[cardguy]

Just another thing I discussed at work today.

Julian Jaynes's strange book - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Origin-Conscious...0618057072

I first heard about this in one of Richard Dawkins's books. This is what he Dawkins said about the book:

Quote:

"It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius, nothing in between!"

What an intriguing comment!

Anyway - the book (which I have still yet to read) puts forward a fascinating hypothesis. It argues that until about 3000 years ago - the majority of people alive were schizophrenics who attributed their moods and thinking to voices in the head which they saw as the Gods directly commanding them to act.

Yet - today - when we read these old works (such as those by Homer) we interpret the Gods commanding people to do things as a poetic device. Whereas Julian Jaynes argues that people really did imagine the Gods were speaking to them since early human thinking was imply voices in the heads telling them to act.

It is a fascinating theory. Here are some quotes setting out his views more clearly than I have done...

Quote:

Julian Jaynes was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, in which he argued that ancient peoples were not conscious.

Quote:

"When Julian Jaynes...speculates that until late in the second millennium B.C. men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis through all the corroborative evidence..."

- John Updike, in The New Yorker

And here is a nice article discussing his work some more:

http://nplusonemag.com/there-is-only-awe

Anyway - I have started to read philosophy again (after a break of about 5 years). So I will be tackling the work of Julian Jaynes soon. But I just felt like putting together this shout out whilst the subject was on my mind.

[Teedub]

You are one of the quirkiest and most interesting members of the forum... I love the threads you post, almost always something fascinating.

I fucking love this place. I've learnt more about life, women, other weird shit, in the months I've been reading and contributing to this forum than I learned in 4 years at University. Nice on Roosh and nice one to all the guys who contribute. I'm a little drunk, forgive my emotions.

[cardguy]

My life consists of reading books, searching for interesting stuff on the internet, pizza and bourbon.

As such - chicks hate me. So - I'll settle for some bro love instead! :-)

[cardguy]

Quote:

In ancient times, Jaynes noted, gods were generally much more numerous and much more anthropomorphic than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own "god" who reflected their own desires and experiences.

He also noted that in ancient societies the corpses of the dead were often treated as though still alive (being seated, dressed and even fed) and argued that the dead bodies were presumed to be still living and the source of auditory hallucinations (see ancestor worship).

This adaptation to the village communities of 100 individuals or more formed the core of religion. Unlike today's hallucinations, the voices of ancient times were structured by cultural norms to produce a seamlessly functioning society. In Ancient Greek culture there is often mention of the Logos, which is a very similar concept. It was a type of guiding voice that was heard as from a seemingly external source.

Quote:

By roughly 1,000 B.C., earthquakes and overpopulation in the Mediterranean led to mass migrations, which caused an unprecedented degree of social upheaval, according to Jaynes’s speculation. The gods, who had provided guidance by transforming habit and intuition into speech, fell silent in the face of novel dilemmas. They retreated to the sky, where they gave ambiguous signs of their watchful presence. Humans were left alone, groping for answers. They still heard a voice, but they knew it was their own: they silently narrated their days, weighing options, imagining what others would think, making sudden pronouncements that they immediately doubted.

Jaynes describes the muting of the gods as an excruciating loss from which we still have not recovered. “The mighty themes of the religions of the world are here sounded for the first time,” he writes. “Why have the gods left us? Like friends who depart from us, they must be offended. Our misfortunes are our punishments for our offenses. We go down on our knees, begging to be forgiven.”

As I mentioned earlier - this is a really good article to get a feel for his life and work. It is very well written - http://nplusonemag.com/there-is-only-awe

[Hades]

Bad ass. That's almost too bizarre.

[cardguy]

Alot of people have responded to his work like it was a religious conversion. His ideas are so radical and interesting that it can inspire awe.

I look forward to checking it out.

Also - I know alot of the ancient greek authors are popular here (certainly Roosh has mentioned them in the past). So - the theory above sheds some interesting light on their work as well.

Quote:

Jaynes began inspecting the world’s earliest literature for the first signs of human consciousness. “I started off like in a detective story,” he told a reporter for the Princeton radio station.

As he moved backward through the centuries, he saw that consciousness, as he had defined it, disappeared somewhere between the Odyssey and the Iliad.

