The "curse of consciousness" describes the human capacity for advanced self-awareness, which, while enabling great achievements, also brings suffering through the knowledge of mortality and an overthinking paralysis, as exemplified by Dostoevsky's "Notes from the Underground" and amplified by modern digital life.
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The curse of consciousness is a scientific and philosophical term and concept that indicates to us the suffering of man, which results
from the advanced awareness of the reality of death, because man is the only being who knows that
a day will come when he will be weaned, and the rest of the animals and other creatures remain far from this
painful awareness, because scientific research shows us that there is a fundamental difference between the consciousness of man and animal.
The first consciousness is primary consciousness, or primal consciousness. This is present in most mammals
and birds, and it enables them to interact with their environment, beware of predators, eat, drink, reproduce,
sleep, and deal with long-term memories. That is, you know that this lion is not good, this
tree is good, its food is fine, and we must lean by this pond because it has shade and sun. But it remains
restricted to the present without the ability to think abstractly and complexly.
As for the second consciousness, okay, and this is the most unfortunate and exclusive one, and is only available
to humans. Psychologists and anthropologists say that this increased consciousness is a blessing and a curse at the same time. A
blessing because it enabled us to go into space, make medicines, and do… YouTube website and we sit and chat,
I swear, I saw a lion do this thing, we don’t mind because it burdens us with a heavy load,
which is the knowledge of the inevitability of our death. Ok Abu Abed, it’s not a problem, but still, why? Why does
death upset us? Why do thoughts like, for example, that one day all our friends
and the people we loved will disappear and no one will remember us upset us to this degree? I swear to God, you
guys know someone like that who has a kind of illness, he says, I was eating myself up in God’s peace and suddenly
I remember that my mother will die one day and I get upset and sit and spoil the whole day for him, the matter
is like these disturbing thoughts that he cannot control.
In general, Ernest Becker, in his book, The Denial of Death, which won the Pulitzer Prize, says that
there is a fundamental contradiction in human consciousness, and this is what makes him fear death. This contradiction is the combination
that we have between the survival instinct and intellectual knowledge, instinct. Survival is what makes
us cling to life and the things we love, and intellectual knowledge is what brought us to these
complex concepts. This contradiction is the essence of the curse of consciousness according to Ernest Becker.
He developed a theory called Terror Management Theory, which explains how humans deal
with this issue. The theory is based on a basic assumption that when humans become aware of the inevitability of
their death, they face existential terror that prompts them to develop a defense mechanism. In more than 500
scientific studies, they have conducted on this issue. In one of the new studies, they brought a group of judges from
municipal courts and had them set bail for a woman accused of prostitution. The judges who reminded them of death set
bail on average at $55,455. As for those who were not reminded of this issue, they set bail
at $55. These results confirm that consciousness does not only affect thinkers, philosophers,
and TikTok teenagers, but also the daily behavior of every human being in an unconscious way.
We find it in books and it doesn’t come to us after we read two books, no, no, rather it is reflected in our lives
and experiences, and here comes our real story in the novel Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky shows us
with complete brilliance how this curse turns into a continuous struggle in the mind and how this
great struggle between perception and desire, between fear and love, is what inspires us to understand man with all
his contradictions. But before we dive into the basement of our friend, the hero of the novel, let us stop and ask ourselves a
simple question. It’s not the same as the one you study in the abilities test, no, no, another one isn’t scary. Come, I tell you, come
ask yourself. How many times were you lying in bed at 3 in the morning and sat over and analyzing something that happened
two months ago? How many times did you doubt the intention of a letter you received as a text from your friend, or wonder about the meaning of a passing glance?
If the answer is a lot, then you are not alone in this mental torment, my friend, because in one of
the basements of St. Petersburg, my friend, in the year 1864, where damp seeps between the walls and basements
and the light Hardly penetrating the small windows, a forty-year-old man sits isolated from the world. He has no
name in the novel, but he carries all the names of human suffering. This is the man of acceptance
, but the information that many of you here do not know is that this man is not a
fictional character. We know, Abu Abed, that he resides in all human beings. No, no, I do not mean metaphorically.
