1 in 10^100,000,400,161 Reasons to Take Consciousness Seriously.

Let’s untangle the answer to the big question.  The one you’ve probably wondered about time and time again.  Is there existence after death?  Most scientists answer with a hard “No”, or, that life is "just random", citing no evidence existing to suggest otherwise.  This post takes this hard-lined answer on.  There is plenty of evidence - read on.    

If you are a scientist who confidently says there is nothing after death - that is… no continuation of awareness, no echo of consciousness - then I have a number I want you to look at until your brain folds in on itself like a collapsing star:

1 in 10^100,000,400,161

A number so large, there exists no name for it.  

That’s not just me, some random guy being poetic. That’s mathematics - a cold, calculated look at what it took for me to exist. For me - to exist right now, in this exact moment, typing this ‘idea’ - for you - who stumbled on here to read.  And since you are reading this, I will make the assumption that you too, are conscious and wondering if anything waits beyond death.

To be very clear, this post is not philosophy. Not even close.  It’s science - 100% undeniably so.  So that's a number 1.......then a comma.......then write the number 0........one hundred billion more times.  If math is truly the language of the universe (per Galileo), it seems clear to me it’s saying something important.  

The odds of your existence, 1 in 10^100,000,400,161, represents a number so vast that it doesn’t have a specific name in standard mathematical nomenclature.  For me, I'll call it the Odds Equation (separate post on here).  In mathematics, large numbers often get names up to a certain point, but beyond that, they’re described using exponential notation or specialized systems because naming every possible number becomes impractical. Here is a small and incomplete breakdown of that for a visual:
•  Common Named Numbers:
        •  Million: 10^6 (1,000,000).
        •  Billion: 10^9 (1,000,000,000).
        •  Trillion: 10^12 (1,000,000,000,000).
        •  Googol: 10^100 (a 1 with 100 zeros).
        • Googolplex: 10^10^100 (a 1 with a googol zeros, far larger than the atoms in the                          observable universe, ~10^80). 
•  This Number: 10^100,000,400,161 is a 1 followed by 100 billion zeroes, It’s exponentially larger than a googolplex. While a googol and googolplex have catchy names - numbers  beyond them, like this one, don’t have unique names because we use scientific notation (10^x) or descriptive phrases as they're more practical than inventing names.

The Cosmic Equation of You:

Below is a breakdown of that number - every step, every layer, every miracle stacked on top of the last; I’ll show you the math and I’ll also show you the sources. And I’ll even show you why “it’s just random” is a laughable answer when facing this kind of improbability.  

Step 1: The Fine-Tuning of the Universe

Odds: 1 in 10^120 (thats a 1, followed by 120 zeroes)
The Big Bang could have produced chaos, black holes, or nothing at all. But it didn’t. The physical constants - gravity, strong force, weak force, cosmological constant - are so precisely balanced that even a one-part-in-10^120 deviation would render the universe uninhabitable.

Source: Roger Penrose (The Road to Reality, 2004) estimates the odds of the initial entropy state of the universe allowing for life as 1 in 10^10^123. This number is a conservative version.

Comparison:

That’s like firing an arrow from one side of the universe and hitting a one-inch target on the other side—blindfolded.

Step 2: Formation of a Sun-like Star in a Habitable Zone - a ‘Goldilocks’ zone. 

Odds: 1 in 10^20

Of the ~10^22 stars in the observable universe, fewer than 1 in 10^11 are stable, G-type, second-generation stars like our Sun. And only a fraction of those are in the “galactic habitable zone,” far from gamma-ray bursts, black holes, or galactic centers.

Sources: NASA Exoplanet Archive; Lineweaver et al. (2004); Gonzalez (Galactic Habitable Zone theory)

Comparison:

More likely to win the Powerball and the Mega-Million every day of your life, than randomly land in this type of solar system.  Without even buying a ticket.  

Step 3: Earth with Just the Right Conditions

Odds: 1 in 10^15

Liquid water. Stable orbit. Tectonic plates. A stabilizing moon. A magnetic field to block solar radiation. Jupiter to deflect incoming asteroids. None of these are guaranteed - and together, they’re rare beyond belief.  There should be no argument. 

Sources: Rare Earth Hypothesis (Ward & Brownlee, 2000); Earth System Science criteria

Comparison:

Like rolling 15 dice and having them all land on 6. Then doing it again. And again.  For millions of years.  Can you hear the universe yet? 

Step 4: Abiogenesis - Life from Non - Life

Odds: 1 in 10^100

Somehow, in a primordial dishpan, non- living molecules assembled into self-replicating systems. Estimates vary wildly, but even optimistic scenarios like Jack Szostak’s still peg this as vanishingly rare. All on ‘it’s’ own.  Almost sounds... "impossible".  

