Consciousness - good and evil

 For my brother, Marek

Let us assume, then, that consciousness is indeed distributed across the Universe, and isn't limited to the insides of human skulls. It permeates the space between galaxies, as it does the space between quarks in an atom. But does consciousness possess morality? 

"When searching for consciousness in flora, cells, atoms, if you were to replace the term 'consciousness' with 'morality', how would that change the argument? To what degree is good/evil fundamental to consciousness? "

Personally, I do not see 'evil' as a demonical force, summoned by Satan or some other mythological / theological entity - but rather as a 'willful lack of good'; an absence of good.

Is a man who kills tens of thousands, wreaking death and trauma upon families, evil? In the case of Putin - yes, most certainly so. A fucked-up little man, full of deep complexes of victimhood going back to childhood, backed by the sullen majority nation with an excruciatingly painful history. Ego has crowded out Putin's consciousness, I believe, to the point where he is little more that a zombie, bereft of awareness. Pure evil in human form - a Hitler or a Stalin for our times. Evil resides in humans.

Evil needs agency, an ego with a will, determined to inflict death, injury and disruption across society.

But is a volcano, earthquake, tsunami evil? The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami left 230,000 dead - more than the death-tolls at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. And then think bigger - a supernova or black hole that swallows entire solar systems, complete with their developed civilisations. Unconscious misfortunes that 'just happen' to conscious beings - but are they things that have to be? Events that must come to pass? A belief in reincarnation or any other form of afterlife for the consciousness can allay the grief of human tragedies; however, solace does not come easy in the face of evil perpetrated by humans.

Let's now turn away from evil, towards good.

Good vibrations, peace and love, the hippy way. Could positive thoughts radiate out from us and influence outcomes in a good way?

Mind over matter wishing for good to prevail as the Universe unfolds. But what is 'good'? I think we all feel that intuitively. What does 'unfold' mean? "To open (anything covered or closed); to lay open to view or contemplation; to bring out in all the details, or by successive development; to unfold one's designs; to unfold the principles of a science."

OK - so what about the science? 

Here's something I intuited in my penultimate blog post of the twenty-teens... (29 December 2019. My hopes for a 'boring decade' dashed within two short years.)

I had the insight that maybe Good - the quality of goodness - is a physical property - like mass and energy - a universal goal, a target, an ambition, something naturally striven towards. Three steps forward, two steps back but over the millennia, we're moving in the right direction, haltingly, unsure of ourselves, full of doubts - are we any the wiser? It would be smug to say "I think so"; it would be overly pessimistic to answer "no".

Love is the answer? That moment of connection, the 'internal hug', the tears welling up in your eyes - spread that out across the Universe... 

Will science buy that? Or is intuition decades, centuries, maybe, ahead of science before it empirically gets to prove that goodness and love, are what ultimately drives the unfolding of the Universe?

This time last year:
A meaningful anniversary

This time two years ago:
One photo for the Warsaw Uprising

This time three years ago:
W-Hour on the Big Day

This time four years ago:
My father at the 74th anniversary of the Uprising

This time five years ago:
73rd anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising with my father

This time six years ago:
Godzina W remembered with my father - a day of emotions

This time eight years ago:
Godzina W commemorated in a more civilised way

Godzina W ten years ago (2012)

Godzina W 11 years ago (2011)

Godzina W 13 years ago (2009)