Contextual Consciousness

What does it mean to be conscious of context, and what effect does this have?

Basically contextual consciousness could be described as; holding the perspective of greater context by being aware of how specific factors in any given situation interact and affect larger circumstances. 

The minimum requirement to be conscious is to access memories of a factor's interaction with another factor, as I summarized in a blog post from 5 yrs ago :Conscious Comprehension. But to be contextually conscious, involves being aware of many factors and their interactions which comprise any context. 

Situational awareness would be 1 very common type of contextual consciousness, which refers to paying attention and keeping in consideration the scenario which someone is in. Being aware of the situation is a broad spectrum form of consciousness, since the individual has to be aware of many factors regarding their circumstances, and how those factors interact with each other, as well as affect themselves. The quantity and variety of factors involved in most situations, and the complexity of the interactions make situational awareness more broad, as well as difficult to keep in mind, but often very useful. This awareness helps more accurately understand how their actions will affect other aspects, and how other factors will affect them themself.

For eg, someone could be situationally aware that they are in the circumstances of an office work meeting. So they are conscious of the presence of others in the meeting, and the hierarchy of interaction of those others and themselves, as well as conscious of the purpose of the meeting of sharing certain information relative to the business. Being aware of this situation benefits the individual to act appropriately and share effective information when it's relevant. 

Contextual awareness can go beyond situational awareness though, since there can be many contexts outside of an individual's direct and current circumstances. Using the previous eg, to go beyond the direct current situation, the individual could also be conscious of; how the actions of the business are affecting their city long-term, or how their own career is going in relation to the job they are doing, or how technology developments of that business will affect people years into the future, etc. 

Context can also apply to something completely unrelated and irrelevant to the individual that is being conscious. For example, someone could watch a video of 2 people getting in a fist fight in another country. They can be conscious of the context of those 2 people and why they are fighting. Or someone could be conscious of a new discovery of a planet light years away, and the context of where that planet is in relation to its star and galaxy. 

Overall, contextual consciousness is so widely applicable that it can be used to be aware of how virtually anything is affected by anything relative to it. In a way it is applying the concept of being conscious of something, twice. Being conscious of how something interacts with something else, but also being conscious of how that interaction and those factors interact with other factors within the circumstances. 

To try to understand how contextual consciousness works, is to be contextually conscious of contextual consciousness.