Define Consciousness

In some ways one could simplify that consciousness is considered a reaction, deliberate and potentially contrary to an appearant physical requirement or presence. To declare oneself by the detection of one's own existence for the purpose of relating the self to the experience of existence as a whole; "where am I amongst the living and all things". It may be considered, too, the ability to attempt to grow beyond current limitations measured by an idea of how things could be, a vision of improvement. Consciousness is an urge to react to the known and the unknown alike, relating it to a known and enabling choices beyond obligations. To become aware of obligations is yet another fragment of it as well as the ability to suspend them for reasons outside of reliable certainty.
Do we qualify ourselves based on existing circumstances or a mysterious best that we somehow know of, but can't represent at present time. Is this "best" defined by ourselves or merely suggested by others or circumstances? Are we allowed to make such definition based on our own conclusions and how does it differ from any direct outside instruction?
It is to be assumed that no other human being can truely detect or define the true nature of your personal best, which actual or percise field it pursues as long as your own history, your own upringing has been the product of permanent manipulation and necessary adaptions to environments or artificial demands that are contrary to your internal focus.
In some ways this train of thought gradually drifts towards a different kind of passivity that may well deprive us of the very foundation of consciousness. The moment we depart from our original path, we suspend our only real obligation to activate the power of our consciousness. It may lead us on a path away from the ideal achievement, be it a connection to or even the creation of the best that could possibly come from us.
A true education might merely consist of proper information in regards to the circumstances that are to be encountered as well as the best of knowledge about the path on how to master our environments and how to accept a useful symbiosis with the given as opposed to fighting it. Education should never represent a reduction or inexplicable limitation of relevant factors, but open up the potential of each being to make "conscious" decisions based on all known parameters as well as the exploration of those unknown.
Any willful manipulation of a being's development, introduced by arrogance and fear, can't lead to a result that finds proper judgement within such student without leading towards either an internal rebellion or a loss of will. Even while both those events are temporary in nature, they skew the true path and submit one to further distraction and ultimatively loss of sincere direction. The beginning of long struggles that we are all to familiar with.
We mold those "beneath" us into what we intent for them to be. Voluntarily or not, willingly or not, we deprive them of their fully revealed consciousness, yet, we still insist in its glory.
At the end, it's words, only words such as this. As if language had taken away from us the true understanding and we're wrestling our way back to it, quantized by the grammatic of communication. It appears to me that language had quickly deteriorated into the means of manipulation and oppression, rather than improving collaboration by means of synchronisation.
As a being is deprived of its true self-determination within the whole and as part of the whole, indoctrinated with a contrived purpose, it is forced into doubt and a permanent self-evaluation, detatching itself from the whole as it cannot find its place amongst life around it. In some ways one could simplify that at this point the being has lost consciousness.