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Conscience/ consciousness as a survival mechanism

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paigetheoracle
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13 Jan 2010, 2:54 am

Conscience is a survival mechanism - why have it if it is self-defeating? To be conscious, is to be aware and conscience is telling you what you're aware of plus how to deal with it. The less conscience you have, the less conscious you are and the more 'unknowingly' self-destructive your acts are within the bigger picture of existence. If we cannot understand the world, we cannot control it and if we cannot control it, we become a victim of our own failure to connect and work with it - dying as an individual and dying out as a civilization or race.



Sand
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13 Jan 2010, 3:37 am

paigetheoracle wrote:
Conscience is a survival mechanism - why have it if it is self-defeating? To be conscious, is to be aware and conscience is telling you what you're aware of plus how to deal with it. The less conscience you have, the less conscious you are and the more 'unknowingly' self-destructive your acts are within the bigger picture of existence. If we cannot understand the world, we cannot control it and if we cannot control it, we become a victim of our own failure to connect and work with it - dying as an individual and dying out as a civilization or race.


An interesting viewpoint as it extends consciousness all the way down to protozoa. Since studying them in biology with a microscope I have always felt some fellowship with them and it's nice to have it confirmed. None of them have ever indicated a motivation for self-destructiveness.



zer0netgain
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13 Jan 2010, 9:13 am

Maybe it's a "termination code" built into the DNA.

The more life can evolve to pose a threat to everything else, the more capable it becomes of self-destructing so as to spare the rest of the universe the trouble of putting up with them. 8)



Sand
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13 Jan 2010, 10:10 am

zer0netgain wrote:
Maybe it's a "termination code" built into the DNA.

The more life can evolve to pose a threat to everything else, the more capable it becomes of self-destructing so as to spare the rest of the universe the trouble of putting up with them. 8)


It is common biological knowledge that when a creature becomes so numerous as to radically affect its environment that various predators develop to nourish themselves on this burgeoning population. Or, alternately, the rapid increase so negatively affects the environment as to make the environment uninhabitable. So far, the predator has not appeared whether it be something hungry from outer space or a virus that is unstoppable or something now unimaginable. But logic indicates it will appear.