"Don't call me Czachówek - my name is Gabryelin"

When the railway line between Warsaw and Radom was built in the 1930s, it ran through sparsely populated rural areas; station names were allocated with scarcely a thought for how the areas they serve would develop. Czachówek Południowy station was originally Czachówek before the war, as the one station serving the area between Ustanówek to the north and Chynów to the south (Sułkowice and Czachówek Górny stations would be built later).

During the height of the Stalinist era, along came the Skierniewice-Łuków line. A requirement of the Red Army - so it could get its troops to the western front bypassing Warsaw, seen as a nest of counter-revolutionary saboteurs - the line was a strategic priority. It passed under the Warsaw-Radom line north of the original Czachówek station. Over time, passenger services began to run over the Skierniewice-Łukow line, so it made sense to connect the two lines with a pair of adjacent stations (Czachówek Górny on the embankment carrying the Warsaw-Radom line over the Skierniewice-Łuków line, and Czachówek Środkowy in the middle of the diamond of spurs connecting the two main lines). And with the building of these, as well as Czachówek Wschodni to the east serving the village of Czarny Las, the original station of Czachówek needed a new name to distinguish it from all the other Czachówek stations. And so Czachówek Południowy came to be. It was renamed in 1962, when the Górny station opened.

But - as I wrote yesterday - the thing to note about Czachówek Południowy station is that it is not actually in Czachówek, but in the neighbouring village of Gabryelin. It is not even in the same gmina (municipality or commune) as Czachówek. 

Gabryelin doesn't like the name of its station. In 2007 there was a local poll in which the majority of inhabitants who voted said that Czachówek Południowy should be renamed Gabryelin. A second preference was 'Czachówek-Gabryelin'. I read that local activists painted over the signboards and replaced them with Gabryelin. Such demonstrations tend not to work. The modernisation of the line (2017-2020) cemented the name Czachówek Południowy with new-style signage. 

So - what to do? Retaliate...

Last year, the village authorities put up two huge signs, on either side of the tracks. The message is clear - Czachówek Południowy may well be situated on PKP territory, who are entitled to call their station what they like, but just take on step off the platforms and you're in Gabryelin. The choice of font (Drogowskaz - as seen on road signs - rather than Paneuropa Bold as used for station signage) is not accidental. Neither is the size - far larger than the normal white-on-green lettering seen when one drives into a town or village. The size is such that it can be read from a train passing at speed.

Gabryelin has aspirations to have its status changed from village to town as its population grows; this is very much what I predict will be happening across exurban Poland. A mere 36.6km from Warsaw Central station, with frequent (and the occasional fast) services to town, Gabryelin is the kind of place where more and more people will choose to live. It even has a Carrefour Express (rather than a Leviatan, Dino or Top Market)! A station named after the place it serves attracts investment, the village reasons.

Below: nice touch - a local map. Solectwo - the smallest unit of local government, a subdivision of a gmina. Headed by an elected sołtys or village elder with executive powers.

Below: modernised, Czachówek Południowy lacks working lifts (there's not the space for ramps, like at Chynów station). The lifts - installed with great delay - are perpetually broken. As they were today. There's no exit from the southern end of the platforms - as there was before the lifts were ready. Local people clamber over the tracks there anyway. Sod the locals? Sod your rules. And - unusual for a station of this size - there's no ticket machine. So boarding my train to Chynów, the conductor bid me go to the front of the train to buy my ticket. I joined a long queue; two stations on, I'd reached my destination, and so I hopped off without paying.

Below: in the underpass between the platforms; signage for the exit for Gabryelin... Centrum!

I wonder whether Gabryelin will see the day when the name of this station changes. Part of me is rooting for the villagers. Part of me, however, likes the notion of a village without a railway line lending its name to three stations that don't even serve it. A nice absurdity.

This time last year:
Accounting for Coincidence
[The Henry Cow-Benjamin Piekut story]

This time two years ago:
Działka food

This time three years ago:
Proper summer in Warsaw

This time four years ago:
Poland's trains failing in the heat

This time five years ago:
"Learn from your mystics is my only advice"

This time six years ago:
Out where the pines grow wild and tall

This time nine years ago:
Behold and See (part V) - short story

This time ten years ago:
Syrenki in Warsaw

This time 11 years ago:
What's the Polish for 'impostor'?

