Manas’s Reviews > The Selfish Gene > Status Update

Genetically speaking, your first cousin is equivalent to a great-grandchild.

Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself.*

...nothing actually 'wants' to evolve. Evolution is something that happens, willy-nilly, in spite of all the efforts of the replicators (and nowadays of the genes) to prevent it happening.