Consciousness; A Quirk of Evolution?
It feels to me like human consciousness is just a quirk of evolution that is being played out as an experiment as all aspects of evolution are.
My recent hyper focuses have included dinosaurs, what came before dinosaurs, how life on earth evolved and it’s looped back to two frequented hyperfocus subjects, human evolution and what it means to be conscious.
From what I understand, life on earth can be dated back more than 3000 million years.
Complex life from fish up to complex pre dinosaur land animals existed from about 418-251 million years ago (mya)
That’s over 150 million years.
Dinosaurs lasted from around 251-65mya. That’s around 200 million years. Yet as far as we know none evolved the sort of conscious intelligence that we have.
While intelligence and consciousness may have helped them survive an asteroid, not having those things ensured they were hugely successful organisms that didn’t destroy their own ecosystem for 200 odd million years.
But for an asteroid they could still be going strong!
This marks out to me that intelligence and consciousness are not a good long term survival strategy, otherwise in that timeframe, why did nothing evolve it?
In the following 60 million years no other animal that we know of evolved conscious intelligence.
Again this is another long time period for evolution not to have as far as we know experimented with this combination of traits.
It evolved plenty of convergent kinds of eyes, limbs, teeth, myriad other things
The oldest hominid species we have found is about 4 million years old.
It’s only in the last 300 thousand years that Homo sapiens has existed.
So potentially it’s taken 4 million years at the outside guess for our species to become conscious and intelligent, out of 3000 million years of life on earth. All those myriad species that came before us and that we indeed now share the planet with did not take this evolutionary course.
Dinosaurs did very nicely for 200 odd million years without ever needing to evolve this survival mechanism.
Because that’s what it seems to me to be.
Hominids we’re small and vulnerable. Only the smartest survived, which led to us getting smarter.
Did intelligence come before consciousness?
I think so. Other animals are intelligent without having our level of consciousness. (As far as we know, maybe they’re just smarter about how they use it)
Consciousness meant an advantage in being able to imagine. To think about how to do things, to learn from past experience and predict what might happen in similar circumstances.
It allowed us to visualise things we couldn’t see, and language then allowed us to pass that on to others who had never seen something, giving them an advantage in future situations.
I think this quirk of evolution is starting to work itself out to its conclusion now in this modern age.
In fact I think it hit its high point somewhere just before civilisations started approximately 10,000-4000 years ago (depending on which theory you go for)
Why do I think this?
Because we seem to have traded some natural instinct for living in harmony with our environment for this inventive intelligence.
AndI don’t think our consciousness was equipped for it.
Why do I think this is important?
Because I think it’s why we’re struggling so much with our mental health and it seems to be an increasing problem. I also think it’s why we continue to destroy nature even though we know what we’re doing and what the consequences will be.
I think human consciousness wasn’t designed to be able to handle the world our intellect has created for us.
Without consciousness we would not have stories or art or many other wonderful things. We would not have been able to dream about what stars were made of, or even question what is consciousness. But also we wouldn’t suffer with our minds spinning out of control over past and future, over imagined events that never come to pass.
Emotions would be raw, but pure. Anger like a charging bull full of fury but then the moment is passed. Fear like a startled rabbit, who moments later returns to grazing.
Language would be simplified yet clearer! A birds repertoire of calls has clear meaning if little nuance! Warning, predator! Marking territory. Calling to attract a mate!
We dwell in our own minds, we get lost in them.
I feel that the evolutionary experiment that is consciousness makes the species Homo sapiens an evolutionary dead end.
There are other species that have found themselves using up resources beyond their means for other reasons and become extinct as a result. It is, in the end a natural process of evolution, to try everything and see what works.
Even trees did it! During the Carboniferous some trees out completed others by growing taller and having harder bark. This was great until they used up too much carbon in the atmosphere. Their hard bark meant dead trees of this species didn’t rot easily and release carbon back into the system. There was no way these trees were sustainable. They became extinct. I’m sure they took a bunch of other plants and animals with them. As we are doing.
But life recovered and continued. Trees still exist in different forms.
I believe we still have a chance, thanks to the double edged sword that is intelligence and consciousness.
If we can get back in touch with that connection with nature, which I believe lies in the true nature of consciousness, and use our intelligence once again for our survival we might have a chance.
I don’t know if consciousness is connected to something bigger in the universe.
I want to believe it is, but it could all just be a quirk of evolution.
