all this, is there any other reasonable strategy than creatively hacking the hallucination, with an attitude of staggering existential humility?

Soak this up.


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I’m Bob Berry — researcher, speaker, writer, and innovator on the art of compelling experience.bob@itstheusers.com / LinkedIn / http://ItsTheUsers.com