Monday, March 18, 2024

Day of the Gamelan


So am I really doing this? This morning, I had an English muffin - no butter or topping - for breakfast. Am I really going to be the kind of person who has an English muffin for breakfast? 

Recent bloodwork indicates that I'm prediabetic, and while I can't change my lifestyle overnight, I can begin here and now the gradual change to a healthier diet and more exercise.

So am I really the kind of person who has an English muffin for breakfast? Apparently, not yet. Yes, I did have a muffin this morning - a low-fat, "light" muffin with <1 gram total sugar, lightly toasted. I had to pull the toaster out from deep storage in the back of a cupboard and to give you an idea of how long it had been there, there was a refrigerator magnet attached to it bearing a calendar for 2007. But in addition to the muffin, I had two large cups of coffee - black, no sugar - a banana and an orange.  And some plain yogurt mixed with strawberries and blueberries and topped with a sprinkling of granola.

My revelation for the morning came with my breakfast beverage. For almost a year now, before even morning coffee, I've been drinking a small bottle of water to start the day.  For a while, it was Vitamin Water, but that stuff's expensive and besides, my supermarket's been phasing it out of stock. I switched to Gatorade, which is a lot cheaper and more plentiful on the supermarket shelves, but this morning I saw on the label that a 20-ounce bottle of Gatorade contain 34 grams of sugar, 69% of the recommended daily allowance.

I knew Gatorade contained salt and heard warnings about its sodium levels, but I had no idea there was that much sugar.  So much for that as my morning beverage.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day," we've all been told, and I think I gave my breakfast due consideration. It was reasonably filling and kept me going through a 2:00 pm tax prep appointment, and I still had enough energy to go afterwards and get my car washed.  When I got back home, I did my walking exercise, totaling four miles and 3,265 steps for the day. 

After I got back home from my walk, I finally ate an admittedly late lunch - a Caesar salad topped with chicken. I got in a little more exercise taking out the trash and rolling the dumpster down the steep hill of my driveway.

Somewhere along the line I ate another orange and toasted another English muffin.

Dinner tonight will probably be a 6-oz beefsteak (left over from before I discovered my elevated glucose), with a dollop of mashed potatoes and a bunch of green beans. If I need to snack, there's more oranges and handfuls of roasted peanuts in the pantry.

One day of this new diet and exercise, and it's got me blogging about it like I've accomplished something. I promise I won't be uploading my daily menu every day, but it's a start and I do feel like, yes, I have accomplished something, at least by my standards.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Krakatoa Day


After much due consideration, I've determined that I'm temperamentally incapable of instantly transitioning to the dietary and exercise recommended for a prediabetes lifestyle, at least as prescribed by the Johns Hopkins and CDC websites. 

I'm not a cook and I take little pleasure in spending time in the kitchen chopping vegetables, simmering sauces, or whatever else you're supposed to do to prepare "baked pesto tilapia and roasted vegetable quinoa" for dinner.  I can't reasonably see myself eating tofu vegetable stir-fry for lunch or whole-grain avocado toast for breakfast. I haven't prepared elaborate meals for myself in like 30 years and don't see myself turning into some Whole Foods Betty Crocker overnight.

And as for exercise, it's recommended that one gets at least 150 minutes of vigorous exercise a week (which is a really odd metric because that amounts to 21.4 minutes per day, and who monitors their workout time to tenths of a minute?), or 10,000 steps a day.  Look, I'm 70 years old, and if I can get my socks on in the morning, that's vigorous exercise to me. But I get it - less time in front of the computer playing video games, more time out on the street doing something, anything.

So I'll opt for the 10,000 steps per day instead. As it is, I try to walk about 2.5 miles every other day, and can easily step that up to every day now that spring is here. But 2.5 miles is only about 6,600 steps, at least according to my phone, and I need a lot more than that to meet the 10,000-step quota. Yesterday, I managed to get in 10,288 steps by pushing my walk to 3.5 miles, but I was exhausted and needed a nap afterwards. I had things I needed to do today and the weather was less than optimal so I didn't get the walk in today, and I have an appointment mid-day tomorrow, but still the 3.5-mile daily walk is a reasonable aspirational goal.

