thoughts

By the way. Welcome to thoughts.com
Cheers George.

Hi. a room full of people is possibly one of the loneliest places for many people. It is lonely because in many cases the people in the room do not share a consciousness close to yours. This means you are probably in the wrong room so to speak. Find the room that you belong in. I studied evolution passionately for many years and found that if I was in a group of mainstream people, religious people or those with no objective understanding of the topic I felt alone and vulnerable but in company with same or similar minded people I was comfortable and confident. Don’t think it is your fault to feel alone but at the same time don’t blame others, just search out people that you share a mind set with-not an easy thing to do but achievable.

There is only consciousness and it is collective. When we die a small increment of what the human race sees as real dies with us but the world and all it means to us lives on in the minds of those that are left. When we all die, all life that is, (not just humans), there is nothing real any more as consciousness is the only reallity.

Genes may be as you say firmware but their expression is not necessarily. Remember the same set of identical genes expresses itself in thousands of ways and in the mind this also varies from second to second as neural connections vary so the recent studies on brain plasticity seems to imply. One does appear to become conscious when one wakes but that does not mean that consciousness is asleep while you are. You may have to elaborate on your description of yourself as I do not know what a “mastermind” is. And to say you are better educated than me or anyone else for that matter makes little if no sense. You don’t know how educated I am and if you did it is not conceivably possible to compare no matter yours or my academic credentials.

Consciousness is in my opinion a natural-selection favoured expression of the genes.
The bacterium response is as you say a action/reaction innate survival strategy-also favoured by natural selection. Therefore could quite easily be part of the beginnings for consciousness.
And yes I still do have a lot to learn, as do we all. But at the moment there is nobody to my knowledge that can supply a theory backed by objective research and hence offered as empirically falsifiable-and able to be tested as to what consciousness is and how it came to be.
I can only assume that you are better educated than I in evolutionary biology, psychology and philosophy. My credentials in these areas are at university level however not exceptional. Put it this way I do not have a Phd but am educated post graduate level.