Sources: Szostak (2007); Orgel (1973); Meyer (Signature in the Cell); Hoyle and Wickramasinghe

Comparison:

Like typing Shakespeare’s complete works by smashing on a keyboard randomly. And getting it right. On the first try.

Step 5: Evolution of Multicellular Life

Odds: 1 in 10^50

Life stayed single-celled for 3 billion years. Then oxygen levels rose, mitochondria appeared, and cells began cooperating. It only happened once that we know of; right here.  Feel that third eye tingle a little yet?  If not, you’re not thinking on purpose. 

Sources: Lane & Martin (2010, Nature); Knoll (2003); evolutionary contingency models

Comparison:

Like winning a cosmic slot machine where the odds of each spin are worse than the lifetime odds of being struck by lightning—ten times every day of your life.  

Step 6: Emergence of Homo Sapiens

Odds: 1 in 10^300

From fish to mammals, through asteroid impacts, ice ages, and genetic bottlenecks and crazy mutations, the evolutionary path that led to me and you took every lucky break imaginable.

Sources: Gould (“Wonderful Life”); Hominin Evolutionary Tree; Mass Extinction Survival Models

Comparison:

Imagine shuffling a deck of cards. Now do it until they come out in perfect order - a hundred times in a row.   Using your knees and not your hands.

Step 7: Your Exact Ancestral Lineage

Odds: 1 in 10^100,000,000,000
(that’s the number that introduces 100 billion zeros). 

Ten thousand generations of humans. Each one had to survive war, disease, injury, childbirth, starvation, weather, fires, heat, ice age.  Then reproduce. And actually SURVIVE.  Then repeat that - 10,000 times.  The odds of this exact lineage leading to you? Off the charts.  So bizarrely wild, that if you still deny the viability - you're just here to troll.  

Sources: Population Genetics Models; Pedigree Collapse Estimates; Conservative compounding survival odds per generation (1 in 1,000)

Comparison:

Imagine you flip a quarter in the air.  Now do it 100 billion times and land heads every single time.  Using your gluteus maximus to pick up and toss the coin.  

Step 8: Your Parents + Your Specific Conception

Odds: 1 in 10^76

The odds your parents met, connected, and conceived you (out of ~100 million sperm options per fertilization event). Only your sperm + egg combo produced you.  The other99, 999, 999 were *this* close to becoming a cosmic wonder. Incredible journey.  And if mom had a headache that night, or father worked late...  No you.  That's all it takes.  The lineage is so complex, one's head would explode just thinking of the variables that effect our trodden paths.  If you still can’t hear the universe, you’re a tenured and overconfident reductionist.  

Sources: Standard fertility biology; Sperm competition statistics; Dating pool math. 

Comparison:

Like throwing a grain of sand into the ocean and hitting a particular coral polyp… - on Mars.  Get it?  It's literally, IMPOSSIBLE.  

Step 9: Plant-Based Food Supply

Odds: 1 in 10^630

Tomatoes. Apples. Rice. Wheat. Bananas. Each of these crops had to evolve, be domesticated, survive pests, blights, droughts, fires, ice and be delivered to your mouth - from all that, to Winn Dixie. Multiply that across all of our species.  Without fertilizer, potted soil from Home Depot, pesticides, or Martha Stewart.  

Sources: Domestication bottlenecks (Diamond, 1997); Crop Evolutionary Timelines

Comparison:

More unlikely than hitting a bullseye on a dartboard you can’t see, from another continent.  The job of science isn’t to protect the syllabus - it’s to follow the data, even if it drags you kicking and screaming into wonder.   Curiosity vs. conformity.   

Step 10: Animal Food Supply

Odds: 1 in 10^315

Cows, pigs, chickens. They evolved, were domesticated, bred, and scaled up for farming without extinction or system collapse.  You know what they say....... just add sunlight, air and water - bing bang boom - just like that.  So easy, right? 

Sources: Zoonotic survival rates; Domestication studies; Livestock sustainability research

Comparison:

Roughly as likely as teaching a jellyfish to play piano.  In a weekend.   

Step 11: Functional Ecosystems

Odds: 1 in 10^155

Bees pollinate crops. Microbes fix nitrogen. Predators control pests. These systems are fragile - and without them, we die.  Science was meant to break paradigms. 

Sources: Pollination Dependence Studies (Klein et al., 2007); Soil Microbiome Research

Comparison:

More unlikely than balancing a pencil on its tip during an earthquake… in a Cat-5 hurricane.

Step 12: You, Right Now, Reflecting

Odds: 1 in 10^18

I haven't died in a car crash. You haven’t succumbed to disease. We have access to technology that provides us access to expand ourselves with knowledge and deeper meanings.  You chose this reflection though, right now, comprehending the complexity that is you. Riddle me that arXiv gearheads.  