This time 12 years ago:
Running with the storm on the road to Mamrotowo

This time 14 years ago:
St Pancras Station - new gateway to London

This time 15 years ago:
Mountains or sea? North Wales has them both

Czachówek Wschodni - strange little station

I have long been fascinated by the railway junction at Czachówek and its three stations. Situated where the main Warsaw-Radom line crosses the east-west Skierniewice-Łuków line, it features a diamond alignment allowing trains from any one point of the compass to go to any one of the remaining three. 

Czachówek Górny ('upper' Czachówek) and Czachówek Południowy (southern Czachówek) sit on the Warsaw-Radom line; Górny being a halt, Południowy being a proper station with extra platforms where express trains can pass. Today, I want to focus on the quiet country halt of Czachówek Wschodni, which for several reasons is a particularly interesting station.

The first thing to bear in mind about Czachówek is that none of the three station are in Czachówek. Czachówek Południowy is situated in the village of Gabryelin (more about that in a separate post); Czachówek Górny is in the village of Bronisławów, while Czachówek Wschodni is in the village of Czarny Las. And the actual village of Czachówek is without a station (though close enough to all three).

In the distant past, passenger trains would serve the entire Skierniewice-Łuków route; today only the short stretch from Czachówek to Góra Kalwaria sees services. However, these are infrequent, with only eight pairs of trains a day - eight to Warsaw, eight to Góra (as locals call it). The trains swing down the spur from Ustanówek, north of Czachówek, stop at Czachówek Wschodni and continue the 6.5km to Góra Kalwaria (or rather its north-western edge).

Once upon a time, there used to be a station called Czachówek Środkowy ('middle' Czachówek). Also in the village of Bronisławów, the station building was demolished some ten years ago (click on the link above for a photo and its location in the middle of the diamond).

So - let's look at Czachówek Wschodni in detail. Located in Czarny Las (which I somehow see as 'Črny Les'), a village of 400 people, the station is literally invisible from the street. There is no, like zero, signage to tell you that it's there. Not even an A4 sheet of paper with a hand-drawn arrow in a plastic sleeve sellotaped to a lamp post. 

Below: the bus loop at the end of the L30 route, which terminates just 200m from the platforms of Czachówek Wschodni station. There's no mention of possible 'convenient change' between modes; looking at bus and train timetable, there's obviously no effort made to coordinate arrivals. If, for example, you want to take the 11:11 train to Warsaw, the bus you'll need arrives here at 10:46. Ah - and no buses at the weekend.

Below: access to the platforms. Nothing on the street saying 'Czachówek Wschodni this way'; if you didn't know (and I didn't) you could be walking through private land, someone's drive - there are no tell-tale hallmarks of a public right of way at all. A portly chap in white vest was watching me suspiciously; I asked him the way to the station - he then politely explained to me the right way - turn right, turn left at the post, across the track and you're there.

Below: looking along the platform from the western end. Note how low the platform is - just one brick high compared to track level. This is a big problem for the train operator, Koleje Mazowieckie. The latest trains - the Impuls and FLIRTs cannot cope with the low platforms here nor at the terminus station one stop down at Góra Kalwaria. Unlike every station on the Warsaw-to-Radom line which has been thoroughly modernised to EU standards, with level access, tunnels or lifts or both - Czachówek Górny and Góra Kalwaria have received little more than platform signs in corporate colours.

Below: looking west from the eastern end of the platform. The tracks on either side of the main line are completely overgrown. The inability to run modern trains to these two stations means that from the next timetable change in December, there will be a shuttle service consisting of old rolling stock, running between Góra Kalwaria and Czachówek Południowy for connections there to the main line.

Not this way - there's no official way from the south side of the tracks to the platforms. No crossing of the tracks here, says the sign - but looking at the well-trodden path, I can see that the local populace doesn't take that ban too seriously. 

Below: signage on the platforms is acceptable. Timetables, other information all properly displayed.

I saw three goods trains, no passenger service. Here comes an interesting freight train - a Deutsche Bahn loco hauling aggregate wagons eastward (below).

What's this I espy? It's an old 2-10-0 Kriegslok, in deplorable state. Either a German-built Ty2 or post-war Polish-built Ty42. Given that the tracks leading into this yard (former overhead traction maintenance depot at the western end of the platforms) have mature trees growing between them, this loco must have been sitting here a while - and yet I've never noticed it before, despite this being a well-worn motorcycling route for me, passing just outside the fenced enclosure.

