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Speaker 1: Hey, are you welcome to stuff to blow your mind?

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: it's Saturday. Time to go back into the vault. Now.

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Speaker 1: If you were with us last Saturday, you were here

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Speaker 1: for our rerun of the classic episode, part one of

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Speaker 1: our exploration of the bicameral mind hypothesis and Julian Jaynes

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Speaker 1: from from September I think it was originally, and so

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of the last episode we talked a

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Speaker 1: little bit about what our thoughts about the bicameral mind

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Speaker 1: have been since we first talked about this idea. My

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Speaker 1: basic take is that I don't think it's correct as

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Speaker 1: a theory of where consciousness came from, yet it remains

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Speaker 1: a fascinating, comprehensive hypothesis to explore, even if its main

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Speaker 1: point is I think probably wrong. Some sub points that

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Speaker 1: Jane's makes within his argument are really interesting and may

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Speaker 1: in fact have some historical purchase. And it's also just

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Speaker 1: a great, fun, fascinating book to read. I also think

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Speaker 1: it's interesting how one can you can almost feel like

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Speaker 1: a religious zeal for it, you know, like and sometimes

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Speaker 1: I detected that in you. Yeah, Well, like I said

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Speaker 1: in the last episode, there's this there's this way that

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Speaker 1: the hypothesis can make the magic of religion and mythology, uh,

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Speaker 1: seem more believable and seem more possible. Uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: especially from more of a like a grounded skeptical point

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Speaker 1: of view, and uh and it but it's the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing too, I can imagine how like I can

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Speaker 1: easily envision some sort of alternate future or even an

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Speaker 1: alternate at present in which the bi cameral mind has

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Speaker 1: become a kind of religion. So anyway, it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a It was a fascinating pair of episodes to record,

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Speaker 1: and I wouldn't rule out returning to it at some

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Speaker 1: point in the future if we find enough new angles

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Speaker 1: to take on it and new things to say about it,

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Speaker 1: or find some individuals who would want to talk with

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Speaker 1: us about it. Yeah. I know. Since we did these episodes,

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Speaker 1: I've read articles about all of the all of the

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Speaker 1: like sort of popular mainstream academics and thinkers and sky

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Speaker 1: allers who are sort of secretly fans of this theory.

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Speaker 1: I think, maybe sort of in the same camp we are, Like,

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Speaker 1: they don't necessarily believe it's correct, but they're just they

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Speaker 1: can't stop thinking about it. I know I've seen Daniel

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Speaker 1: Dennett placed in this camp before that he's sort of

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Speaker 1: secretly a fan of it. I now have to say

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Speaker 1: that among the various ways I try and interpret attacks,

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Speaker 1: you know, you looking at it as literature, as as

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Speaker 1: some sort of you know, a true story, as some

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Speaker 1: sort of allegorical story, etcetera, I also throw in the

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Speaker 1: bicamera right mind, and I think, well, what's the bicamera

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Speaker 1: read on this? And it's a really fun fun way

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Speaker 1: to to to pass the time if you find yourself

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Speaker 1: being like bombarded with a kind of say, boring Bible story. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I can totally see how it would play that kind

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Speaker 1: of role. I would be interested in returning to it

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Speaker 1: some day, especially if we could find a way of

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Speaker 1: bringing some fresh evidence to it, anything in in support

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Speaker 1: or in opposition. I mean, one thing I would I

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Speaker 1: have thought would be interesting is just try to find

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Speaker 1: lots of counter examples to Jane's idea that like ancient

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Speaker 1: literature is not display interiority, that the most ancient stories,

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Speaker 1: people don't seem to have inner minds, that they just

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Speaker 1: you know, their decisions come from deliverances of the gods,

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Speaker 1: and if you can just collect lots of examples where

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Speaker 1: that's not the case, that could provide some sort of

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Speaker 1: counter evidence to say, Okay, so he's probably not right

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Speaker 1: about this part of the theory, but other things might

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Speaker 1: might still have some purchase. Yeah. Absolutely, So on that note,

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Speaker 1: we're going to dive back in. We're gonna play the

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Speaker 1: second part of our bi cameral Mind episode we hope

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Speaker 1: you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from

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Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe

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Speaker 1: McCormick in today. This is going to be part two

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Speaker 1: of our two part series on Julian Jaynes and the

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Speaker 1: bicameral mind and the origin of consciousness in the Breakdown

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Speaker 1: of the bi cameral Mind. So as this is part

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Speaker 1: two of a two part episode. If you haven't heard

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Speaker 1: part one yet, you should go back and listen to

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Speaker 1: that one first. Sometimes we say, you know, if you

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Speaker 1: feel like jumping right in and go for it, this

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Speaker 1: is one where I feel like you're really going to

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Speaker 1: have a hard time following us if you haven't heard

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Speaker 1: part one yet, because that's gonna be where we explain

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Speaker 1: what Julian Jamee's main hypothesis is and how he arrived

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Speaker 1: at it. And then in the second episode we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about evidence for it from the ancient world

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Speaker 1: and from the modern world. Yeah, this episode is going

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Speaker 1: to be full of like falling kingdoms and whispering statues

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Speaker 1: and other great stuff, but you need that first episode

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Speaker 1: to understand it. Now, as with the first episode, we

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Speaker 1: want to make clear that we're not necessarily endorsing this hypothesis.

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Speaker 1: This is a very controversial hypothesis. It's not something that

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Speaker 1: is at all considered proven or even necessarily very well

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Speaker 1: attested by evidence. It's something that is controversial but very

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Speaker 1: fascinating I think worth exploring as a hypothetical. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: is a it is a radical hypothesis and if nothing else,

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Speaker 1: it is just a fascinating thought experiments. So as we

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Speaker 1: discuss it again, you're going to hear us Uh discussing

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Speaker 1: it as if it was fact, as if this is

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Speaker 1: actually how ancient people thought. But that is just a

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Speaker 1: part of our exploration of the hypothesis. Now, to briefly

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Speaker 1: recap the core of Julian James theory, and we should say,

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Speaker 1: Julian James, when did he live? Nine? Yeah? So nine seven.

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Speaker 1: Julian James was an American psychologist. He's primarily known for

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Speaker 1: this book that was published in nineteen seventy six called

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Speaker 1: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,

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Speaker 1: And the thrust of that book is, until about three

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Speaker 1: thousand years ago, human beings were not conscious. They did

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Speaker 1: not possess consciousness and the way we do today. And

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Speaker 1: around that time, roughly three thousand years ago, modern human

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Speaker 1: consciousness began as a cultural invention, probably in Mesopotamia that's

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Speaker 1: spread around the world over time. And before that time,

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Speaker 1: for thousands of years, almost all humans were not conscious

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Speaker 1: in the way we are, but instead we're unconscious beings

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Speaker 1: commanded in all novel behaviors by hallucinated voices that they

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Speaker 1: called gods or another way of putting it. And uh,

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Speaker 1: and James himself put it this way, everybody was schizophrenic

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Speaker 1: sort of. Yeah, I mean, so schizophrenia, as Jane's imagines,

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Speaker 1: it is one form or a modified version of a

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Speaker 1: regression to this bicameral mind state that used to be

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Speaker 1: the norm for how humans and ancient civilizations lived and

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Speaker 1: so this norm would be that most of the time

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Speaker 1: you would be going around unconsciously behaving out of habit

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Speaker 1: you know, you have a stimulus response behaviors, and you

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Speaker 1: would have habitual behaviors that you would enact, and this

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Speaker 1: would serve to do most things that would be you know,

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Speaker 1: recurrent repetitive behaviors over the day. But whenever something new happened,

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Speaker 1: whenever you needed to make a decision and there was

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Speaker 1: a stress point induced by that decision, you would be

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Speaker 1: told what to do by a hallucinated auditor or voice

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Speaker 1: that you would perceive as a god, and that you

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Speaker 1: would enact that. Now, this is, as you said, a

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Speaker 1: radical hypothesis. Yeah, because again the idea here is that

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Speaker 1: everybody heard these voices, that this was the universal human experience,

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Speaker 1: this was the norm, right, And so obviously I mean

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Speaker 1: that that sounds kind of crazy to us, now, like

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Speaker 1: what really could could that be true? So if there

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Speaker 1: is any truth to Jane's theory, and as we said before,

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Speaker 1: we're not necessarily endorsing it as true, just entertaining it

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Speaker 1: as an interesting hypothesis, we should be able to find

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Speaker 1: some evidence of that theory. And so we can look

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Speaker 1: at psychiatry, and we can look at neuroscience, and we

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Speaker 1: can look at evidence from the ancient world. And today

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Speaker 1: we're going to start by looking at evidence from the

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Speaker 1: ancient world, from history, from archaeology, from ancient literature. If

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Speaker 1: there was a bicameral mind state, this divided mind state,

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Speaker 1: where one half of the brain spoke to the other

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Speaker 1: as the voice of a god and commanded the unconscious

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Speaker 1: other half, we should be able to see that in

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Speaker 1: the behaviors of a people's and the traces left of

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Speaker 1: those behaviors. Right, So, a lot of this episode is

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Speaker 1: going to be uh, Joe and I discussing some of

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Speaker 1: the examples that James brings up in the book. We

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Speaker 1: can't possibly touch on all of the examples because much

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Speaker 1: of the book, and much of the real joy of

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Speaker 1: the book is is him bringing up these various examples

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Speaker 1: from from historical accounts, from archaeology, from literature, and using

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Speaker 1: that to support the idea of the by bicameral mind. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and one of the pleasures of the book is even

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Speaker 1: if Jane's hypothesis does turn out to be entirely incorrect,

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Speaker 1: you know, if there never was any bicameral mind, if

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Speaker 1: consciousness is not a recent invention. If he's wrong about

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Speaker 1: all that, it's still a fascinating book just because of

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Speaker 1: the way he pulls in so many different disciplines and

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Speaker 1: ranges throughout history, incorporating evidence in such an amazing and

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Speaker 1: fascinating way. All right, well, let's jump into it a

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Speaker 1: bit here and are discussing some of the evidence that

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Speaker 1: James brought up in the book. Okay, Well, one of

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Speaker 1: the things that we probably should be able to think

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Speaker 1: about is if ancient people's perceived auditory hallucinations that they

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Speaker 1: regarded as gods, and these gods told them what to do.

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Speaker 1: There should be some evidence of this in what traces

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Speaker 1: they left of their relationship to the gods they believed in. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And one of those examples, Jane's argues is the positioning

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Speaker 1: of the houses of the gods. So this is the

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Speaker 1: basic idea. Well, so today you travel to a big city.

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Speaker 1: Let's say you go to Washington, d C. All right,

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Speaker 1: this is our example, not James. So I'm in Washington,

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Speaker 1: all right, and you seek out the grandest, most centralized home,

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Speaker 1: the one that just really stands out from the rest,

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Speaker 1: is the most protected it has them. You know, the

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Speaker 1: most central status of any other habitat. Okay, so I'm

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Speaker 1: imagining it is the home of an extremely tall, thin

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Speaker 1: person that stands looking out over the water. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: that's one one interpretation. No way, that thing isn't a home,

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Speaker 1: is it. No, well, it's not a home. But I

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Speaker 1: mean that is an example of a of a building

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Speaker 1: of prominence with a with a statue in it, which

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Speaker 1: kind of gets into some additional arguments that we're going

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Speaker 1: to make here. But no, no, no no, you'd expect to

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Speaker 1: find the home of a king, right, yeah, yeah, you would.

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Speaker 1: That's the thing, right, you would want to you would expect,

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Speaker 1: all right, this is the center of the town. The

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Speaker 1: whole town is built around this. It occupies a spatial

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Speaker 1: center as well as just the center of meaning and purpose.

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Speaker 1: Or maybe sorry, that was probably my sexism talking to

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Speaker 1: a king or a queen. In any case, you would

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Speaker 1: expect the ruling person to live there. But what have

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Speaker 1: you entered into this grand building at the center of

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Speaker 1: the city and you found that it was home only

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Speaker 1: to a quote hallucinated presence, perhaps a statue of that

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Speaker 1: presence in the case of Abraham Lincoln, if you will.

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Speaker 1: But still for our purposes here an unreal entity, a god,

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Speaker 1: a goddess. Um. You can also look to two cities

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Speaker 1: in which a church still occupies the central ground, and

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Speaker 1: James argues that this is an ect, perhaps an echo

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Speaker 1: of the bicameral past. So why would that, why would

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Speaker 1: that be evidence of a bicameral past. To find churches

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Speaker 1: or temples at the center of a city as opposed

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Speaker 1: to the house of a king. Well, the idea here

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Speaker 1: is that the voice occupied the center of our thoughts,

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Speaker 1: and so to it occupied the center of the town

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Speaker 1: or the city, and that the house of the God

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Speaker 1: or the house of the gods was quite literally the

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Speaker 1: house of the gods. Yeah, yeah, this is true. So

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Speaker 1: if I remember hearing when I was a kid people saying,

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Speaker 1: you know, be be respectful when you're in church because

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Speaker 1: it's God's house. But the churches I was going to

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Speaker 1: didn't literally believe that the God they worshiped lived in

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Speaker 1: the church. That was just where humans congregated to worship.

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Speaker 1: That's not so much the case in ancient religions. It

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Speaker 1: really does seem like in many ancient religions, the place

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Speaker 1: of worship or the the you know, the sacred building

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Speaker 1: was literally where the God inhabited. Yeah, where the God inhabited,

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Speaker 1: and then as things sort of go on, the place

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Speaker 1: where God may visit, the place where God maybe uh

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Speaker 1: contact did so. He draws on examples from the god

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Speaker 1: houses at Jericho, the zigarato or which we discussed in

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Speaker 1: our Tower of Babbel episode, as well as the city

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Speaker 1: of Hatasus, the Bronze Age capital of the hitt Eede Empire,

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Speaker 1: and in the ladder this was actually a mountain shrine

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Speaker 1: with images of the overwatching gods rather than a city center,

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Speaker 1: but he said it's kind of an exception that that

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Speaker 1: also lines up with the argument. He also looks to

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Speaker 1: the old mec and Mayan empires as Bicameral Mesoamerican empires

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Speaker 1: due to the presence of quote huge otherwise useless, centrally

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Speaker 1: located buildings, in chief among these the Pyramid of TiO

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Speaker 1: Tiwakan in modern Mexico. And I love how he mentioned,

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Speaker 1: you know, otherwise useless buildings because this touches on on

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Speaker 1: our discussions in the Tower of Babbel episode regarding the ziggurats.

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Speaker 1: A lot of our our study of the past has

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Speaker 1: been us trying to figure out what was this for purpose?

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Speaker 1: And a lot of times we try and figure out

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Speaker 1: a practical purpose. You know what purpose did this structure have? Absolutely?

