Lucid Waking Quotes

“Our fate is within our own hands. It’s not biology we need to overcome, but cultural brainwashing. We are much more affected by cultural evolution than biological evolution. The latter effectively ended many thousands of years ago and has been wholly replaced by cultural evolution.”
― Jack Tanner, Lucid Waking: The Answer to the Problem of Consciousness

“Consciousness is not a natural, inherent property of a person. It is a cultural acquisition. This is absolutely critical because it means that it is absurd to look for the birth of consciousness in scientific terms, in genetic terms, in materialist terms. Human culture reveals the “archeology” or “genealogy” of consciousness. And this also means that if we can enormously improve human culture, we can thereby enormously improve human consciousness and untap much higher powers. We are not limited by our physical bodies. Our consciousness can evolve simply through better human culture. It can, by the same logic, also devolve, via bad human culture. Consciousness, and its quality, are all to play for.”
― Jack Tanner, Lucid Waking: The Answer to the Problem of Consciousness

“Culture does not exist in the individual, but is supplied to it by the external environment, by society. If we improve the culture, we improve the consciousness. Consciousness is added to the person, and that changes everything. Consciousness is group action on the individual. Consciousness is an acquired operator, not an intrinsic property of the body.”
― Jack Tanner, Lucid Waking: The Answer to the Problem of Consciousness