On the Death of Consciousness

     Where does one cease to survive and begin to succumb? The point of demarcation(1) is not death as we know it. It is marked by what one might call the death of the consciousness(2) of the individual.

     Man's greatest weapon is his reason.(3) Lacking the teeth, the armor-plate hide, the claws of so many other life forms, man has relied upon his ability to reason in order to further himself in his survival.

     The selection of the ability to think as a chief weapon is a fortunate one. It has awarded man with the kingdom of Earth. Reason is an excellent weapon. The animal with his teeth, with his armor-plated hide, with his long claws, is fixed with weapons he cannot alter. He cannot adjust to a changing environment. And it is terribly important, to survive, to change when the environment changes. Every extinct species became extinct because it could not change to control a new environment. Reason remedies this failure to a marked extent. For man can invent new tools and new weapons and a whole new environment. Reason permits him to change to fit new situations. Reason keeps him in control of new environments.

     Any animal that simply adjusts itself to match its environment is doomed. Environments change rapidly Animals which control and change the environment have the best chance of survival.

     The only way you can organize a collective state is to convince men that they must adjust and adapt themselves, like animals, to a constant environment. The people must be deprived of the right to control, as individuals, their environment. Then they can be regimented and herded into groups. They become owned, not owners. Reason and the right to reason must be taken from them, for the very center of reason is the right to make up one's own mind about one's environment.

     The elements fight man and man fights man. The primary target of the enemies of man or a man is his right and ability to reason. The crude and blundering(4) forces of the elements, storms, cold and night bear down against, challenge and then mayhap(5) crush the reason as well as the body

     But just as unconsciousness(6) always precedes death, even by instants, so does the death of reason precede the death of the organism. And this action may happen in a long span of time, even half a lifetime, even more.

     Have you watched the high alertness of a young man breasting(7) the forces which oppose life? And watched another in old age? You will find that what has suffered has been the ability to reason. He has gained hard-won experiences and on this experience he seeks, from middle age on, to travel. It is a truism that youth thinks fast on little experience. And that age thinks slowly on much. The reason of youth is very far from always right, for youth is attempting to reason without adequate data.

     Suppose we had a man who had retained all his ability to reason and yet had a great deal of experience. Suppose our graybeards(9) could think with all the enthusiasm and vitality(10) of youth and yet had all their experience as well. Age says to youth, "You have no experience." Youth says to age, "You have no vision," you will not accept or even examine new ideas!" Obviously an ideal arrangement would be for one to have the experience of age and the vitality and vision of youth.

     You may have said to yourself, "With all my experience now, what wouldn't I give for some of the enthusiasm I had once." Or perhaps you have excused it all by saying you have "lost your illusions. Are brightness in life, quick enthusiasm, a desire and will to live, a belief in destiny, are these things illusions? Or are they symptoms(13) of the very stuff of which vital life is made? And isn't their decline a symptom of death?

     Knowledge(14) does not destroy a will to live. Pain and loss of self-determinism(15) destroy that will. Life can be painful. The gaining of experience is often painful. The retaining of that experience is essential. But isn't it still experience if it doesn't yet have the pain?

     Suppose you could wipe out of your life all the pain, physical and otherwise, which you have accumulated. Would it be so terrible to have to part with a broken heart or a psychosomatic illness, with fears and anxieties and dreads?

     Suppose a man had a chance again, with all he knows, to look life and the universe in the eye again and say it could be whipped. Do you recall a day when you were younger, and you woke to find bright dew sparkling on the grass, the leaves, to find the golden sun bright upon a happy world? Do you recall how beautiful and fine it once was? The first sweet kiss? The warmth of true friendship? The intimacy(16) of a moonlight ride? What made it become otherwise than a brilliant world?

     The consciousness of the world around one is not an absolute thing. One can be more conscious of color and brightness and joy at one time of life more than another. One can more easily feel the brilliant reality of things in youth than he can in age. And isn't this something like a decline of consciousness, of awareness?(17)

     What is it that makes one less aware of the brilliance of the world around him? Has the world changed? No, for each new generation sees the glamour and the glory, the vitality of life - the same life that age may see as dull at best. The individual changes. And what makes him change? Is it a decay of his glands(18) and sinews?(19) Hardly, for all the work that has been done on gland and sinews - the structure of the body - has restored little if any of the brilliance of life.

     Ah, youth, sighs the adult, if I but had your zest(20) again! What reduced that zest?

     As one's consciousness of the brilliance of life declines, so has declined his own consciousness. Awareness decreases exactly as consciousness decreases. The ability to perceive the world around one and the ability to draw accurate conclusions about it are, to all intents, the same thing.

     Glasses are a symptom of the decline of consciousness. One needs his sight bolstered to make the world look brighter. The loss of the ability to move swiftly, as one ran when he was a child, is a decline of consciousness and ability

     Complete unconsciousness is death. Half unconsciousness is half death. A quarter unconsciousness is a quarter of death. And as one accumulates the pain attendant(21) upon life and fails to accumulate the pleasures, one gradually loses his race with the gentleman with the scythe.(22) And there ensues, at last, the physical incapacity for seeing, thinking and being, known as death.

     How does one accumulate this pain? And if he got rid of it would full consciousness and a full bright concept(23) of life return?

     And is there a way to get rid of it?