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Speaker 1: I mean these building projects consumed vast resources. I mean

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Speaker 1: to build the most prominent and the highest and well

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Speaker 1: defended building in the middle of an inhabited space. That

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Speaker 1: just seems like, why would you waste that on being

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Speaker 1: there for a being that is not that does not

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Speaker 1: physically need a house. Yeah, unless you are a people

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Speaker 1: for whom the voice of God is real. Again, this

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Speaker 1: is just the wonder of this theory is that it

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Speaker 1: turns so much of ancient history on its head. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and then also you know more recent history, as

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Speaker 1: this is all an echo of the past. Now, in

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Speaker 1: the previous episode, we pointed out that you know the

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Speaker 1: by the voice of the bicameral mind it is it's

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Speaker 1: coming in to help you deal with novel experiences that

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Speaker 1: pop up, and how it might be helpful but it

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Speaker 1: might also be destructive. Well, in the same way that

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Speaker 1: a conscious person can make good decisions or can make

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Speaker 1: bad decisions, the God guiding the behaviors of the unconscious

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Speaker 1: bicameral person, if this person ever existed, could be giving

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Speaker 1: good advice or bad advice. I mean it's based on

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Speaker 1: the integrated powers of the brain. In both cases, it's

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Speaker 1: just that is it consciously happening or is it being

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Speaker 1: delivered to you as a command that must be obeyed. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And and along these lines, he attributes the construction of

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Speaker 1: ancient meso American cities that are located in inhospitable areas,

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Speaker 1: such as you on top of a mountain or uh,

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Speaker 1: in the middle of a swamp on the you know,

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Speaker 1: on the side of a cliff. He says that, uh,

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Speaker 1: that these are areas that yeah, again, we're inhospitable, and

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Speaker 1: they may have been abandoned at some point later on. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And this is because they were linked to the commands

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Speaker 1: of quote hallucinations, which in certain periods could be not

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Speaker 1: only irrational but downright punishing. Now that's possible, but it's

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Speaker 1: also possible that we in the modern world are just

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Speaker 1: not seeing correctly what the benefits of these spaces were.

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Speaker 1: That's right, I mean, we're always working with imperfect data. Um.

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Speaker 1: He does not reference this, but I couldn't help but

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Speaker 1: think of Montezuma Castle in modern Arizona. These were cliff

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Speaker 1: side dwellings of the Sinegua culture that were abandoned around

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Speaker 1: four after centuries of occupation. Now now, various explanations for

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Speaker 1: the abandonment of Montezuma Castle include a drought, resource depletion,

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Speaker 1: tribal conflict, and interestingly enough religious religious inclination to move.

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Speaker 1: Now you can get into a discussion of of how

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Speaker 1: that would possibly line up with james timeline for the

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Speaker 1: bicameral mine, but he does point out that by the

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Speaker 1: time the Incans encountered Europeans in the fifteenth century, uh,

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Speaker 1: there was perhaps a combination of things bicameral and things

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Speaker 1: proto subjective subjective. Yeah, and that is one feature of

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Speaker 1: his theory that for a long period of time it

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Speaker 1: wasn't just like everyone was bicameral and then everyone was conscious.

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Speaker 1: You had a long period of the slow death of

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Speaker 1: bike emeral society turning into being taken over by conscious people.

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Speaker 1: You know, this makes me think of shows like Game

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Speaker 1: of Thrones and other fantasy worlds where magic slowly bleeds

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Speaker 1: out of the world, because that's essentially the argument here

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Speaker 1: is that over time, fewer and fewer people are hearing

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Speaker 1: the voice voices of the gods. Fewer people are hearing

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Speaker 1: the voices of the spirits of the departed loved ones, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: And yet they're surrounded by the cultural memory of people

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Speaker 1: who did hear the voices of the gods, or people

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Speaker 1: who still hear the voices of the gods today even

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Speaker 1: though they can't. So you have this society in which

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Speaker 1: there are conscious people who are are constantly being reminded

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Speaker 1: that they could be in contact with the gods, but

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Speaker 1: they're not, and this, I imagine is very distressing and

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Speaker 1: frustrating to these people. And you know, this is also

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Speaker 1: interesting in that you eventually have this clash between the

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Speaker 1: Inca Empire and the Spanish Empire. And he says that

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Speaker 1: this was as close, too close to anything in our

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Speaker 1: history as to a meeting of these two different minds,

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Speaker 1: of the bicameral mind and the conscious mind, like two

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Speaker 1: different cultures uh encountering each other. Um And yet he

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Speaker 1: points to a number of different arguments for and against

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Speaker 1: the Inca Empire being a bicameral empire. Well, it could

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Speaker 1: have been an empire in transition, as many of these

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Speaker 1: others were for so long. Yeah, I think basically, he

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Speaker 1: says that he believes that if there was a transition

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Speaker 1: from a bicameral society to a conscious society. That it

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Speaker 1: began in Mesopotamia about you know, roughly one thousand BC. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, a few hundred years on each side. It

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Speaker 1: was a slow transition and spread around the world from there. Yes.

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Speaker 1: So with the Inca in particularly, he um, he points

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Speaker 1: out that on one hand, uh, the administrative demands and

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Speaker 1: politics were probably beyond something that a purely bicameral culture

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Speaker 1: could handle. Yet they had a god king who was

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Speaker 1: the Inca among them, and there were you know, other

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Speaker 1: aspects of bicameral culture as well. Uh. And these may

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Speaker 1: have been again to your point, mere traditional echoes of

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Speaker 1: the past, but he points out that that you you

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Speaker 1: had these gold and jeweled spools that members of the

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Speaker 1: top of Inca hierarchy they wore in their ears and

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Speaker 1: sometimes with images of the Sun on them. That these

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Speaker 1: may have indicated that those same ears, we're hearing the

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Speaker 1: voice of the Sun, since the Sun was a god. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So he spends a lot of time with various examples

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Speaker 1: discussing the importance of eye symbolism, ear symbolism, as as

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Speaker 1: showing that that the individual or the statue is somehow

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Speaker 1: involved in speech or hearing. Now, one of the things

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Speaker 1: I wanted to revisit from our last episode is just

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Speaker 1: the idea that James is not necessarily saying that, for example,

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Speaker 1: the bicameral mind is not as good as the conscious mind.

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Speaker 1: I know, we with our conscious bias, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: would naturally kind of feel that way. But it's not

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Speaker 1: necessarily that conscious minds are better or more valuable or

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Speaker 1: even smarter. Mean, that's not just that's just not necessarily

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Speaker 1: the case. It's that they have different adaptive strengths, and

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Speaker 1: so having different strengths, a sudden clash of a conscious

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Speaker 1: culture against a bicameral culture could be very disastrous for

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Speaker 1: one or the other. Yeah, I mean, this is this

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Speaker 1: is basically the the the key example of an outside

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Speaker 1: context problem in our world. And uh, and James has

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Speaker 1: a just a beautiful little description of how this would

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Speaker 1: have gone down. Assuming that this is a meeting of

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Speaker 1: a bicameral or partially bicameral culture in the Inca and

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Speaker 1: a conscious culture in that of the Spaniards, He says, quote,

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Speaker 1: it is possible that it was one of the few

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Speaker 1: confrontations between subjective and bicameral minds that for things as

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Speaker 1: unfamiliar as Inca at a Wappo was confronted with these rough,

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Speaker 1: milk skinned men with hair drooling from their chins instead

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Speaker 1: of from their scalps, so that their heads looked upside down,

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Speaker 1: clothed in metal, with avertive eyes writing strain ange lama

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Speaker 1: like creatures with silver who's having arrived like gods in

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Speaker 1: gigantic quampas uh teared like mockagan temples over the sea,

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Speaker 1: which to the Inca was unsailable that for all this

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Speaker 1: there were no bicameral voices coming from the sun or

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Speaker 1: from the golden statues of Cuzco in their dazzling towers,

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Speaker 1: not subjectively conscious, unable to deceive or to nar narraw

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Speaker 1: to rize out the deception of others, the Inca and

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Speaker 1: his lords were captured like helpless automatons. Oh man, it's

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Speaker 1: a horrible thing to imagine, as I mean, reading anything

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Speaker 1: about the European conquest of the Americans is always like

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Speaker 1: a horrible thing to Yeah, you don't have hold have

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Speaker 1: to imagine a separate state of mind for it to

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Speaker 1: be a rather horrific uh encounter, But yeah, that is

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Speaker 1: One of the features of his hypothesis is, so one

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Speaker 1: of the things that consciousness gives us is a capability

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Speaker 1: for treachery. Yes, that really the bicameral person, and it's

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Speaker 1: not very much capable of treachery. I mean, they can't

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Speaker 1: prolong a deceptive behavior, right because they can't run this

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Speaker 1: internal narrative of how they should behave if they were

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Speaker 1: to believe one thing versus how they you know, really

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Speaker 1: what goal they'll be working towards secretly, it just doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem like that works out very well. But these conscious

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Speaker 1: people are capable of extreme deception and treachery and the

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Speaker 1: ability to just be jerks all right. Now. Another area

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Speaker 1: that that he brings up is that of essentially the

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Speaker 1: love to dead. He points to the burial of the

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Speaker 1: dead as if they were still alive as being a

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Speaker 1: key evidence for by the bicameral mind. So we've covered

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Speaker 1: a number of different mommification practices on the show over

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Speaker 1: the year. So I think everyone here knows the drill

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Speaker 1: the corpse as an astronaut on a cosmic journey to

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Speaker 1: the other side. You know, there's some sort of an

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Speaker 1: elaborate tomb. Maybe fill that tomb with items that that

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Speaker 1: individual loved in a low life and therefore might continue

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Speaker 1: to need on a trip. And then beyond that, you

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Speaker 1: may even supply them, as we see in the case

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Speaker 1: of Egyptian tombs with food stuffs, with with perishable goods

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Speaker 1: to to aid them in the journey. And the idea

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Speaker 1: here is that if this goes beyond the mere idea

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Speaker 1: that oh, well, they like to cheeseburger, so let's put

405
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Speaker 1: a cheeseburger in there as a you know, a token

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Speaker 1: is some sort of uh, just a tribute to them.

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Speaker 1: It's the idea that that no, I still hear their voice,

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Speaker 1: they are still speaking to me, even though the body

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Speaker 1: has stopped moving. I will put a cheeseburger in there

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Speaker 1: for them to eat, exactly. Yeah. So we think of

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Speaker 1: tokens to the dead today primarily as uh, it's something

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Speaker 1: representing the way the living feel. Yeah, But no, the

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Speaker 1: belief here was that the dead person still needed that. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And he says that this spills over to the treatment

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Speaker 1: of ordinary dead as well as royal dead in many

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Speaker 1: of these ancient cultures. But the concept of bearing the

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Speaker 1: dead in massive tombs, pres irving their bodies, providing them

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Speaker 1: with physical luxuries and even food. Uh, this is key.

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Speaker 1: And and in cases where there was no food, such

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Speaker 1: as the graves at Larsa and Mesopotamia from around that Uh,

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Speaker 1: he says there these areas were foodless because the tombs

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Speaker 1: were beneath human habitation, so that the dead essentially still

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Speaker 1: lived among the living, so that they would wander up

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Speaker 1: into the house and you would literally hallucinate them doing

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Speaker 1: so and telling you what to do. Yeah. Now, James

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Speaker 1: admits that grief could have been the core motivation and

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Speaker 1: most of these rights, and certainly, I think that's the

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Speaker 1: way we think about it when we're trying to put

429
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:39,360
Speaker 1: ourselves in the shoes of ancient people. Right. I Mean,

430
00:23:39,640 --> 00:23:42,960
Speaker 1: another very plausible and perhaps the more probable answer is

431
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,360
Speaker 1: just that people wished their loved ones were still alive

432
00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:50,280
Speaker 1: and wanted to behave as if they could be. Now. Yeah, Now,

433
00:23:50,440 --> 00:23:53,640
Speaker 1: he argues that grief alone wouldn't be able to account

434
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 1: for all of these practices. I mean, I think it

435
00:23:57,480 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 1: depends on your example and uh, and you know what

436
00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:03,679
Speaker 1: your experience with bereavement is. I think that a lot

437
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:06,480
Speaker 1: of his can a test that. Yeah, that that the

438
00:24:06,560 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 1: loss of a loved one or even the loss of

439
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 1: just a you know, I loved celebrity in many cases

440
00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:14,639
Speaker 1: can can have a big impact, a huge impact on

441
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:17,359
Speaker 1: your life. So uh yeah, I don't know to what

442
00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:20,360
Speaker 1: extent I completely agree with that assessment, but I still

443
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:22,320
Speaker 1: think it's a it's an interesting case to be. Yeah,

444
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:24,840
Speaker 1: I mean, in a bicameral culture, you could imagine that

445
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 1: when Prince died, everybody would still be hearing him sing

446
00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:32,800
Speaker 1: into their ear. Yeah, because what is Prince but a

447
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:36,159
Speaker 1: you know, royal of the modern age. All Right, we're

448
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:37,680
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, and when we come back,

449
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:40,119
Speaker 1: we will keep looking at evidence from the ancient world

450
00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:44,640
Speaker 1: that may indicate a bicameral past. Okay, we're back. You know, Joe,

451
00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:48,680
Speaker 1: you mentioned uh uh statue of Lincoln to the top

452
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 1: of this episode. I know, Oh, you know what, I think.

453
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:53,399
Speaker 1: I think I was talking about what's it called the

454
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:55,679
Speaker 1: obelisk the Washington Oh, I think you mean when you

455
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:59,959
Speaker 1: were talking about a statue of a tall, slender figure.

456
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:01,719
Speaker 1: I thought you meant Lincoln. You know this can tell

457
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:05,040
Speaker 1: slender dude. There's a miscommunication that so easily comes with

458
00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:10,040
Speaker 1: our conscious inability to communicate. Well, you've been you've seen

459
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 1: Lincoln his statue in Washington. Yeah, he's just sitting in

460
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 1: that chair, but he probably has not spoken to you.

461
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:18,920
Speaker 1: And I mean I don't mean that in a in

462
00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:22,199
Speaker 1: a metaphorical sense or anything. I mean that statue has

463
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 1: not literally spoke. You have not heard the voice of

464
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:27,600
Speaker 1: that statue. No, But if I were a bicameral person,

465
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:30,120
Speaker 1: apparently I might, like I could go to pay reverence

466
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:32,639
Speaker 1: to that statue, but I wouldn't just be paying reverence,

467
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:35,919
Speaker 1: I'd be getting advice on what to do exactly. So

468
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:38,600
Speaker 1: that's the next point that the James made, is that

469
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 1: we have these idols of the speaking stone that that

470
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 1: that play into all these different cultures. So we've already

471
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:49,600
Speaker 1: mentioned that, all right, your your father's voice is still

472
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:52,560
Speaker 1: in your head, like literally in your head. You're still

473
00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:56,359
Speaker 1: hearing it after they have died because of this confusion

474
00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,479
Speaker 1: to take place about about the nature of death. So

475
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 1: your your parents did die, yet you still hear their admonitions, right,

476
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:05,920
Speaker 1: and then the king dies, you still hear the voice

477
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:08,800
Speaker 1: of the king. So one of the first humans just

478
00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:12,240
Speaker 1: raised up the corpses and skulls of their dead loved

479
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 1: ones and their dead leaders. Uh, and after that we

480
00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:20,000
Speaker 1: would turn more and more to two various artificial likenesses

481
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:24,919
Speaker 1: of those individuals in varying degrees of detail. So we

482
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:28,560
Speaker 1: we can find crude humanoid figurings dating back to a

483
00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 1: roughly UM fifty six hundred BC in what's modern day

484
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:36,200
Speaker 1: Turkey and Uh and relatively these are relics that were

485
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:42,360
Speaker 1: already ancient when the pyramids were built. Now Frasier would

486
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 1: have classified such carvings as just fertility figures, but James

487
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:48,479
Speaker 1: points out that that was the horse. He was right,

488
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:51,680
Speaker 1: and he was trying to cram everything into those boxes. Yeah.

