The basic function of consciousness seems to be survival. This is the first track and role that evolution has played on the basic nature of the world. The basic origin of consciousness can be seen in simple one and two celled organism’s. They eat, and are eaten. This is a very simple process, whereby the function of consciousness, and the exercise of it’s intelligence, is used for what appears to be mere survival.
This basis is seen throughout the animal kingdom, however there have been a series of abnormalities, miracles that even science has a hard time explaining. Consciousness possibly in it’s beat for survival, has made altruistic decisions. The example of such decisions are represented by evolution. Somehow monocular organisms grew to be multicellular organisms. Teamwork trumped the idea of the individual ‘lone wolf’ cellular organisms.
Never more than now do we see examples of this in the world. Not only can we see this in ourselves, but we can even look back at evolutions trail, which a resident of planet earth is painfully obvious. We see the consciousness that didn’t evolve, that was too dumb to exercise it’s intelligence to make the leaps forward. We see crabs who’s (biological) intelligence is two weeks behind it’s environment.
Which leads us to the question of altruism. What is it? Well it is inherently present in evolution, as every leap has required some sort of giving up. It is the very notion of evolution, where monocellular organism gave up it’s independence for a greater existence, and life became increasingly complex based on the specialization of individual cells. Even our tiniest cells gave up being lots of things to be what they need to be to sustain our life!
We don’t need to focus simply on ourselves, insects as ancient as some of them are, have somehow learned teamwork as well. Every one of these gains we see consciousness function as intelligence. It is possible to observe mammals exhibit intelligence and the internet is full of altruistic video’s and stories of animals bonding, literally giving up their individualistic nature to share in a larger sort of brotherhood.
This I propose is the ultimate goal of consciousness. It is evident that the struggle to be altruistic is real. Looking at the whole evolution of intelligence, on it’s way to becoming human, who we are today, we can see millions of sidetracks. We also see consistent growth, and as far as we know consciousness is continually working to express the fullness and vastness of it’s intelligence. This is the truest function of consciousness. This is consciousness’s role, and ours as the highest intelligence we know. Some will cling to survival, as it is necessary for ant’s to live, and grass to grow, but the secret to consciousness is it’s own evolution. This is it’s function.
