I recently did a bit of thinking about the relation between consciousness and evolution and how both of them are certainly the main causes of the human self-importance syndrome, or a necessary bias towards what favors us. I got this idea from this TED talk, which is very well worth taking 15 minutes to listen to for it is a very good lesson in humility.
We all pride ourselves of being conscious creatures. It is what seems to differentiate us the most from other animals and is pretty much the only advantage we have over them; a human without his intelligence is defenseless against nature and certainly near the bottom end of the food chain. Some may think this mental capacity was a gift of some higher being but this is entirely debatable and completely biased since as sole owners of consciousness, we find ourselves incapable of making an objective statement about it. If it wasn’t the case, then anything could claim consciousness but thanks to reason and logic, we know the answer cannot come from us but from observation so we should try adopting an outsider’s perspective if we wish to find a reasonable explanation.
If we look in other living beings to find an explanation for consciousness, we will undoubtedly be let down because we are again the sole creature that seem to possess it. However, humans have not been constant in time and have only existed as such for a very short while, which means there must be a point in our biological history where we or our ancestors acquired this trait through evolution; between you and me, it makes a lot of sense to be conscious. While it has been a blessing of nature in terms of providing us with a definitive intellectual advantage against other species, it has also, by definition, tricked us into thinking we are different and unique when consciousness is most likely just another trait acquired trough natural selection like gills or lungs.
Consciousness has given us the notion of individuality as beings, this is well known, but I would postulate that it has duped us into compromising our very own existence just for the sake of perpetrating this impression of individuality. Individuality as we all conceive it is inevitably tied to Others as explained by Existentialism; with consciousness being the mechanism enabling the separation between ouselves and others. In other words, this sentiment of individuality, subsequent to us being conscious agents, can then only occur trough interaction with others we can relate to in terms of mental capacities and apperance. We see them as equal to us and capable of filling the role of Others. However, when we compare ourselves with other living organisms, we find it very hard to consider them as equivalents because they lack so many of the aforementionned characteristics, thereby limiting individuality and all it implies (equality, free-will, rights, etc.) to the human race.
Considering all that is not us as a separate class (amplified by our mastering of nature and increasing intelligence) can only lead to a sentiment of self-importance ( the human self-importance syndrome) and incidently the unconscious realization of the destructive but evolutionary advantage of consciousness. It might be our doom as blinded by egocentrism, we fail to see the impact we have on this environment we rely on. Nature will get rid of us in no time if we fail to adapt to the consequences of our own intellect and greed; just like the people that used to inhabit Easter Island.
Once this simple principle is accepted, it becomes a lot easier to reason racism, the invention of theories that like intelligent design (based by a gross misunderstanding of complexity), geocentrism, but also the need for the scientific method and why more primitive communities tend not to be so disrespectful to nature. Consciousness, both from an evolutionary and human point of view, is mainly exacerbated favoritism; favoritism for oneself and then for our own kind. That feeling of specialness is consciousness and so is the difficulty most of us have of accepting theories or facts that do not favor us while inventing some that do.