Lately i’ve been reading a lot of random philosophy stuff, consciousness, emergence, existentialism, critiques of modernity etc. Some Jung, Nietzsche, bits of Spinoza, also random discussions around emergence and process philosophy, and honestly i dont even know exactly where this thought came from anymore but i cant stop thinking about it.
I think maybe the strangest thing in the universe is not life itself but consciousness. Like the fact that matter, through completely blind physical processes, somehow became capable of realizing “i exist”.
People always say humans are part of nature too but I dont think we fully understand what that actually means. Because if thats true then consciousness itself is natural. Human thought is natural. Morality, abstraction, science, art, civilization, all of it. Not outside nature, but something nature itself eventually became.
And maybe thats the weirdest part.
Because nature spent billions of years evolving through balance, adaptation, limits, equilibrium etc. Everything correcting itself slowly over absurd amounts of time. Then somehow it produced something capable of accelerating beyond that rhythm entirely. A form of consciousness capable of remembering, accumulating knowledge, changing environments intentionally and continuously developing itself faster and faster.
Not even mainly talking about technology honestly, more the human mind itself. Technology just seems like an extension of consciousness.
And sometimes i wonder if this was such an insanely improbable thing that the moment it happened, the original natural equilibrium basically became unreachable forever. Like nature accidentally created something capable of moving further and further away from the balance that originally produced it.
Not in some “nature is conscious and angry” way, i dont mean that AT ALL. More like reality itself always tries to stabilize through limits, catastrophes, death, collapse, pressure etc, but consciousness keeps adapting faster than those corrections can actually stop it. Every limit becomes another thing to overcome.
And because of that it feels like eventually the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” might completely collapse. Like consciousness could reach a point where what we currently call nature no longer even exists in its original form because the universe produced something capable of going against its own previous limits.
Which honestly i dont even see as dark. If anything i think its beautiful. Terrifying too maybe, but beautiful.
Idk maybe im just rambling after reading too much shit lately lol, but are there philosophers/authors/traditions that touched ideas remotely similar to this? Especially regarding consciousness, emergence, nature, self transcendence or the collapse of natural equilibrium.
Would thinkers like Spinoza, Bergson, Jung, Whitehead or Teilhard de Chardin be relevant starting points here? Or am i completely misunderstanding those traditions?