I will not be surprised if someone ever produces evidence that human consciousness is actually the result of something very like a disease process… Or, parasitism. I don’t hold out a lot of optimism for the idea that “people” are merely supercharged apes. There’s something else going on, although I would not want to even try to predict what it is, based on the evidence we have so far. The discovery that the cellular mitochondria which power much of our biology are actually captured and re-purposed bacteria…? Suggestive, in the extreme. One wonders what we will learn in the future, about ourselves. Who knows what’s lurking in the background of our genome and biology?