This is the sense in which consciousness can be understood here as entrapment rather than triumph. The problem is not that awareness has no practical value. It has enormous practical value. It allows human beings to cooperate, communicate, invent, plan, build, remember, and transform their surroundings. The problem is that the same machinery can turn inward without limit. The mind can imagine its own death, then imagine the loss of those it loves, then imagine the future suffering that has...
When the last human observer disappears, the questions disappear with the observer. There will be no one left to decide whether the experiment succeeded. No one left to condemn the creator, if there was one. No one left to defend optimism or celebrate pessimism. No one left to maintain money, borders, religions, identities, institutions, or the stories through which human beings explained their lives. There will be no human meaning because there will be no human minds left to produce it
The most persistent story is the belief that the process is moving toward something. Human beings are remarkably willing to tolerate the present when the future is presented as compensation for it. Progress promises that the next generation will inherit something better. Work promises that effort will eventually be rewarded. Love promises that attachment will produce permanence. Religion promises that suffering will be repaid in another existence. Politics promises that collective action can...