The Curse of Consciousness

Self-Awareness Comes at a Cost

Sometimes it’s better not to know.

Is consciousness — generally considered to be a crowning achievement of our species — a good thing? The answer is not at as obvious as it seems.

01 Consciousness, though innately and deeply experienced, is notoriously difficult to define. One popular description characterizes consciousness as “the feeling of what happens”, which is both profound and meaningless. Another states that consciousness is the understanding of “what it’s like” to be something, which doesn’t do any better.

02 A more comprehensive definition of consciousness might be the following: A conscious entity is one which, at least periodically, has (1) some level of awareness of its basic existential situation as a discrete individual “thing”, separate and apart from its surrounding environment and other physical objects encountered therein; and (2) an internal frame of reference (a subjective viewpoint) that fosters the creation of self-serving interests or objectives capable of being advanced or thwarted.

03 Regardless of what consciousness is, exactly, it is commonly believed to be a quality possessed only by human beings, to the exclusion of all other living (and non-living) things. This is convenient, given how humans run roughshod over the Earth, ravaging their fellow planetary inhabitants in every way imaginable. Better to suppose that the untold billions of voiceless creatures we routinely abuse, slaughter, and drive to extinction (in addition to the horrors they inflict upon each other) are incapable of fully experiencing their plight, than to contemplate the uncomfortable alternative. Yet like most reassuring anthropocentric assumptions, this is probably false, as mounting scientific evidence suggests that, at a minimum, many non-human animals behave “as if” they perceive themselves as independent actors in their environments and are able to infer the mental states of other creatures, including us.

04 Here it should be understood that consciousness is not an all-or-nothing proposition — there are varying degrees of consciousness. Certain “higher” animals like whales, elephants, and crows, to name just a few, very likely have at least some consciousness, though perhaps not the full breadth of consciousness that humans possess. Moreover, far less neurologically advanced creatures like fish, mice, and ants might have a glimmer of consciousness flickering inside their tiny brains. One cannot completely rule out the possibility that even plants or quasi-living entities like viruses possess a vital disposition that, if not consciousness itself, approximates or is akin to consciousness. It may, indeed, be “like” something to be a willow tree, or COVID-19.

05 It also should be borne in mind that a conscious being doesn’t have to be fully or even partially conscious all the time. Maintaining consciousness is energy-intensive, so it is dimmed, or shut off completely, during sleep. This means that humans spend roughly a third of their lives experiencing no more consciousness than a paper clip. There are also certain situations in which consciousness is detrimental to our well-being, prompting our brains to abruptly terminate it, such as when we’re in a state of extreme pain, heat, asphyxiation, fright, or shock. On occasion, we also intentionally dull or suspend our supposedly coveted consciousness via the use of alcohol, drugs, anesthesia, or hypnotism, for palliative or recreational reasons.

06 If one accepts Darwinian evolutionary theory, consciousness arose for the same reason that any trait develops — not for its own, intrinsic value, because it would be a great quality for an organism to have, but because it offers a competitive advantage. A conscious creature can think and reason more abstractly, and more effectively, by conceptualizing itself as an individual, motivated actor in a dangerous world. It can reflect on its past experience and project its present state into the future, along an unbroken continuum, to make more intelligent choices about what actions to take and to refrain from taking, thereby maximizing its chances of survival. To that extent, consciousness has considerable benefits.

07 However, there is a significant tradeoff — a dangerous side-effect. The more consciousness a being has, the greater understanding it obtains of its true condition, including its limitations, its vulnerabilities, and, most devastatingly, its mortality. It comes to realize that, no matter what it does, it’s going to suffer, and, ultimately, it’s going to die. This is a huge problem for humans, and, most likely, humans alone. In the parlance of modern technology, it’s a bug, not a feature. It creates a kind of pre-coded psychological crisis. Even a highly intelligent, socially-integrated animal like a dolphin or a chimpanzee (probably) never has to wonder why it should continue to struggle to go on living if it’s just going to die in the end and utterly cease to exist. Your pet dog, along with every other non-human creature on Earth, believes — if it can believe anything at all — that it’s going to live forever, right up to its final breath. Only we know the awful truth.

08 Arguably, humans are burdened with too much consciousness — more than we could ever bear if we didn’t find a way to deal with the destabilizing overdose of self-awareness that it produces. Without some kind of jury-rigged solution, some kind of mental software patch, the entire human race would soon go completely insane and extinguish itself, thereby de-selecting excessive consciousness as a viable biological attribute and sparing future life forms our unique misery.

09 So how do people go on? Well, some don’t, obviously, as suicide statistics attest. But most employ a combination of denial, delusion, and distraction.

10 Denial involves simply refusing to believe that you’re actually going to die. This may sound absurd, but some people are able to do it, assisted by the impossibility of conceptualizing their own nonexistence (see Article 1). People utilizing this technique recognize that other people die, but they’re convinced that, somehow, it won’t happen to them. Here the idea of a medical or technological breakthrough that stops or reverses natural aging and prevents the onset of terminal disease has great currency (never mind that, at some point, murder, suicide, or accidental death would eventually kill you anyway). But for the most part, people in denial don’t ruminate on how they’ll survive; they just assume that they will.

11 Delusion is largely engendered by a religious, spiritual, or secular belief in an afterlife. Much could be said about this, but in the present context its application is self-evident: we will die, yes, but only to live again, in some other fashion. Of course, human consciousness encompasses much more than consciousness of our mortality, making us keenly aware of a great many other unpleasant and regrettable aspects of life. So delusion is most effective when it not only holds out hope of life after death, but also explains away hardship and suffering as being part of some divine or cosmic plan that we can’t be conscious of, because it lies beyond our human understanding.

12 Distraction may be the most pervasive coping strategy, particularly in the West. People suppress or dilute their existential dread by diving deeply into the meaningless minutiae of their lives, frenetically engaging in almost constant activity, “multitasking”, scurrying about — anything to avoid quiet, solitary moments of reflection that might lead to grim realizations they’re desperately trying to avoid. People diligently strive for things and aspire to things; build things, create things, and experience things, all in a relentless effort to busy themselves enough to not notice that they’re forever pushing against the tide; that things are falling apart and breaking down all around them; that they themselves are inexorably marching toward their own unheroic demise (see Article 5). They think they can soften the final blow by “leaving something behind” — an enduring legacy in the form of a thriving family, a successful business, a storied career. They find solace in the conviction that they will be remembered long after they’re gone, for their accomplishments, their creations, their big, full, laudable lives, despite the bitter reality that within a century’s time there will be no one alive who knew them and the entire earthly record of their existence will gradually fade into obscurity, until finally disappearing altogether.

13 This leads to a fourth “D” — despair, the most appropriate emotional response felt by the most fully conscious human beings, who are unable to avoid seeing things as they really are.