A zombie won't catch your consciousness ..

.. unless you're unaware.

C.P. van der Velde


There is a huge variety of theories of consciousness! Do you have to know them all, to understand the subject well? Don't think so. Nor it is sufficient. You are able to understand consciousness if you are willing to stay in contact with your own, that wonderful and miraculous phenomenon that is common to all aspects of your immediate very personal subjective experience on any moment that you may perceive.
Your own consciousness is the only real one you know for sure.
And you know what? Many theories of consciousness have the effect to alienate you from your own conscience. In fact, that may precisely be their purpose!
This is understandable because most theories of consciousness are construed by professional intellectuals, like academics, scientists, scholars and professors. No problem as such. However most of the experts on consciousness theories operate within the mental frames of standard models and methodologies of science in mainstream, its paradigms and cultural traditions. Thus their assumptions are fundamentally materialistic, physicalistic, empirical-analytic, functionalist, cognitivistic, .. This has profound consequences of course when it comes to thinking about thinking itself, more specifically, subjectivity, mind, mental processing and most of all, consciousness.
And guess what? They spend their professional lives proving that consciousness is - in its nature or in its causal origin - essentially materialistic, physical, abstract structure, information processing, cognition, algorithm, complexity, mechanistic .. Surprise, huh. No not really. Self-fulfilling prophecy running around once again.
Second point is more touchy so to speak. As I know many of them, I have noticed that theorists of consciousness often don't make such a sharp distinction between sound logic and sheer intellectualizing, rationalizing or fabricating mental 'castles in the air'. In fact in talking and thinking about consciousness you rarely observe them grounding their ideas by contacting their own personal consciousness .. also, they rarely refer to empathy with the conscious experience of others, be it humans or animals.
As the genius (though not perfect) Freud pointed out, intellectualizing or rationalizing often serves profound functions within the psycho-dynamics of the human mind: to shield and dissociate consciousness from immediate experiences, especially intense body feelings and of course emotions - to the effect that they become softened, masked, censored, subliminal, or entirely suppressed and therefore .. unconscious!
These physical and emotional feelings may disrupt mental frames and thus disturb the personal system, or ego. This may lead to more or less severe problems like stress, unbalance, psychological crisis, psychosis, disintegrating of personality, and thus severe psychopathology, and may therefore be a serious risk. For this reason, such internal patterns of ego-protection are psychologically known as ego-defense mechanisms.
In other words, many theories of consciousness may well be designed with the - unconscious - aim to 'protect' the very theorist from consciously feeling his/her own honest feelings, which is a certain dimension of consciousness content, very important for functioning as an integrated, complete and responsible grown-up person (feelings may offer huge amounts of important information of 'wisdom of the organism' about personal needs, goals and concerns and therefore better be listened to).
The theorist then is alienated from his own consciousness. Somewhat like a nerd slightly zombified ..
He/she may further show the signs of a well-known pathological pattern of compensation, known as 'defending the problem' by propagating it. Misery seeks company, and there you have another motive. The result is a kind of crusade against consciousness - by faking to know consciousness and thus spreading a fake consciousness ..
Now why is the 'bio-robot' or zombie-model as a theory of consciousness becoming more and more popular and into fashion these days? Well, I think because it embodies the maximum of rationalization. In the bio-robot model, consciousness has been completely ripped and robbed from her essentials, reduced and destructed, eliminated and whiped out. After the bio-robot, the soul has been banished really thorougly. Try to find it back afterwards, will be a tough job.
Incidentally, the bio-robot naturally has no intrinsic value, only market-value, which is extrinsic and accidental of nature and thus varying with coincidents and chance.
This is perfect! When you get people to believe they are bio-robots, you can trample their rights and make them do what you like.
You can make them behave like robots - eg in an army, but also in a companies and in everyday society.
Thus we may all serve as functional zombies, for the most profitable exploitation and production, commerce and consumption ! Most profitable for some, of course.
Does this picture look familiar to you? Just look around in your world.
You see, there seems to be a very logical agreement between the elites of academic intellect, finance, corporations - in other words, the elites in power these days.
They are more or less united in what you may call a war against your consciousness. Because by this, destruction of real value can go on.
Therefore, I think the world faces an even more serious, dangerous and deeper threat than ecological disasters: consciousness is about to be expelled from this world. With it, life and value have no chances anymore.
ZOMBIFICATION is a problem, and it is contagious.
Feel free to join me to be a warrior for awareness about your (our) consciousness. I care for it, I guess you do too.

See also ..