Either way I think it will play a big part in our species survival… or demise.
My recent hyper focuses have included dinosaurs, what came before dinosaurs, how life on earth evolved and it’s looped back to two frequented hyperfocus subjects, human evolution and what it means to be conscious.
From what I understand, life on earth can be dated back more than 3000 million years.
Complex life from fish up to complex pre dinosaur land animals existed from about 418-251 million years ago (mya)
That’s over 150 million years.
Dinosaurs lasted from around 251-65mya. That’s around 200 million years. Yet as far as we know none evolved the sort of conscious intelligence that we have.
While intelligence and consciousness may have helped them survive an asteroid, not having those things ensured they were hugely successful organisms that didn’t destroy their own ecosystem for 200 odd million years.
But for an asteroid they could still be going strong!
This marks out to me that intelligence and consciousness are not a good long term survival strategy, otherwise in that timeframe, why did nothing evolve it?
In the following 60 million years no other animal that we know of evolved conscious intelligence.
Again this is another long time period for evolution not to have as far as we know experimented with this combination of traits.
It evolved plenty of convergent kinds of eyes, limbs, teeth, myriad other things
The oldest hominid species we have found is about 4 million years old.
It’s only in the last 300 thousand years that Homo sapiens has existed.
So potentially it’s taken 4 million years at the outside guess for our species to become conscious and intelligent, out of 3000 million years of life on earth. All those myriad species that came before us and that we indeed now share the planet with did not take this evolutionary course.
Dinosaurs did very nicely for 200 odd million years without ever needing to evolve this survival mechanism.
Because that’s what it seems to me to be.
Hominids we’re small and vulnerable. Only the smartest survived, which led to us getting smarter.
Did intelligence come before consciousness?
I think so. Other animals are intelligent without having our level of consciousness. (As far as we know, maybe they’re just smarter about how they use it)
Consciousness meant an advantage in being able to imagine. To think about how to do things, to learn from past experience and predict what might happen in similar circumstances.
It allowed us to visualise things we couldn’t see, and language then allowed us to pass that on to others who had never seen something, giving them an advantage in future situations.
I think this quirk of evolution is starting to work itself out to its conclusion now in this modern age.
In fact I think it hit its high point somewhere just before civilisations started approximately 10,000-4000 years ago (depending on which theory you go for)
Why do I think this?
Because we seem to have traded some natural instinct for living in harmony with our environment for this inventive intelligence.
AndI don’t think our consciousness was equipped for it.
Why do I think this is important?
Because I think it’s why we’re struggling so much with our mental health and it seems to be an increasing problem. I also think it’s why we continue to destroy nature even though we know what we’re doing and what the consequences will be.
I think human consciousness wasn’t designed to be able to handle the world our intellect has created for us.
Without consciousness we would not have stories or art or many other wonderful things. We would not have been able to dream about what stars were made of, or even question what is consciousness. But also we wouldn’t suffer with our minds spinning out of control over past and future, over imagined events that never come to pass.
Emotions would be raw, but pure. Anger like a charging bull full of fury but then the moment is passed. Fear like a startled rabbit, who moments later returns to grazing.
Language would be simplified yet clearer! A birds repertoire of calls has clear meaning if little nuance! Warning, predator! Marking territory. Calling to attract a mate!
We dwell in our own minds, we get lost in them.
I feel that the evolutionary experiment that is consciousness makes the species Homo sapiens an evolutionary dead end.
There are other species that have found themselves using up resources beyond their means for other reasons and become extinct as a result. It is, in the end a natural process of evolution, to try everything and see what works.
Even trees did it! During the Carboniferous some trees out completed others by growing taller and having harder bark. This was great until they used up too much carbon in the atmosphere. Their hard bark meant dead trees of this species didn’t rot easily and release carbon back into the system. There was no way these trees were sustainable. They became extinct. I’m sure they took a bunch of other plants and animals with them. As we are doing.
But life recovered and continued. Trees still exist in different forms.
I believe we still have a chance, thanks to the double edged sword that is intelligence and consciousness.
If we can get back in touch with that connection with nature, which I believe lies in the true nature of consciousness, and use our intelligence once again for our survival we might have a chance.
I don’t know if consciousness is connected to something bigger in the universe.
I want to believe it is, but it could all just be a quirk of evolution.
Either way I think it will play a big part in our species survival… or demise.