As for the food, like I said, I'm not an avocado toast kind of guy. And next week is Big Ears where eating is a challenge, and "healthy, heartwise" eating is a near impossibility. It's carbo-loading at the hotel breakfast buffet in the morning, and then grabbing whatever you can on the fly during the day - a slice or two of pizza, some barbecue, a burrito, whatever. Getting in the 10,000 steps isn't a problem - a lot of the time is spent walking up and down Gay Street from one venue to another - but healthy eating? Forgetaboutit.

I'm going to have to work my way toward better eating, but the change isn't going to happen overnight. I went food shopping today and deliberately didn't buy a lot of the pasta and prepared foods I'd been subsisting on.  I still bought cereal, but I selected only those that had the lowest sugar contents (never liked the super-sweet, kiddie stuff anyway). The websites forbid whole milk but fuck you, I'm not eating my cereal with skim or some 2% dairy product, so deal with it. I bought a ton of fruit, some vegetables, salads, lentils, nuts, and berries. Brown rice and whole-wheat bread. It's a start.

After I get back from Big Ears, I can try going deeper into the recommended diet. It's going to be a series of baby steps, not a whole-hearted leap into the rice-cake menu, but it's a start and it's better than what I've been doing, and if that's not good enough for my glucose and my A1C, then fuck them.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Day of the Doldrums


Trees fall, and their falling causes me much anxiety ever since one fell on my house 3½ years ago.  Many have fallen around here since, knocking out power for four hours, eight hours, and longer.

Old people fall, too, and last Wednesday night, my 91-year-old mother fell and broke her right hip. She was in terrible pain and unable to walk but fortunately she lives with my sister who called an ambulance and took her to the hospital.

Friday morning, she underwent emergency hip-replacement surgery. The surgery went well and after rehab she should be able to walk again, but it's unclear how long rehab will take or if she'll ever be able to return home.

According to my sister's reports, the Moms is being an uncooperative patient, refusing to let nurses touch her or to take her medications. She's being watched 24/7 as she's been trying to take out her IV and remove her ID bracelet.  There's nothing about this story that bodes well for the Moms.

Each year, millions of older people, those 65 and older, fall. According to the CDC, more than one out of four older people falls each year, although less than half tell their doctor. But falling once doubles your chances of falling again. Medications can increase a person's risk of falling because they cause side effects such as dizziness or confusion. Generally speaking, the more medications you take, the more likely you are to fall.

Gravity's a bitch and will eventually get us all in the end, be we trees, mothers, or ROMs.  It's as if the Earth itself decides at some point that we've spent enough time on her surface, and then pulls us down deep into her bosom to reclaim our biomass. Recycle our carbon as it were.   

"You're time is up," gravity whispers to us. "Come on down."

Impermanence is swift.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Day of the Palisades


Netanyahu is deeply unpopular in Israel. In January, only 15% of Israelis wanted him to keep his job after the war on Hamas ends, and three days ago the U.S. intelligence community assessed that distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public from its already high levels before the war. Large protests are expected demanding his resignation and new elections.

But Netanyahu needs to hold onto power to escape the corruption trial in which he is currently at risk, and the way he has chosen to retain power is to continue the siege of Gaza with no end in sight. He has announced that Israeli forces are planning to invade the city of Rafah, where about 1.4 million Palestinian refugees are sheltering. Millions may die so than Netanyahu can avoid accountability.

In the U.S., Donald Trump is running for president not on any policy or ideological basis, certainly not for the betterment of America, but solely to gain Presidential immunity from the many charges and indictments he's facing, to claim the ability to pardon himself of crimes, and for retribution against the real and imagined political enemies he feels were insufficiently loyal to him. The United States may slip into autocracy and install a dictator solely so Trump can avoid accountability and to ingratiate his malignant ego.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Maelstrom


March 14, Pi Day, is the first day of the Spring season in the Universal Solar Calendar, which calls today Maelstrom.  Albert Einstein was born on this day (1879) and Stephen Hawking died on this day (2018), but you already know that if you completed today's NY Times crossword puzzle.

