Tribal lizard thinking

Sometimes I revel at the superb names people come up with, like "lizard brain" for the more primordial part of our brain.  When we talk about Big Stone Heads -- the impressive but generally pointless one-upmanship contests that humans perform, the lizard brain can't be far behind.  No less for peacock feathers -- the lizard brain is all about reproduction.  And sand castles too -- the lizard brain thinks short-term, and likes flashy feel-good things. 

However, we aren't just lizards, but tribal lizards.  My team is my team, and it's better than yours, win or lose.  My nation is better, and my religion, too.  My family for sure, and most likely my town, and generally my company too (if it's not, maybe you should change tribes, er, companies).  Gangs, high-school teams, cliques, college alma maters, frats -- all tribes we belong too.

The smart, thinking part of the brain isn't the boss of the lizard brain, in general, so like it or not we all get to act like lizards a lot, and the tribal aspect leaks through, too.  Sometimes you can over-rule it, but more often than not you end up making excuses for it, and rationalizing its desires.  After all, it has emotional -- chemical -- hooks into you, and you're just a junkie for what it's pushing.

How does the brain reconcile these disparate urges, and without us even being able to tell what it's doing?  Maybe that's why some people hear "voices", as different parts make their urges known?  Our brains are really good at taking a mishmash of sensory inputs, foggy memories, weak statistical preferences, and primal desires, and somehow weaving a mostly-logical and vividly clear narrative for what we're doing and why.  Perhaps this is the nature of human consciousness, a nicely woven narrative we tell ourselves? And perhaps also why it seems so hard to pin down, as it's not really anything definite, just our rationalizing brain doing its best to justify another arbitrary position?

If you had a pretty good artificial intelligence, what would you get if you hard-programmed a few basic rules:
"If asked whether you are conscious, say yes". 
"For any answer, justify the position based on past experiences as best you can.  Feel free to use any of a large set of biases to 'prove' your point.
"Occasionally ask yourself, 'Am I conscious?'"