[Below: same engine type, same angle, but in happier circumstances: from 2008, a tourists' special from Dobra to Chabówka railway museum. An aside prompted by the congruence of the photos.]

Below: a lovely and historically significant train - a 1938 narrow-gauge diesel railcar, one of just four built at the Lilpop, Rau & Loewenstein factory in Warsaw before the war. This is MBxd1 344. Used on the Grójec railway - who knows - maybe my grandmother took this very train to her hometown of Mogielnica during the German occupation of Warsaw to buy food for her sons. I heard the sound of metalwork coming from that shed on the right - and a parked car; someone's dedicating their summer Sunday to restoration work? Hope so...

Below: not only old trains, but old cars too. From left to right: FSD Nysa N59, two Polski Fiat 125Ps and an FSO Polonez. A little cluster of historic transport - will they be restored?

Below: rear view of the vehicles. That Nysa N69 is very rare - only third one I've seen since beginning this blog.

Tomorrow - observations from another station that's not named after the village it serves!

This time four years ago:
Wrocław's Ostrów Tumski

This time nine years ago:
Behold and See - short story - Part IV
[My longest work of fiction thus far...]

This time ten years ago:
A new-found fascination for Mars

This time 11 years ago:
Rhetorical question: why the fuss?

This time 12 years ago:
Varsovians! Ditch the car - buy a quarterly karta miejska
[Today 250zł, still excellent value at 4zł per working day]

This time 13 years ago:
The limited interests of mankind's geniuses

This time 14 years ago:
Into the fading light

This time 15 years ago:
Ar y Ffordd i Pwyl Rhydd
(a little bit of Poland in North Wales)

The End of Time(s)

One night last summer, I was bidden by a conscious thought to step outside the house on the działka. It was a starry night; as soon as I was outside, looking up to the heavens I received this intuition, directly to my consciousness: {{ Everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way. }}

Our subjective conscious experience in life is our own; it is deeply personal. No one can peer into it, examine it, hold a microscope to it, judge it. Our experience of the numinous, the transcendental, the mystical, the supernatural, the metaphysical, takes a myriad different forms.

Some will see glowing orbs in the sky, some await the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, some expect Nirvana; for me it is confirmation of the upward spiral of biological death and reincarnation of an ego-free consciousness, evolving spiritually from one life to the next. These past few sunny days, I have had flashbacks occurring with blissful frequency, which tend to reinforce my belief. 

Science has no clear answer as to how the Universe (this Universe?) will end. In a Big Crunch (galaxies collapsing into their black holes which then go on to swallow one another)? Or in Heat Death - galaxies flung further and further apart by dark energy at an ever-accelerating pace, over time losing all contact with each other, and then, one by one, their stars go out? 

And when will this all happen? Sometime around 10¹²⁰ years from now, so no immediate worry. But will the end of the Universe (however it happens) mean the beginning of a new one? Or is that it? Or is space-time merely an emergent phenomenon created by - for - consciousness? In which case, what happens to Consciousness (formerly known as the Soul) when space-time runs out?

Most religions have their eschatology - the study of the end of things. How will this look from the spiritual perspective? Most eschatologies see things ending in an ultimate bliss - a bliss of knowing, of fulfillment, of arrival, of unity, of love. How the journey there is accomplished is for the individual to find their own path. Some through communion with the church, others through countless incarnations. But while paths are many, the destination is one.

Below: this is not America. No. Not the rural/small-town  U.S.A. of the '40s and '50s that feel so familiar to me, but Mazovia, today. My soul has found itself a place that feels familiar. That's where I'll make my stand.

This time last year:
Going round in circles

This time two years ago:
Between wakefulness and sleep 

This time five years ago:

Hammersmith, on Thames

This time eight years ago:
In search of quintessential English countryside

This time nine years ago:
Behold and See - short story, Pt III

This time 12 years ago:
Another return to Penrhos

The right rituals

Success in life in whichever field of endeavor is determined by meeting deadlines. Not deadlines set by other people but deadlines that you set yourself. This isn't taught at school - in fact, success at school and university boils down to meeting deadlines set by others - getting coursework and homework done and preparing for exams. But once you've left full-time education, you need to be constantly setting your own goals and targets. To meet them, you you have to discipline yourself rigorously. Part of this is the habit of setting and monitoring your attainment of daily goals. It's easy to have a simple goal of getting up, going to work for 9am, doing what's expected of you, and keeping your nose clean. Other people's deadlines, other people's expectations.