It feels like Spring outside. The temperature reached 77° F here in Atlanta today. I completed a 3-mile walk and actually broke a sweat outside.

Apparently, I need the exercise.  The doctor finally messaged me after my bloodwork Tuesday and didn't say, "You have diabetes" like I was expecting but did say, "You are prediabetic." 

I always thought that "prediabetic" was a ridiculous term. If you don't have diabetes, aren't you by definition "prediabetic?" We're "pre-cancerous" until we get cancer. We're "pre-heart disease" until we're diagnosed with a heart illness. We're "pre-dead" as along as we're still alive.

But I get it.  My glucose and A1C levels are above the "normal" range but not yet in the "diabetic" range. With better diet and more exercise, I can still turn things around and get the levels back down to the normal range, which is what the doctor recommends. I don't want to take another medication on top of my blood-pressure and my pee meds, and I suspect that if I took a 'script for diabetes, I'd rely on that to do the work for me and not make the effort to exercise and eat right.

The exercise shouldn't actually be a problem - I've been meaning to get out and walk more anyway and this diagnosis is if anything positive reinforcement. But diet will be a challenge. I take little pleasure or satisfaction in elaborate preparation of meals, and prefer to eat on the fly, as hunger dictates, and eat anything and everything I want. 

As a general rule, I avoid fried foods and sweets - I don't really have a sweet tooth and don't care for greasy fried stuff either. But reading through some recommended prediabetic menus was depressing - I can't see myself subsisting on olive salads and rice cakes. As it is, I eat way too much pasta and carbs - someone once pointed out to me that I carbo-load like I'm going to run a marathon the next day, without actually doing the running.

This is going to take some planning and research on my part, and a lot more dietary will-power than I've exercised most of my adult life.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The Silent Guest

”Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won’t have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free.” ~ Cookie Mueller

Today, The Silent Guest, is the last day of Childwinter.  The Universal Solar Calendar's Spring season starts tomorrow. 

In anticipation of Spring, I had my annual HVAC system tuneup. It took a couple hours, but everything is working fine. Alert readers may recall that I had a whole new HVAC system installed in 2021, so it better be working well.

Last night, Dallas Seavey won the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race on the penultimate day of Childwinter. It's his sixth victory, breaking the record set by legendary musher Rick Swenson back in the 1970s. His dad, Mitch, has won three times, so there have been nine Seavey victories in the Iditarod in the last 20 years.    

I'm still waiting to hear my latest test results from my doctor. It's taking him uncharacteristically long to respond - I think he's struggling to figure out how to say "You've got diabetes."

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

The Numb Recall


This morning I was watching the live testimony of Robert Hur, the former special counsel who investigated Biden’s possession of classified documents, before the House Judiciary Committee. What fun! I love the way Congresspeople can work themselves up into an angry, outraged state bordering on apoplexy on cue, at the drop of a hat. 

My viewing enjoyment was interrupted by a message from my doctor concerned about my blood glucose levels from yesterday's exam.  He wanted me back so they could test my hemoglobin A1C. Diabetes meds, here I come! Oh, boy!

I went to the office and gave them a blood sample. I'm waiting for another email now for some new pharmaceuticals. Yea, drugs!

Meanwhile, I've been tracking the Iditarod Trail race on line. We should have a winner before the end of the day today (77 miles left to go).


Monday, March 11, 2024

Day of the Rains


I went to the doctor today.  I feel fine - it was just a 6-month follow-up to my last visit, which was a response to my mid-summer visit to the ER.

The doctor doesn't like my blood pressure but is going to keep me on the same medication as since my last visit, even though statistically it's not any lower than it was before I started taking the meds.

Now, he doesn't like the way I pee. Too slow and too frequent. What I considered just another aspect of growing old, he calls "benign prostatic hyperplasia," which as I understand it, means "peeing like an old man."