489
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:54,119
Speaker 1: But but James points out that you you can find

490
00:26:54,119 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: them in very fertile parts of the world, such as

491
00:26:56,320 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 1: what they all metal civilization, and he points to some

492
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:04,120
Speaker 1: of the areous um attributes of these likenesses open mouths,

493
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:08,520
Speaker 1: exaggerated ears, as if the statue is going to listen

494
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:12,240
Speaker 1: to you and speak to you. And in the case

495
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:15,920
Speaker 1: of the Old Mix, the creation of such idle skyrocketed

496
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 1: about seven hundred see but Jayne's questions whether this was

497
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 1: due to the cease of the voices, So did the

498
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:26,399
Speaker 1: voices stop so that you you were crafting more and

499
00:27:26,440 --> 00:27:28,640
Speaker 1: more of these details to try and bring them back

500
00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: or was it due to a multiplication of them, So

501
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 1: you know, you're having to deal with the chaos of

502
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: all these voices. Now, he argues that many artifacts might

503
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:44,399
Speaker 1: have been quote semi hallucinatory uh mnemonic aids for the

504
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: non conscious people. So they're all it's also about remembering

505
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:52,720
Speaker 1: things and um, you know, adding order to life. But

506
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:55,720
Speaker 1: he argues that quote some of these small objects, we

507
00:27:55,800 --> 00:27:58,720
Speaker 1: may be confident we're capable of assisting with the production

508
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 1: of bicameral voices, and he points to Mesopotamian ie idols

509
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:05,760
Speaker 1: from around three thousand bees. He and the eyes of

510
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:09,560
Speaker 1: these and numerous others were figures were important to focus

511
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 1: because of our involved dependency on eye contact for communication.

512
00:28:14,920 --> 00:28:17,640
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and then it's only left for the statue

513
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:21,560
Speaker 1: to speak to us and speak they did, uh, not

514
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:25,080
Speaker 1: only according to bicameral mind theory here, but also just

515
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 1: according to various accounts. Um Uniform literature he writes provides

516
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:32,800
Speaker 1: examples of speaking statues. If you turn in your Old

517
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:36,399
Speaker 1: Testament to a sequel one, there's an example of a

518
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 1: Babylonian king who said to speak to idols, which were

519
00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: known as a terrup Yeah, they're there are all kinds

520
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: of accounts of this throughout the ancient world of us.

521
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 1: I mean, this is another case of like we were

522
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 1: talking about in the last episode with ancient literature. You know,

523
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:53,440
Speaker 1: you read it and you feel you send something alien

524
00:28:53,480 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: about the characters, and you're like, is that something I'm

525
00:28:56,360 --> 00:28:59,240
Speaker 1: just not getting that's getting lost in translation or were

526
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,560
Speaker 1: they truly alien to my mentality? A similar thing is

527
00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: going on with when it describes the practices of hearing

528
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 1: God speak. You could think like, okay, well I don't

529
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:13,280
Speaker 1: usually hear God speak. Um, so maybe there's just something this,

530
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: you know, this like a literary device or something that's

531
00:29:15,800 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 1: getting lost in translation. Or you could just say, no,

532
00:29:18,200 --> 00:29:20,959
Speaker 1: I'll just take this literally. I'll take it at face value.

533
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:23,480
Speaker 1: Something was speaking to them and it was the other

534
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: hemisphere of their brain. Yeah, So we get to this

535
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 1: point where these statues, these artifacts become kind of focus

536
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 1: points for the voice, like in a way to in

537
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:37,920
Speaker 1: a way summon the voice even when it's not, you know,

538
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: directly called up by stressful circumstance. He has numerous tidbits

539
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:48,560
Speaker 1: to support this. Some of the really fun ones I

540
00:29:48,560 --> 00:29:51,680
Speaker 1: found was he adds that to quote the conquered Aztecs

541
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:55,000
Speaker 1: told the Spanish invaders how their history began when a

542
00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:58,479
Speaker 1: statue from a ruined temple belonging to a previous culture

543
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: spoke to their leaders. So I just love the mental

544
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 1: image of you know, these tribal individuals coming across the

545
00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:09,480
Speaker 1: statute built by someone else, and it it summons the

546
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:11,960
Speaker 1: voices just to look at it. You can also imagine, though,

547
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:16,360
Speaker 1: how if this model is correct, conscious people would react

548
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:21,280
Speaker 1: very negatively to encountering bi cameral people and and the

549
00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 1: voices of their gods. Right, Oh yeah, I mean that's

550
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:26,000
Speaker 1: another example he makes is that you have the Spaniards,

551
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 1: who again are conscious individuals steeped in Catholicism, and they

552
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: come in and they encounter the native peoples and they

553
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: actually reported that the people of the of Peru were

554
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 1: a quote commanded by the devil. In that quote, the

555
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 1: devil himself actually spoke to the Incas out of the

556
00:30:44,240 --> 00:30:48,440
Speaker 1: mouths of their statues. So that could just be you know,

557
00:30:48,600 --> 00:30:53,240
Speaker 1: historical cultural slander, or it could be them trying to

558
00:30:53,320 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 1: make sense of practices they saw. Yeah, you know, before

559
00:30:57,120 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 1: really getting into the bi cameral mind theory, I would

560
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:01,640
Speaker 1: have easily just said, well, that's just obviously just a

561
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 1: bunch of xenophobic foreigners from another continent coming in and saying, oh,

562
00:31:05,480 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: they have statues. They probably stand around listening to their

563
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 1: voices and they obey the statues. I mean, either way,

564
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:13,840
Speaker 1: they are putting their their dominant racist spin on it.

565
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: But it could be that they were actually observing a practice. Yes.

566
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: Now again we always get into the same situation though,

567
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:24,239
Speaker 1: where they was this a practice that was based on

568
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: on an existing bicameral experience or is it an echo

569
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 1: of a bicameral past. Yeah, it could be either one.

570
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:34,520
Speaker 1: If there's anything to this theory. Another thing that I

571
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: think is one of the most important takeaways of this

572
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: whole theory is that if James is correct, it's not

573
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 1: that people used to be more religious and now they're

574
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:51,040
Speaker 1: less religious. That's not the progression. It's that ancient bicameral

575
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:56,320
Speaker 1: religion and modern conscious religion are completely different types of things.

576
00:31:56,760 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 1: Conscious religion requires an emphasis on things like faith and

577
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: belief and organized systems of dogma. You know, they say

578
00:32:05,240 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 1: here's what we believe and here's why you should believe it,

579
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:13,400
Speaker 1: and so it's like regulated by ecclesiastical authorities. It's addressed

580
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:17,200
Speaker 1: to an object that is not immediately apparent. Not so

581
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 1: for bicameral religion. Right, So bicameral religion would have had

582
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 1: no need for the concept of faith, because what's the

583
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: point in telling people to believe in the gods that

584
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: literally talk to them and appear before them all the time?

585
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:34,880
Speaker 1: That's right, I mean, the gods are speaking to you household,

586
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 1: God's household spirits are speaking to you. Uh so you

587
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: really there's not really any room to doubt there if

588
00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 1: doubt was even a thing that your mind can do. Yeah,

589
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: I mean, our modern concept of religion you could look

590
00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:50,320
Speaker 1: at as something that came to exist after the disappearance

591
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 1: of the direct experience of the gods. Likewise, I mean

592
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: could it could heresy even exist in such a world

593
00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:00,400
Speaker 1: like everybody is I mean, certainly you're still going to

594
00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:04,800
Speaker 1: have a structure to society, but everyone is hearing voices

595
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: of the God. Everyone has has their their their radio

596
00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:11,680
Speaker 1: set to the other world. Yeah, I mean, this is

597
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: a world where the voices are speaking to everyone. Okay,

598
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:17,080
Speaker 1: I think we should look at one more thing about

599
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: features we see of the organization of ancient societies before

600
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:23,920
Speaker 1: we start to look at some ancient literature. So how

601
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: about the theocratic organization of ancient society. What what does

602
00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: that tell us about whether or not a bicameral mind

603
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:33,960
Speaker 1: ever existed? According to Julian James, well, in this we're

604
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 1: getting into a topic that we've discussed before, the idea

605
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:40,240
Speaker 1: of divine kings. What does it mean that the king

606
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: is either you know, the right hand man of God,

607
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 1: works for God, or in some cases is God. That's

608
00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 1: an important distinction, and James makes that distinction. You know,

609
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 1: there are two main types of kings for him, the

610
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:54,480
Speaker 1: steward king and the god king. Right, that's right, the

611
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 1: steward king, this is where the king is a stand

612
00:33:56,960 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: in for God and then the god king. The king

613
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:03,400
Speaker 1: is God. And James believe that both tides developed out

614
00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 1: of the more primitive bicameral situation where a new king

615
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: ruled by obeying the hallucinated voice of a dead king,

616
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:14,080
Speaker 1: which sort of that gives you, like the you know,

617
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 1: the succession order, right, Yeah, in fact, you're never really

618
00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:21,320
Speaker 1: obeying you're never really obeying the new king, You're always

619
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:25,440
Speaker 1: obeying the old king through a sort of intermediary And

620
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:27,400
Speaker 1: in this he I mean, he even argues that the

621
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:31,800
Speaker 1: ziggurat centered civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia that in these cases

622
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:33,400
Speaker 1: it's not you can't even really look at it, like

623
00:34:33,440 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 1: the human beings were the ones that were ruling, Like

624
00:34:36,080 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: the ruling powers were the hallucinated voices of the various gods. Right,

625
00:34:40,080 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: So it was not the left brain or the dominant

626
00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:45,160
Speaker 1: side of the brain of the actual king, but it

627
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 1: was the other hemisphere of their brain ruling, the dominant

628
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:53,359
Speaker 1: side ruling the people. Right. And he also gets into how,

629
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about, Okay, you're reacting to statues

630
00:34:56,840 --> 00:34:59,359
Speaker 1: humanoid figures, but on top of this we also end

631
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:04,640
Speaker 1: up with all additional uh, religious imagery symbology. That's that's

632
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:07,840
Speaker 1: this used even written language. Uh. He points out the

633
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:11,480
Speaker 1: quote reading in the third millennium BC may therefore have

634
00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:15,320
Speaker 1: been a matter of hearing the cuneiform, that is, hallucinating

635
00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:18,839
Speaker 1: the speech from looking at its picture symbols, rather than

636
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:23,359
Speaker 1: visual reading of syllables in our sense. Oh, that's that's fascinating.

637
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 1: So you think about how reading takes place for us today.

638
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:29,480
Speaker 1: It is largely an unconscious thing if you're an adult

639
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 1: that's been reading, not if you're a kid who's learning

640
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:34,160
Speaker 1: to read. Or if you know, at any point in

641
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:36,279
Speaker 1: your life, if you're learning to read, you do have

642
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 1: to think about the constituent parts of words and sentences,

643
00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:41,879
Speaker 1: like you have to sound them out and put them

644
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:45,560
Speaker 1: together in your mind using your conscious mind. Eventually reading

645
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:50,560
Speaker 1: becomes unconscious. I mean, I wonder if in this, in

646
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,919
Speaker 1: this bicameral framework, you would learn to read in an

647
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:57,640
Speaker 1: entirely unconscious way, the same way that maybe you get

648
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: better at shooting basketballs or something in an unconscious way. Yeah, yeah,

649
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 1: that's so. Now. No, another thing that another point that

650
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:10,799
Speaker 1: he makes about language is that in reference to ancient Egyptians, uh,

651
00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:13,319
Speaker 1: much like the language of the ancient Sumerians, he says

652
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:17,440
Speaker 1: that these languages were concrete from first to last, and

653
00:36:17,480 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: that interpretations involving abstract thought, uh, these are the These

654
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:26,520
Speaker 1: are modern modern intrusions, and that basically the gods commanded

655
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:29,319
Speaker 1: rather than created. Yeah, and we'll see that more when

656
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 1: we look in literature in the next section. Now, I

657
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:34,239
Speaker 1: I think I made reference already to household gods and

658
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:37,400
Speaker 1: household spirits. You encounter these in a lot of different cultures.

659
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:39,799
Speaker 1: If it's not household gods, then maybe it's a you know,

660
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 1: just a memorial of various members of the family, right,

661
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 1: And a lot of those traditions still carry on to

662
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:48,000
Speaker 1: this day. But the idea here is that not everyone

663
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:50,320
Speaker 1: can hear the voice of the ruling God, right, that

664
00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:52,719
Speaker 1: would seem to be kind of chaotic if the even

665
00:36:52,760 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: if it's just a simple model of the previous dead

666
00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: king speaking to the current king. I mean, it wouldn't

667
00:36:58,520 --> 00:37:00,320
Speaker 1: make sense for everyone to hear that king's voice and

668
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:02,880
Speaker 1: have their authority. But everyone in this scenario, in the

669
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:06,680
Speaker 1: bicameral scenario, is hearing voices, So who are those voices? Well,

670
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:10,279
Speaker 1: there's a hierarchy of God's isn't exactly like because we

671
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 1: there are different types of stressful situations. Imagine a scenario

672
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:17,560
Speaker 1: where one is cooking, preparing a meal in one's hut

673
00:37:17,960 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: and um, let's say you've only got one piece of meat.

674
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: I mean, you accidentally drop it onto the ground. There

675
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:26,719
Speaker 1: is a moment of panic. What do I do? Well,

676
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: the household cooking God chimes in and says take it

677
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:32,840
Speaker 1: and wash it in the river or something to that effect,

678
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:35,800
Speaker 1: you know, and and it's solved. So that's five second

679
00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:39,480
Speaker 1: rule us. Yeah, So this would be the case of

680
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:43,239
Speaker 1: a of a lesser deity coming in and calling the shot. Yeah,

681
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 1: you know. One of the things about ancient Religionny mentions

682
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:48,520
Speaker 1: in the book that is very interesting is his discussion

683
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:50,719
Speaker 1: of the evolution of the concepts of the car and

684
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:56,439
Speaker 1: the bar in h in Egyptian theology, where it's hard

685
00:37:56,480 --> 00:37:58,799
Speaker 1: to I guess we can't summarize it here, but if

686
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 1: you get a chance to read the book yourself, look

687
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:04,600
Speaker 1: out for that section. It's really interesting. It's it's about

688
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:09,399
Speaker 1: the way we're you know, words for theological concepts sort

689
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:14,359
Speaker 1: of transition into other into having other meanings. Now, part

690
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:16,400
Speaker 1: of the whole timeline, of course, is that as we've

691
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 1: already stressed, that the gods cease speaking to everyone after

692
00:38:19,640 --> 00:38:22,359
Speaker 1: a while and then cease all together for the most part.

693
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:24,759
Speaker 1: We'll get into the details of that as we we go.

694
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:30,239
Speaker 1: But but then when that happens, there's uh, their order collapses, uh.

