BEING CONSCIOUS: A Brief Introduction

In this series we'll examine the nature of consciousness informally by telling a story of its emergence.  We'll look at how it might have manifested through sound to transform into the language we use today and what that could mean for us now.

To do this we'll introduce an unorthodox way to look at the meanings of words we use—words we often take for granted.  The idea is to peek behind the veil to see if we can find some form of order or obscured meaning in the sounds we use to speak about ourselves and our world.  Think of it as a game. 

Since we'll work in English though, a literal translation into other languages will yield very unsatisfactory results.  Buyer beware.

Having said that, there's no particular reason why the ideas expressed here can't be translated well.  What it would take to do that, however, would be a strong understanding of the basic premise presented in the entire work, along with a very fluid assimilation of the words used and great flexibility in terms of the sequence.  In fact the sequence presented here is already flexible.  But in order to put words and sentences on the page, choices need to be made.  Most of these choices have been arbitrary to some degree or other as far as their order is concerned, yet once determined there is also a purpose. 

If this all sounds like Greek to you, hey, don't be too surprised!  Because to do this we're going to use a phonetic system based on the Greek alphabet.  But please, don't let that scare you.  We won't be writing or reading in Greek, just using the sounds, and this is just a framework.

We're using Greek because it's convenient, believe it or not.  You see Greece represents a crossroads in the spread of many languages from their birthplace within what's called the Proto-Indo-European family.  PIE, as it's known, is not a language in and of itself however, but a conjectured base for languages emerging from and through this region of the world.  While it is made up, certainly, it has been formulated by linguists and etymologists who spent a great deal of time and energy analyzing the surprising range of common roots found in this seemingly diverse 'family' of languages.

Importantly for us, Greek contains all the basic sounds we need, and without the repetition and confusion we often find in English.  Furthermore, ancient Greek civilization has impacted Western culture in many profound ways—ways still felt though often unseen or unacknowledged by most of us in the world today. 

Many of our most revered and best-known philosophers hail from ancient Greece, and their impact on us can hardly be measured.  Greek culture also provided those of us in the West with the genesis of an idea called 'democracy'—in a form that, as imperfect as it may have been, is often considered as the true spirit of democracy.  Now, many revere this ideal while others abhor it, but one thing we can say with certainty is that for whatever reason it has found a loud voice in the wider world. 

Ancient Greece was also a filter or progenitor of many systems we use today: our modern western legal systems, our medical systems, literature, architecture and the arts generally, particularly the theater, and even the military.  In other words those very things that affect us all in ways we scarcely comprehend on any given day.  Because of this we use many Greek-derived words without any special thought as to where they came from or even what they originally meant, way back when. 

All in all, ancient Greece provides a lens through which we see both ourselves and our world, whether we know it or not.  There are plenty of other influences of course, and many that predate this time, but nothing takes away the impact ancient Greece has on us and our world today.

To keep things simple though, we're going to disregard all the vowels except the first (alpha) and the last (omega), concentrating on alpha for most of the story.  Of course, the other vowels are significant and useful (and naturally we'll be using them in English as we normally do!) but in this system we'll be focusing on the consonants to explore some basic sound codings and ponder what significance they may hold.

We won't use all the Greek consonants here either, just the ones that fit this version of the tale; so it's not as bad as it might seem at first glance.  The important thing to remember as we go is that we'll often break our familiar English terms down into their components so the consonantal sounds can speak independently, if you like, and then we'll put them back together again in various ways to see what we can find.  It's a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.  What's presented here is just a taste from a much larger menu to be explored more fully another time. 

It's probably also worth noting that we'll be using a very informal, conversational style for the most part, interspersed with some rather archaic constructions not much in use today.  Hopefully the reason for this strange mix will become apparent as we go. 

Because of the highly interwoven and arcane nature of this material, it's been an enormous challenge to present it coherently and there may be times when the meaning is unclear.  Since my goal is to communicate this new material I apologize for that in advance.  Undoubtedly it could be written better—even far better in my own opinion—but for the sake of putting it out there, this will have to do for now.  Perfection is great but sometimes falling short is good enough in the short term.  I hope you'll let me know kindly so I can improve on what's here wherever I can. 

Well then, don your sense-of-humor hat, and come with me on a strange ride.

Enjoy.

[To continue reading click here:  BEING CONSCIOUS: Part 1 — Ah, It's Nothing]