Description

Have you ever grown tired of yourself, fed up with the narrative of your life, despairing of hopeful change? Me too. But this book is not a self-help book. Its intricate interweaving of neuroscience and the philosophy of mind takes us back to fundamental questions: is there such a thing as a continuous self, or a reliable narrative of a life? Is there such a thing as consciousness apart from biology? Is the human brain the source of conscious awareness or the evolved site of an awareness that inheres in the nature of general relativity? This book argues that consciousness on earth is an ancient phenomenon, dating back at least 500 million years, and that human self-awareness is a relatively recent gremlin on the scene. Arguing from the vantage point of one particular moment in Edmund Husserl's "the residuum of consciousness after the annihilation of the world", this book invites the reader to leave both self-consciousness and the fear of death behind and to look at how the relative phenomenon of the brain is a harbinger of something much greater.