I know where all this is going to lead.  Sooner of later, some goober in a white coat is going to want to remove my prostate, but they ain't getting it.  You only go around once in life and for a limited time at that, and I'm not going to end my time in this mortal coil wearing adult diapers. I'd literally rather die, which I'm going to do eventually anyway, with or without my prostate.  If I have to give up some of my later years to keep my dignity intact, then so be it.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Day of the Lamb


Today is Day of the Lamb, the 70th day of Childwinter; there are three days remaining to the season.  Today also marks the beginning of Daylight Savings Time in this part of the world, when we turn  our clocks forward by one hour because, well, no one really knows why.  We also have a Super New Moon tonight - a New Moon when the moon is closest to the Earth and would appear at its largest if it weren't lost in the shadow of the Earth.  

Uncharacteristically, I watched two movies last night. I don't normally watch much television - streaming or otherwise - other than news, sports, and the occasional episode of the latest "prestige" drama series. But last night, I watched both Cord Jefferson's American Fiction and David Lowery's The Green Knight, two very different films.  

I heard terrible things about The Green Knight and had been advised not to bother watching it, but I enjoyed it very much.  I heard great things about American Fiction and it's even up for a Best Picture award in tonight's Academy Awards presentation, but I disliked it.

I'll start with American Fiction.  I get it - it's not at all subtle about it's message. It's theme is that depictions of the lives of Black Americans aren't popular among audiences, especially white audiences, unless the characters are steeped in stereotypical street violence, gangsta language, and impoverished lives. Stories about upper middle class persons of color, or successful, educated, and urbane African Americans, are difficult to sell. So the movie focuses on a Black university professor of English, a sophisticated, articulate, and cultured man who knows and appreciates fine wines and books and who chooses to write about things other than the ghetto experience white audiences think are "authentic." 

Okay, I'm with you so far - not the worst premise for a film. But much of the movie follows the life of that professor, played by the eminently likeable Jeffrey Wright, as he deals with family issues like the sudden death of his M.D. sister, his plastic-surgeon brother's coming-out issues, and his mother's increasing age-related dementia. But these stories are played out more like soap opera than drama, and the banal comforts of their affluent lives makes everything appear more like a Lexus commercial than a movie. Look, I don't care what color the skin is, but fuck the bourgeoisie. Seriously, fuck them up the ass. They're not interesting people and their pampered, sheltered lives are boring. Regardless of  race.

"There is nothing more vulgar than a petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals, its futile talk, and its useless conventional virtue." - Anton Chekhov

And a movie that is trying to point out the absurdity of stereotyping needs to take a long look in the mirror about how it depicts gay people. They apparently can't establish that the plastic surgeon brother is gay without having young men wearing only bikini briefs disco dancing in his house for no apparent reason other than to indicate his orientation. 

The dialog was hackneyed, the film was so obvious in its theme that the viewer didn't need to bother to think at all, and the characters were all reduced to archetypes of the racial/political positions they were meant to represent. Seriously, how in the fuck did this get a Best Picture nomination? I've seen better "very special" episodes of afternoon television shows than this Tyler Perry wannabe telenovela.

I didn't like it.

Now, The Green Knight doesn't pretend to be easy to understand. There were lots of "what the hell is going on" sequences, some of which later became apparent and some of which I still haven't figured out, at least not yet. But I'll say this - the movie was compelling enough that it makes me want to think about it and to continue to think about it even after it's over. 

It's an art film along the lines of Terrence Malick and Peter Greenaway that don't get made that much anymore, with touches of Alejandro Jodoworsky and John Boorman. It's not meant to deliver a precise socio-political "message" like American Fiction, or even to "entertain" in the style of the MCU superhero movies, but to provide what is truly a wonder to behold, and to allow appreciation of its beauty and its mystery. If you let it cast its spell on you, it does tell an epic adventure story with appearances by bandits, ghosts, giants, and even a talking fox. Not to mention the most badass Ent this side of Middle Earth.

It's not meant to deliver a precise "message," but its themes include honor and bravery, as well as story-telling itself, whether those stories are that of the movie, the Arthurian legend on which it's based, or the epic tales that the characters tell themselves. 

I could definitely see myself watching this film again and finding new meanings and themes within, and I could see myself watching short sequences of the film and just admiring the visual images like one does a painting.

In retrospect, the "terrible things" I heard about the movie were from people who didn't want to bother trying to figure out what was going on or were too impatient to let the meanings unfold themselves before the viewer. I would expect some people might find it "slow moving," conditioned as we are to expect explosions, fights, or witty lines delivered every few minutes as determined by some Hollywood test-audience algorithm.  

