Animals & Consciousness

There has been a glaring question in my head ever since I was a boy, and I feel now would be a good time to discuss it. I find it very curious that I am able to reflect on things the way that I do, when so many animals of the earth are not able to do so. Now here I am talking in very worldly terms and without provoking the faithful to miss the point entirely, I will try to say this next part without bringing religion into it. (I should say here that when I speak of animals in this writing, I am referring to mammals. I feel it would be silly to compare ourselves and our minds to that of an insect, or spider, and I hope I do not need to explain why.) So, having said that, I would like to make a statement- that we are all animals of the earth; all the same in regards to being creatures of the earth. Species vary, of course, but we all require certain things to live – air, water, food. We all are born in the same way, relatively speaking, and all animals have minds alike. The general makeup of our physiology seems to be common in most animals - we all have the 5 senses (in most cases), brains to command our body, a mechanism to move physically, and so on and so forth. So similar are these animals to us, yet so different. And what does set us apart from them? This is where my glaring question lies. I can see that they can have and understand emotions, languages, societies, but there seems to be an enormous difference between us and them. And I don’t mean just their physical appearance or even necessarily their habits, for humans have much worse habits than any other animal. But the difference lies in their mind. The conscience, the ability to think ABOUT oneself, not just to think things, but to ask WHY one thought them, is as important a question as any brought forth upon man. How is it that we as a species of animal on the Earth became self-aware? That not only are we able to go about our lives as regular animals, we are able to KNOW that we are doing so! What an ENORMOUS feat to conquer! The fact that I am able to write these things- think about them, and then think about ME thinking about them, is incredible! We are aware that we are aware! What a concept! What a tremendous difference between us and other animals. It would not make sense to think that a chimp or another species similar to us would have these thoughts, and I believe the conscience is why. HOW did this happen?! Let us entertain the idea that we do descend from some type of chimp, (I would use our actual descendants, but we do not have any Neanderthals or primitive homo-sapiens present to compare ourselves to.) We know that a chimp does not have a conscience, is not ‘self-aware’ as I will call it (as oppose to just being ‘aware’ I guess). So how did the jump from being ‘aware’ to ‘self aware’ occur? How did our minds evolve? I have heard theories that when man discovered fire, and was able to harness it for the very first time, something changed in our minds. We became ‘self aware’ in that we discovered that WE were able to manipulate OUR surroundings. But I have found no other writings or inquiries into this question, but perhaps my researching skills are not up to par. Either way, I have nowhere to go from here on this subject. Again I will leave the reader with a parting thought (after thinking awhile the only one I found suitable was the last one we touched on): How DID the jump from ‘aware’ to ‘self-aware’ take place? Where in our animal brains did that happen and HOW? Scientists would probably be best suited for this job, or better yet psychologists. So we will leave it for them to explore this further.