Treasure Conscious Life
Repeatedly in the history of Earth, intelligent life might have come to a dead end. . . . It is a miracle we survived. We can also conclude that although life may exist on other planets, conscious life may exist on only a tiny fraction of them. So we should treasure the consciousness that is found on Earth. It is the highest form of complexity known in the universe, and probably also the rarest.
. . . We take for granted that we are conscious, but we don’t understand the long, tortuous sequence of biological events that have transpired to make this possible. Psychologist Steven Pinker writes, “I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.”
(Present Time 193, October 2018)