Unfortunately, consciousness doesn't necessarily mean 'free' will. Humans are very susceptible to the models they grow in their brain, and to coercion based on our instinctive programming. Far too many believe they are making their own choices when they are actually making up reasons after acting on instinctual programming or conditioned habit. The simplest example is the candy bar bought in the checkout line. Nobody drives to the grocery store to buy that candy bar. They are doing something else and they pick up the candy bar on an impulse that is triggered by sophisticated techniques pushing multiple buttons. After they pay for it, they think they bought it because they 'wanted' it.

That's conscious action without effective agency, combined with self-deception and even a form of hypnosis by marketers (including time, attention and intention theft).

That's just for a candy bar (and the billions of dollars in the marketing industry telling us we are making 'choices').

Thousands of years of refinement of the same techniques have built religions, nations, oligarchies and university systems to exploit humanity's biggest weakness: our dreamland of consciousness: a model of the universe that we believe to be the real one, including a model of our self inserted at puberty and isolated from natural risks and responsibilities by civilization.