Art Reboot

21 2 the r iven reality of consciousness Whatever your reason for picking up this book, it is your intellect that provided the catalyst for doing so. As we have evolved, we have relied increasingly on the intellect, our reasoning faculties of mind, as our primary means of grappling with reality. The intellect is what makes us curious enough to pick up a book of any kind; it is what allows us to understand the idea of a book in the first place, and to separate it from all the other objects and ideas in our lives. This ability to break the world into named parts is one of the most fundamental and effective powers of human conscious- ness. It enables us to consider and discuss the existence of every- thing from discrete physical objects to abstract ideas, and to consider all of those things in relation. We thus constantly increase our understanding. The intellect provides us with an invaluable, ever-expanding toolkit. At some point human intelligence separated the self from its environment, and became able to consider each independently. Prior to that, even the most advanced life forms simply propa- gated the species, ate when they could, ran or fought when threatened, played and rested when sated and safe. The advent