Odysseus is a modern hero, introspective and deceptive. In the Iliad, the writing of which scholars date some three hundred years earlier, the characters are passive and mentally inert. They have no concept of a private mental space. The word “psyche” referred only to actual substances in the body, breath, and blood, which leave the warrior’s body as soon as he dies.

The gods, emerging from mists or clouds or the sea, handle the warrior’s decisions. When Achilles accuses Agamemnon of stealing his mistress, Agamemnon insists he had no agency. “Not I was the cause of this act, but Zeus,” he explains. “So what could I do? Gods always have their way.”

Critics have interpreted the meddling presence of the god as poetic devices, but Jaynes accused translators of imputing a modern mentality to people with subjectivities foreign to us.

“The gods were in no sense ‘figments of the imagination,’” he wrote. “They were man’s volition. They occupied his nervous system, probably his right hemisphere.”

Jaynes drew on research with patients with severed corpora callossa, the band of fibers that separates the two hemispheres of the brain, which showed that the two chambers can function independently, without conscious awareness of information processed in the other half.

Jaynes proposed that the Trojan War was fought by men with a kind of split brain, a “bicameral mind.” In moments of stress, the left hemisphere, “slave-like,” perceived hallucinated voices in the right hemisphere—the god hemisphere—as direct commands.

[Homo_Sapien]

Amazed by this theory cardguy, will be looking into it more. I agree with teedub, I love your threads.

[Mersault]

The theory is interesting, although hardly revelatory, but it doesn't quite equate to schizophrenia. The contexts are different. The specificity of the symptoms of schizophrenia, those which are part of the diagnosis, are as vague and ambiguous as you care, or the other person in your mind might care, to imagine.

You can attribute the most innocent things / feelings in the world to a factor outside of yourself, whether it is something in your stomach telling you your team is going to score a goal in the next few minutes, to an innate instinct like feeling telling you to avoid the next corner. We all do it. We aren't all schizophrenic.

[cardguy]

Yeah - I am using schizophrenia as a useful shorthand. Also - the theory above may have links to the origin of schizophrenia.

With that said - I happen to be a little sceptical around illnesses like schizophrenia.

I find the following to be quite interesting:

http://www.antipsychiatry.org/schizoph.htm

I can't remember what I was reading the other day. But the author mentioned - in passing - that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. But it was later rediagnosed to OCD.

Even though the author didn't expand on this I found it quite startling. A bit like being told you have cancer. To only later find out it is just flu.

[Mersault]

Indeed sir ^. That is precisely the point i was trying to make. To the layman, schizophrenia is a particular set of features that are evidenced in the nutter who came back from armed service, drank too much, went a little crazy and now speaks to himself and imagines others, hallucinations, speaking to him under the bridge. In actuality, schizophrenia is far more diverse and difficult to fathom.
It is diagnosed, almost literally, by ticking a certain amount of boxes. Ie. If you have 7 symptoms out of 10 then you are schizophrenic.
In truth, half the world would tick plenty of the boxes. But we aren't all schizophrenic or close to being.


We know more about fish in the the oceans listening to frank ocean than we do about mental health. So, although speculation about mental health 3000 years ago is interesting, it is, frankly, as credible as a Japanese crack whore in Beirut.

[MikeCF]

Fascinating.

[Belgrano]

Interesting.
But that would mean isolated groups or tribes, for example in the Amazon or Papua New Guinea, should still behave in that way, right? I don´t know his theory, but surely that trait couldn´t have been limited to the Mediterranean.
I´m certainly not the only one to bring that up, does Jaynes provide any possible explanations on this?

[cardguy]

It is a complex area. A bit like love. Our idea of romantic love is only about 200 years old. But people assume people have 'fallen in love' for thousands of years.

Also - hallucinations are pretty common amongst sane people:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinations_in_the_sane

Personally - I think the idea of consciousness and introspection is linked into our language and culture.

Look at dreams. For a long time people thought of dreams as being a message from God. Indeed - most religious visions throughout history are just descriptions of dreams. Whereas today most people don't attach any importance to dreams.

This is a big subject and one I have yet to fully explore.

