Song history written by TimelandIsWacky and Ashley

One of the big questions in philosophy is “where does consciousness come from?” In fact the question has gained the apt title of the “hard problem of consciousness” because it's that complicated. Philosophers have been split into various camps like materialism (that consciousness is a product of the brain) and dualism (that mental and physical are two separate entities with major differences). However, what if consciousness is something larger and everything in the world has some level of it? That is the theory of panpsychism. To be clear this doesn’t mean that a rock has complicated thoughts and feelings, but it does propose that it has some level of experience. Philosopher Philip Goff put it like this: “we have good reason to think that the conscious experiences a horse has are much less complex than those of a human being, and the experiences a chicken has are much less complex than those of a horse. As organisms become simpler perhaps at some point the light of consciousness suddenly switches off, with simpler organisms having no subjective experience at all. But it is also possible that the light of consciousness never switches off entirely, but rather fades as organic complexity reduces, through flies, insects, plants, amoeba, and bacteria.” Panpsychism, while being an enticing answer to a complex problem for various reasons, is heavily debated and has seen sharp criticism.
While King Gizzard has alluded to this concept in the past (“The Great Chain of Being” is about a rock with some sort of consciousness restructuring the titular hierarchy if we take it at face value), “Panpsych” explores the subject more thoroughly over a playful, woodwind-heavy instrumental. The song explains how our entire universe is interconnected through consciousness while describing the ways we can find peace and unity by getting closer to nature. While Stu and Ambrose start the song with an introduction of its premise, Lucas and Joey embody various forms of awareness across nature – from waves to blood – while also referencing “The Silver Cord” through the line “the dog on the freeway thinks it’s in control.” In the fourth verse of the song, Ambrose seems to allude to “The Silver Cord” through a Dungeons & Dragons reference. In the game there are only a few things that can sever a traveler’s silver cord – two of which are Astral Dreadnoughts and psychic winds found in the astral plane.