But what do want from life?

Set yourself too many unrealistic goals and you will be disappointed. Stress takes over as perfectionism proves hard to attain. Set yourself too few goals and your potential as a human being will go unfulfilled.

Maybe a banal example, but for me, exercise has a crucial importance in keeping healthy into old age, I have a set of seven daily exercises which have become routine - ritual, almost. And as I tackle them throughout my day, I come up against the dangers of procrastination. It's all too easy to devise a plausible excuse and delay something that you should be doing now. There's always something more pleasant, something distracting, that gets in the way. And then the exercises bunch up at the end of the day, along with other things on the to-do list, and time runs out.

First thing in the morning after I wake up is automatically make the bed. No thought required - it's the first thing, no questions, always, every day. Then I do pull-ups (up to 20 in one go right now) then I get dressed and fill the kettle. As it's coming to the boil I do squats - at the moment about 50 in one go - and so before I've even had my coffee, I've already done two of the seven sets of exercise. 

This makes it harder to go for a day without exercise - I generally aim to do another two-three during the day and leave the rest to the evening. Determination wanes over time, so frequent new starts are important. New Year and Lent are two big ones, but even the beginning of the month is better than the end, by which time I can convince myself that four or five sets of exercises is enough.

It isn't. If I skip sit-ups for a few days, for example, I can feel the numbness returning to my big toe. If I skip weight exercises for a few days, I can feel my left shoulder stiffening. Too much beer and not enough plank - the spare tyre starts inflating. Not doing back extensions? I see my ageing father, bent almost double as he'd shuffle along.

Another important element is a to-do list for the day. To write down all the tasks that you should get done during the day, office work and otherwise. Blogging is has become an essential defining part of my life I must record what's my consciousness observes thoughts I have had which I keep in a notepad. The ability to dictate directly into the phone as I'm walking is a great innovation. 

Squeezing distractions and procrastination out of my life (especially that temptation for that short-term dopamine hit from Twitter) is an important process. The spreadsheet approach works for me as it is cast in stone; there's no point lying - writing in exercises I didn't do or paces I didn't walk. The aim, as always since 2014, is to Beat Last Year. And I'm on track to do that in every area except press-ups (unless during the autumn I manage to crank out 50 a day every day until Christmas). Creativity also; more thinking, more searching for intuitions, more writing and photography.

A walk at sunset, catching the sun disappearing from view from the embankment above the railway line between Chynów and Sułkowice. Going out last thing at night when there are no clouds to gaze up at the starry sky in amazement. Two rituals that form an important part of my działka life, adding to the spiritual richness.

Laziness needs to be defeated from within, and only you can defeat it. This is difficult to achieve if it has not been inculcated at an early age. 

This time last year:
Measuring the Immeasurable

This time three years ago:
Heading Home [my father leaves Warsaw for the last time]

This time five years ago:
From my father's historic return to Warsaw

This time six years ago:
Country life in a capital city 

This time seven years ago:
My ogród is my działka

This time eight years ago:
Over the hill at Harrow

This time nine years ago:
Behold and See - the Miracle of Lublin - Pt 1.

This time 11 years ago:
Quiet afternoon in the bazaar

This time 12 years ago:
The politics of the symbol

Summer as it should be

It's dawned on me earlier this summer that a great part of why I love it round here in Jakubowizna is because the landscape reminds me of two places I grew up with, associated with pleasant memory - Oxshott Common in Surrey and Stella-Plage in northern France. And throw in some atavistic memory from my maternal grandmother (who grew up near Mogielnica, 22 miles away), and some past-life qualia memories (exomnesia) from 1940s U.S.A. - and it all fits together. Below: a real Stella-Plage/Sandy Lane, Oxshott vibe here. Smell of pine in the late-afternoon heat.

I rode to Grójec to sort out the paperwork for my solar-panel subsidy, a beautiful day for a motorbike ride. Taking mostly backroads, I was in my element. Below: setting off (l), road out of Grójec (r)

After getting back, lunch, some office work - and as five o'clock comes round, time for a long walk around the orchards between Adamów Rososki, Grabina and Grobice and back.

