A rather astonishing piece of research if true: our consciousness is only a memory.

This research reminds me of Theodore Roethke’s descriptions of plants  and how vital growth is even while dying.  Read “The Florist’s Root Cellar”.

I have written about this research in a poem.

Cognitive Theft

Is reality
just a persistent memory?

Is reality
just a clever predictive algorithm,
more handy than true?

Is reality
a bubbling witches brew
filtered through
the unconscious as it rises up?

Is reality
the unconscious dream of the world
and the consciousness
a narrative.
a desire path?

We do not experience the world directly.

It is mediated over and over
in a game of tag
where our unconscious sense and memory
are always just a little bit ahead
and mediated by
our consciousness,
never ‘it’.