#1080 - Robert Pantano - The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Why is self-awareness a problem?

**Robert Pantano** (0:03)
Self-awareness is a problem. Well, first of all, I think it's important to recognize that we often think about self-awareness as a good thing. We generally think about it as a gradient. So we might refer to somebody as being more or less self-aware than others, and more is typically assumed as better. When I'm referring to self-awareness, I'm referring to just the fact that we are aware of a self at all. And so the mere fact that we have a certain form of consciousness that provides us that sense of self is a problem for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we've arrived with a sense of self-awareness by a process of evolution that doesn't really care. Obviously, care I'm using loosely there because evolution doesn't care at all about anything besides it's just continuation, propagation. But the experience of consciousness and self-awareness from the first-person perspective is not central to the reason for why self-awareness and consciousness arrived in the form that humans experience it. We are often at odds with the fundamental nature of reality in existence by virtue of the self-awareness, in my view at least. The reason for that is as a self who is aware of that self, we attach to that self, we attach to the ideas of that self, we attach to people and things and our desire to make sense of our perception and understanding through all of the concepts that we form by nature of having that degree of awareness. And yet, reality in existence is fickle, chaotic, uncertain. We are going to lose everybody and everything through time or distance, decay, age or illness or death. And so, we find ourselves in this sort of cosmic ocean, where the waves are crashing on our heads constantly. And yet, we must continue because we are also a part of the same substrate that built us, that needs continuation. And so, it puts us in this very peculiar position, where we can feel the intensity and pain and suffering that seems from a conscious individual entity, terrible. And yet, we just refuse to give up. We must endure. And so, that's why it's problematic. But also, obviously, I see the other side of that coin. And the paradox of self-awareness, in my view, is that self-awareness, self-consciousness, self-apprehension is the most horrific, terrifying thing in the known universe. And yet, it is the most beautiful thing in the known universe. Because as far as we're aware, it's the only thing that allows conceptual understanding of existence and reality. So we can form the very idea of beauty and wonder and meaning and purpose and hope.
And it seems to me to be necessary that the first part, the other half of that coin, is in the equation for the second half to be possible.

**Chris Williamson** (3:27)
Yeah, you've got this line, self-awareness is a sort of poison that we each consume upon birth.

**Robert Pantano** (3:33)
Yeah, yeah, I believe that's, our birthright is the horrific qualities of self-awareness, a poison, but that we as almost magicians or alchemists can transmute into gold, into art, and beauty and wonder and love and all that. And so it makes you wanna, you know, you love and hate it in the fullest possible form of those words at the same time. At least obviously that's my perspective. I know maybe some people might see life and existence as purely positive and beautiful. Some might see it as purely negative and horrific and somewhere in between there's a spectrum. But in my view, it's sort of, it has to be both at the same time. And that is the paradoxical nature of it.

**Chris Williamson** (4:22)
How much of that do you think is just us all coming up with some fancy philosophical explanation for our own idiosyncratic experience of the world? That you have a bit of a grasp of the awe and a bit of a grasp of the dread. And some people are almost all dread and some people are almost all awe. And each of them kind of create their own philosophical views of the world and the universe based around just, well, this is my typical daily affect. This is my typical experience of things.

**Robert Pantano** (4:54)
I think that it's definitely important to not universalize your own perspective, your own experiences and your own way of thinking. It's easy to assume that the way you think, both in the most literal of sense and in the most abstract of sense is the way most people do. And it's not the case. There's a huge spectrum and variety of modes of thought that people experience and operate through. And so people might be more visually inclined, people might be more linguistically inclined, people might be a more feeling orientation of the world. So just on that level alone, there's a wide variety and spectrum of experience of thought. And so we have to start there and recognizing that our own fundamental experience of the world in reality is not going to be universal in the way that we might project or assume.