when life became Meta

It strikes me as humorous that humans expend such energy researching the human.

I think back to the dawn of consciousness. I imagine recognizing that I was recognizing.

The exploration of reality from that point has taken place in baby steps. Those baby steps have us now studying the mind in a sort of Meta Meta: we are now awkwardly aware of our existence.

With consciousness came an existential fear: we needed meaning and something after to appease our awareness of death (enter religion). Now, as consciousness itself becomes old news, we settle into a soft nihilism: a shrinking world begot relativity that bred atheism and a lack of significance.

What’s next?

Probably a swing back in the cycle.

We’ll move from an overly objective approach to existence to a romantic understanding of reality, from expansion to contentment, from science to religion, from constructing meaning to… well, constructing meaning.