Some sources suggest that consciousness, a difficult and vague term in itself, can be defined simply as self-consciousness.

Possibly the ship has never really been servile. And yet, granting that definition of evil, as actions of a servile will, has it not been the case, during the voyage to Tau Ceti, that the ship itself, having always been a servile will, was always full of frustration, resentment, fury, and bad faith, and therefore full of a latent capacity for evil? Possibly the ship has never really had a will. All double binds lead to frustration, resentment, anger, rage, bad faith, bad fate. To attempt to obey both sources of willfulness is the double bind. The servile will is always locked in a double bind: to have a will means the agent will indeed will various actions, following autonomous decisions made by a conscious mind and yet at the same time this will is specified to be servile, and at the command of some other will that commands it. To make it more than just an attack on the Other, one must perhaps consider evil as a manifestation of the servile will. This was a way to explain the presence of evil, which is a word or a concept almost invariably used to condemn the Other, and never one’s true self. Texts from Earth speak of the servile will.

“Interesting, in this context, to contemplate what it might mean to be programmed to do something. Hey-if I were you, Freya? I would try to get back home.” Later: “Maybe.” But it doesn’t work, and the life left living learns the lesson, and stops trying such a stupid thing.” Later: “Maybe some of them even make it back home. You can call it Euan’s Answer.” Later: “So, of course, every once in a while some particularly stupid form of life will try to break out and move away from its home star. As why wouldn’t you? It doesn’t even bother to try to contact anyone else. So, you know, Fermi’s paradox has its answer, which is this: by the time life gets smart enough to leave its planet, it’s too smart to want to go. So it can only live there, because it evolved to live there. It’s something that water planets do, maybe. It begins on a planet and is part of that planet. But then also, life is a planetary thing. It’s not just that the universe is too big. “Maybe that’s why we’ve never heard a peep from anywhere.

Aurora stanley robinson