We evolved. Life is all about satisfying yourself. There is no living creature that doesn't aim to satisfy itself, or their species would go extinct.

There are many things that seem to distinguish humans from animals, the ego and stuff.
But something I've not heard people talk about is the basic dissatisfaction in humanity.
Humans as a species are driven by an insatiable thirst for more.
I have food but I want spices, I have a hut but I want a stone house, I can walk on water and land why not air. I have an entire planet, so what? Give me the other planets too. And so forth.

I think every animal is fuelled by dissatisfaction in one sense or another, but lack the technology to over do it as much as humans have. I believe (but I could be wrong) that humans are one of the few species that lives in almost every environment, whether tundra or desert. In that sense, it’s probably true that humans are the most invasive of species in the history of the world.

Well, in theory at least, wouldn't absolute satisfaction admit absolute stasis? If dissatisfaction fuels the micro motivations (to get up off the couch and get a snack) just as it does the macro (to get up off the couch and get a life), then wouldn't the absence of any dissatisfaction - that is, absolute satisfaction - make any action extraneous and unnecessary?

If such a state were permitted of the micro-consciousness (of the individual?) by macro-consciousness (of the species?), wouldn't that run the risk the species collectively reaching (total?) extinction via (gestalt?) inertia?

Well consciousness is attention and attention is usually directed at attending a mental event which the autonomic mind could not deal with.
It's not so much dissatisfaction so much that there will always be issues to contend with. How long can a satisfied mind endure before it is taken advantage of or the ground falls from under it?

I like your use of "autonomic mind" here.

And this risk - of being taken advantage of, or of losing footing, so to speak - can be thought of as what warrants conscious activity qua attention? As the means of constantly re-rendering the constantly shifting environment, so as to keep said footing?

In terms of the psychic layering (consciousness as one of the components of the psyche?), I have trouble formulating a conception of it. One can argue that consciousness is the first, and hence least informed, line of defense, poised to process the stuff of exteriority that has not yet been processed and therefore needs to be accounted for (?). But one can also argue that consciousness is the last line of defense, to which the material (that the autonomic mind (?) does not already have some account of) is sent to be cognized and digested, so to speak, before being integrated (through habit?), into autonomy?

Or are both ways more or less rephrasing the same thing?

Bit of a ramble there, but hopefully what I was trying to say can shine through.

dissatisfaction is the essence of everything dude

As the means of constantly re-rendering the constantly shifting environment, so as to keep said footing? — Blurrosier

yes, just that.

Or are both ways more or less rephrasing the same thing? — Blurrosier

I'll be able to give a better answer to this soon. I'll make a note of this thread once I have more detail. But I'd say both of those are correct.
Its not a formalized algorithm where consciousness appears somewhere within the chain but something messy, as in all over the place. Which is what you would expect from something created by evolution.

I think every animal is fuelled by dissatisfaction in one sense or another, but lack the technology to over do it as much as humans have. — NOS4A2

They either lack the technology or the fostering environment. But yea, cyanobacteria would cover the whole universe if they could manage, which brings us very indirectly to the Fermi Paradox.

It seems to me that the "driving force" of consciousness would be mutations in earlier species that made it difficult to survive purely by unconscious/automatic reactions. The most rudimentary consciousness would appear at first as a fluke--something that is just a byproduct of particular materials, in particular structures, that undergo particular electrochemical processes, where it initially has no survival value, but it's not a significant survival detriment, either. But as mutations appear that make "automatic" survival difficult, it turned out that consciousness could help an animal survive long enough to procreate--so animals with enough conscious abilities to overcome the handicap of decreased automatic abilities are the ones that survived to procreate. That gives an opening for further mutations away from automatic survival, and it biases development of consciousness as a necessary crutch to survive non-automatically.