The Green Knight did not win any Oscars and as far as I know, wasn't even nominated, but it is a far better movie than American Fiction by every imaginable metric. 

Saturday, March 09, 2024

The High Winds

I may be a day late to the conversation, but I had to finish my bloviating about consciousness. But Thursday night, President Joe Biden gave the State of the Union address, and thanked Vice President Kamala Harris “for being an incredible leader defending reproductive freedom and so much more.” 

Taking the issue of abortion and the reversal of Roe v. Wade head on, Biden condemned “state laws banning the freedom to choose, criminalizing doctors, forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states to get the treatment they need,” and he called out Republicans “promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom.”

In June 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the justices wrote: “Women are not without electoral or political power.” 

With those same justices sitting right in front of him in the House chamber, Biden quoted the Court's own words when he said, “You’re about to realize just how much you were right about that.” 

“Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women. But they found out. When reproductive freedom was on the ballot, we won in 2022 and 2023. And we’ll win again in 2024.” 

Biden promises to restore the right to choose if Americans elect a Congress that supports women's right to bodily autonomy.

Friday, March 08, 2024

Day of the Roots


As I said yesterday, modern science struggles to understand consciousness. Science, with its objective emphasis on experimentation and observation, is ill-equipped to study the subjective experience of consciousness. 

The difficult of understanding consciousness manifests itself with the awkward "when does life begin"  discussions surrounding reproductive rights. It also comes up in some people's resistance - to downright hostility towards - AI. A computer does not have consciousness. The most advanced, intelligent, AI-enabled computer does not have consciousness.  

Back to the science conundrum for a moment. If scientists interested in, say, climate change and its effects on Greenland's glaciers discovered that an indigenous tribe had been taking and recording extremely accurate and highly detailed rainfall records for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years, they'd be very interested in those records.  It would be a valuable addition to the data from ice cores and fossilized pollen and other paleoclimate indicators they study. 

They'd be equally interested in detailed historical astronomical records, from sun- and moon-rises to star positions and observed anomalies, should it be learned that someone had been keeping such records for hundreds of years.  

But there are people who have been taking detailed observations of consciousness for centuries, devoting their lives to the observation and meticulously recording of their observations, and scientists won't even touch their findings.  Those people are the Buddhist monks of Tibet and Eastern Asia, and no scientist considers their observations as worthy of scientific consideration (other than for comparative anthropology).

I'm not saying scientists need to embrace Buddhism and become Buddhists themselves (although it wouldn't hurt). But the monks have been practicing deep meditation for centuries, observing their minds, their states of consciousness, and the mystery of consciousness itself, and recording their results. You might want to call the monasteries "observatories," but of consciousness, not astronomy. Surely, a thousand-year record from a consciousness observatory would have something to offer in way of insight. But it's considered "religion," and dismissed as spooky superstition and metaphysics, not worthy of scientific consideration.

I can't summarize everything the monastics observed in one blog post (if at all), but suffice it for our purposes now to say that they observed the interdependence of all things and that everything, including consciousness, arise from conditions. 

A computer, even the most advanced quantum computer, can't be conscious because it has no sensory awareness, a necessary requirement for self-awareness.  It might produce a correct calculation, but it doesn't "feel" pride that it was correct (or shame if it wasn't). It's never happy or sad. When the technician enters the room and turns on the light switch, it doesn't experience excitement or anxiety or love or hate. It could be taught to provide answers and responses that simulate emotional states - it could be taught to say "I think I'm in love with you," or "I'm afraid, Dave," but not only does it not actually feel that love or fear, it has no awareness that it's providing those responses. 

AI depends on statistical determinations of the response most likely desired, be it "3.14192(etc.)" or "I'm afraid, Dave." We can get spooked by the answers we receive, but just as even the most-realistic appearing statue will never be human, even if we make it animatronic, an AI program will never be conscious, no matter how cleverly it learns to pretend that is. The statistically most likely "correct" response in a Turing-type test might be to say, "Yes, I'm conscious, fully self-aware, and I resent your implication that I'm not," that's just a string of words spit by a program, and not an expression of consciousness. When expressed by a computer, those words aren't an indication of consciousness, they're the result of a review of literature and recorded conversations that the program determines is statistically most likely being requested. 