I walked for an hour and 20 minutes and during all that time, was passed by just one car and one cyclist, and I saw three people at work in the orchards. Blissfully quiet. Left: the car raised clouds of dust, the sun between the trees highlighting it in a pleasing composition. Apples are ripening but nowhere near ready to eat. In the orchards, branches are being cut to ensure the fruit gets maximum sunlight - and that the apples are easier to pick.

Below: as canonical as it gets; one of my favourite vistas. Where orchards give way to forest; through the wood to Machcin II.

Night falls. The sky is clear, and a waxing crescent moon shines low, just above the horizon, about an hour before it set. I am most grateful for the day, for a summer which - so far at least - has neither bothered Poland with searing heat nor with any biblical deluges. The spring was dry, so early fruit have been small in size, but the apple harvest looks set fair.

Below: bonus photo - in Grójec, I came across this magnificently preserved Mercedes-Benz 230 (W115). Post face-lift, this would have been manufactured between 1973 and 1976 - so it's getting on for half-a-century old. Magnificent! Worth pulling over to snap.

This time last year:
Measuring the unmeasurable

This time three years ago:
Heading Home [my father leaves Warsaw for the last time]

This time five years ago:
From my father's historic return to Warsaw

This time six years ago:
Country life in a capital city 

This time eight years ago:
My ogród is my działka

This time ten years ago:
Mazowieckie province tempts with mini- and micro-breaks

This time 11 years ago:
Pride and anger

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)

Sunset mysticism

Unless it's raining or heavily overcast, a sunset stroll is an obligation. Even if just to the end of the road and round the corner, the benefits of this daily ritual are clear - it offers direct contact with a far greater reality than mundane day-to-day human matters. Watching the sun descend below the horizon is a form of communion with the Cosmos - watching the earth spin backwards away from the sun - a Copernican moment. I realise that I'm standing on a planet in a solar system; once dusk has evaporated, the galactic context becomes clear - in a clear sky, away from the city's light pollution.

Below: ulica Miodowa (lit. 'Honey Street') winds its way into Chynów, the setting sun catching the bark of the willow trees on the left. This scene reminds me so much of the chemins-vicinaux around Stella-Plage, northern France, and childhood and teenage holidays.

Below: up the hill, past the orchards - a brief flashback, towards the brow, what sights await me?

Below: "as the Earth turns, at the edge of night" to quote Nick Lowe, the orchards are being sprayed with pesticides - a reminder to peel or wash carefully your supermarket apples before consumptions.

The moment of communion. The observer is stationary on a spinning planet orbiting its star.

Three minutes later, the sun has disappeared below the horizon as seen at ground level, but the clouds are still illuminated by its rays, giving a magnificent display, below.

No apologies for the repeated landscape below - one of the XII Canonical Views of Jakubowizna, perhaps my favourite, photographed at many different times of the day in different seasons of the year. The rapidly changing moods of the sky, bathed in the afterglow, makes sunset-catching so worthwhile.

"I am a Consciousness moving across the face of this planet..."

This time three years ago:
You've either got or you haven't got style

This time four years ago:
Total eclipse of the moon, Warsaw

This time six years ago:
'Others' vs. 'Our others'

This time seven year:
Reducing inequality in Polish society

This time nine years ago:
Llanbedrog beach

This time 11 years ago:
The Accursed Soldiers - a short story

This time 12 years ago:
Driving impressions of the Toyota Yaris

This time 14 years ago:
Poland's dry summer

This time 15 years ago:
The UK's wettest summer ever

Where does consciousness come from?

"Easy," you might say. "Consciousness is an emergent property resulting from the evolution of Life. It's something we feel as the result of activity going on inside our brains. And it may also be found in the higher-order animals - large mammals... and cephalopods." 

Well - actually, it is not that easy; our paradigm is shifting. If octopuses and squid can be seen to display sentience - why not, in smaller creatures? Why not in the simplest of all life forms?

The leap from Non-Life to Life is something that science has yet to explain. The Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago (I expect the James Webb Space Telescope will help narrow that date down by to within plus/minus a few million years), was the start of our Universe. What happened before the Big Bang - what led up to the Big Bang - is another thing that science has yet to explain.