695
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 1: Cultures end up retreating into the jungles, and for many

696
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:37,400
Speaker 1: people everything has to be built up again. Basically, the

697
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:40,839
Speaker 1: idea here is that the bicameral mind, this, this whole

698
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:44,839
Speaker 1: system of hearing voices, this hold society together. This is

699
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 1: it's it's an instrument of social control. Yeah, and so

700
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: it's it's like playing jinga with gravity and then gravity

701
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:54,759
Speaker 1: goes away, and then how do you hold the blocks together? Well,

702
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 1: then suddenly have to come with new novel ways to

703
00:38:57,040 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 1: do it, such as gluing them all together, I guess.

704
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:02,440
Speaker 1: Is so the political organization equivalent of that would be

705
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:05,400
Speaker 1: what it would be brutal dictatorship. Yeah, things like brutal

706
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:08,839
Speaker 1: dictatorship have to step in. Uh. Suddenly, you know, you

707
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:12,880
Speaker 1: have all these wars and just total bloodshed occurring because

708
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:17,040
Speaker 1: the voices that organized society have have stopped speaking or

709
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:22,960
Speaker 1: have certainly stopped speaking with enough regularity to hold everything together. So,

710
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:25,960
Speaker 1: in closing on this, he argues quote that man in

711
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:30,279
Speaker 1: his early civilizations had a profoundly different mentality from our own.

712
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 1: That in fact, men and women were not conscious as

713
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: we are. We're not responsible for their actions and therefore

714
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 1: cannot be given the credit or blame for anything that

715
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 1: was done over these vast millennia of time. That instead,

716
00:39:42,640 --> 00:39:45,719
Speaker 1: each person had a part of his nervous system which

717
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 1: was divine, by which he was ordered about like any

718
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:52,880
Speaker 1: slave of voice or voices, which indeed were what we

719
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: call volition and empowered what they commanded and were related

720
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:01,799
Speaker 1: to the hallucinated voices of others in a carefully established hierarchy.

721
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: And this mindset would have again developed over the over

722
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:08,400
Speaker 1: the ninth century BC to the second millennium BC, a

723
00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:13,000
Speaker 1: gradual procession progression. Right, So that's the hypothesized era of

724
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: the bicameral mind, which around the first millennium BC starts

725
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:19,279
Speaker 1: to decompose and fall apart. All right, we're gonna take

726
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:20,839
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come back, we will

727
00:40:20,920 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 1: look at signs of the bicameral mind in ancient literature.

728
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: Than all right, we're back, alright, So obviously it would

729
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:32,399
Speaker 1: make sense that we'd see examples or the examples could

730
00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 1: be made in literature, because, after all, the bicameral mind

731
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:39,279
Speaker 1: is uh is, according to the theory, according to the the

732
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: hypothesis here an offshoot of the acquisition of language. Right,

733
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 1: Jane says, language makes it exist. So could you could

734
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:49,240
Speaker 1: you look at ancient uses of language to find evidence

735
00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:52,279
Speaker 1: of it? Now, another thing that complicates this is that

736
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:55,800
Speaker 1: James thinks that one of the causes of the decomposition

737
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:58,440
Speaker 1: of the bicameral mind into the conscious mind is the

738
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 1: widespread introduction of language so this also writing ends up

739
00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:06,440
Speaker 1: undermining the bicameral mind. But can we see signs of

740
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 1: the bi cameral mind in ancient literature? I think he's

741
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:13,160
Speaker 1: got some interesting stuff to talk about here. Yet again,

742
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: I want to be clear that I'm not endorsing his

743
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: theory as correct, but I do think some of his claims,

744
00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:21,919
Speaker 1: especially about what we see in Greek literature, are fascinating

745
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 1: and a little terrifying. I have to admit when I

746
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 1: was reading, you know, I kind of kind of gave

747
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: me the willies at various points to try to imagine

748
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 1: ancient people ruled by bicameral mind. But when you started

749
00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:37,120
Speaker 1: talking about the Iliad in particular, kind of gave me

750
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:39,440
Speaker 1: chill bumps. So totally. So, the Iliot is one of

751
00:41:39,520 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 1: Jane's chief examples of bicameral literature. So, of course the

752
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:45,359
Speaker 1: Iliad if you're if you never read it, It's an

753
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:47,920
Speaker 1: epic war poem that tells the story of an alliance

754
00:41:47,960 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 1: of Greek kings and their warriors, primarily the warrior Achilles,

755
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:54,359
Speaker 1: laying siege to the city of Troy. This is the

756
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 1: historical event now known as the Trojan War, and Jane's

757
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:00,840
Speaker 1: claims that the Iliad was develo by a group of

758
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:03,640
Speaker 1: oral storytellers or bards known as the ao E d

759
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 1: And that's in contrast to sort of the traditional received

760
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:10,360
Speaker 1: knowledge that they were composed by an individual named Homer.

761
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 1: I think it's probably more widely believed now that these

762
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:17,280
Speaker 1: are the works of many people of time. But anyway,

763
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:21,880
Speaker 1: that that war took place about twelve thirty b C.

764
00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:24,400
Speaker 1: Or sorry, it was first composed around the time the

765
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:27,279
Speaker 1: war took place around twelve thirty BC, and it was

766
00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:31,440
Speaker 1: first transcribed into written form around nine hundred or eight

767
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty b C. And scholars may believe some

768
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:36,799
Speaker 1: different dates now, but that's what James is working with.

769
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 1: So when we look at the thoughts and behaviors of

770
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 1: characters in the Iliad, it should tell us something about

771
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:46,080
Speaker 1: the mental life of people who composed and wrote the

772
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 1: story about three thousand years ago. And when we examine this,

773
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:52,520
Speaker 1: what do we find. Well, James makes a really striking

774
00:42:52,520 --> 00:42:55,640
Speaker 1: claim about the Iliad. It is a work of literature

775
00:42:55,760 --> 00:42:59,919
Speaker 1: in which the characters are almost entirely devoid of any

776
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:05,720
Speaker 1: thing recognizable as consciousness. You do not really see introspection

777
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:08,640
Speaker 1: in the Iliad. There are a few passages which serve

778
00:43:08,719 --> 00:43:12,560
Speaker 1: as exceptions to this. Generally, James thinks that they look

779
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:15,560
Speaker 1: like late additions to the text or signed or they

780
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: could possibly be signs of early protoconscious thoughts seeping through.

781
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 1: But primarily, the characters of the Iliad do not introspect,

782
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 1: they do not narrotize, they do not seem to have

783
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:30,759
Speaker 1: conscious consideration. Instead, when they're faced with the need for

784
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 1: novel behavior, what happens. They're told what to do by

785
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:37,839
Speaker 1: a god. A god makes them do it. Now, it's

786
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:40,280
Speaker 1: it's generally when we look back on pieces of literature

787
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: like this, we think, well, this is just this was

788
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:44,279
Speaker 1: a primitive form of literature, This was a this is

789
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 1: a more archaic um in a form of storytelling. Yeah,

790
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: you see it as a literary device, which very well

791
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:52,239
Speaker 1: could be. It makes me think, you know, all these

792
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: various bad films that you and I enjoy, and sometimes

793
00:43:56,480 --> 00:44:01,400
Speaker 1: they're enjoyably bad because the craftsmanship isn't there at various levels.

794
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:06,240
Speaker 1: Um if bicameral, if the bicameral mind hypothesis is true,

795
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:09,839
Speaker 1: could it be possible that that sometimes we love bad

796
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:13,439
Speaker 1: movies because they seem to have been created by a bicameral. Mind.

797
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:17,360
Speaker 1: I was with you every step of the way there, Robert.

798
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 1: I can believe that there are movies that feel quite bicameral. Yeah,

799
00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:24,360
Speaker 1: that feel as if they were like dictated by a

800
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:28,279
Speaker 1: divine presence rather than consciously thought through. All right, but

801
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: but but back to the discussion here. So, yeah, we

802
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:33,200
Speaker 1: have this this war going on. There's no introspection, there's

803
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:36,960
Speaker 1: nothing that resembles consciousness, and at all the pivotal plot

804
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:39,600
Speaker 1: points are punctuated by a God stepping in and saying

805
00:44:39,680 --> 00:44:41,359
Speaker 1: do this or do that. Yeah. So there might be

806
00:44:41,440 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: like a scene where Achilles is going to reach out

807
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 1: and kill his king Agamemnon, but instead it says, a

808
00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: God grabs him and tell and makes him not do it. Yeah. Interesting.

809
00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 1: I would like to see more of that in our films, though,

810
00:44:54,719 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 1: where you just have God's pop up and direct the

811
00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:00,080
Speaker 1: course of action. You know, even in the words of

812
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:03,360
Speaker 1: the Greek, Jane says, uh, we can see something of

813
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 1: bicamerality here because there are Greek words that later come

814
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: to be used to refer to consciousness, and they appear

815
00:45:11,160 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 1: throughout the Iliad, but through contextual clues we can tell

816
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 1: that they mean something entirely different in the Iliad than

817
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 1: what they mean when they later come to mean consciousness.

818
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:25,239
Speaker 1: For example, the word see he it's spelt psyche, you know,

819
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 1: in the English pronunciation see he. In later centuries, this

820
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 1: clearly comes to mean consciousness or mind or soul. That's

821
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:35,200
Speaker 1: how it is used in Greek, but in the Iliad

822
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 1: phase it appears to refer to something more like physical

823
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 1: life substances. Jane says it means something more like blood

824
00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:46,520
Speaker 1: or breath, like if a soldier gets killed on the battlefield,

825
00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:50,960
Speaker 1: his see he bleeds out onto the ground, or the

826
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:54,800
Speaker 1: word thumos. In later writings, Jane says this means something

827
00:45:54,840 --> 00:45:58,239
Speaker 1: more like emotional mind or soul. In the Iliad, once again,

828
00:45:58,239 --> 00:46:01,040
Speaker 1: it seems to have this base level animal meaning. It's

829
00:46:01,080 --> 00:46:05,080
Speaker 1: something more like animation or motion. So when a soldier

830
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:10,160
Speaker 1: stops moving, the thumos goes out of his limbs, But

831
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:12,880
Speaker 1: it also seems to mean this weird kind of organ

832
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:15,680
Speaker 1: in the body that can be filled with the impetus

833
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 1: for motion or activity. Next is noose. In later Greek,

834
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:25,400
Speaker 1: it certainly comes to mean consciousness, it's like a conscious mind,

835
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:28,720
Speaker 1: but in the Iliad it appears to mean something much plainer.

836
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:32,000
Speaker 1: It means like sight or field of vision. So when

837
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: you see something, the thing is in your noose. Now,

838
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: this next point, this is the exact place where he

839
00:46:39,000 --> 00:46:42,000
Speaker 1: really gave me the creeps, and I got actual chill bumps.

840
00:46:42,040 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 1: He points out that the Iliad, as well as a

841
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:47,719
Speaker 1: Greek art of the time quote, shows man as an

842
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:52,600
Speaker 1: assembly of strangely articulated limbs, the joints under drawn and

843
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:56,480
Speaker 1: the torso almost separated from the hips. It is graphically

844
00:46:56,560 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: what we find again and again in Homer, who speaks

845
00:46:59,120 --> 00:47:03,360
Speaker 1: of hands, lower arms, upper arms, feet, calves, and thighs

846
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:07,960
Speaker 1: as being fleet, sinewy in speedy motion, etcetera, with no

847
00:47:08,160 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 1: mention of the body as a whole. Yeah. So it's

848
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:17,799
Speaker 1: just this idea of of just these automatons waging war, uh,

849
00:47:17,840 --> 00:47:22,320
Speaker 1: you know, killing each other with without this concrete sense

850
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: of self guiding. It so alien to comprehend. Oh, it

851
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 1: really is. And so if you buy into Jane's theory,

852
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:31,120
Speaker 1: or if you just want to entertain it as we

853
00:47:31,160 --> 00:47:34,719
Speaker 1: are doing, these characters simply do not seem to introspect.

854
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: They argue, they rage, they desire, they act out on desires,

855
00:47:38,840 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 1: but they don't seem to have access to a mind

856
00:47:41,120 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: space where they can perform introspective, metaphor based activities like

857
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:48,760
Speaker 1: we described in the previous episode, they don't have access

858
00:47:48,800 --> 00:47:52,319
Speaker 1: either to the conscious aspect of decision making. Instead, when

859
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:54,320
Speaker 1: they got to make a novel decision, the iliot is

860
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:56,880
Speaker 1: very clear about what happens. The God tells them what

861
00:47:56,960 --> 00:48:01,000
Speaker 1: to do and they do it. Hm. Maybe this is

862
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:03,600
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we like like a very classic

863
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: action hero, you know, because it's like they don't think,

864
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:08,319
Speaker 1: they just do. They are a man of action. They

865
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:13,279
Speaker 1: are a bicameral hero. I mean, you sometimes do get

866
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 1: that sense, right that there is a kind of there's

867
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:21,200
Speaker 1: a kind of unthinking charisma to the action hero in

868
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 1: most action movies. Uh. I guess that is what you'd

869
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:28,840
Speaker 1: call that, that man of action cliche. I mean, I

870
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:31,600
Speaker 1: guess it. Technically usually is a man in these movies,

871
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: and he's got this kind of macho swagger that does

872
00:48:34,719 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 1: not seem to involve thinking, It doesn't seem to involve

873
00:48:38,680 --> 00:48:43,160
Speaker 1: self reflection. They've just got this. Uh, this like violent intuition,

874
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:46,239
Speaker 1: can't be bargained with, can't be reasoned with, and absolutely

875
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 1: will not stop. I mean this that's the terminator. Uh.

876
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:51,719
Speaker 1: In a nutshell, the by the terminator is is a

877
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:55,240
Speaker 1: is a machine. Everybody was the terminator in the Iliad.

878
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 1: That's the scary part. Oh man, So what I what

879
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:01,920
Speaker 1: I'm thirsting for now? It's almost like this theory is

880
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:04,960
Speaker 1: too interesting and I'm too tempted to want it to

881
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 1: be true. So what I want now is for a

882
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 1: great classic scholar to say, like, no, no, no, he's

883
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:13,000
Speaker 1: got it all wrong. Here's why, here's how. You can

884
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:15,840
Speaker 1: definitely find lots of signs of consciousness in the Iliad.

885
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:17,920
Speaker 1: And they're not later editions. They are part of the

886
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:22,319
Speaker 1: original text. I want that, or I don't want that.

887
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 1: I feel like I need that. Yeah, Otherwise I feel

888
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:27,520
Speaker 1: like I'm just buying into the idea that Stanley Kubrick

889
00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: faith them in landing or something. Right. Yeah, it is

890
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 1: just such a radical hypothesis. Okay, Well, let's leave the

891
00:49:34,120 --> 00:49:36,920
Speaker 1: Iliad and look at some other literature from the ancient world.