Sources: Global mortality stats; Software availability estimates; Decision-tree modeling

Comparison:

If a monkey randomly typed characters, the odds of producing just one sentence of Shakespeare are astronomical.  Your existence is like that monkey typing the entire Library of Congress in order…- using no backspace key.

Final Total: 1 in 10^100,000,400,161

That’s a 1 followed by 100 billion zeros.  Just that 401,000 - is beyond comprehension.  Can you imagine - 100 BILLION zeroes.  IMPOSSIBLE ODDS.  

You couldn’t write this number out if every atom in the universe held a pen. If every atom in the universe had a keyboard and typed one character per Planck second for 13.8 billion years, You’d still have better odds of winning the lottery every day for a million years than producing the number 10^100,000,400,161 by chance. 

So Now Tell Me This:

If the universe went through all that to produce this moment - where one self-aware, language-using, tomato-eating human being can wonder about their own existence…

…how do you explain that consciousness just stops?  That makes zero sense.  And 0 is a long way off from 1 in 10^100,000,400,161.  

The following observations may sound provocative; however, I assure you they are scientifically grounded and I point them out to highlight the unfathomable complexity of life and matter - the kind of things that quietly mock the idea that everything “just happens” without deeper mystery. These aren’t anti-evolution points (evolution is real, I know), but they do expose how absurdly underexplained the deeper layers still are:

1. No scientist has ever seen the inner workings of an atom directly.
   They've fired particles at it, inferred its shape, mapped probabilities - but no one has ever seen the nucleus of an atom. It’s always a shadow of a shadow of a shadow.
2. No scientist has ever built a single blade of grass from raw atoms.
   You can 3D-print a plastic leaf. But try assembling carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sunlight into a self-replicating, photosynthesizing, water-balancing actual blade of grass. Still waiting.
3. No scientist has ever invented a new fundamental force.
   We’re stuck with four: gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. All explanations play with these - yet no one knows why they exist or where they come from.
4. No lab has ever created a self-aware consciousness from non-living material.
   We simulate it. We guess about it. But no one has turned dirt into a thinking “I.”
5. No physicist has isolated and bottled ‘life.’
   We can transplant cells, clone sheep, and grow tissue. But if you extract everything material from a living cell—what’s missing is still the most important part: whatever life actually is.
6. No experiment has ever replayed evolution with completely different inputs and gotten ‘life’ again.
   We say evolution is inevitable, but can’t duplicate it from scratch without cheating (like seeding with preexisting code—RNA, DNA, or amino acids).
7. No simulation has ever invented a new law of physics.
   Every model we run is limited by human assumptions. We call it “random,” but the randomness is rigged by our math. No model has ever surprised us with new physics—only nature does that.
8. No brain surgeon has ever located the exact switch that turns ‘you’ off.
   Cut enough, and awareness fades—but there is no single neuron marked: “Here lies the soul.”
9. No scientist has ever measured the total information content of a single human being. How many bits is your childhood? What’s the entropy of your conscience? We don’t even have the math to ask the question properly.
   
10. No biologist has ever created even a single working ribosome from scratch. These ancient nano-machines build every protein in your body - and we still don’t know how they built themselves the first time.
    
11. No one knows why quantum probabilities collapse into classical reality. The Copenhagen interpretation tells us what happens. Not why. Not how. Just “shut up and calculate.”
12. No cosmologist can explain why anything exists instead of nothing.  Multiverse? Vacuum fluctuation? Simulation? Philosophy in lab coats.
13. No neuroscientist has traced a single thought from origin to conclusion. Thoughts happen - but you can’t rewind one and say where it came from, step by step. Not even close.
14. No one has made a synthetic cell that can evolve. We can make protocells. We can get them to wiggle. But a self-replicating, mutating, adapting creature from lab-brewed goo? Not yet.
15. No evolutionary biologist has built a full animal from random mutations alone.  Computer models cheat. They assign goals. Nature didn’t. Show me randomness, unsteered, building a fin into a wing - without any selection pressure designed into the program.

And yet you think the most improbable thing of all - conscious awareness - vanishes without a trace?  You wouldn’t be here without it!  We wouldn't be talking about it, if it wasn't so.....clear.  It’s right in front of your nose. And in it, on it, left, right, up, down and nowhere to be found.  But it’s there. 

As non-submitted and non-published hypothesis' goes, this one is irrefutable; just as is the irreducible presence we all experience.  It’s not ‘faith’.  It’s not a hope or a prayer.  Not Wisdom Magazine fodder either.  It’s mathematics.  

Here it is:

The Conscious Emergence Improbability Argument (CEIA)

Claim: The emergence of a self-aware being, through stacked improbabilities exceeding a 1 in 10^100,000,400,161 chance, renders consciousness the single rarest event in the observable universe.

