What is consciousness? The Merriam-Webster defines it as “Awake and able to understand what is happening around you; aware of something (such as fact or feeling); knowing that something exists or is happening; known or felt by yourself.” In short, it is the human ability to be aware of any circumstance. It is easy to pass consciousness off as something that just exists, however, it was an ability that we (humans) developed through our Earthly experiences and our evolution and not the common misconception that it has always been, gifted to us by a divine entity.
First, it is imperative to discuss the connection between consciousness and human experience. When we as humans experience something traumatizing, anything associated with the traumatizing incident will now be represented in a negative fashion. It is called “disassociation” and can be directly related to consciousness. For instance consider the following hypothetical: A person becomes obtusely ill one morning after eating an orange. From that moment on, there will be an association with oranges because it will remind the person of becoming ill. This is an example of experienced consciousness because the person was aware of the circumstance. The person ingested an orange and became sick. This will not rule the same for others who may associate positively with oranges. The point here is the state of consciousness suggested had to be developed. It was not present until after the experience, thus highlighting the existence of different forms or levels of consciousness.
Next is the evolution process and its connection with consciousness. To begin, it is fairly common knowledge that simple creatures (cats, insects, bacteria) do not have consciousness. Moving on, at one point humans once existed in a primitive state. In this state, they were no more aware than cats are today. They went off of their instincts. They were not actually aware or conscious of their situation. As time moved forward, the variants of humans with higher-functioning brains survived all the way up to today, a day in which all humans possess this phenomena known as consciousness. It is a tool for survival. It helps us to find problems in situations and fix them. We are in a constant state of awareness as compared to our instinct-driven feline counterparts.
It is a common belief in theology that we gained consciousness from a god after we began to know shame through the eating of the forbidden fruit. This idea is faulty for many reasons. First off, it is difficult to justify an argument based on already unproven grounds. That is the actual existence of these two people and the circumstance they found themselves in. Second of all, one could go as far as to relate my first contention to the matter. Say the instance did occur—who is to say that Eve’s was not caused by situational consciousness? The legend has it the serpent that persuaded Eve to consume the fruit was beautiful. Also, it seemed knowledgeable. So perhaps she associated the action of consuming the fruit with the beauty and knowledge of the serpent. This would suggest consciousness existed, just in a lesser form even before Eve consumed the fruit.