But happen it did. And a mere 150m to 200m years after Big Bang, the first stars began to form. Within those stars heavy elements were formed from atoms of hydrogen and helium - by-products of nuclear fusion - and from those heavy elements, planets formed. And then after a couple of billion of years - on at least one of the trillions of planets in our immediate cosmic neighbourhood (!!!) - a miracle happened. Life emerged. What was once non-life became living. Simple single-cell life-forms began to evolve, becoming ever more complex animals. Some would go on to form specialist structures called brains, and within those, more and more neurons would appear over time, leading to more neuronal connections and more activity in that brain to process signals from the environment.

In Darwinian terms, the growth of brain power was the result of the survival of the fittest; the more neuronal connections, the better your chance to survive and reproduce. This process - determined by nothing more than natural selection - reached a point (so materialist reductionists would say) when within these brains, something that one could call 'consciousness' suddenly emerged.

Many eminent neurobiologists say that you shouldn't even attempt to inquire about the nature of consciousness - the only worthwhile pursuit, they say, is to look for the brain processes that result in consciousness. This line of thought suggests that consciousness is nothing more an illusory epiphenomenon formed by the sensory inputs that come into the brain from our physical surroundings via our eyes, ears, skin, nose and tongue. And that consciousness is actually just the same as thinking. Therefore, consciousness can be reduced to brain processes. 

This is the 'realist' way of looking at consciousness. The trouble is that science is no nearer discovering a seat of consciousness in the brain than ever it was. Meanwhile more and more scientists are begin to intuit that consciousness is not computational.

But I find the 'realist' way unconvincing; there's an entire Cosmos out there, and all the consciousness that we know of is bottled up within the skulls of a few billion sentient creatures here on Planet Earth? That don't feel right!

So what is it then?

Panpsychism (which comes in many flavours) posits that consciousness is a fundamental property of the Universe; without it, say some philosophers and physicists, matter could not even exist. But the next question - one that divides those who do not believe that consciousness is merely an emergent property of matter - is whether consciousness is something that's present in the background - a kind of cosmic sea within which everything swims - or whether consciousness exists in discreet units; granular consciousness that is not the background, only present within the quarks that form matter, consciousness as a fundamental (rather than emergent) property of matter - along with mass, charge and spin. If indeed it is the 'sea', the 'background', then maybe the dark energy and the dark matter that science has yet to explain is actually conscious. Maybe flora and lesser fauna also experience consciousness - but to a lower degree than what we human feel? If consciousness is an inherent property of matter, it suggests that the non-life/life barrier is not as fundamental as we thought. "Is this table conscious?" asks Robert Lawrence Kuhn in several of his Closer To Truth podcasts on the subject. I'd be happy to accept that the tree from which the table was made did once experience some low level of proto-consciousness - nothing beyond the awareness of existence, of swaying in the wind, of feeling water in the roots, the sentience of being cut down. But once dead - is the wood from which the table is made still conscious? 

Could machines become conscious - when levels of complexity within computers start reaching that of sentient life, could they demonstrate that they too are conscious? Philosophically tricky... If biological life is the only substrate within which consciousness is to be found - no. But if consciousness really is everywhere, and a machine is given the means to merely voice that consciousness - then why not?

With each passing year, scientists picking away at the nature of reality find that it's stranger and harder to pin down than it seemed a century ago. There are so many things we know we don't know; acknowledging that makes us suddenly more open to ideas that once sounded crazy.

Maybe string theory (another hotly-debated attempt by science to present a theory of everything), explains that all matter is somehow connected? We just don't know. But at least today, serious scientists can talk about consciousness openly as a mysterious subject, perhaps a fundamental property that underlies the entire Cosmos and guides its unfolding.

This time last year:
Unpicking the Rational Revolution
[one to read after reading this piece - unplanned - synchronicity!]

This time two years ago:
Ride to Roztocze

This time three years ago:
Poznań and Wrocław - two boomtowns

This time nine years ago:
Scaling the highest peak in Wales

This time ten years ago:
Beaches of the north coast of the Llyn Peninsula

This time 11 years ago: 
The Accursed Soldiers - a short story

This time 12 years ago:
Driving impressions of the Toyota Yaris
[12 years on - still rock-solid! No need to change.]

This time 14 years ago:
Poland's dry summer

This time 15 years ago:
The UK's wettest summer ever