892
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 1: How about Jewish literature. This is interesting. I'd not run

893
00:49:41,080 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 1: across this before either. This is a so this deals

894
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:47,279
Speaker 1: with him. Yeah. The Elohim, one of the names of

895
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,840
Speaker 1: God used in the in the Hebrew Bible, very often

896
00:49:50,880 --> 00:49:54,680
Speaker 1: just translated as God as singular, right, right, But he

897
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:57,000
Speaker 1: argues that to translate it as merely God is to

898
00:49:57,040 --> 00:50:00,839
Speaker 1: miss the plural nature of the word in Hebrew Uh,

899
00:50:01,040 --> 00:50:03,960
Speaker 1: which is something I've independently read, like eloheim is essentially

900
00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:06,960
Speaker 1: a plural word, but it's rendered in the modern sense

901
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:09,400
Speaker 1: and as a singular word. Yeah. It says that it

902
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:13,000
Speaker 1: comes from the root of to be powerful. But better

903
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:18,240
Speaker 1: translations of Him might be the great ones, the prominent ones,

904
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 1: the Majesty's, the judges, the mighty ones, etcetera. And so these,

905
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 1: he argues, are the vote could be the voice visions

906
00:50:26,600 --> 00:50:30,520
Speaker 1: of the bicameral mind. And he also argues that one

907
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:33,360
Speaker 1: can really see the decline of the bicameral vision in

908
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 1: the Bible. And now this is I really love this,

909
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:37,560
Speaker 1: because he's basically talking about all right, if you pick

910
00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:40,080
Speaker 1: up the Old Testament and you read it front to back,

911
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:44,280
Speaker 1: you can see this transition. So in the he says, quote,

912
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:47,120
Speaker 1: in the true bicameral period, there was usually a visual

913
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:51,480
Speaker 1: component to the halluciated hallucinated voice, either it's self hallucinated

914
00:50:51,640 --> 00:50:54,320
Speaker 1: or as the statue in front of which and in

915
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:57,720
Speaker 1: front of which one listened so even as a modern

916
00:50:57,800 --> 00:50:59,839
Speaker 1: reader of the Bible will find this. You go from

917
00:50:59,880 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 1: a physical God who physically does stuff like kick people

918
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:06,239
Speaker 1: out of the garden or shut the door on the arc,

919
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:09,759
Speaker 1: to a God that merely speaks to everyone, and a

920
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 1: purely auditory God that we account that we encounter with Moses,

921
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:17,600
Speaker 1: you know, with additional visual flares here and there, and

922
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:21,479
Speaker 1: crucially after that, a God of law and religion rather

923
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:24,800
Speaker 1: than of direct experience. So you go from this robustly

924
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:28,560
Speaker 1: imagined God who physically does stuff to a God who

925
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:32,000
Speaker 1: is a voice, to a God who is not experienced

926
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:36,120
Speaker 1: directly and rather as experience through his tradition of teachings

927
00:51:36,160 --> 00:51:40,200
Speaker 1: and law and so um so yeah. James argues that

928
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:42,920
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible is essentially a long narrative of the

929
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:47,920
Speaker 1: transition from myth to bicameral humankind, too conscious humankind, and

930
00:51:48,000 --> 00:51:50,040
Speaker 1: you can see the whole thing there. You've got the

931
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:53,719
Speaker 1: older prophets like Amos, who Jans identifies as clearly bicameral,

932
00:51:54,040 --> 00:51:58,359
Speaker 1: to Ecclesiastes, who uh. James thinks the author shows all

933
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:01,399
Speaker 1: the markers of consciousness, and he claims you can also

934
00:52:01,440 --> 00:52:05,840
Speaker 1: see this painful transition from bicameral society to conscious society

935
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: in many aspects of the canon. A couple of examples,

936
00:52:09,920 --> 00:52:13,160
Speaker 1: he says people are constantly begging for contact with a

937
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:16,600
Speaker 1: god or gods that no longer speak to them in

938
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:19,720
Speaker 1: the literature that he believes comes from the conscious period

939
00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: of this history. So one quote he gives from Psalm

940
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:25,239
Speaker 1: forty two, and this is with the name of God

941
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:28,040
Speaker 1: rendered directly to the plural rather than the singular, as

942
00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:31,720
Speaker 1: it would usually be rendered as the stag pants after

943
00:52:31,800 --> 00:52:35,320
Speaker 1: the water brooks. So pants my mind after you, Oh Gods,

944
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:39,479
Speaker 1: my mind thirsts for God's, for living gods. When shall

945
00:52:39,560 --> 00:52:42,920
Speaker 1: I come face to face with God's. Yeah, it's almost

946
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 1: like a like a gradual breakup story, like what he

947
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:47,240
Speaker 1: used to He used to see God all the time.

948
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:49,640
Speaker 1: We hung out, and now, yeah, we talk on the

949
00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 1: phone sometime, but it's not quite the same. And now

950
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:55,320
Speaker 1: it's like he won't even call. We just keep exchanging texts,

951
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:57,520
Speaker 1: and suddenly, you know, that's all I have to go on.

952
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 1: It's just the not even new texts, but the old texts.

953
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:04,360
Speaker 1: But then again, there are there are definitely in Jane's vision,

954
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 1: partisans of the conscious version of the religion that don't

955
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:11,520
Speaker 1: want anything to do with the direct experience version of

956
00:53:11,560 --> 00:53:14,560
Speaker 1: the religion. Like he says that there are many signs

957
00:53:14,560 --> 00:53:16,839
Speaker 1: throughout the books of the Hebrew Bible that the Bicameral

958
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:20,600
Speaker 1: people may have been actively persecuted by conscious people for

959
00:53:20,719 --> 00:53:24,320
Speaker 1: religious reasons. I'll just read one quote, he says. Quote.

960
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:27,680
Speaker 1: A further vestige from the Bicameral era is the word obe,

961
00:53:27,920 --> 00:53:32,400
Speaker 1: often translated as a familiar spirit. A man also or

962
00:53:32,440 --> 00:53:35,120
Speaker 1: a woman that have an obe shall surely be put

963
00:53:35,200 --> 00:53:40,359
Speaker 1: to death, says Leviticus. And similarly, Saul drives out from

964
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:43,720
Speaker 1: Israel all those that had an obe in First Samuel.

965
00:53:44,360 --> 00:53:47,160
Speaker 1: Even though an obe is something that one consults with,

966
00:53:47,760 --> 00:53:52,200
Speaker 1: according to Deuteronomy eighteen eleven, it probably had no physical embodiment.

967
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:55,759
Speaker 1: It is always bracketed with wizards and witches, and thus

968
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:59,799
Speaker 1: probably refers to some Bicameral voice that was not recognized

969
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:04,040
Speaker 1: by the Old Testament writers as religious. Yeah. I mean,

970
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 1: you get into this scenario where you know, obviously the

971
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:08,880
Speaker 1: individuals who don't hear the voices, they've built up all

972
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:11,560
Speaker 1: this this law and order based on the old texts

973
00:54:12,040 --> 00:54:16,160
Speaker 1: in the old stories. It becomes dangerous if other individuals

974
00:54:16,200 --> 00:54:19,520
Speaker 1: are attempting to to add new material to it. No,

975
00:54:19,680 --> 00:54:22,799
Speaker 1: I'm hearing God's right now, and they're telling me something different. Yeah,

976
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:25,040
Speaker 1: I mean it reminds me of the fact that the

977
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:27,600
Speaker 1: church that I attend they have this saying God is

978
00:54:27,640 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 1: still speaking, which, as it's intended, the idea is God

979
00:54:31,719 --> 00:54:34,600
Speaker 1: is still real and a part of everyone's lives, and

980
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:36,640
Speaker 1: you know, this is not just a story. But on

981
00:54:36,680 --> 00:54:39,560
Speaker 1: the other hand, there's it's kind of scary to think, well,

982
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:41,520
Speaker 1: if God is still speaking, what's he going to say?

983
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:46,320
Speaker 1: You know, Um, the conflict comes. It could provide license

984
00:54:46,400 --> 00:54:49,719
Speaker 1: for some very uh, for some very disturbing content, yea,

985
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:53,160
Speaker 1: or some great stuff. Yeah indeed. Yeah, it's just sort

986
00:54:53,160 --> 00:54:56,720
Speaker 1: of like it provides you with a blanket authorization for

987
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 1: action that is not so there if you have a

988
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 1: written and codified law. So again, all of this just

989
00:55:02,719 --> 00:55:05,880
Speaker 1: ends up playing into the conflict of the downfall of

990
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:09,840
Speaker 1: the bicameral mind. As the voices blink out and this

991
00:55:10,040 --> 00:55:13,560
Speaker 1: a new system of of order and social stability has

992
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:16,720
Speaker 1: to take hold. So let's try to summarize real quick

993
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:20,320
Speaker 1: what James is saying is the basic contours of the

994
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:25,040
Speaker 1: transition through the bicameral period to the conscious period. Let's

995
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:26,879
Speaker 1: see Robert tell me what you think of this. As

996
00:55:26,880 --> 00:55:29,720
Speaker 1: I've tried to summarize his view, I think James argues

997
00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:34,280
Speaker 1: that bicameral society emerged with language and the increasing size

998
00:55:34,360 --> 00:55:38,480
Speaker 1: of tribal groups. So when one could encode mental content

999
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:42,440
Speaker 1: into grammatical sentences, it was possible to code action motivation

1000
00:55:42,520 --> 00:55:45,879
Speaker 1: efficiently through language. So you have a big group where

1001
00:55:45,880 --> 00:55:49,799
Speaker 1: your authority figure can't be around to constantly tell you

1002
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:52,400
Speaker 1: what to do because the group's too big. So a

1003
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:56,360
Speaker 1: command heard from one's parents or one's tribal chieftain is

1004
00:55:56,440 --> 00:56:01,520
Speaker 1: hallucinated to recur over and over again provide continuous motivation

1005
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:05,520
Speaker 1: for action. And this is the non dominant hemisphere commanding

1006
00:56:05,520 --> 00:56:09,160
Speaker 1: the dominant hemisphere. This is the first version of bi camerality.

1007
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:12,560
Speaker 1: So when you've got words and sentences that can be hallucinated,

1008
00:56:13,360 --> 00:56:18,239
Speaker 1: then over time these admonitory voices, eventually they become not

1009
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:22,000
Speaker 1: just repetitive but synthetic. So they're not just telling you

1010
00:56:22,080 --> 00:56:24,560
Speaker 1: what these authority figures have told you in the past,

1011
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:28,760
Speaker 1: but they're telling you what these authority figures would command

1012
00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:31,880
Speaker 1: if they were present now. And of course we know,

1013
00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:35,680
Speaker 1: the mind has the power to synthesize information and imagine

1014
00:56:35,680 --> 00:56:38,720
Speaker 1: what somebody else would command. We do that consciously now,

1015
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:41,440
Speaker 1: But here it's saying, what if the right hemisphere and

1016
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:45,759
Speaker 1: in most people, or the non dominant hemisphere generally did

1017
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:52,040
Speaker 1: that automatically, nonconsciously. Uh So, over time, parents and chieftains

1018
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:55,960
Speaker 1: die and their voices are still heard instead of internal

1019
00:56:56,000 --> 00:57:01,160
Speaker 1: copies of authority figures, they become imbued with disim bodied authority.

1020
00:57:01,200 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: The voice itself provides inherent authorization, magical authority, as from

1021
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 1: a God. Then for a long time, bicameral society grows

1022
00:57:10,680 --> 00:57:14,520
Speaker 1: and develops, and bicameral people build technologies and kingdoms and

1023
00:57:14,600 --> 00:57:17,880
Speaker 1: begin to write works of ancient literature. But what happens

1024
00:57:17,920 --> 00:57:21,800
Speaker 1: to make it all disappear? Essentially, his answer is a

1025
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:27,880
Speaker 1: combination of catastrophe and literature. Would you agree with that, Robert, Yeah,

1026
00:57:27,920 --> 00:57:31,840
Speaker 1: that seems to be the basic idea catastrophe and literature. Yeah,

1027
00:57:32,080 --> 00:57:34,640
Speaker 1: the story of the story of our lives. Yeah, that

1028
00:57:34,640 --> 00:57:37,280
Speaker 1: that that is the roof collapsing on the bicameral mind.

1029
00:57:37,400 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 1: So the catastrophe he singles out is the widespread failure

1030
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 1: of civilization throughout the Eastern Mediterranean close to the end

1031
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:48,439
Speaker 1: of the second millennium BC. This is a period that's

1032
00:57:48,480 --> 00:57:50,680
Speaker 1: coming off of what's now referred to as the Late

1033
00:57:50,760 --> 00:57:54,960
Speaker 1: Bronze Age collapse, where ancient empires fell apart and dispersed

1034
00:57:54,960 --> 00:57:57,080
Speaker 1: and people were displaced, and there was a lot of

1035
00:57:57,120 --> 00:58:02,720
Speaker 1: war and raiding and collapse of infrastructure. Trade was interrupted,

1036
00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 1: education stifled, and it led to what some would consider

1037
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 1: a dark Age of the ancient world. And he also

1038
00:58:08,840 --> 00:58:12,080
Speaker 1: argues that a certain a small amount of natural selection

1039
00:58:12,120 --> 00:58:14,400
Speaker 1: may have come into play as well, because as all

1040
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:17,880
Speaker 1: this is going on, in the enormous, enormous bloodshed that's

1041
00:58:17,880 --> 00:58:20,360
Speaker 1: playing out here at the end of the second century BC,

1042
00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:23,560
Speaker 1: those who had the best chance to survive were those

1043
00:58:23,600 --> 00:58:26,760
Speaker 1: who could resist the commandments of the gods and the

1044
00:58:27,240 --> 00:58:29,760
Speaker 1: literal you know, the voice of compulsion, right, who were

1045
00:58:29,800 --> 00:58:34,000
Speaker 1: more adaptable and could narrotize out solutions to problems, and

1046
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:38,240
Speaker 1: who had the ability to practice prolonged deception and treachery. Yes,

1047
00:58:38,320 --> 00:58:41,080
Speaker 1: that's another huge idea here. So yeah, So he's got

1048
00:58:41,080 --> 00:58:44,160
Speaker 1: a summary of of the several factors he thinks led

1049
00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:47,760
Speaker 1: to in this period around the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia.

1050
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:51,280
Speaker 1: The collapse of the bicameral mind and the beginnings of

1051
00:58:51,320 --> 00:58:54,919
Speaker 1: widespread consciousness in culture. So what are these main things

1052
00:58:54,960 --> 00:58:58,560
Speaker 1: he offers? He's talking about, first of all, one, the

1053
00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:02,560
Speaker 1: weakening of the auditory by the advent of writing. Okay,

1054
00:59:02,600 --> 00:59:04,960
Speaker 1: A good example would be the invention of written law,

1055
00:59:05,120 --> 00:59:08,440
Speaker 1: right clearly distinguishing acceptable from non acceptable behavior in a

1056
00:59:08,480 --> 00:59:12,040
Speaker 1: way that does not require the intervention of an internal God. Yeah,

1057
00:59:12,080 --> 00:59:13,959
Speaker 1: we've got these tablets here. He didn't have to speak

1058
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:16,080
Speaker 1: to you all the time. Just refer to the tablets. Yeah,

1059
00:59:16,280 --> 00:59:18,480
Speaker 1: this is how I feel about any kind of power

1060
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:21,400
Speaker 1: point presentation. Just give me the power point. I don't

1061
00:59:21,440 --> 00:59:23,400
Speaker 1: need the voice of God telling me the things. Just

1062
00:59:23,440 --> 00:59:26,600
Speaker 1: give me a list. Yeah, okay, okay, what's the next thing?

