To be human.

António Damásio is a renowned neurologist that researches emotions and their influence in the cognitive process. Contrary to popular notions, he argues that emotions do not get in the way of rational thinking; emotions are essential to rationality.

"For instance, people with damage to the ventro-medial part of the pre-frontal cortex (VMPFC) may be able to perform to a high level on most language and intelligence tests, but they display gross defects of planning, judgement and social appropriateness. Damásio’s group have shown that these defects in patients with VMPFC damage are caused by their inability to respond emotionally to the content of their thoughts."

The root of consciousness is a inner-directed attention." Damásio argues that consciousness is based upon an awareness of the ‘somatic’ milieu, and that awareness of inner states evolved because this enables us to use somatic states (ie. emotions) to ‘mark’, and thereby ‘evaluate’, external perceptual information."

"It seems that Damásio’s work stands at the very heart of our attempts to understand what it is to be distinctively human, and to be a human among other humans."

Depressive lucidity

Depressive lucidity, usually described as a radical withdrawal from ordinary human concerns, generally manifests itself by a profound indifference to things which are genuinely of minor interest. Thus it is possible to imagine a depressed lover, while the idea of a depressed patriot seems frankly inconceivable.

Houellebecq, Michel. Atomised. pag. 270. Vintage U.K., 2001.

Individual consciousness seemed to emerge among animals for no apparent reason

[...] As he did so, he realised that around the world, researchers were trapped in a senseless empiricism. Nothing in their experimental results brought them closer to a conclusion, nor did they provide support for any particular hypothesis. Individual consciousness seemed to emerge among animals for no apparent reason, and seemed largely to predate the capacity for language. Darwinians, with instinctive determinism, put forward hypotheses about how natural selection might have benefited from the emergence of consciousness, but these in no way explained anything; they were Just So stories, no more. Then again, the anthropogenic model was hardly more convincing: life had thrown up something which could contemplate it, a mind capable of understanding it, but so what? That in itself did not make understanding consciousness any easier. Self-consciousness, which is absent in nematodes, was clearly observable in inferior lizards like Lacerata agilis, implying the presence of both a central nervous system and something more. What that something was, remained completely mysterious; consciousness dod not seem to depend on any single thing, whether anatomical, biochemical or cellular. It was all rather pressing.

Houellebecq, Michel. Atomised. pag. ?. Vintage U.K., 2001.