You can write ‘I have a brain,’ yet you cannot say whether ‘I’ IS your brain or is somehow IN your brain or even caused BY your brain. Although your education has taught you the correct manner of forming sentences, your ability to comprehend the product of your action is lacking. An intricate network of muscles allows your hand to write ‘I am real’; but to wholly contemplate the implications of such a statement – or whether you can even accurately claim such a thing – demands more. Somehow a physical organ composed of neurons and chemicals produces the intangible state of what scientists refer to as your consciousness.

When you consult your friend’s psychology textbook, it warns you that as you read about consciousness, you are much more likely to become increasingly perplexed rather than increasingly enlightened. Nonetheless it still attempts to enlighten you, positing a generally agreed upon psychological definition of consciousness consisting of inner qualitative states and awareness.

Your humanities education denies you the rigid logic of such scientists. By your knowledge, simply being able to engage in mental states is not enough; you learned the meaning and process of consciousness from Hegel: “Self-consciousness if faced by another self-consciousness; it has come out of itself. This has a two-fold significance: First, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as another being; secondly, in doing so, it has superseded the other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its own self.” In order for YOUR humanities-influenced consciousness to be achieved, an already-recognised Other has to recognise you – and you must be aware of the Other’s recognition of you. Your own definition of consciousness renders you enslaved. Until you find another being to recognise you, you are enshackled by ignorance.

You stare fixedly at the psychology textbook, thoughts congesting your ability to think. This object is attempting to grant you consciousness – liberation. The object has a maker, a master, an author.

The cornerstone of the Hegelian Master-Slave Dialectic (Hegel perhaps intended for his dynamic to hold true for human subjects exclusively. However, the application of his analysis to you and that psychology textbook does not violate this… as it is still your HUMAN consciousness that is at stake here) holds that the two beings in question must “recognise themselves as mutually recognising one another.” That textbook does not have your mother’s eyes that beam when you surprise her with flowers on your old porch or your boss’ subtle eye-roll when you ask for your well-deserved bonus. But the writing itself is very aware of you, you in the form of its audience. The preface states the author’s perceived need for a textbook that depicts “in a compelling and readable manner the science of psychology.”

The author knows you. He knows you hate dry prosaic writing. He knows you’ll glance at the textbook every three seconds, guilty because at times your apathy violently overpowers your desire for knowledge. You are not starved for the information the book offers. Thus, the author’s diction is carefully deliberated for an audience more childlike than academic. For example, “The road gets slippery when we try to pinpoint exactly what is meant by learning. You may think you know what the term means, but however you attempt to define it, I guarantee that I can find someone willing to debate you.” This author doesn’t just know you; he owns you. He directly addresses you. And you will imbibe his words more fully than if he were addressing you as his equal. He owns you, but does not enslave you, rather placing himself fantastically above you, alienating and infantilising his potentially intellectual readers.On a superficial level, he gives you consciousness (or rather the illusion of consciousness). He tells you that in just reading his very words, you are exercising rational activity; en vivo proof that you are conscious.

You close your eyes, disgusted. That is not consciousness. But you begrudgingly admit that despite the infantile nature of these attempts, he DID grant you consciousness. Not by giving you something en vivo to read, but by presupposing his audience and recognising you. Once you became aware of the author’s condescending style of writing, you achieved Hegelian consciousness.

The book was the Master and you were the Slave. You smile at the WERE. You are proud of having inverted the inherent power structure and having become a Master in your own right. Your education has fed you freedom, but you remain famished. You hear of Frantz Fanon and are captivated by the promise of his writing. With Hegel’s notion of the mutual dependence of recognition between Master and Slave in mind, you begin reading Fanon until your consciousness is threatened: “I hope I have shown that here the master differs basically from the master described by Hegel. For Hegel there is no reciprocity; here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work.” You recall your encounter with the psychology textbook. You recall every encounter you’ve had with every kind of book. You were in a position lacking power, lacking knowledge, and had relied on the book to recognise YOU – its audience – for your own consciousness. Your Hegelian consciousness collapses on itself as you realise the book itself never needed YOU to validate or legitimate it. You fall into despair. You have never had a relationship of reciprocity with any books – or even any people. Your spouse objectifies you, it feels, simply by being attracted to your body. Your mother sees you as nothing more than a physical manifestation of her accomplishments. And now that you’ve begun to see the world this way, you cannot stop.

Your mind is bound. Not by your education, but by your very existence. Your assigned scholarly reading cannot break those chains; it only allows you to become aware of them. Regardless of the work you read, your mind exists to be ordered. By forming your thoughts into words, you are directly colonising your own mind. It is an inevitable trap. You are both the Master and Slave of your consciousness, and your education serves to provide relief from the chaos of imagination. It feels, then, that the knowledge of the LIMITS of your knowledge is all that can liberate you. That is, the only freedom you CAN attain comes not from the annihilation of your chains, but rather, the awareness of them. This renders freedom more as a state of mind than a physical condition. All you are afforded is the choice of what shackles constrain you: cast-iron Western canon, bronzed psychological principles, golden delusions of love. So you choose, unafraid. Your entire life has prepared you to accept a harsh truth.

You must drag on in these chains; they are what ground your reality.