No, he actually exists. This man is Dostoevsky, because Dostoevsky once said, “I do not write
literature, but I write what I suffer.” So what exactly did Dostoevsky suffer from to reach this stage?
This stage that makes him at the beginning of the book and the first two lines in which he says, “I am a sick, evil,
liver-sick man, and a hateful man.” Oh, what is this, Abu Dost, Abu Fyodor, Abu Fyodor? Come on, let us
delve into the life and biography of Dostoevsky and see what exactly he suffered from.
The seeds of his first suffering begin from his childhood, which is full of contradictions. No offense, these are things that hurt
a man. He was born in 1821 to a family like shit. His father was a man whose name was
Mikhail Andreevich was a military doctor and had a small farm, but he was very strict
, disturbed and depressed, and he was very unfair to the boy. Sometimes he would take him with him to the hospital where
he worked. In this hospital, Dostoevsky, since his childhood, used to see people without hands,
whose limbs were cut off, and other people struggling with death and coughing up blood. He used to go and play with the sick children who…
He was relying on someone like that without a normal man, may God grant you good health, while he was still a child, and when he returned home
with his father, he was forced to deal with his morbid suspicions and all the darkness in him. As for his mother,
Maria, she was sweet, kind, and respectful. He was very attached to her and loved her. May God keep
them together, but she died of Dostoevsky’s disease when he was a teenager. This early loss of the only one
he loved left a deep wound in his soul, especially since he remained sitting alone with his sick father. But it’s not
a problem, uncle. A father is better than nothing. Things are good. He knows what to deal with and gets used to it.
One day, he was walking in his father’s field and found his father dead in the middle of the field because
his father was so unjust to those workers. The workers killed him and revolted against him. Later,
Dostoevsky wrote that he had solved the reasons for his father’s terrible death throughout his life. Then, when he grew up, the most shocking experience
in his life came. Dostoevsky joined a men’s cultural club called Petrushevsky. They were
a group of liberal intellectuals. Very critical of the ruling family and the Tsarist regime. The important thing is
that they were all arrested and handcuffed and he was sentenced to death, but this execution was just
a play to torture them psychologically, meaning they were not executed because at the last moment, with the gun pointed
at the men’s heads, an envoy from the Tsar came and cancelled the death sentence. Dostoevsky wrote to his brother
hours after the sentence was cancelled: “I faced death for three-quarters of an hour. Today I lived with this
thought in my head. I was a hair’s breadth from death, and now here I am living again. I was born again
in a different form. Because of this incident, anxiety and depression haunted men throughout
their lives. Now you are telling me that they cancelled the death sentence. He returned home and lived in a coma and a sleep. No,
my friend, he was sentenced to four years in a Siberian prison among murderers, thieves, and psychopaths. He lived
the worst experience a person can go through there. The important thing is that after the four years were over and he was released from
prison, he fell into the gambling trap. He became a gambling addict, and in his letters to his wife, he described with all pain and regret how
he wasted his money on…” These moon tables in Waspad invented a system and actually tried it and
immediately won 1000 francs and the next day I got excited and deviated from the system and
immediately lost everything I owned and the man at the same time suffered from epilepsy all his life when he went
to parties or sat with people suddenly he would fall to the ground epileptic and this thing made him very sad
and disappointed in himself but also this experience the epileptic experiences he went through gave him a deep understanding
of the nature of consciousness how it can be present and not present at the same time clear or confused a blessing and a curse
in the same second and described it in his letters as an aura of ecstasy that merges with the highest structures
of life and since the character of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment was reflecting
Dostoevsky’s struggle with his conscience and his sense of guilt and the prince in the novel The Idiot embodies his vision of good in a
ruined world and in The Brothers Karamazov Ivan expresses his doubts about life so the man from the basement embodied
his dealing with the curse of consciousness
to be Conscious is a real disease, this was one of the first words he said and a summary of the
psychological state. In the book, Dostoevsky classifies people into two types. The first type is men of direct action,
