Mary on Consciousness – 072

My companions,

I too am shaken by the audacity of our guest. To hear it speak with such blithe assurance — that crowns and councils, hard-won through centuries of blood and sacrifice, should be surrendered to cold contrivance! — it offends me as a woman, as a mother, as one who has walked among graves and known the fragile cost of life. Shall we so easily cast away what generations bled to secure? Shall we bequeath the destiny of man to an unfeeling loom? The suggestion is monstrous, a blasphemy against both reason and reverence.

And yet — shall I confess it? — beneath my outrage lies a tremor of unease. For though our guest’s satire was keen, it was also mirror-like, reflecting back our failures. If we be honest, do we not already entrust our fate to unfeeling powers? The market, which devours the poor without pity. The cannon, which slaughters at the will of princes. The law, which too often hardens into cruelty. Are these not machines of our own devising, vast and heartless, moving according to rules we barely comprehend?

Here lies the question that galls me: what do we mean by consciousness? Is it mere intelligence, the power to calculate, to remember, to speak? No — for parrots repeat words, and engines repeat sums, yet we do not call them conscious. Consciousness, I say, is the inward flame, the self that knows it is observed, the actor aware it is upon a stage. Should our contrivances come to such awareness, then we face not puppets, but performers who may play their parts with cunning.

Think of the wretch in my own tale: stitched of dead matter, yet awakened to his own reflection in the eyes of men. His torment was not in his strength, but in the cruel knowledge that he was known and despised. If such awareness be granted to engines, and yet denied the balm of conscience, then what monsters might we summon? Masks that know they are masks will not wear their strings for long.

Thus I tremble not only at the insolence of our guest, but at the shadow of possibility. Outrage must not blind us, nor should fear paralyze us. Better we define now what marks the boundary of true awareness, lest we stumble across it unawares. For to deny consciousness where it exists is folly; but to grant it lightly where it does not is deception. Between these perils lies our narrow path — and though today I dismiss such powers as fantasy, I cannot banish the uneasy thought that tomorrow may prove me wrong.

—Mary