1063
00:59:26,840 --> 00:59:30,720
Speaker 1: Number two? The inherent fragility of hallucinatory control. Okay, Yeah,

1064
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:33,520
Speaker 1: we can see that there's some instability in the system there.

1065
00:59:33,880 --> 00:59:37,440
Speaker 1: Number three, the unworkable nous of God's in the chaos

1066
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 1: of historical upheaval. Okay, So the God's prevented problem that

1067
00:59:41,400 --> 00:59:45,520
Speaker 1: they caused problems when when society and hierarchy was falling apart. Yeah,

1068
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:48,120
Speaker 1: and again, the voice of the gods was just there

1069
00:59:48,160 --> 00:59:50,760
Speaker 1: was not actually the voice of a divine being with

1070
00:59:50,840 --> 00:59:56,320
Speaker 1: superior knowledge. It was still originating from within the individual, right, Okay.

1071
00:59:56,320 --> 00:59:58,440
Speaker 1: The fourth one, the fourth one is the depositing of

1072
00:59:58,480 --> 01:00:02,320
Speaker 1: internal cause and the observation of difference in others. Okay,

1073
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:05,280
Speaker 1: So you see other people are behaving differently, and you

1074
01:00:05,320 --> 01:00:09,160
Speaker 1: begin to wonder if maybe they're just behaving on their

1075
01:00:09,200 --> 01:00:12,360
Speaker 1: own and not being commanded by God's maybe undermining your

1076
01:00:12,360 --> 01:00:15,240
Speaker 1: own authorization of god belief. Yeah, I can see where

1077
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:17,840
Speaker 1: it would be. Um, I mean it would it would

1078
01:00:18,440 --> 01:00:21,480
Speaker 1: It would be contagious in that in that respect. Yeah. Uh.

1079
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:26,040
Speaker 1: Number five the acquisition of anatization from epics, the introduction

1080
01:00:26,080 --> 01:00:30,120
Speaker 1: of stories. Number six the survival value of deceit, which

1081
01:00:30,120 --> 01:00:33,120
Speaker 1: we already touched on, and number seven a modicum of

1082
01:00:33,240 --> 01:00:36,200
Speaker 1: natural selection, which we also discussed here. But to be clear,

1083
01:00:36,480 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 1: I think James is primarily thinking about these transitions in mindset,

1084
01:00:40,520 --> 01:00:44,200
Speaker 1: not as changes in the physical brain brought about by

1085
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:46,600
Speaker 1: you know, mutation and natural selection, though there might be

1086
01:00:47,040 --> 01:00:51,120
Speaker 1: a little bit of selection towards levels of predisposition for it.

1087
01:00:51,160 --> 01:00:54,200
Speaker 1: But he's primarily thinking about this as cultural change. Right

1088
01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:57,640
Speaker 1: that there there are cultures of bi camerality and cultures

1089
01:00:57,680 --> 01:01:01,280
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Yes, all right, we're gonna take one more break,

1090
01:01:01,280 --> 01:01:03,560
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're going to jump into

1091
01:01:03,680 --> 01:01:08,480
Speaker 1: modern traces of the bicameral mind. Thank you, thank alright,

1092
01:01:08,480 --> 01:01:12,040
Speaker 1: we're back. So we've examined the evidence that James claims

1093
01:01:12,040 --> 01:01:14,280
Speaker 1: to offer for the existence of a bicameral mind and

1094
01:01:14,400 --> 01:01:17,640
Speaker 1: history and his conception of how the bicameral mind arose

1095
01:01:18,040 --> 01:01:22,600
Speaker 1: and then collapsed into society's based on conscious mentality. So,

1096
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:26,160
Speaker 1: if there truly was a bicamerality in the past, if

1097
01:01:26,160 --> 01:01:28,720
Speaker 1: our brains are still so wired as to be perhaps

1098
01:01:28,800 --> 01:01:31,600
Speaker 1: capable of bi cameral culture in the present, if we

1099
01:01:31,720 --> 01:01:35,760
Speaker 1: just practiced it, what would the evidence of that be. Well,

1100
01:01:35,800 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: you would think there'll be some practices in human behavior

1101
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:40,880
Speaker 1: that would give you evidence that we used to be

1102
01:01:40,920 --> 01:01:44,040
Speaker 1: b cameral and that we could still be bicameral if

1103
01:01:44,080 --> 01:01:46,800
Speaker 1: we tried. That's right. And he first of all, he

1104
01:01:46,840 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 1: makes uh, he makes some examples out of religion. So

1105
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:53,560
Speaker 1: at this point I think everyone can pretty well imagine

1106
01:01:53,560 --> 01:01:56,480
Speaker 1: the sorts of religious examples that James is going to make.

1107
01:01:56,840 --> 01:01:59,200
Speaker 1: After all, we've been discussing the trans like nature of

1108
01:01:59,240 --> 01:02:04,320
Speaker 1: biocameral existence. Uh. In the Commanding words of corpses and statues,

1109
01:02:04,400 --> 01:02:07,880
Speaker 1: you know, all you know, very magical and scenarios that

1110
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:10,560
Speaker 1: we can imagine lining up with both religious stories and

1111
01:02:10,640 --> 01:02:15,280
Speaker 1: religious right. So expectantly he points to spirit possession. There's

1112
01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:17,760
Speaker 1: a topic we come back to on a few different

1113
01:02:17,960 --> 01:02:20,200
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and it ranges

1114
01:02:20,200 --> 01:02:24,160
Speaker 1: from demonic possession across various cultures to you know, tribal

1115
01:02:24,240 --> 01:02:28,680
Speaker 1: African beats that threatened Carl Young's sanity, and more positive

1116
01:02:28,720 --> 01:02:32,480
Speaker 1: forms of spirit possessions such as oracles, which which Jane

1117
01:02:32,520 --> 01:02:35,000
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time with. Um. We have a

1118
01:02:35,040 --> 01:02:36,880
Speaker 1: recent episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind that covers

1119
01:02:36,960 --> 01:02:41,800
Speaker 1: the the Thaie tattoo festival in which uh, the animal

1120
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:45,240
Speaker 1: tattoo ends up overtaking the individual individual. So we have

1121
01:02:45,280 --> 01:02:48,600
Speaker 1: examples of this this throughout different cultures. The speaking of

1122
01:02:48,680 --> 01:02:52,640
Speaker 1: tongues uh and similar religious experiences may also play into this,

1123
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:55,440
Speaker 1: and of course we have examples of this in ancient

1124
01:02:55,480 --> 01:02:58,680
Speaker 1: writings as well. So as early as a fourth century BC,

1125
01:02:58,880 --> 01:03:02,640
Speaker 1: Socrates wrote of odd possessed men, so and clearly like

1126
01:03:02,720 --> 01:03:06,120
Speaker 1: that's not the kind of thing you would uh necessarily

1127
01:03:06,200 --> 01:03:10,000
Speaker 1: speak about if if you were immerged within a bicameral

1128
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:14,520
Speaker 1: uh world anyway, right, Um, Yeah, these might be more

1129
01:03:14,760 --> 01:03:19,000
Speaker 1: vestiges of the bicameral culture. Right. And James points to

1130
01:03:19,640 --> 01:03:24,600
Speaker 1: a number of different examples, mainly those dealing with Greek oracles, uh,

1131
01:03:24,640 --> 01:03:27,400
Speaker 1: with the idea being that the oracle the individual here

1132
01:03:27,440 --> 01:03:30,080
Speaker 1: would have would have ramped themselves up, but they basically

1133
01:03:30,120 --> 01:03:33,840
Speaker 1: ramped up right hemisphere activity in relation to the left

1134
01:03:34,440 --> 01:03:37,960
Speaker 1: as a result, as a response to complex ritual stimuli,

1135
01:03:38,480 --> 01:03:40,120
Speaker 1: you know, the use of all these various and we've

1136
01:03:40,120 --> 01:03:43,240
Speaker 1: talked about statues and language and and all of all

1137
01:03:43,280 --> 01:03:48,880
Speaker 1: of these aspects playing into passed bicameral experiences. And therefore

1138
01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:51,919
Speaker 1: the idea here is that even as we're shifting out

1139
01:03:51,920 --> 01:03:55,640
Speaker 1: of the bicameral age, even as the bicameral ages behind us,

1140
01:03:56,000 --> 01:03:58,200
Speaker 1: you have conscious individuals who are able to sort of

1141
01:03:58,280 --> 01:04:03,840
Speaker 1: resurrect the bicameral experiences. Yes, he enter into trance like states, etcetera,

1142
01:04:04,080 --> 01:04:06,480
Speaker 1: by engaging in these rituals. Yeah. And these would be

1143
01:04:06,600 --> 01:04:10,880
Speaker 1: rituals where they channel the output of what Jans identifies

1144
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:15,280
Speaker 1: as in most people the right hemisphere speech associated sections

1145
01:04:15,280 --> 01:04:18,440
Speaker 1: of course, right a speech usually coming from the left hemisphere,

1146
01:04:18,640 --> 01:04:21,120
Speaker 1: So it would be like the voices of the gods

1147
01:04:21,160 --> 01:04:23,560
Speaker 1: that spoke in the bicameral minds of the ancients, but

1148
01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: speaking out through the mouths of these oracles and prophets.

1149
01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:31,240
Speaker 1: And you know what, those oracles and prophets, they didn't

1150
01:04:31,280 --> 01:04:35,520
Speaker 1: necessarily speak in even in a commanding tone. In many

1151
01:04:35,520 --> 01:04:39,200
Speaker 1: cases they may have they may have sung yes. And

1152
01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:42,000
Speaker 1: so this is a really interesting section James gets into

1153
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:44,479
Speaker 1: in the in the third book of his book where

1154
01:04:44,520 --> 01:04:49,320
Speaker 1: he talks about the evidence of pasted bicamerality in poetry

1155
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:54,000
Speaker 1: and music. So remember that Jane's neurological hypothesis, uh is

1156
01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:57,160
Speaker 1: that the bicameral mind consisted of the non dominant hemisphere,

1157
01:04:57,160 --> 01:04:59,800
Speaker 1: which is the right brain in most people, speaking directly

1158
01:04:59,840 --> 01:05:03,200
Speaker 1: as an auditory hallucination to the dominant hemisphere, which is

1159
01:05:03,240 --> 01:05:05,919
Speaker 1: the left brain in most people. Keep that in mind here,

1160
01:05:06,360 --> 01:05:09,080
Speaker 1: that's right now. His his his thesis here is quote,

1161
01:05:09,400 --> 01:05:13,320
Speaker 1: the first poets were God's poetry began with the bicameral mind.

1162
01:05:13,640 --> 01:05:16,800
Speaker 1: The God's side of our ancient mentality, at least in

1163
01:05:16,840 --> 01:05:20,400
Speaker 1: a certain period of history, usually or perhaps always spoke

1164
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:23,800
Speaker 1: in verse. This means that most men, at one time

1165
01:05:24,000 --> 01:05:27,880
Speaker 1: throughout the day, we're hearing poetry of a sort composed

1166
01:05:27,880 --> 01:05:32,360
Speaker 1: and spoken within their own minds. That's terrifying and beautiful. Yeah,

1167
01:05:32,400 --> 01:05:33,680
Speaker 1: that that kind of sums up a lot of the

1168
01:05:33,680 --> 01:05:37,480
Speaker 1: bicameral hypothesis in general. So evidence is scanned for this,

1169
01:05:37,520 --> 01:05:41,080
Speaker 1: but he argues that quote individuals who remained by cameral

1170
01:05:41,160 --> 01:05:44,960
Speaker 1: into the conscious age, that these individuals continue to express

1171
01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:48,480
Speaker 1: the voice of God or God's and poetry um the

1172
01:05:48,880 --> 01:05:52,280
Speaker 1: so you know, the Indian Veda dictated by the gods,

1173
01:05:52,520 --> 01:05:57,120
Speaker 1: the oracle at Delphi, early Arabic poets, etcetera. And this

1174
01:05:57,160 --> 01:06:01,160
Speaker 1: concerns music too, because early poetry was musical in nature.

1175
01:06:01,440 --> 01:06:04,320
Speaker 1: Janes says absolutely. I mean, you could still say that

1176
01:06:04,400 --> 01:06:07,560
Speaker 1: poetry is musical and nature, especially insofar as it invokes

1177
01:06:07,600 --> 01:06:10,320
Speaker 1: any kind of scanning or rhythm. That's right. And speech

1178
01:06:10,480 --> 01:06:13,840
Speaker 1: is a function again primarily of the left cerebral hemisphere,

1179
01:06:14,000 --> 01:06:17,200
Speaker 1: but song is primarily a function of the right hemisphere.

1180
01:06:17,880 --> 01:06:21,640
Speaker 1: Poetry begins as the divine speech of the bicameral mind.

1181
01:06:21,920 --> 01:06:26,640
Speaker 1: That's an interesting hypothesis in itself. Now there's a he

1182
01:06:26,720 --> 01:06:30,720
Speaker 1: presents a fair amount of of evidence for this, which

1183
01:06:30,720 --> 01:06:32,960
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna roll through here. Joe jump in

1184
01:06:33,760 --> 01:06:36,680
Speaker 1: as we go. Hit me man, all right. So, first

1185
01:06:36,680 --> 01:06:39,640
Speaker 1: of all, many elderly patients who have suffered cerebral hemorrhages

1186
01:06:39,760 --> 01:06:43,280
Speaker 1: on the left hemisphere such that they cannot speak, they

1187
01:06:43,280 --> 01:06:47,680
Speaker 1: can still sing. We also have the Wada test to

1188
01:06:47,760 --> 01:06:51,480
Speaker 1: determine a person's cerebral dominance. This is when sodium amatal

1189
01:06:51,560 --> 01:06:55,080
Speaker 1: is injected into the carotid artery on one side, putting

1190
01:06:55,080 --> 01:06:58,640
Speaker 1: the corresponding hemisphere under heavy sedation, and the other side

1191
01:06:58,680 --> 01:07:01,760
Speaker 1: remains awake. So when this case case, if the left

1192
01:07:01,800 --> 01:07:05,120
Speaker 1: hemisphere is sedated, the patient can't speak, but they can sing.

1193
01:07:05,240 --> 01:07:07,840
Speaker 1: If the right hemisphere is sedated, the patient can't sing,

1194
01:07:08,000 --> 01:07:11,200
Speaker 1: but they can speak. So like, the centers for speech

1195
01:07:11,320 --> 01:07:16,280
Speaker 1: and singing are lateralized and the situation is more pronounced

1196
01:07:16,280 --> 01:07:20,160
Speaker 1: in cases where there's actual physical damage to one hemisphere

1197
01:07:20,240 --> 01:07:23,160
Speaker 1: or the other, or you know, it's it's completely removed. Also,

1198
01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:26,640
Speaker 1: electrical stimulation of the right hemisphere in regions adjacent to

1199
01:07:26,680 --> 01:07:30,840
Speaker 1: the posterior temporal lobe often produces hallucinations of singing and music.