I remembered it being said that ancient people were in the habit of not reading silently. INstead they always read aloud - even when alone. But having looked this up it seems it is a commonly believed myth:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul...anreview27

Still - I imagine The Baldwin effect will play an important factor in these issues. I wish it was more widely known since it is the most interesting idea in evolution. Indeed - when discussing evolution - I refuse to continue the conversation if the other person isn't familar with The Baldwin effect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_effect

[Mersault]

^ Although the notion of romantic love is a little too loose to tie down as one type of thing, i think we can safely agree that the type of romantic love most commonly described in the romantic era (200 odd years ago) wasn't created then. I don't know when it was created, but it certainly featured in the Greek myths i adored as a child. Romance was everywhere to be found in them. From psyche and cupid through to the rest.

Simply put, our idea of romantic love isn't only 200 odd years old. It is much older.

[RichieP]

GREAT FIND MUST READ



Although, yeah, my first thought is "that's not really schizophrenia...", but you've got me interested now...

[iknowexactly]

I read it like twice, it is extremely original and an extremely provocative theory.
I thought when I read it "this is the most interesting idea since Darwin and Freud."

Even if you don't agree with his idea, he brings in a vast variety-- both across geography and time-- of sources from history and archeology to support his claims.

Lots of ancient literary sources, statues from all civilizations and eras.. it is a very powerful display of historical knowledge. I thought it was really entertaining too. He was definitely a very brilliant guy.

[Excelsior]

(06-08-2013 01:44 PM)Teedub Wrote:  

I fucking love this place. I've learnt more about life, women, other weird shit, in the months I've been reading and contributing to this forum than I learned in 4 years at University. Nice on Roosh and nice one to all the guys who contribute. I'm a little drunk, forgive my emotions.

No need to apologize, bro. We all share the same feelings.

[Architekt]

The criteria for having a mental disorder is getting looser, it seems. Pretty soon we'll all be schizophrenic psychopaths, with anxiety and ADHD

[Thomas the Rhymer]

Merely hearing voices in not considered to be schizophrenia.

It has to be accompanied by actual decay in a person's ability to function, eg job loss, relationship collapse, loss of desire to attend to personal hygiene, etc.

Hallucinations in and of themselves do not mean you are insane.

[Architekt]

(06-10-2013 07:09 AM)Thomas the Rhymer Wrote:  

Merely hearing voices in not considered to be schizophrenia.

It has to be accompanied by actual decay in a person's ability to function, eg job loss, relationship collapse, loss of desire to attend to personal hygiene, etc.

Hallucinations in and of themselves do not mean you are insane.

Exactly my feeling. As far as I know, almost everyone I've discussed this with has an internal dialogue they use for thinking. Are all of my friends schizophrenic?????

[Fitzgerald]

It's really an interesting possibility, and I've yet to read the book, but I'm gonna go with something else I've read before: Humans were animals without higher thought functions until we started ingesting large amounts of psychedelic plants.

[Beyond Borders]

Or maybe the voices they heard were real...

[Architekt]

(06-10-2013 10:00 AM)Fitzgerald Wrote:  

It's really an interesting possibility, and I've yet to read the book, but I'm gonna go with something else I've read before: Humans were animals without higher thought functions until we started ingesting large amounts of psychedelic plants.

Firstly, many animals have receptors in their brain that psychadelic drugs affect. Most are incredibly similar in structure and effect to substances our bodies produce naturally, or can even be found in trace quantities. Now, onto your thesis:

Meaning and interpretation on any psychadelic is an interesting and complex thing. Most people who have ever taken hallucinogens will spout some shit about "spiritual and meaningful and life changing blah etc," to anyone that is taking it for the first time. This tends to lead a lot of people to associate psychadelic drugs with spirituality and leads to interesting ideas. Let me tell you now, however, that taking a lot of psychadelic drugs doesn't help anyone speak - in fact, the opposite will probably happen.

For someone like me, who just enjoys tripping, and the general insanity that comes with being on huge amounts of drugs, its another world. I don't go in thinking "I want to get in touch with god," I go in with the aim of gaining a greater understanding about myself and the world around me. (But then I often find that people can't tell the difference between me sober, and me high/tripping, so eh)

Being a natural introvert, my mind interests me like nothing else. I spend a lot of time thinking about my thoughts and analysing every last detail about them. Things like...

What am I thinking about?
Why am I thinking this?
Is this good or bad?
What does this mean?
What should be my next move?

