As I've slowly gotten my brain back from the addiction I kicked, I've been using it more and more. As odd as it may sound, thinking is kind of a novelty for me right now. So is the enjoyment of activities simply for the sake of enjoying them.

Before, when I was getting my kicks with morphine, you could have thrown sand in my eyes, and I probably wouldn't have even flinched. I was disconnected from the world. Disconnected from the world in the same way Paris Hilton is disconnected from her virginity (which is to say: very).

I spent most of my early years growing up in Portland, Oregon, and, like any other healthy childling who has spent most of his life in one place, I was sick of it. Portland has many merits, but it didn't matter. It was too familiar, and that made it dull.

I fixed that problem by taking off for London, and then for continental Europe. Went to school over there, traveled around, took trains through the most beautiful mountains and valleys I've ever seen, woke up in strange places, was spoken to in strange languages, and ate some strange salmon (it was in a can and had the consistency of butter - I lived on it for a while because it was cheap and easy to smear on bread for a nice salmon-butter sandwich).

When I finally came back to Portland, my family met me at the airport, stuffed me in a car, and drove me home.

Although the city hadn't gone through any major structural changes while I was gone, it looked completely different to me from the city I had left. The town looked brighter, the streets looked smaller, the leaves on the trees looked greener, and I probably looked surprised.

The time away gave me the perspective to be able to see what was good about a town from which I previously wanted to escape.

The time away from my head, then, that I experienced during my little junkie phase gave me the perspective to be able to see what was good about the mind from which I previously wanted to escape.

I'm making a mess of my condo. The place is littered with books, magazines, DVDs, video games, and everything else I didn't take the time to enjoy while loaded.

One thing I've been digging is a radio show I found while browsing Audible called "To the Best of Our Knowledge." It plays on NPR, and it's a deeply satisfying way to spend an hour.

It's an odd thing. It isn't a news program, nor is it a traditional talk show.

It runs twice a week (from what I can tell), and each show has a theme. The theme is then explored in conversation between the show's hosts and various guests. The conversations happen one at a time, and are then edited together to form a sort of debate. The guests are arguing with each other, but they don't know it.

I haven't been able to figure out what the show's bias is. The conversations sometimes sway far to the left, and then sometimes far to the right. They bring on scientists, philosophers, personalities, theologians, and whoever else might contribute something interesting to the mix.

For the most part, I love it. A typical talk show reveals its bias very quickly. Think Rush Limbaugh. You know whose side he's on.

This one's different.

The one gripe I have is that, in the shows based around philosophical, scientific, or religious themes, there's an alarming lack of critical thinking. An atheist will make a point, and the host will argue the point. Soon after, a theologian will make a grandiose claim about The Fabric of the Cosmos without any supporting arguments and the host will just reply with an "Oh, that's lovely" (or whatever). In the end, I'm afraid it leaves listeners with an unbalanced viewpoint. It feels like most of the supernatural based ideas win out over the scientific, but do so thanks to the show's editing rather than the strength of the cases made by each side.

One of the episodes I listened to this week was on the subject of consciousness. It might be one of the toughest subjects out there - and I mean it. It's such a bizarre thing, and we have so little knowledge with which to attempt to explain it that it's hard not to sound like a bunch of teenagers smoking pot around a campfire and talking about the possibility that "we all might just be living inside, like, a giant's toenail. Hey, man... don't eat all the Doritos." If you've never been one of those teens around the campfire, the discussions I'm talking about here are the late night entirely fabricated theories about the nature of reality, or some other similar subject that's obviously so simple that it could be tackled and solved by a handful of kids who have temporarily pulled the ground out from beneath their IQs.

I was shocked at how the subject of consciousness was treated on this show. I expect a lot of conjecture and ambiguity around such a topic, but the things they chose to air... yeah. It worried me.

While there was some rational talk, such as Daniel Dennett's comment that the problem of consciousness is wrapped up in "lots of puzzles" but "not many mysteries," the bulk of the show wasn't quite so sensible.

The show began with this question: "Does the mind have an independent existence apart from the brain?"

This question was followed with: "Come to think of it, is there any way to answer that question?"

The subject of consciousness is some heavy stuff, but it seems pretty simple when you throw a couple short questions at it.

So, what came back?

I'll write a follow-up post this weekend in which I deliver some of the insanity from the people on the show.

I'm doing this in a follow-up rather than one gigantic post for two (2) reasons:

1. To enjoy my writing, your attention span must be taller than this post.

2. To give you all the opportunity to play armchair philosopher with the two questions. It's what I'm going to do in the next post. I love playing armchair philosopher, and I think I'm really good at it. I manage to be pretentious and offensive in nearly equal parts whenever I share my inner thinkage.

Tah for now.