On Compatibilism/Soft Determinism and Consciousness
For love, and beauty, and delight
There is no death nor change: their might
Exceeds our organs—which endure
No light—being themselves obscure
-Percy Shelley; The Sensitive Plant
Often, while meditating, trying to calm
my overstimulated body and mind, trembly, bone deep…as if
I took amphetamines, it seems
like my unconscious and body operate so automatically,
like gravity, that it doesn’t matter at all
what I consciously
think, or what I desire,
and on occasion I feel intense dissociation, as if I were just a flower,
with each blossoming pedal like a thought
I never sought,
and the mystical automaticness of it haunts me…
but…I persist in my search for a way to give my consciousness a strengthened
paradoxical (perhaps illusive?) impression of its control
and power, in the form of an intelligence, one without dogmatic concern
for inevitable limitations, since there’s no one who can say, based on their feigned omniscience,
which ways one’s mind can and cannot grow “in wisdom and stature”;
this analysis
helps me detect and deflect the briefly blinding glares
of coincidence and externalized locus of control,
but then, as I channel my self-confidence by focusing on my breath, I worry
that I will forget to breathe, or that I’ll breathe too shallowly
or too deeply, because I struggle to believe
my brain will indeed keep me
breathing, because of course at some point that will be the case…
and will that mean the end of consciousness ?–the perception of stars and their lights
illuminating space’s reservoir of stuff and things…
the hindsight’s music and its winds,
which, sometimes, blows too cold,
the choppy shivers and chills evoke
panic attacks, and I dread
life’s random bloodsheds,
but then, I remind myself, these things, at least,
some of the time can be deterred
as we gain knowledge and learn,
how, for example, to use wind power to stir up
a rational imagination, self-actualization and self-transcendence,
coalescence of the global community…(this is why I think
one’s got to believe in at least a little free will and be at least a little idealistic!… )…