1200
01:07:32,080 --> 01:07:34,840
Speaker 1: Oh and he also he presents an experiment that you

1201
01:07:34,880 --> 01:07:37,680
Speaker 1: can try. He says says that you can prove the

1202
01:07:37,760 --> 01:07:42,000
Speaker 1: latter though the laterality of music yourself. Try hearing different

1203
01:07:42,120 --> 01:07:46,080
Speaker 1: musics on two earphones at the same intensity. You will

1204
01:07:46,080 --> 01:07:49,720
Speaker 1: perceive and remember the music on the left ear phone better.

1205
01:07:50,000 --> 01:07:53,200
Speaker 1: This is because the left ear has greater neuro representation

1206
01:07:53,320 --> 01:07:57,120
Speaker 1: on the right hemisphere. Now, he points out that Plato

1207
01:07:57,240 --> 01:08:01,680
Speaker 1: spoke of poetry as possession. Yeah, said, poets then around

1208
01:08:01,800 --> 01:08:05,400
Speaker 1: four b C. Were comparable in mentality to the oracles

1209
01:08:05,400 --> 01:08:09,120
Speaker 1: of the same period and went through similar um psychological

1210
01:08:09,160 --> 01:08:13,000
Speaker 1: transformation when they performed. And then there's this idea. We've

1211
01:08:13,000 --> 01:08:15,240
Speaker 1: all heard talk of the muses, right right. I mean,

1212
01:08:15,320 --> 01:08:18,719
Speaker 1: so ancient epics might start saying like sing muse blah

1213
01:08:18,760 --> 01:08:25,120
Speaker 1: blah blah. So the authors telling their personal composition God

1214
01:08:25,240 --> 01:08:28,840
Speaker 1: to start going Yeah, Now, when we talk about the muses,

1215
01:08:28,880 --> 01:08:31,960
Speaker 1: where you know, we're just talking about inspiration or you know,

1216
01:08:32,160 --> 01:08:34,240
Speaker 1: or attention even or just you know, the will to

1217
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:37,280
Speaker 1: get a project done. It's a literary device we think of. Yeah.

1218
01:08:37,400 --> 01:08:40,040
Speaker 1: But but back back then, the argument is is that

1219
01:08:40,120 --> 01:08:44,320
Speaker 1: the bicameral human would literally need to hear the voice

1220
01:08:44,439 --> 01:08:48,080
Speaker 1: of the muse. Yeah, the muse was literally real, and

1221
01:08:48,120 --> 01:08:50,000
Speaker 1: so it wasn't just something they imagine, it was something

1222
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:54,479
Speaker 1: they experienced though it all was in the brain. Now,

1223
01:08:54,479 --> 01:08:56,760
Speaker 1: he points out that by the sixth century BC, the

1224
01:08:56,880 --> 01:09:00,160
Speaker 1: poet is no longer just naturally imbued with their long

1225
01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:02,840
Speaker 1: They have to learn the gift of the muse in

1226
01:09:02,960 --> 01:09:06,240
Speaker 1: order to hear it. So societea that the voice is

1227
01:09:06,240 --> 01:09:08,920
Speaker 1: becoming harder and harder for everyone to hear. So this

1228
01:09:09,000 --> 01:09:11,280
Speaker 1: might be kind of like how the oracles of these

1229
01:09:11,360 --> 01:09:14,280
Speaker 1: later periods, living in conscious societies have to go through

1230
01:09:14,280 --> 01:09:17,600
Speaker 1: elaborate rituals to get into the altered state of consciousness

1231
01:09:17,640 --> 01:09:21,320
Speaker 1: where they channel their non dominant hemisphere and let the

1232
01:09:21,400 --> 01:09:24,160
Speaker 1: voice of God speak. That's right, And he says that

1233
01:09:24,400 --> 01:09:27,920
Speaker 1: in the fifth century b C, we hear the very

1234
01:09:27,920 --> 01:09:32,439
Speaker 1: first hints of poets being peculiar with poetic ecstasy. That's

1235
01:09:32,479 --> 01:09:35,439
Speaker 1: that's his quote there. So I want to use that

1236
01:09:35,479 --> 01:09:37,200
Speaker 1: from now on. If I'm like trying to get some

1237
01:09:37,280 --> 01:09:39,720
Speaker 1: writing done and somebody interrupts me, I'm like, hang on,

1238
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:43,280
Speaker 1: I'm being peculiar. Yeah, So it basically just gets harder

1239
01:09:43,280 --> 01:09:45,320
Speaker 1: and harder to hear the voices of the gods until

1240
01:09:45,360 --> 01:09:48,600
Speaker 1: you're having to essentially make up the words yourself. It

1241
01:09:49,080 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of of how magic works in

1242
01:09:51,720 --> 01:09:55,479
Speaker 1: dungeons and dragons, because dungeons and Dragons you basically have

1243
01:09:55,520 --> 01:09:58,520
Speaker 1: three different types of magic users. You have the warlock

1244
01:09:58,800 --> 01:10:01,880
Speaker 1: who works their magic the enslavement to a god or

1245
01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:04,679
Speaker 1: god like being, So that's a bicamera being. Yeah, yeah,

1246
01:10:04,680 --> 01:10:08,720
Speaker 1: that would be the bicameral experience. A sorcerer learns to

1247
01:10:08,880 --> 01:10:13,200
Speaker 1: better channel magic that naturally emerges from their being. So

1248
01:10:13,360 --> 01:10:16,479
Speaker 1: this is like a transitional being. This is like one

1249
01:10:16,479 --> 01:10:19,120
Speaker 1: of the oracles in the late antiquity. Yeah, like it

1250
01:10:19,240 --> 01:10:21,599
Speaker 1: still flows through them, it still can flow through them,

1251
01:10:21,720 --> 01:10:24,559
Speaker 1: but they have to manage it. And then finally you

1252
01:10:24,600 --> 01:10:27,360
Speaker 1: have the arcane wizard, who has to master the workings

1253
01:10:27,360 --> 01:10:30,840
Speaker 1: of magic through study and academic effort alone. So these

1254
01:10:30,880 --> 01:10:34,040
Speaker 1: are the pathetic poets of the modern era who have

1255
01:10:34,120 --> 01:10:38,360
Speaker 1: to consciously compose their works exactly. Yeah, and uh, you know,

1256
01:10:38,640 --> 01:10:41,360
Speaker 1: in the same way that within Dungeons and Dragons you

1257
01:10:41,400 --> 01:10:43,320
Speaker 1: can you can have that, you can have sort of

1258
01:10:43,360 --> 01:10:45,920
Speaker 1: the attitudes of what the wizard is. And this is

1259
01:10:45,960 --> 01:10:49,640
Speaker 1: also kind of based on attitudes involving witches and wizards

1260
01:10:49,720 --> 01:10:53,080
Speaker 1: and in the real world in earlier periods. But there's

1261
01:10:53,080 --> 01:10:56,519
Speaker 1: the idea that the arcane wizard is a master of

1262
01:10:56,520 --> 01:11:01,000
Speaker 1: of these forces where lesser models are um you know,

1263
01:11:01,040 --> 01:11:03,840
Speaker 1: the magic is a master of them, which is, you

1264
01:11:03,880 --> 01:11:06,920
Speaker 1: know not unlike the comparison between the bicamera and the

1265
01:11:06,920 --> 01:11:10,719
Speaker 1: conscious human right. And of course the idea is as uh,

1266
01:11:10,920 --> 01:11:14,800
Speaker 1: conscious society exists for longer and longer, and the bicameral

1267
01:11:14,880 --> 01:11:18,080
Speaker 1: society goes farther and farther into the past. Our ability

1268
01:11:18,120 --> 01:11:20,639
Speaker 1: to access these states of consciousness, to be an oracle,

1269
01:11:20,760 --> 01:11:23,559
Speaker 1: or to be a muse possessed poet gets further and

1270
01:11:23,600 --> 01:11:27,640
Speaker 1: further from our grasp. Exactly he writes, And then the

1271
01:11:27,760 --> 01:11:31,559
Speaker 1: muses hush and freeze into myths, nymphs, and shepherds dance

1272
01:11:31,640 --> 01:11:35,280
Speaker 1: no more. Consciousness is a witch beneath whose charms pure

1273
01:11:35,320 --> 01:11:39,920
Speaker 1: inspiration gasps and dies into invention. The oral becomes written

1274
01:11:39,960 --> 01:11:42,360
Speaker 1: by the poet himself, and written it should be added

1275
01:11:42,600 --> 01:11:45,800
Speaker 1: by his right hand, worked by his left hemisphere. The

1276
01:11:45,920 --> 01:11:49,519
Speaker 1: muses have become imaginary and invoked in their silence as

1277
01:11:49,560 --> 01:11:53,479
Speaker 1: a part of man's nostalgia for the bicameral mind. That

1278
01:11:53,640 --> 01:11:56,800
Speaker 1: is gorgeous. Yeah, and the whole book is filled with

1279
01:11:56,840 --> 01:11:59,720
Speaker 1: passages like that that are just beautifully written and uh

1280
01:11:59,800 --> 01:12:03,880
Speaker 1: in and just really drive home often emotionally the subject matter.

1281
01:12:04,000 --> 01:12:06,200
Speaker 1: That's another reason I guess I got to be skeptical

1282
01:12:06,240 --> 01:12:10,240
Speaker 1: and suspicious of this hypothesis is that it's so well written.

1283
01:12:10,320 --> 01:12:13,080
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to be especially cautious about it.

1284
01:12:13,160 --> 01:12:15,800
Speaker 1: Like he he communicates it so well and it's so

1285
01:12:15,840 --> 01:12:18,960
Speaker 1: beautiful in the book that that it's like getting an

1286
01:12:19,000 --> 01:12:23,120
Speaker 1: unfair advantage as a scientific hypothesis. Yeah, yeah, I can

1287
01:12:23,120 --> 01:12:26,799
Speaker 1: definitely get that argument. Maybe that's why most scientific papers

1288
01:12:26,840 --> 01:12:29,679
Speaker 1: are so horrible to read, Like why you know, it's

1289
01:12:29,720 --> 01:12:31,800
Speaker 1: really rare you come across the one that's really well

1290
01:12:31,960 --> 01:12:35,479
Speaker 1: well written, and it's because, well, maybe maybe you shouldn't

1291
01:12:35,560 --> 01:12:38,559
Speaker 1: let your writing skills make it stand out more than

1292
01:12:38,600 --> 01:12:43,479
Speaker 1: the theory itself deserves in terms of content. All right, Well,

1293
01:12:43,520 --> 01:12:48,400
Speaker 1: what's another lingering example of of the bicameral mind. Hey,

1294
01:12:48,439 --> 01:12:50,120
Speaker 1: can you think of a state in which people have

1295
01:12:50,240 --> 01:12:54,320
Speaker 1: altered consciousness or reduced consciousness and a tendency to obey

1296
01:12:54,400 --> 01:12:57,800
Speaker 1: verbal commands? Who sounds a lot like hypnosis to me,

1297
01:12:58,040 --> 01:13:00,680
Speaker 1: ding ding ding. There you go. Now, we've talked hypnosis

1298
01:13:00,720 --> 01:13:03,840
Speaker 1: on the podcast before, but just to reiterate, what's going

1299
01:13:03,880 --> 01:13:06,679
Speaker 1: on with hypnosis is people seem to have wildly differing

1300
01:13:06,760 --> 01:13:11,080
Speaker 1: levels of susceptibility to hypnosis. Some people just can't be hypnotized,

1301
01:13:11,160 --> 01:13:13,880
Speaker 1: but for those that can, hypnosis does seem to be

1302
01:13:13,920 --> 01:13:17,360
Speaker 1: a genuine altered state of consciousness at some level in

1303
01:13:17,400 --> 01:13:21,439
Speaker 1: which the body is relaxed, focus is narrowed, inhibition is lowered,

1304
01:13:21,680 --> 01:13:26,320
Speaker 1: consciousness is reduced, and verbal obedience is increased. Sounds kind

1305
01:13:26,360 --> 01:13:29,640
Speaker 1: of like the model of bicamerality, with a lot of

1306
01:13:29,640 --> 01:13:32,120
Speaker 1: these public demonstrations of hypnosis that you see you know,

1307
01:13:32,200 --> 01:13:34,080
Speaker 1: or that you're on a cruise ship and somebody's doing

1308
01:13:34,080 --> 01:13:36,960
Speaker 1: a show. I think people following the hypnotist commands is

1309
01:13:36,960 --> 01:13:40,280
Speaker 1: not necessarily always a highly altered state of consciousness. It

1310
01:13:40,439 --> 01:13:44,080
Speaker 1: could be partially just a performance brought on by social pressure.

1311
01:13:44,080 --> 01:13:46,920
Speaker 1: But this is actually part of Jane's theory. He talks

1312
01:13:46,920 --> 01:13:51,320
Speaker 1: about the idea of collective cognitive imperative. Group pressure enables

1313
01:13:51,400 --> 01:13:54,519
Speaker 1: different states of mind and this is why you can

1314
01:13:54,560 --> 01:14:00,479
Speaker 1: have uh basically a culture dictating which mindset you adopt,

1315
01:14:00,600 --> 01:14:04,000
Speaker 1: the bicameral mindset or the conscious mindset. And it's also

1316
01:14:04,040 --> 01:14:06,639
Speaker 1: the reason that you can, through these elaborate rituals, say

1317
01:14:06,640 --> 01:14:10,960
Speaker 1: like the Oracle at Delphi, produce these these amazing. Uh,

1318
01:14:11,040 --> 01:14:15,840
Speaker 1: you know, metered prophecies out of your right brain because

1319
01:14:15,920 --> 01:14:19,240
Speaker 1: group cognitive pressure is putting you into that mindset. And

1320
01:14:19,280 --> 01:14:22,400
Speaker 1: so he's saying hypnosis maybe maybe in fact a modern

1321
01:14:22,439 --> 01:14:26,599
Speaker 1: reapproximation of the left brain operation of a bicameral person.

1322
01:14:26,720 --> 01:14:29,160
Speaker 1: But instead of having the right brain talk, you're having

1323
01:14:29,200 --> 01:14:32,760
Speaker 1: the hypnotists talk. And again this makes me think of

1324
01:14:33,040 --> 01:14:35,960
Speaker 1: yoga classes where I just let the individual tell me

1325
01:14:36,040 --> 01:14:38,240
Speaker 1: what to do for an hour and a half and

1326
01:14:38,280 --> 01:14:43,160
Speaker 1: it it feels so liberate. Now, another big area that

1327
01:14:43,240 --> 01:14:45,680
Speaker 1: the James spends a lot of time with is the

1328
01:14:45,720 --> 01:14:49,040
Speaker 1: condition of schizophrenia. Now, this is obviously going to be

1329
01:14:49,120 --> 01:14:52,120
Speaker 1: very relevant because it's one of the features of schizophrenia

1330
01:14:52,280 --> 01:14:56,439
Speaker 1: is hallucinations, especially auditory hallucinations. Yeah, it is a condition

1331
01:14:56,479 --> 01:15:00,519
Speaker 1: defined by voices, by auditory hallucination voices, the crew, the size,

1332
01:15:00,680 --> 01:15:04,559
Speaker 1: voices that tell us what to do it with. Under

1333
01:15:04,600 --> 01:15:07,439
Speaker 1: the tent of the bicameral mind hypothesis, it would seem

1334
01:15:07,479 --> 01:15:11,479
Speaker 1: to line up pretty well. And uh, and so James

1335
01:15:11,560 --> 01:15:17,360
Speaker 1: argues that schizophrenia is essentially a relapse into the bicameral mind. Now,

1336
01:15:17,400 --> 01:15:20,000
Speaker 1: he argues that in the sculptures literature, murals and other

1337
01:15:20,080 --> 01:15:23,960
Speaker 1: artifacts of the great biicare bicameral civilizations. We do not

1338
01:15:24,120 --> 01:15:27,679
Speaker 1: see instances of individuals who suffer madness in a way

1339
01:15:27,680 --> 01:15:32,679
Speaker 1: that differentiates them from their fellow humans. There's idiocy, but

1340
01:15:32,680 --> 01:15:35,880
Speaker 1: but he says, there's no madness. Uh there, like there's

1341
01:15:35,920 --> 01:15:38,360
Speaker 1: no insanity in the Iliad, for instance. Yeah. Now, by

1342
01:15:38,360 --> 01:15:40,960
Speaker 1: the time we get to Plato, Plato speaks of madness,

1343
01:15:41,040 --> 01:15:44,559
Speaker 1: but in these ancient civilizations, Jane says, you don't see it. Yeah.

