Consciousness Was A Mistake

At the end of 2024 I read The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, by Thomas Ligotti. Not exactly a book brimming with Christmas Spirit, I fear. One of its central theses can be stated simply: consciousness was a mistake. For all the benefits the evolution of human consciousness has granted us, it is consciousness that makes horror and suffering possible. In fact it would best if no one ever lived to experience it.

In sharp contrast, I recently wrapped up Balance of the Heart, a book about early Christian monasticism in Egypt and the desert monks’ approach to spirituality. What I find interesting about the religious view of consciousness is its partial agreement with Ligotti. Human consciousness is something humans are endowed with by God, and that separates man from animal. Our thoughts are also the source of all sin, starting with the first act of disobedience described in Genesis. The gifts of consciousness and rationality are decidedly good, but human consciousness is noticeably imperfect.

I think in some ways our thoughts of God are an exercise in imagining a perfect consciousness. A consciousness that is completely free from ignorance or limitation. A consciousness that therefore never suffers. A consciousness that is therefore capable of perfect love.

Strategies for spiritual development appear to involve treating God in this way. In the Christian faith spiritual development means emulating Christ in our thoughts and actions, and turning to God when our spirit fails. God incarnate as Christ provides an example what human consciousness can accomplish. God themself symbolizes what may be possible for consciousness. Spiritual development is successfully using each to guide our actions.

There is also a somewhat parallel, secular version of this in the meta-ethical view called ideal observer theory. Ideal observer theory asks us to imagine a version of ourselves that is fully informed, impartial, calm, and reasonable. What is “good” for us is what this ideal observer would choose for us. This view of what is “good” similarly recognizes the gaps of human consciousness and asks us to use a more perfect consciousness as the standard by which to choose one act over another.

Consciousness undeniably feels like a mistake at times, and I think that this does explain in part the religious urge to describe human beings as “fallen”, or lesser beings made in the image of a perfect consciousness. We do concede the point that Ligotti and the pessimist philosophers he cites raise; something about our experience is off. It just so seems that one strategy to cope with this experience is to imagine a less uncanny consciousness and work every day to bridge the gap.