RE: virus: Consciousness

Dan Plante (dplante@home.com)
Thu, 13 May 1999 01:50:34 -0700

At 06:43 AM 11/05/99 -0700, Richard Brodie wrote:

>"conscious of" implies that you have access to it in daily life and can
>therefore gain power from its use. "knowing about" means you could pass a
>test, which is useful in only limited application.

I would suggest that "understanding" the interpersonal dynamics in such situations is even more to the point, affording greater personal power than simply being "concious" of, or even "knowing" about it, since understanding is an emergent state gained through reflecting on knowledge, as knowledge is an emergent state gained through reflecting on that which we are concious of. On the other hand, "being wise" to the ruse really trumps them all, since wisdom is the emergent state gained through reflecting on what is understood, which in turn is a level-3 kind of thing. After all, what is level-3 except a profound level of wisdom put to the task of personal happiness (or, as in this case, avoiding unhappiness)?

>In message <3737B175.F9E28446@c-realm.com>, KMO <kmo@c-realm.com> writes
>>Being
>>CONSCIOUS of human psychology and the methods compliance professionals use
>to
>>exploit it
>>gives you access to a range of defensive strategies which are not
>available to
>>someone
>>who is unconscious of the psychological/social dynamics that are in play.
>
>Why are "conscious of" and "unconscious of" better than "knowing about"
>and "ignorant of"? Because to me, bringing consciousness into this is
>just causing confusion. There are certainly parallels and connections
>between consciousness on one hand and education/intelligence on the
>other, but they are NOT the same thing!
>--
>Robin
>

Dan