…we could think, feel, will, and remember,
and we could also “act” in every sense of that word,
and yet none of all this would have to “enter our consciousness”.
The whole of life would be possible without,
as it were, seeing itself in a mirror.

Man… as the most endangered animal,
he needed help and protection,
he needed his peers,
he had to learn to express his distress
and to make himself understood;
and for all of this he needed ‘consciousness’,
that is to say, he needed to ‘know’,
himself what distressed him,
he needed to ‘know’ how he felt,
he needed to ‘know’ what he is thinking.

The sign-inventing man
is at the same time the human being
who becomes ever more keenly conscious of himself.
It was only as a social animal that man acquired consciousness of himself.

Fundamentally, all our actions
are altogether incomparably personal,
unique. and infinitely individual;
there is no doubt of that.
But as soon as we translate them
into consciousness
they no longer seem to be.

The world
of which we can become conscious
is only a surface and sign-world,
a world that is made common and meaner;
whatever becomes conscious
becomes by the same token shallow,
thin, relatively stupid, general, sign, herd signal;
all becoming conscious involves a great and thorough corruption,
falsification, reduction to superficialities and generalization.

We “know” or believe or imagine
just as much as may be useful
in the interests of the human herd, the species;
and even what is here called “utility”
is ultimately also a mere belief,
something imaginary,
and perhaps precisely
that most calamitous stupidity
of which we shall perish someday.

The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann aphorism 354

One of the enduring conundrums for philosophy, as well as for neuroscience is how to “explain” consciousness, that awakening of homo sapiens, a grasp of “self.” These lines are a lightning flash illuminating the social aspect of consciousness. Nietzsche points to the ramifications of our predicament as a language-enabled mammal. Becoming self-aware means mastery of understanding, of muscle memory of the tongue so that one can enlist the help of his/her fellows, and respond to their requests for aid. Words are containers for the minimally necessary information requisite to mirroring what the body indicates it needs, and minimally necessary for transmission and reception of what amounts to a mere surface state of things. Language by contrast to all that is always occurring is dumbed-down:

a shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general, sign, herd signal.

Nietzsche’s final thought suggests a scenario that describes the “Make America Great Again” stampede of allegiance to former President Donald Trump.