Let me tell you, if you're anything like me, thinking about these things after eating a large amount of hallucinogenic drugs (most recently, something along the lines of about 20g+ of (dried) shrooms, some acid, railing some ecstacy - combined with a reasonable amount of benzos, booze, and opioids. DMT provides a similar level of mental and visual distortion, but the feeling and trip is different), is an experience. You start to question your thoughts. You question what they are. You question whether they even exist. You question what they mean, and every last possible quality they may possess.

Every answer you come up with is perfected and crafted to account specifically for every experience you've ever had leading up to that moment. Meaning no longer comes in words - It is just meaning, in it's purest form. If you can imagine a billion voices screaming at you in a language you've never heard spoken before, and catching the intended message in every last syllable - closing your eyes in such a state is usually something like that.

One of the conclusions I came to during one of these experiences, is that intellect is simply a result of instinct, and it follows that language is a consequence of intellect. Intellect is, to me, knowledge of the world around us. Knowing more about the world around us is obviously beneficial, as we can more accurately make decisions that ensure the continuation of our own existence. It makes sense that we have the instinct to gain such intellect.

Where does language come in to this you may ask?

Communication is a crucial component in most modern day animal's tool box. Ants leave pheremone trails, bats do some crazy sonar screeching shit, and Giraffes have a low, rumbling call. Obviously, the ability to communicate is yet another instinctual advantage. None of these animals, however, communicate with any semblance of what we might call "language."

Why is that?

I personally believe that the only reason humans created language, is simply because we just have so much fucking intellect, or knowledge, that it became really inconvenient to continue using the point and grunt method, that probably dominated our communications before the advent of language.

It makes sense, also, if you think about the development of different cultures, traditions, and practices being associated with different languages. For example, the Japanese are widely regarded as being incredibly intelligent, and being at the forefront of technology. They have a very complex language. On the other hand, many tribal colonies (which lack the billions of ideas western society has birthed in the insane race to our own demise) have much simpler languages.

Language is simply a useful tool for us to express our thoughts. Instead of representing all of our thoughts individually, (in ways such as heiroglyphs or Chinese characters), it is convenient for us to assign whatever combination of syllables to a certain meaning for the purpose of expressing so many ideas with minimal frustration.

So yeah, tl;dr, we have language because humans are nosey and lazy, not because of drugs.

[cardguy]

Just curious. Do you think a single toke of pot can help increase your creativity?

That is what George Carlin claimed worked for him. I could imagine maybe a joint. But just a single drag???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj5Sd3BRm_I&t=2m40s

[Architekt]

(06-10-2013 12:14 PM)cardguy Wrote:  

Just curious. Do you think a single toke of pot can help increase your creativity?

That is what George Carlin claimed worked for him. I could imagine maybe a joint. But just a single drag???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj5Sd3BRm_I&t=2m40s

Depends on your tolerance. At first, depending on the quality, it could put you in a chair and just destroy you for an hour or 2. This definitely isn't a good state to be in when you want to be creative. After a while, you'll develop a tolerance and you'll be needing larger doses. Eventually, you don't even notice you're on it. I function without any issues after taking ridiculous amounts of drugs - especially weed.

I feel that it's not so much that drugs make you creative, they just put you in a mind set that allows for creativity. I suspect this is because of the enhancement and confusion of the senses - you experience the same things in a slightly different way. The result of this is usually a different or "creative" interpretation of the world around us.

For your average person, taking up smoking pot will put a downer on their activity levels for a while. Once you get past that, it all comes down to how you use it. If I'm writing music sober, I might doodle around to no avail for hours, simply because nothing I'm playing sounds good. If I'm high, I'll probably notice some part of some little melody or riff that sounds good, and I can work with that until it sounds right, and I can expand from there. In that sense, it can be a creative aid.

I prefer to think of it as allowing you to observe, with greater clarity your ideas. That is what makes it useful.

If you want to use drugs as a way to increase your creative outlook, try some mushrooms, acid, or MDMA, and practice whatever respective discipline you desire. Mushrooms are amazing for anything geometry, or body movement related. Acid is great, purely for the visual and thinking aspect. On MDMA, you will want something, anything, to express yourself, pretty much.

I'd recommend trying it at least once, but keep yourself in check. Make sure you're not overdoing it and destroying the creative juices you're working so hard to squeeze out.