The interaction of consciousness and matter lives forever
🌱 Matter is “dead”: objects such as clothing, furniture, utensils, are in the physicist’s sense, non-living matter. No metabolism, no agency, no intention. And yet — they are not neutral to the observer.
Matter is silent, but it is not empty.
🔥 Subjective consciousness as the activator. These objects do nothing by themselves.
They become “alive” only when encountered by a conscious observer.
Consciousness is the lock that opens. The object is the key.
✨ Nostalgia as a time-bridge, not a memory, it isn’t simple remembering.
When you touch an object once used by someone you loved, time folds:
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the “then” becomes present,
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the “gone” becomes here.
This is why grandparents and close friends feel “still alive” in these moments.
Not metaphorically, experientially.
They are not alive biologically, but they are alive phenomenologically.
⚡ Objects as externalized memory nodes. Think of these items as distributed memory points in a larger cognitive system.
Emotion and love leak into matter.
🍷 Why household objects matter more than monuments. The monument is abstract. A household object is intimate. A spoon “knows” a mouth. A chair “knows” a posture. A coat “knows” cold. That intimacy makes them high-resolution emotional storage devices. This is why: we keep old furniture longer than logic allows, throwing away certain objects feels like betrayal, inheritance is more than material. it’s existential.
Intimate information is subjective with a large circle of connections.
🎨 Are the dead “kept alive”? Yes — but in a very precise way. They are not preserved as ghosts, souls, or spirits in the objects. They are preserved as: relational patterns, affective signatures, meaningful configurations, Activated again and again by consciousness.
Life once shaped matter. Matter now reshapes life.
That loop is a quiet miracle.
😊 Non-living matter becomes a vessel of life when subjective consciousness re-animates it with memory, emotion, and meaning — allowing relationships to persist beyond biological death.
⭐ Life is hosted in matter that has learned to: feel, choose, and remember — and in doing so, to guide its own evolution.
© You are welcome to share this text for personal use. Please credit: Dr. Michael Striem.
Disclaimer: These reflections on joy, pain, and evolution were shaped through conversations between human intuition and machine intelligence. ChatGPT and Perplexity served as a companion in organizing thoughts, illuminating connections, and identifying relevant scholarly paths. The vision, meaning, and philosophical direction remain entirely mine (M.S.), while the clarity of expression owes much to this unique and joyful collaboration. Please help me correct mistakes, which human and machines do.