In the dark of night, at around 12:00 am in the morning, I went out for a walk. I took the route to graveyard. It was calm and silent all around. After covering some distance, I reached near a tree which stopped my feet, literally, knocking me out. It was a young man hanging from the tree, when I went closer, he was dead.
This was my first experience of such an event. I had never seen a suicide before. I wished I could reach there some times earlier so that I could help him saving his life. He had hanged himself for quite some time, like an hour or so, and that too, in a studious manner. One thing that took my attention was one of his legs, stuck forward as if trying to reach the tree trunk and undo the action. Some questions arose in my mind. Was he conscious about his murder? If yes, why did he try to save himself at some last point after making a conscious decision? If no, then surely, before murdering himself, he had murdered his consciousness.
Consciousness means ‘awareness’ of internal and external existence. Despite centuries of knowledge and research, it has remained a puzzle, being at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives. Perhaps we know only that it exists. The awareness of ‘internal’ existence refers to the awareness of your unique thoughts, memories and feelings. What do you think, in general? What thoughts are wandering around your head? Are those thoughts conscious or unconscious? What memories you have stored consciously that manipulates you unconsciously? What are your feelings about your thoughts and memories? These questions, if asked by you, render as a filter that alters the position of unconsciousness into consciousness; if not asked, will remain unconscious thus resulting in an unconscious action or reaction.
On the contrary, the awareness of external existence refers to the awareness of your sensations and environments. You should see, hear, touch, taste and smell consciously. Therefore, being aware of your sensations is being conscious because these sensations link you to your external environment which plays an important part in your lives. Your family, home, friends, relatives and society at large, your workplace, your income, your life-style, all should be in sync with your conscious mind.
Essentially, your consciousness is your awareness of yourself and the world around you. This awareness is subjective and unique to you. It is easy to understand. In fact, you are using it right now. It is your ‘waking’ mind. The awareness of things you can focus on. It is the ‘here and now’ mind that makes choices, makes plans, and helps you live in present. The unconscious mind, though, is a different phenomenon. Compared to the conscious, it is enormous. It holds all the memories, experiences, wisdom and insight you have gained over the years. It runs everything that happens in your body and mind. And while the unconscious runs the show, it will take orders from the conscious mind. When the word ‘conscious’ is used, it refers to the logical side of your brain. The side that analyzes everything, criticizes everything, and works in a linear way. It is in control of your thinking while you are awake. It is in control of your voluntary movements. It is in use whenever you speak.
In the early days of psychology, consciousness was regarded as the core of the discipline. In more recent times, psychologists have grown away from traditional approaches to consciousness, and a number of attempts to describe it have emerged. As you might imagine, thought, it is an elusive concept. Consciousness appears to serve an important function in allowing us to have choice as regards our actions. By weighing up a situation we can choose what we would like to do. Consciousness also helps us to change or modify our behaviour, if we find that we are acting inappropriately. I wonder how a teenage guy murdered his all internal and external existence in a playful manner, unconsciously, without giving a second thought to change his behaviour and decision. As a matter of fact, we find many such instances of unconscious actions around us. From being alone to being in company, we constantly wander, mentally, in an absent world.
Let us dig deep, on every action we do in our lives, on how many of them do we pause and think consciously before acting? Assumptions and judgements we make are based on our unconscious part of the mind. And, most often, our unconscious mind, in that particular matter, is composed of unpleasant events and experiences. Thus, despite the knowledge of the unpleasantness of that situation, one traps into the compulsive state of mind, and acts in haste without giving a pause – a slight pause of few seconds: pause before assuming; pause before accusing; and pause whenever we are about to react. It is recommended to practice ‘pause’ in your daily life and see changes in your decision making. You will realise that when your answers were ‘yes’, now they are ‘no’. The consequences of that huge difference – from yes to no – will be tremendous because now you are thinking cautiously and consciously.
As we attempt to analyse the current situation, we discover that there existed and exists numerous factors that contributed in tampering the mental statement of majority of the people. The major contributing factor, among them, is the twenty years of planned oppression and genocide which has left huge impacts on the mental quality of the oppressed, men and women, especially affecting the youth. Those who needed a peaceful environment to grow up in, were presented with a game of bloodshed which kept them mired in “fear”. That fear grew with the passage of time, leaving the youth in profound desperation and a sense of non-belonging. The players of the game knew what they were doing, but the objects did not know this fear would breed more, and in return, it would result in a mutilated social fabric.
This fear is not natural but rather it was inserted and imposed on us by some hidden forces whose primary objective was to silence the active part of our brain, the critical aspect of our thinking, and the powerful tool of our thoughts and actions. In other words that programmed and inserted fear murdered the consciousness of a vast majority of the oppressed community which created a herd of unconscious populace.
In such a scenario, what should nations and communities do? History shows that nations fallen in hard times proved to be harder than time. Let us repeat such history to prove us harder and stronger, instead of, being an easy prey. Some researchers argue in the evolutionary context that consciousness provides a survival advantage for human beings by allowing them to monitor the environment for threats, and to anticipate them, which would make it possible to develop more effective ways of coping with such threats or avoiding them. If this is so, we must expect consciousness to be more likely to evolve in a rapidly changing environment where new kinds of threat might develop and rigid inherited behaviour patterns are no longer appropriate. In the process, we should revisit our past, and count on our strengths and weaknesses. A movement of inquiry should be initiated and this movement must be directed towards humanization – consciousness-raising. The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but in fellowship and solidarity. Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of ‘praxis’: reflection and action upon the world to transform it. To achieve this goal, the oppressed must confront reality critically, simultaneously objectifying and acting upon that reality. A mere perception of reality not followed by this critical intervention will not lead to a transformation of objective reality – precisely because it is not a true perception.
The caveat is that, if we still as a nation do not realise this and take due urgent actions, the problems will only continue metastasizing which will ultimately endanger the community’s very survival.