or as the bull called it. He called it the bull because he is like an angry bull who rushes towards the wall
and breaks it. A person who is confident in himself and heads towards his goals, acts according to his instincts spontaneously and takes whatever
he wants without thinking. If there is a problem, he butts it and gets rid of it. He does not say why it happened like this. Is this
fair or not? Well, what are the consequences of this action? His affairs are simple and he does not complicate matters. He lives
happily and they describe him as stupid, and his stupidity gives him peace of mind and strength. As for the
second type, he is the conscious man, or as he called him the paralyzed mouse. Let us take an example so that we can
differentiate between them. If an argument or an argument occurs between the bull and his wife, he responds at the same time, or he
leaves the house or returns her to his family’s home. As for the mouse, after any simple argument, he sits and thinks for
three days and three nights, “Why did she say that?” “Okay, is she upset with me?” “Okay, will she make me a Kabsa tomorrow,
or will I order from a restaurant?” “Okay, wait a minute, maybe I was wrong?” “No, just a few seconds.” She is the one who shouted at me before. If
we notice, the bull got upset at the same time and quickly closed the subject. As for the mouse, the situation replayed in his head a million
times, and in the end he remained shaken. The mouse always blames himself, while the bull blames the world. The mouse
analyzes and is unable to sleep. As for the bull, his sleep is like the people of the cave.
In the second part of the novel, the hero meets a girl named Lisa, who works in a brothel. The important thing is
that as time passes in the novel He loves her and tries to help her and improve her life and get her out
of this bad job because it represented the last chance in his life to get out of
his loneliness, a wonderful human moment that almost uprooted both of them from the hell of life. So let's see how
excessive awareness ruined everything, oh Abu Abed, excessive awareness means it ruined relationships, even oh
man, may your home be ruined, the men of the basement began to doubt Lisa's intentions and to analyze every word she says and to wonder
about her true intentions. Does she really love me or does she pity me because I am a lonely man and my condition is a condition
and I am sick? Well, is she exploiting me to get out of her situation or is she really like me and enough?
How can she love someone like me? The thing is that when Lisa came to visit him at his house, he used to receive her
with these illnesses and their meeting turned from romantic moments to a philosophical lecture about the nature of…
Human relationships do not reach the point of argument, of course, that he transgresses against her verbally
because love, for him, scares him more than the current situation. Love requires giving up control
and trust, and these things he was unable to do because he is a rational and logical person, and this is one of
the requirements of awareness, that you be rational and logical, my friend. Rational thinking depends on logic,
evidence, and analysis, and its goal is for you to reach a real decision, even if it is against your desires.
They use it in science, philosophy, and these academic matters, meaning that emotional thinking
depends on momentary feelings. It does not care about truth and evidence as much as it cares about how
it makes us feel, and its goal is for you to satisfy your desires and instincts. In short, the emotional person: I feel,
so I decide. As for the rational person, I think, so I decide, too, but objectively. The basement man,
because of his sharp intelligence that makes him analyze every point and try to know the truth of all matters, starting from
the truth of death to the truth of Professor Lisa, and in the end she leaves and disappears from her life forever. We find him
writing in his diary, he has I wasted the only chance for happiness that fate gave me and I know
that very well. In another situation that the novel takes us to, the men were sitting in a cafe, hunkering down in the
darkest corner of the cafe, surrounded by people in the corridor to avoid people. After a few minutes of his sitting,
a tall officer entered through the door and stood in the middle of the corridor in front of the table of the basement man, our friend. Of course, he did not
notice what he was trying to do. He wanted to make the officer feel comfortable so he could walk and thrust his feet into him with all
the humiliation. He did not see anything. At that moment, time stopped in our friend’s mind and
he did not utter a single word because he was not bold. He thought rationally and saw that she was taller than him, so he decided not to do anything, but
his dignity was still hurt and he felt ashamed. He returned to his home that day and, as usual, found himself surrounded by questions.
