In his view, consciousness is an evolutionary misstep best corrected by voluntary extinction. His central problem with consciousness is not unlike the one of language that Fish identifies in Milton: it can’t actually do its job. Just as language transgresses against God by asserting itself, consciousness exists in constant and anxious opposition to the knowledge of its own inevitable death. To be conscious of one’s existence is to have all of the biological impulses for survival common to life but to be aware that these impulses are doomed.