Given that, its nature - and its potential persistence - should not be dismissed, but studied with the same scientific reverence we apply to black holes, dark energy, and the quantum vacuum. The emergence of conscious observers—given the unfathomable improbabilities at every step from cosmic inception to present awareness—renders consciousness a statistical anomaly that defies physical reduction. The default scientific stance should be epistemic humility, not categorical dismissal. Consciousness may very well outlast physical death - not because of wishful thinking, but because its very presence is already the most statistically miraculous event in the known universe.

Final Word

I should not exist. But I do.  

And not just to eat, excrete, watch TV, or count dots in the night sky and die. I’m here to ask - why? And I’m not just surviving - I’m dreaming, wondering, remembering, grieving, questioning. All built from atoms no one can truly see. Atoms that still remain indestructible, each with enough energy to level Manhattan.  (There are approximately 44.5 quintillion atoms in a single grain of table salt).  Held together by rules no one fully understands.  We can't see them, but they are literally everything.  Just like our awareness is.  

This metaphorical number - this mathematical monstrosity - is not a coincidence. It’s not trivial. It’s not sentimental.

It’s the loudest evidence in the universe that something impossible already happened.    So maybe, just maybe - what happens next deserves more than a dismissive “nothing.”  Maybe, nobody gets to say it ends - when we still don’t understand how it began.  13.8 billion years ago. 

I’ll say it even plainer:

If the odds of you being here are 1 in 10^100,000,400,161,
then what comes next is no one’s call to make.

Still not convinced? 

Mind-Blowing Comparisons to Grasp the Scale
To make this resonate, let’s revisit the scale with some fresh comparisons:

​1.  A Single Perfect Moment in All Histories:
        •  Picture every possible history of the universe - every event, choice, or atom’s path. If each second since the Big Bang (4.35 x 10^17) had 10^100 possible outcomes, and you pick one specific history, the odds are ~10^100 x 10^17 = 10^117. Repeat this every millisecond for 100 trillion years (3.15 x 10^21 milliseconds), and you’re at 10^138. This number is billions of times larger.  Your existence is like picking the one perfect history where you happen, against odds so vast no word can capture it. It’s why you’re a miracle, not a math term.
2.  A Pinpoint in an Infinite Maze:
        • Imagine a maze with 10^100 rooms, and you must pick one specific room, blindfolded. Now, picture 10^80 mazes (one per atom in the universe), and you pick the right room in all of them. The odds are ~10^100 x 10^80 = 10^180. Repeat every day for a quadrillion years (3.65 x 10^17 days), and you’re at 10^197.  Our number laughs at this.  The odds are like navigating an infinite maze to find you, a pinpoint so precise no name can hold it. It’s the story of your life, not a number.

Still a resounding "No"?  Keep chasing those stars you'll never touch.  

*ADDENDUM*

I'd like to include one other alternative value for ancestry (Step 7).  Even if we use a conservative probability for our lineage—1 in 10^2,576 instead of 1 in 10^100,000,000,000—the odds of you existing are still astronomical. With 10,000 generations, each with a realistic ~1 in 10^4 chance of survival and specific mating (adjusted for shared ancestors), we get 10^2,576. Combine this with the other 11 steps (e.g., 10^120 for fine-tuning, 10^100 for abiogenesis), and the total odds soar to ~1 in 10^3,088.
That’s a 1 with 3,088 zeros—way bigger than a googolplex (1 with 10^100 zeros), as explained before, it's a number so vast it has no name in standard math. All of my original comparisons, like finding one grain of sand across every universe or typing the Library of Congress perfectly by chance, still hold 100 % true. A googolplex can’t even touch 10^3,088, yet our brains shrug it off, minimizing the cosmic miracle of your existence.

If curious:

•  Odds: 1 in 10^2,576
•  Calculation: 10,000 generations (~300,000 years, 30 years/generation). Per generation: ~1 in 10^2 survival (50% mortality, wars, disease); ~1 in 10^2 mate/offspring specificity (population ~10^4, genetic drift). Total per generation: 10^2 × 10^2 = 10^4. Over 10,000: (10^4)^10,000 = 10^(4 × 10,000) = 10^40,000. Adjust for pedigree collapse (shared ancestors, logarithmic scaling): ~10^2,576.
•  Source: Population genetics models; Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale (2004); historical mortality rates (e.g., 50% child mortality, UN demographic data).
•  Reasoning for Plausibility:
•  Grounded in Data: Uses empirical mortality rates (~50% survival to reproduction) and population estimates (~10^3-10^4 early humans). Mate choice odds reflect small, constrained populations.
•  Pedigree Collapse: Accounts for shared ancestors (e.g., most humans share ancestors within 3,000 years), reducing unique lineage odds. Logarithmic adjustment aligns with genetic studies (e.g., mitochondrial Eve models).
• Why Stronger: Supported by population genetics and demographic data, avoiding arbitrary large exponents. Realistic for human lineage tracing, making it scientifically defensible.
•  Contribution to Total: If used, Step 7 would contribute 10^2,576, leading to a total odds of ~10^3,088 across 12 steps (e.g., 10^120 + 10^20 + … + 10^2,576), which is far from  10^100,000,400,161.
Assumption 2: High Probability
•  Odds: 1 in 10^100,000,000,000
•  Calculation: 10,000 generations (~300,000 years, 30 years/generation). Per generation: ~1 in 10^10,000 survival/reproduction/mate/offspring specificity (extreme uniqueness, no pedigree collapse). Over 10,000: (10^10,000)^10,000 = 10^(10,000 × 10,000) = 10^100,000,000,000.
•  Source: Population genetics (conceptual framework); no direct empirical source for 10^10,000.  
•  Reasoning for Plausibility:
•  Conceptual Basis: Reflects the idea that each generation’s survival, specific mating, and exact offspring leading to our existing is highly improbable, compounded over 10,000 generations. The 10^10,000 exaggerates factors like mortality, mate choice, and genetic drift.
•  Contribution to Total: Drives the 10^100,000,400,161, as 10^100,000,000,000 dominates, with other steps (10^120, 10^630, etc.) adding 400,161 zeros.  *This is an early modeling estimate - a finalized model exists on this page under the "Odds Equation" post*.  

