[literalAardvark]

One can do planning ahead without being conscious, it can all be rules based.

Our high level consciousness seems like more of a side-effect, and I subscribe to [*my interpretation of] Peter Watts' Blindsight and Echopraxia that it's evolutionary dead weight that will be outcompeted by better adapted rules based organisms, likely from within our midst (high functioning psychopaths as the first adaptation).

Life doesn't have time for our navel gazing, art, computer games, reproduction avoidance, etc. It's wasted biological potential.

I highly recommend the books btw, Blindsight is entertaining hard sci-fi that's actually used as undergrad course support.