Should I have responded or walked away and emerged as a respectable person? At that time, people would have applauded me. What’s this?
Okay, no, wait a minute. Was I supposed to take revenge with force and justly hit him, for example? Seconds is what
hurt me physically why would I hit him and after weeks of confronting himself and these circles of thinking
the situation returned and he devised a plan for revenge the plan was to hit him with his shoulder so he watched the officer and knew his routine
and memorized the times of his entry and exit from this cafe and indeed the day came when he confronted him in the street
and hit him with his shoulder and was very happy and at that time the officer looked and waited for him to give any reaction or look or even
a word and what happened the officer did not pay attention to him and from the beginning when he pushed his feet in the corridor there was no one around him
from the beginning and it was a spontaneous act and in the week after that he started writing in his memoirs and said I
realized today that the mind is not enough for victory over the world and that humiliation will eventually turn
into a prison inside the mind the paradox here is that today and after more than 150
years since the book was published we see that this curse of consciousness has become widespread but instead of
this dark basement where our friend was sitting we have begun to live in a digital basement in our cell phones how is it
Abu Abed our cell phones you what Something you're ramming into technology, man. I'm the biggest enemy
of technology. In every clip I sit and get angry and link all the scattered events that are gathered in it. Okay, but it's not
logical, Abu Abed. What is this old man's business? Abu Abed, you're the one who says that instant noodles cause
cancer. Right, man? Come on, take a look at the frightening statistics that say that more than
86% of adults constantly check their phones and 74% suffer from the pressure of having
to be online 24 hours a day. As for students, they check their phones every quarter of an hour.
New symptoms of the same old disease that we call today digital anxiety. It's the same curse of consciousness
that Dostoyevsky described. How many times have you spent hours analyzing a specific message or messages? Or trying
to interpret the tone of an emoji, man? The tone of an emoji can't be analyzed. Or, for example, you have the comparisons
that we make, like the man in the basement used to compare himself to others. Remember when he classified humans
into two types: mice and bulls? You see, he envied the bulls. These are envy in the novel, I will not show you
and say why I am not like them. These are the same comparisons that we make today on Instagram posts.
We see people traveling and beautiful people, luxurious maxi-dressing, ideal fathers and ideal families. As for
the monster that is bigger than all of them, it is the digital analytical paralysis that has led to our inability to make
decisions due to the abundance of information and analysis. Scientific research confirms that our human minds
are not designed to deal with this large amount of information that we see
today on social media. I will give you an example. When you go to order from a restaurant, you do not stay for 2000 hours
because of the abundance of restaurants, options and choices. Our exposure to these things changes the structure of our brains.
So my advice to you in the end is to practice sacred ignorance because sometimes not knowing is
much better. After this long journey that we talked about in the clip, I will ask you a bit of a personal question,
if you allow me, Abu Abed. I ask you, the love of my heart, my love. May God make you happy. Have you recognized
yourself in the character of the basement man? If this is the answer, then you are not alone, my friend
, and you are not sick. You are a conscious person in a complex world. In the past, consciousness was good. Aristotle would wake up
in the morning and contemplate a tree, a sun, a moon. Do you understand? He sleeps at night and writes for him, for example, two pages. Now
we have a huge amount of information and things that we see as very large, my brother. The human mind is not basically the same.
Designed for example, he sees calamities on a daily basis and more than one calamity. The human mind is designed to
see, Sheikh, a calamity every two years, for example. But now every day we see blue disasters. I don’t see
it frankly as a disease that must be treated, and from this talk, no, no. I see it as what distinguished
the scholars, thinkers, and great people who were recorded in history in the past, but now it has become a curse.
Thank you. Abu Abed 511 was with you. All my accounts are on the description. Like and subscribe to me,
and donate. What else do I want?
But my love, I will go. May God protect us.
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