​So whichever you choose, you're beyond a miracle.  You can embrace it and thank those lucky stars, or deny it and take pictures of them.  All good stuff either way.  Lets try to figure this out.  

If you’re interested in consciousness studies, have you ever absorbed so much information, with no clear resolution, that you’ve wondered if it was a fool’s chase?  Does it ever feel as though it’s a niche science?  One reserved for gatekeepers to sell books and lectures over?  Sometimes studies that have no defining direction can seem like science, but when you really break it down to examine it’s architecture, you’re almost left with just boxes of junk that serve no purpose, but you just can’t seem to throw them out. 
 
I spend a great deal of my time observing and examining the ideas of what consciousness really is.  Scientists consume themselves with examining ideas of where consciousness really is.  Every now and then I find myself wandering the halls of my imagination and then stopping to realize that behind every door, is…..no answer. Then I sigh, and continue on, thinking, imagining, searching.  It’s like trying to find where Heaven is.  It’s similar to pouring over calculations to find how everything in the universe was packed into a point, or how things were prior to the human construct of a “Big Bang”.  We pick and choose what feels right to us, because there are no answers – just choices.  When it comes to consciousness, as humans we absorb materials to learn and seek and solve.  But maybe some things in life are not meant to be solved.  Not only are they not “meant”, but beyond our scope of understanding.  We can likely agree that the impossible is possible, simply by looking in the mirror.  But we cannot agree that it is possible to take a selfie in the core of the earth.  It’s the human paradox. I could write an equation that makes it sound plausible, but let’s keep ourselves grounded.  Being grounded is real.  Electricity proves that.   
 
But at the end of it all, if I was to stand on a stage with the greatest authority to exist in consciousness studies today, and that we are about to embrace death, that person and I would not be any farther ahead in an answer than the next person.  Maybe consciousness studies should be more about simply being in a state of observation while we can. 
 
To give a thought visual, I offer the following real life example from a recent workday:
 
By “trade” I am a police officer.  Not different.  Not unique.  Just aware.  I do not raise this point to provide an idea that my experiences are more unique than others, but it should be obvious to anyone mildly intelligent that my opportunities to observe and engage in all walks of life is likely more falsifiable than a parking lot attendant – or a CEO.  Please don’t overthink my reasoning for pointing out my daily work (Honestly, I didn’t know how else to introduce this example without giving a context).  I recently went to a simple call to standby in what is called a Department of Children and Families (DCF) watch.  This is where a parent has lost custody of a child and is provided a visitation.  If a biological parent is threatening with communications to DCF staff, they require a police officer to be present in the building in case a threat escalates to something higher.  Merely a precaution. 
 
In this case, the mother is a full fledged adult - 30's/40's.  If stereotypes are real to you – the visual description I will provide will speak for itself.  Tattoos from neck to toe.  Piercings.  Breasts hijacked via corset and spilling over.  Pants low, with thong and buttocks exposed, on her arrival - flying into the lot, explicit music cranked.  A documented history of drugs, alcohol, partying – all a central theme in this person’s life.  Very pleasant to speak with – but head first in a loop of debauchery and an extraordinarily wild need for attention.  After her visit, I came into the room after her child had left with his foster parents to wait for the DCF worker to come back.  I observed her as a human.  Ordinarily a loud mouth with an uncanny knack to say everything you should not say to a DCF worker – the noble ones tasked with keeping children safe.  For instance – announcing that any party that has no alcohol or drugs…?, well “where’s the fun in that”?  But I looked at her sitting on the couch, clutching her now melted slushy drink – and I noticed her eyes.  100% pure sadness.  You know the old saying – eyes are windows to the soul.  There may be truth in that.  A quiet stare into the abyss, as if looking at pieces of puzzle that she can’t understand how to put together.  The realization that she is surrounded by a system of rules that is also governed by persons with more intellect and societal normalism then she can neurologically match.  It’s a stare that isn’t straight ahead, and not down at the floor – it’s slightly angled and a body that remains relaxed and quiet.  I’ve seen it many many times – a complete deflation of her conscious core.  As a police officer (and parent), my stereotype suggests/requires that I detest her actions as a mother.  As a human, I also leak empathy.  But here's the fascinating thing - we completely match at this point.  Like a quantum entangled particle re-joining itself.  The only difference is that my costume means business and authority, hers means fun.  It is at that moment, where we take off our masks, and become exactly the same.  Two humans – orbiting and rocketing through space, not knowing why or what is going on, yet silent and reflective.   
 
