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This is way more important than people think that we are co-creators of reality Now you think well, do you believe that? Well, let’s let’s let’s let’s think about that for a minute or two. It’s like You know that standard scientists they tend to think of human beings as materialist and deterministic And I don’t think that works very well for consciousness I don’t think there’s any evidence that it works as an explanation for consciousness at all and I think I think consciousness is self-evident I mean we certainly act as if it’s self-evident you act like you’re conscious you act like all the people around you are conscious They’re not happy if you don’t act like they’re conscious. That’s for sure you’re not going to get along with yourself or your family members or Society at large if you don’t treat people like they’re conscious You’re also not going to get along with any of them unless you treat them like they are active agents that have some role in Determining their own destiny, right? I mean god you see that in two-year-olds, you know when they’re already pushing for autonomy and so we make these assumptions that well we have this capacity for autonomous choice and I’m gonna split an argument into two parts here The first thing is I don’t think that we can be deterministic Because it looks like neurobiologically that if you want to run deterministic Like on habit which would be what? deterministically would be you have to practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and build all the machinery that allows you to act Deterministically and then there’ll be a stimulus and the whole Deterministic process will lay itself out, but that doesn’t happen unless you’ve built the machinery So like if you’re a tennis pro, you know, you’re acting deterministically all the time because you don’t have enough Time to Consciously decide what you’re going to do when a ball is coming at you so fast. You can’t actually see it properly It’s all reflex, but it’s really complicated chains of reflexes and you spent like $10,000 building them and so fine and when you’re driving your car you’re walking You’re doing these things that you’ve practiced so well Well, you’re deterministic, but when you can counter the chaos of the day, that’s a whole different story And so what consciousness seems to do actually is to act when deterministic processes aren’t at hand So and so what we could walk through that we say look look here here’s one way of thinking about yourself you’re a clock and you’re wound up and you Wind down mechanistically But the clock mechanism has to be there for you to wind down mechanistically and unless you’ve practiced something a long time It’s not there. So I don’t see how determinism can account for that So here’s an alternative and you can tell me if this is in keeping with your experience. So you wake up in the morning Your consciousness reemerges from the darkness in which it’s been embedded like the Sun coming up Just why consciousness has always been associated with the Sun We’re daytime creatures and we and we’re Creatures of vision and so we identify consciousness within with the light with illumination with enlightenment You wake up in the morning and what do you have in front of you? Well, it depends whether you’re excited or worried but it doesn’t it doesn’t really matter because it’s the same thing what you have in front of you This is as far as I can tell is that you have a field of possibility You have a field of potential you might wake up and worry you think well I have to do this or you know This series of negative consequences might emerge and I have these Obligations that need to be taken care of for the same reason duties, you know tax bills that have to be opened before they turn into some sort of terrible monster or Work work requirements that need to be done for the same reason to keep to keep chaos at bay and That’ll run through your mind and if it’s overwhelming if there’s too much chaos in your life You might wake up in the middle of the night and have all that running through your head. You have all these this potential of What could be? manifesting itself in front of you and then that’s that that can be very stressful can also be very exciting, right because The flip side of that obligation is opportunity. And so you see in front of you this field of potential that’s opportunity But what what what you see as far as I can tell with your consciousness is the potential that could be right you see a sequence of worlds that you have some Causal ability to bring into being and And you act like that you think well I have to do this because then this will happen or if I don’t do this then this will happen and Hopefully if you’re Not too skewed most of the decisions you make are Positive ones because you want to take the potential that’s in front of you the chaos and you want to turn it into a reality That’s good and most of the time you’re going to assume although you may be tempted not to from time to time that the best way to do that is to confront that potential forthrightly and to deal with it in a positive and truthful manner and that The hopeful consequence of that will be that well, even if you don’t produce something good It will be less hellish than it might have been right, but maybe you’ll maybe you’ll get lucky because you’re focused and you’re doing your best and you’re confronting what’s there as Potential and you turn it into something good and then you can live with yourself properly and you don’t wake up in the middle of the night and Bemoan your lost opportunities and your lost possibilities. And so I think that what we are as individuals are spirits that confront the potential of reality and Transform it into the actuality of reality as a consequence of our ethical decisions That’s what it looks like