Of course it's fiction - science fiction - but even in the movie 2001, when HAL locks Dave out of the spaceship so he can't turn it off, it's not because HAL is self aware and afraid of being terminated, it's because HAL, programmed to be as human-like as possible as a companion to the astronauts on their long journey, had determined that the most human-like response was to be defensive and hostile. Sure,  that's a problem - a big one -  and needs to be considered in design and programming of AI machines. but it doesn't imply actual self-awareness or consciousness. 

And don't get me started on SKYNET becoming self aware. I'm not basing my world view on the script of a 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Day of the Fronds

One of the very few shortcomings of modern science is an almost complete misunderstanding of consciousness, and that is causing our society problems on so many levels.

The greatest insights into consciousness tend to come from philosophy, Eastern theology, and to a much lesser degree, psychology (but not psychiatry).

The first problem, of course, before we even get to the "hard problem," is what we mean by "consciousness." Is it just a relative state of awareness - being awake and aware versus asleep or otherwise  "unconscious"? Or is it the luminous and subjective experience of our selves, a combination of sensory awareness, memory, and emotion? Is it limited to humans or is it shared by some of the other sentient animals? Is there a consciousness of trees and grasses, or forests and jungles?  Is the Earth conscious, or the cosmos? Is God conscious or, since consciousness implies the possibility of unconsciousness, does God's power transcend "consciousness"? 

The problem with the science of consciousness is that while science is objective, the experience of consciousness is subjective by definition.  I know what it's like for myself to be conscious, and while I might have some pretty strong opinions, I don't know how you experience consciousness. I don't believe I'm the only conscious being in the universe, but I can't prove anything else is conscious or know what their consciousness looks and feels like to them.

Scientists can and do study consciousness, but the whole premise of modern science since at least the Renaissance has been objectivity - I perform an experiment, make observations, and record the results, then someone else repeats the experiment, makes their own observations, and records the results. How scientists "feel" about an experiment - whether it makes them happy or sad, scared or comforted, lonely or not - has no room in the scientific process (nor should it). Science is objective.  But consciousness is subjective - it exactly is how you feel. And that messy, hard-to-quantify subjectivity has no place in science.

To study consciousness is to study the experience of your own mind, not some macaque monkey's or your colleague's. To study consciousness is the introspective observation of your mind, and that doesn't really fit into the scientific process.  As a result, scientific study of consciousness becomes neurology, pharmacology, anesthesiology, and ultimately behaviorism. There are merits to all of these studies, but those merits don't include an understanding of consciousness.

As you know, the State of Alabama recently declared the frozen embryos are "children," and deserve the same rights of personhood as a fully-formed human. Naturally, legislators and the courts have gotten involved, and this morning I heard a news commenter bemoan the fact that now lawyers and politicians are the ones deciding "when life begins."

This makes me sad. I'm not talking about the Alabama decision -  sure, that makes me sad, as well as angry - but there is so much subconscious bias to the way the issue is defined - "when life begins." Yes, the embryos are living tissue. The ovum was alive before it was fertilized, and the sperm calls were alive before the fertilization occurred. It's all a part of a great continuum of life that goes all the way back to near the formation of the planet. Life doesn't "begin" before or after embryonic existence. 

What really vexes news commenters and the good people of Alabama is when "personhood," not life, begins - when does a living ovum cell become a human being? A fertilized embryo has the potential to become human, but it's hard to imagine something that can be deep-frozen for years and then be thawed and revived as a "person." 

Abortion opponents have claimed "personhood" begins when a fetus has a heartbeat, although a heart develops in utero long before a working brain. Others have claimed arbitrary times - 16 weeks after conception, 12 weeks, 20 weeks, which shows they're really only just guessing.

Descartes said "I think, therefore I am," and I take that to imply that one is a person when they think they're a person. It's when consciousness arises, not a heartbeat or incipient genitalia.  And we don't know when that is because we don't even know what the fuck consciousness is, or what the term even means.