Through the years, I have noticed when people are at this point; it’s a very delicate operation to keep them there if one intervenes, even with good intent.  The moment I restore my authoritative presence in their consciousness (i.e. hi there daydreamer, big mean cop is still here), they break the gaze, and their brain is signaled to go to the comfort zone.  So normally, I just stay quiet. And observe and feel.  
 
What I’m seeing in that look - the angled stare, the unmoored gaze - is probably as close as anyone gets to actually witnessing a person’s raw consciousness slip through the mask. There exists no posturing. No excuses. No drugs or bravado or fake laughter to cover it up. Just the flicker of recognition that they are the problem… and that they’re too far out to know how to solve it.
 
It’s a kind of trapped awareness. Not stupid in that moment. Not manipulative. Just painfully awake to the wreckage they’ve made of their lives and maybe for the first time understanding - not just intellectually, but existentially - that they won’t get out of it.
 
I’ve seen it so many times.  That same lost-ness. That same soft confusion at the edge of realization, where someone almost sees the structure of their own failure. But they don’t have the internal architecture to sustain the insight. They don’t know what to do with the puzzle pieces, so the moment passes, - or, I re-introduce my presence - and the loop resumes. Party girl. Sad girl. Angry girl. Tough girl. Back to square one.
 
And here I am. Not judging (even if I prioritize the child’s well-being). Not rescuing (even if I could). Just bearing witness. Just observing a soul flash for a second and then dim again.
 
There’s a quiet tragedy in that.  Not the kind of tragedy that makes headlines. But the kind that writes itself across a face - when someone suddenly realizes they’ve built a whole life out of fragments, and now there’s a child in the wreckage too.
 
In these moments, I see something real. Something most people never notice or don’t want to. It’s an observation - not in a lab, but in a real, raw, human environment.
 
So – I’m not critiquing consciousness studies out of cynicism or dismissal. But from a place of experience, soul-weariness, and unflinching truth.  I’m merely suggesting the idea that studying consciousness often feels like we’re just hoarding metaphors in a fireproof safe. Goff, Chalmers, Dennett, Penrose — they’re each trying to map a ghost with a ruler. And I’m here in the room with a woman whose entire conscious being is collapsing under the weight of her own limitations, while her child plays on the carpet like a potential future trying to outrun its own origin story.
 
It’s not a theory. It’s not panpsychism or emergent materialism. It is consciousness in the wild - tragic, unexamined, untheorized, and most of all, it is felt.
 
Earlier I had stated: “It’s like trying to study where heaven is.”
I fear that people read these books on consciousness hoping someone else solved it. It’s the modern version of scripture-seeking. We used to read the Psalms for comfort; now we read neuroscience abstracts and cross our fingers someone did the tough work and cracked the code.  But once again, I find myself wondering: maybe it’s not supposed to be solved.  Maybe it’s supposed to be witnessed.
 
That moment with that mother? That was consciousness research. Just not the kind anyone will write about in a cognitive science lab. That was anthropology, psychology, and spiritual hospice care all rolled into one.  There stood I, someone with a half-trained eye, a half-broken heart, and the ability to hold two truths at once: that she’s both trashy and tragic, stupid and sacred, a mother and a lost child herself.  And my cup of empathy; it runneth over for everyone involved. 
 
None of us as individuals should be experiments, we should not study them – I offer this typical day in my life because sometimes, we absorb them. That woman’s face is burned into my mental reel now. Same as everyone before her.  Same as I am burned into that little boy’s. These experiences we all have are more valuable than all the fMRI scans in the world. It is because I actually looked. And I remembered.
 
Consciousness might not be solvable. But I think observing consciousness is the closest thing to what it’s for; I’m not defining it, but bearing it.  I am merely laying bare what most people - even the smartest - are too scared or too invested to admit: that some things aren’t puzzles to be solved, but realities to be endured, observed, maybe even respected in their opacity.
 
