Consciousness is still the most contentious subject at the present. There are researchers who actually cherish an open hatred against consciousness because they feel the idea interferes with their belief that the world is decidedly nothing but a material construct. However, they forget that without them being endowed with awareness they could not be conscious of the fact that there is such a thing as matter. One of these protesters wrote that it was quite easy to imagine a world having developed without consciousness to arrive at what it is now. He, like all such students of the world, forgot that one cannot imagine anything at all without the presence of consciousness. He, like all his fellow students, are like the group of men who, after crossing a dangerous river wanted to make sure if everyone had crossed the waters safely. They all counted the number of the members of the group and found to their horror that there were only nine members who made it safely across. Panic struck them and they all mourned the loss of the tenth man.
It is actually quite surprising how easily one can forget the 10th man, the centre of attention. Equally easy it is to follow others blindly instead of with open eyes and original thought. A typical instance of such ‘blindness’ is our willingness to accept the perspective of others. A typical example is the belief that there is such a thing as an objective point of view, with everybody accepting this faulty perspective, not realising that a report is done by a subject and that, to boot, objects have no point of view.
The quotes (op. cit. in the main text are from the book entitled ‘The Secret Life of Plants” by Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird.