Jens Berges' blog part 12

Evolutionary consciousness

I live alone, in a very rural setting in Southeast Asia. I live alone, not because I could not find anybody who would want to live with me, but by choice.

I am in my seventies, and I have a severe lung condition. I will soon die. Probably alone.

That is also my choice. I do not want to be rushed to a hospital and saved.

I had a good life. I don't complain. But before long, I will have to say Good Bye to something that has been good, and, on a more limited scale, is good until now.

I feel sorry for myself. Other people who are about to die, and know it, probably also feel sorry for themselves. I do not know anybody who is enthusiastic about the fact that he or she is going to die. Enthusiastic, like what one feels when one is about to arrive at a destination after a long journey.

I assume that to feel sorry about one's upcoming death is the defining feature of our consciousness.

We are not logical. Reason makes us realize that all life is mostly suffering. We toil along, and face a serious risk of experiencing a horrible death. For what? When we are dead, it's all the same: long life, short life, or no life at all, never.

If we were logical, we would terminate our lives at the earliest convenience in a quick and painless manner: a high-caliber bullet through the head, an overdose of barbiturates or opiates, or asphyxiation by inhaling an inert gas.

But it is a salient feature of our consciousness to make us shy away from self-termination, except in extreme circumstances when we know that a much worse death is imminent anyway.

From an evolutionary perspective, this single aspect alone (the intention not to die, not right now anyway) turns consciousness into a survival advantage, for the individual, and for the species. Thus, when this kind of consciousness, which is directed towards death avoidance, first occurred during evolution, it was a trait that would not easily be lost again.

How far back in evolution?

When I look into the eyes of another person, and the other person into mine, it is always emotional. Direct eye contact feels like open doors to each other's consciousness. It can make us feel uncomfortable, so we often avoid it.

I look into the eyes of many small animals on a daily basis: roaming domesticated rabbits, feral cats, birds that make my home theirs, too, and other invaders like frogs, lizards, and snakes.

All these animals look into my eyes, including the tree snakes that regularly make into my quarters, the lizards, and the frogs. And what do I see?

Fear, usually. A request for food, in the case of rabbits. Curiosity, in the eyes of birds. And I always see consciousness.

You may say that I anthropomorphize primitive creatures. But I can tell you, I will never see anything in the eyes of dolls. Or in the eyes of dead animals.

Human consciousness is not fundamentally different from animal consciousness, and Darwin is on my side.

Consciousness certainly is a human trait. And like all other traits, it is a product of evolution which confers a clear competitive advantage. In the case of consciousness: death avoidance.

In evolution, complex achievements, such as the human eye, or the ability to use our hands to assemble watches, or, for that matter, death-avoidance consciousness, do not pop up as a sudden mutation in a single species.

These features evolve through diversification in millions of years.

And if consciousness is a complex trait brought about by evolution, it must be traceable downwards on the evolutionary ladder.

It cannot be a unique feature of humans. It must be present, maybe less sophisticated, but well-developed nevertheless, in all mammals, and, again less sophisticated, in birds, reptiles, and even amphibians.

Death-avoidance emotions are a central function of consciousness throughout all higher life forms (I am not going to speculate about worms, even though they do have death-avoidance behavior).

To summarize my observations, my consciousness is what makes me feel sorry about my not-so-distant death, even though, of course, my consciousness (in the form of knowledge) also makes me aware of the inevitability of death, and the futility of death-avoidance agitation.