As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoy and admire Philip Goff – author of Galileo’s Error – but I maintain that standing side by side at the edge of death – he knows no more than that broken and tattooed mother about what consciousness really is.  It is not possible to prove otherwise, because it’s true. Strip away the words, the theories, the fMRI scans, the symposia in Vienna and the tenured chairs and the YouTube lectures with clever titles… and none of them can tell me what that look in her eye meant. Or - what it meant when I recognized it.  They can only guess.  Not to take away someone’s achievements in their field of study, but we all have our own.  Doctors, Veterinarians, EMT’s, Nurses – etc.  Trades where observing person’s on life’s biggest roller coaster rides is on the daily.
 
And what I’m describing by stating I remain in silence when I observe that far away gaze – my quiet resignation - isn’t apathy. It’s my own version of earned clarity. In the words of character Lt. Col. Frank Slade in The Scent of a Woman – “I’ve been around, you know?”  I’ve certainly been around, seen too much, and I’ve tried too hard to still fall for fairy-tale thinking. I know hope is real, but not always relevant. I know potential exists, but it doesn’t mean it gets used. And I’ve learned that sometimes, stepping back is not heartless — it’s also self-preservation.
 
Maybe life just isn’t a problem. Because that’s the spiritual inverse of what science, religion, and politics all scream at us: “This is broken — fix it.”
But maybe it’s not broken. Or maybe it’s just beyond repair in certain ways, and not meant for fixing in others. Like a sunset, or grief, or the fact that we die.
 
And maybe — just maybe — the wisest thing a man can do is watch, remember, and not flinch.  So if consciousness isn’t solvable, and life isn’t a problem — then the question hasn’t changed - what do you think it is?  Or is it enough that it just is?  For many, too much time and effort has been spent in the chase and they will never walk away from it even if that was their own honest conclusion.
 
Doing so could be the beginning of something real. Something better than all the E-ticket rides and lectures combined.  Sometimes I feel I’ve reached a kind of summit - not the kind with fanfare or degrees - but the kind where I’ve seen enough to know (or feel/question) that most of this truly is scaffolding. Ornate, expensive scaffolding. Institutions hand out words like “understanding” and “truth” when what they often mean is “description” and “procedure.” But life? Life just is.
 
It doesn’t explain itself. It pulses. It breathes. It dies. It smiles at me from a child’s face in a DCF office, and it stares back in shattered recognition from a mother who never figured out how to be whole.  And scientists - the honest ones anyway - know this. They pretend less as they age. Feynman knew it. He said:
 
“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.”
 
But most people don’t live there comfortably. They chase degrees, tenure, speaking gigs, book deals – all labels for uncertainty. And I’m standing here in the thick of it all saying, “Maybe we should just accept it.”  Maybe that’s where anthropology comes back in — not the academic kind, but the existential kind. Not everyone needs a classroom.  Maybe the next move is just noticing with no goal. Being aware of how absurd, painful, beautiful, and unresolved all of this is - and learning to walk through it without needing to solve it or sell it.
 
There’s dignity in that.  Just silence. Watching. Listening. Breathing.
 
​Because maybe that’s enough.  And guess what, maybe I/you/we will be on that stage with a great thinker, and actually be closer to an actual answer than the respected and chosen authority.  

Part of being alive and conscious, is struggling with the inevitable sorrow and loss from death.  Despite a short stint in my own life as a funeral director, I don’t deal with death well at all.  Particularly with animals.  I just love my pets.  Of them all, I’m a cat guy.  I love cats.  Especially elder cats that need a forever home.  Back in 2015, I was lucky enough to get chosen by a big 20 pounder named Willy.  He was 10 years old and the only family he ever known gave him up after getting a kitten and he didn’t like it.  I only had him just shy of two years when he had heart failure and had to be put to sleep.  I did not handle it well at ALL.  I can chuckle now a bit at it, but for two solid weeks, I just could not collect myself.  The spaces in the home he once prowled were so empty and sad.  In life, I’d see him at the food bowl everyday, and now - just the sharp hum of silence.  After two weeks, I decided to just check local human societies just to see what was out there. 

I googled into my phone ‘humane societies near me’ – and I noticed one only about 10 miles away I had never heard of called the Lucy Mackenzie Humane Society.  I clicked on the page – it was a new modern building that housed all types of animals, including horses.  I clicked on adoptable cats – and as the page came unblurred into a clear image, the picture above was staring at me.  A 12 year old male named Willie (different spelling) who was up for adoption because his owner had died.  What were the odds?  An elder tabby, suffering from loss as well, with the same name (but spelled Willie)?   I grabbed my keys and took off.  15 minutes later, I strolled through the door at Lucy Mackenzie, and was greeted with the customary ‘How can we help you?”  I told the woman I was interested in meeting Willie.  She was happy to hear that, as even though he was super social and friendly, his age frightened most people off.  She told me he was in the big cat room, where there was probably 15 or so cats in.  Some nestled in a tower tunnel, some in the corners, some eating….and when I walked in, there was Willie, sitting on a very high stoop of steps that were drilled into the wall.  He looked at me, I said 'Hi Willie', and he came right down.  He had the loudest purr I’ve ever heard, and he was craving pats, smashing his big head up against me.  I sat down Indian style and he made himself right at home in my lap.  Other cats that were also social came over to see what's up, and Willie slashed his paws at them to stay away.  We picked each other I guess. 
 
I had 8 great years with Willie.  He was so loyal to me.  Same routines every day.  Always at my side.  When laying down, was always leaned into my chest, chillin like a villain.  It was like the universe (in poetic parlance), threw both Willie and I a lifeline at a time of tremendous sadness.  Willie, like me, had lost his owner to death and found himself alone.  As I later learned, Willie had been through loss prior to this last owner having adopted him - and later passing away.  He was originally a barn cat, and his first owner took care of him until that person's life came to an end.  Willie ended up at the Lucy Mac Center, where his second owner adopted him, and for the next 5 or so years, he was taken care of very well.  But then that owner passed, and Willie found himself once again at Lucy Mac, after having to get trapped because he was too scared and timid to catch outdoors.  He looked to have gotten in a few scrapes, as he had a large scar on his mouth and missing his top right canine tooth. 
 
Willie died on March 12, 2025.  I had no choice but to have him put down.  He had some type of cancer, but at 20, I wasn’t about to have him poked and prodded.  The vet agreed.  Willie hung on for 6 solid months, lost mostly all of his 18 pounds of weight, but still purred and looked lovingly at me right to the very end.  I had 6 months to prepare for the inevitable, and that helped some, but the emptiness, the sheer darkness of losing this furry guy was just beyond my operating system to handle.  Cry cry cry cry cry.  

Nothing new there.  So many of us go through this same scenario.  But Willie really hit me different.  How can something so special just be…..gone?  This got me thinking – what really ARE the odds of meeting Willy (or anyone really).  Probably so low, you could say it impossible.  But this page isn't for me to stir doldrums.  So let's break the weight and brevity of a death talk and equate the odds of our existence.  

*NOTE* I had originally had an equation in here for figuring the odds of our existence.  I have since updated it with new ideas for factoring and can be seen a couple of posts up - Titled: Of All the Gin Joints; There's You.  It's literally mind-blowing odds.  

Lets just say it 1 in 1 with 100 billion zeroes behind it.  

If you’ve landed on this page, there is a better than average chance you were looking for insights from the late Professor Michael Ruse.  I was a friend in distance to him, having shared the same name, and – for the most part – the same longing for finding the unanswerable.  My quest, unlike his, is non- academic, in the sense that he made a living out of it.  He was an author, lecturer, and grounded to the fundamental insights that come with a man of his ‘stature’. 

Me?  I’m just here.  I’m a lot of different things.  I do what I do because I’m lost at times.  Wait, before I continue, let me ease any sense you might be getting that I’m going to present myself as a chaser of the mystic.  I do no such thing.  I search for meaning in just about everything.  For me.  Not for ego; not for a pat on the back.  You see, I have but one mission in this poetic and maddening life.  To find the answer that no one, not even the greatest minds on earth, has been able to answer.  The question (in short):  Is there existence after "life"?  So, in essence it seems - that since we don’t have any scientific proof at all beyond the dimming of our neurons, we pick our poison while here, and try to find solitude and calming in a world packed with chaos, discontent, as well as beauty and wonder.  If you’re a healthy person, your view of the beauty and the chaos will be starkly different than someone who is wrestling with the question if they are quite ill or riddled with challenges that distort what it is we chase.  But what I try to do here on this page, is share my often quirky thoughts, for I am obsessed with the question, as so many others on earth now and in the past, and well into the future are.  There are subsets to the question as well, which is the question of purpose.  Then of course there is the question of consciousness.  These questions are often left to the professionals to deal with in the form of clergy, philosophers and that of physicists.  All entirely different animals.  Religion is the path that many people tip-toe on to find the answer if you’re blessed with faith.  If you don’t have faith, then you don’t have ‘your’ answer.  Philosophy is much the same – great overthinking and based on a desire for positive outcome.  That is….what feels good to us.  I encourage it all.  For physicists, it’s all about the peer review, the PHD and canonical rigor in terms of facts - more specifically - math. If you’re missing any one of those key ingredients, then you’re just being metaphorical.  For me, since I have no desire to chase a PHD down, I try to answer the question with what their hard work has provided on my own terms.  You really don’t need a PHD to think and calculate.   

In any event – most of my insatiable appetite in finding an answer in any form, is fueled by loss and sorrow.  If you’re planning on clicking through this page, and are too on a similar quest or question loss and why we are here – something in here may resonate.