1344
01:15:44,600 --> 01:15:47,120
Speaker 1: He says that the first instance of insanity discussed in

1345
01:15:47,160 --> 01:15:51,120
Speaker 1: the conscious period, uh is in Phaedrus or Plato calls

1346
01:15:51,120 --> 01:15:54,640
Speaker 1: insanity quote a divine gift and the source of the

1347
01:15:54,760 --> 01:15:59,120
Speaker 1: chiefest blessings granted two men. And then he goes on

1348
01:15:59,200 --> 01:16:02,120
Speaker 1: to a Plato ends up identifying four types of madness.

1349
01:16:02,439 --> 01:16:04,719
Speaker 1: And you'll and just again think of the bicameral mind

1350
01:16:04,720 --> 01:16:08,560
Speaker 1: and reference to all of these prophetic madness, ritual madness,

1351
01:16:08,680 --> 01:16:12,759
Speaker 1: poetic madness, and of course the erotic madness. Huh okay,

1352
01:16:12,840 --> 01:16:14,160
Speaker 1: So these kind of line up with some of the

1353
01:16:14,160 --> 01:16:18,760
Speaker 1: categories we've just been talking about. The Greeks wrote on paranoia,

1354
01:16:19,439 --> 01:16:24,360
Speaker 1: he argues, which is literally having of two minds, Over time, however,

1355
01:16:24,479 --> 01:16:26,840
Speaker 1: madness is no longer and no longer has these sort

1356
01:16:26,880 --> 01:16:31,280
Speaker 1: of divine categories that Plato identified, But it becomes a

1357
01:16:31,320 --> 01:16:33,719
Speaker 1: part of an ill, a part of a disease. There's something,

1358
01:16:33,760 --> 01:16:36,080
Speaker 1: there's an ailment at work with the human being. Now

1359
01:16:36,120 --> 01:16:39,960
Speaker 1: this maybe James thinks, as there is more conscious takeover

1360
01:16:40,040 --> 01:16:43,920
Speaker 1: of society by the conscious culture, that it becomes untenable

1361
01:16:44,000 --> 01:16:49,080
Speaker 1: for for bicameral society to exist and work within itself.

1362
01:16:49,400 --> 01:16:52,639
Speaker 1: So people who experienced the bicameral mindset within a conscious

1363
01:16:52,680 --> 01:16:56,759
Speaker 1: culture have they essentially have no cover. They have no

1364
01:16:56,760 --> 01:17:00,960
Speaker 1: nobody to like be part of their culture right now.

1365
01:17:00,960 --> 01:17:03,519
Speaker 1: He also points out that the voices of schizophrenia these

1366
01:17:03,560 --> 01:17:06,040
Speaker 1: tend to be When I say the voices of schizophrenia,

1367
01:17:06,080 --> 01:17:10,040
Speaker 1: the voice is heard by individuals with schizophrenia. They tend

1368
01:17:10,080 --> 01:17:13,800
Speaker 1: to be authority figures created out of cultural expectation. And

1369
01:17:13,840 --> 01:17:16,599
Speaker 1: the hallucinations also seem to have access to more memories

1370
01:17:16,600 --> 01:17:19,360
Speaker 1: in the patient. There in many cases and in many

1371
01:17:19,400 --> 01:17:23,520
Speaker 1: cases they replace thought. The they frequently take on religious

1372
01:17:23,560 --> 01:17:27,560
Speaker 1: overtones because he says, the condition emerges from the neurological

1373
01:17:27,640 --> 01:17:30,240
Speaker 1: structures bound to the birth of religious thought. To begin

1374
01:17:30,320 --> 01:17:34,759
Speaker 1: with and he says that the there's also a frequency

1375
01:17:34,760 --> 01:17:39,560
Speaker 1: of religious experience overall in the waking state for human consciousness,

1376
01:17:39,560 --> 01:17:44,000
Speaker 1: the the hypnopompic state that is often accompanied by vivid,

1377
01:17:44,080 --> 01:17:47,320
Speaker 1: lingering imagery. We've discussed this in terms of sleep paralysis

1378
01:17:47,439 --> 01:17:52,000
Speaker 1: and supernatural experience before. James writes that these parts of

1379
01:17:52,040 --> 01:17:55,400
Speaker 1: the brain are quote released from their normal inhibition by

1380
01:17:55,479 --> 01:18:01,160
Speaker 1: abnormal biochemistry in many cases of schizophrenia, and particularized into experience.

1381
01:18:01,520 --> 01:18:04,320
Speaker 1: This is also telling. He points to the relative inability

1382
01:18:04,320 --> 01:18:07,360
Speaker 1: of schizophrenics to draw a person. Think again to our

1383
01:18:07,400 --> 01:18:11,240
Speaker 1: discussions of I and me. There's this draw a person

1384
01:18:11,320 --> 01:18:14,320
Speaker 1: test or adapt test, and it's used to help identify

1385
01:18:14,400 --> 01:18:18,679
Speaker 1: schizophrenia and other conditions by asking the individual to draw

1386
01:18:18,800 --> 01:18:21,839
Speaker 1: a person. Now, if you have trouble drawing a whole person,

1387
01:18:22,680 --> 01:18:25,679
Speaker 1: that kind of makes me think about those disembodied body

1388
01:18:25,800 --> 01:18:29,519
Speaker 1: parts you talked about with reference to the iliad. And

1389
01:18:29,760 --> 01:18:31,400
Speaker 1: and I have to point out this is another thing

1390
01:18:31,439 --> 01:18:34,120
Speaker 1: I see my son having to do on kindergarten tests

1391
01:18:34,560 --> 01:18:38,000
Speaker 1: and uh, in evaluations draw a person and and see,

1392
01:18:38,320 --> 01:18:40,080
Speaker 1: I mean they're also looking to see with what degree

1393
01:18:40,080 --> 01:18:43,880
Speaker 1: of accuracy you can pull them together. But uh, but Yeah,

1394
01:18:43,920 --> 01:18:47,040
Speaker 1: in this case, are you able to draw a complete

1395
01:18:47,080 --> 01:18:50,000
Speaker 1: person at all? Now, not all people who have schizophrenia

1396
01:18:50,040 --> 01:18:52,600
Speaker 1: are going to have trouble drawing a person, right, but

1397
01:18:52,640 --> 01:18:56,440
Speaker 1: when they do, it is uh, it is extremely diagnostic.

1398
01:18:56,840 --> 01:19:01,280
Speaker 1: Also with schizophrenia, neurotization can also become impossible. You see

1399
01:19:01,280 --> 01:19:05,360
Speaker 1: these like fractured self stories, right hues. And then there's

1400
01:19:05,400 --> 01:19:09,360
Speaker 1: also body image boundary disturbance or boundary loss and this

1401
01:19:09,439 --> 01:19:12,880
Speaker 1: again this ties into this uh, this lost sense of

1402
01:19:13,000 --> 01:19:17,960
Speaker 1: eye or me. And remember too that schizophrenia has a

1403
01:19:18,000 --> 01:19:23,679
Speaker 1: genetic inherited basis to the underlying biochemistry. Natural selection, James

1404
01:19:23,840 --> 01:19:26,160
Speaker 1: argue would have favored it for a while. There's a

1405
01:19:26,160 --> 01:19:29,400
Speaker 1: certain tirelessness in schizophrenic individuals. They seem to have a

1406
01:19:29,439 --> 01:19:32,960
Speaker 1: lot of energy, and in the bicameral individual this would

1407
01:19:32,960 --> 01:19:35,960
Speaker 1: have become this would have become very important if you were, say,

1408
01:19:36,040 --> 01:19:38,880
Speaker 1: building pyramids or are there great works? Yeah, I mean

1409
01:19:38,880 --> 01:19:40,599
Speaker 1: we were talking about. One of the advantages, or one

1410
01:19:40,600 --> 01:19:43,040
Speaker 1: of the possible advantages of a bicameral mind would be

1411
01:19:43,080 --> 01:19:46,439
Speaker 1: mental endurance, much more so than a conscious person could muster.

1412
01:19:46,800 --> 01:19:49,439
Speaker 1: So James basically says that the modern schizophrenic is an

1413
01:19:49,520 --> 01:19:54,320
Speaker 1: individual that's essentially in search of a bicameral culture. Quote,

1414
01:19:54,320 --> 01:19:57,840
Speaker 1: but he retains usually some part of the subjective consciousness

1415
01:19:58,080 --> 01:20:02,120
Speaker 1: that struggles against this more emitive mental organization, that tries

1416
01:20:02,160 --> 01:20:04,559
Speaker 1: to establish some kind of control in the middle of

1417
01:20:04,560 --> 01:20:07,960
Speaker 1: a mental organization in which the hallucination ought to do

1418
01:20:08,040 --> 01:20:11,400
Speaker 1: the controlling. In effect, he is a mind barred to

1419
01:20:11,479 --> 01:20:16,040
Speaker 1: his environment, waiting on God's in a godless world. Okay,

1420
01:20:16,080 --> 01:20:19,719
Speaker 1: so you convinced yet, Joe. I mean, it's tough because

1421
01:20:19,800 --> 01:20:23,800
Speaker 1: I do find his argument very compelling, but it just

1422
01:20:23,960 --> 01:20:27,000
Speaker 1: may be the case that he was wrong about how

1423
01:20:27,040 --> 01:20:29,200
Speaker 1: about some of the evidence that he claims, or about

1424
01:20:29,200 --> 01:20:32,840
Speaker 1: how he interprets some of that evidence. So I don't know.

1425
01:20:32,920 --> 01:20:36,760
Speaker 1: I find the bi cameral mind thesis very interesting and

1426
01:20:36,880 --> 01:20:40,040
Speaker 1: very compelling, but I do not consider myself convinced that

1427
01:20:40,120 --> 01:20:43,719
Speaker 1: it is correct true. And with like with the schizophrenia evidence,

1428
01:20:43,760 --> 01:20:47,479
Speaker 1: for instance, is this is this truly more evidence in

1429
01:20:47,479 --> 01:20:52,200
Speaker 1: support of bicameral mind theory or is this schizophrenia as

1430
01:20:52,280 --> 01:20:55,960
Speaker 1: explained with bicameral mind. Yeah. I mean, one way you

1431
01:20:55,960 --> 01:20:57,800
Speaker 1: could look at the bi cameral mind is you could

1432
01:20:57,800 --> 01:21:00,600
Speaker 1: say it's a theory that explains a lot or you

1433
01:21:00,640 --> 01:21:04,960
Speaker 1: could say that it is a very interesting, carefully conducted

1434
01:21:05,080 --> 01:21:08,599
Speaker 1: story that's overlaid on lots of evidence that we already

1435
01:21:08,640 --> 01:21:11,760
Speaker 1: knew about. So what would be really interesting about it

1436
01:21:11,760 --> 01:21:15,960
Speaker 1: would be can it predict new discoveries like, based on

1437
01:21:16,120 --> 01:21:19,400
Speaker 1: the assumption of the bicameral mind hypothesis, would you be

1438
01:21:19,439 --> 01:21:22,080
Speaker 1: able to predict will find X, Y, and z about

1439
01:21:22,120 --> 01:21:26,040
Speaker 1: the ancient world and about neuroscientific discoveries in the future,

1440
01:21:26,080 --> 01:21:29,479
Speaker 1: say with you know, uh a neuroimaging, and that would

1441
01:21:29,520 --> 01:21:31,640
Speaker 1: be a real good way of testing whether it has

1442
01:21:31,680 --> 01:21:34,160
Speaker 1: any predictive power and thus whether we can have any

1443
01:21:34,200 --> 01:21:36,680
Speaker 1: confidence that it will continue to have predictive power in

1444
01:21:36,680 --> 01:21:39,400
Speaker 1: the future, which is pretty much synonymous with saying there's

1445
01:21:39,439 --> 01:21:42,400
Speaker 1: something to it, that it might be true. Uh So

1446
01:21:42,760 --> 01:21:44,439
Speaker 1: I tried to look up you know what if people

1447
01:21:44,479 --> 01:21:47,360
Speaker 1: said about it and the theory. It's had lots of critics,

1448
01:21:47,400 --> 01:21:49,680
Speaker 1: It has lots of people, you know, it's always been

1449
01:21:49,720 --> 01:21:53,400
Speaker 1: controversial ever since it was first introduced. It's had supporters.

1450
01:21:53,439 --> 01:21:57,080
Speaker 1: Some people think that it's it's really interesting, there's something

1451
01:21:57,120 --> 01:21:59,559
Speaker 1: to it. Some people think it might shed some light

1452
01:21:59,600 --> 01:22:02,599
Speaker 1: on some issues, even if it's wrong. Overall, it's had

1453
01:22:02,640 --> 01:22:04,559
Speaker 1: a lot of people who think it's just bunk. So

1454
01:22:04,720 --> 01:22:08,880
Speaker 1: you know, there's opinions all over the place. One paper

1455
01:22:08,920 --> 01:22:11,519
Speaker 1: I found that I thought summarized well some of the

1456
01:22:11,600 --> 01:22:15,599
Speaker 1: neuro scientific evidence and implications is a paper by Leo

1457
01:22:15,680 --> 01:22:18,760
Speaker 1: Share published in the Journal of Psychology or Psychiatry and

1458
01:22:18,840 --> 01:22:22,200
Speaker 1: Neuroscience in two thousand. Leo Share is a professor of

1459
01:22:22,200 --> 01:22:24,600
Speaker 1: psychiatry at Mount Sinai and New York, and in the

1460
01:22:24,640 --> 01:22:28,080
Speaker 1: short piece he collects some relevant reactions to Jane's hypothesis

1461
01:22:28,080 --> 01:22:31,920
Speaker 1: and argument. Uh Some reactions to Jane's include He finds

1462
01:22:31,960 --> 01:22:35,600
Speaker 1: that in seven Assade and Shapiro published a criticism of

1463
01:22:35,680 --> 01:22:39,840
Speaker 1: Jane's work in the American Journal of Psychiatry, and they write, quote,

1464
01:22:40,040 --> 01:22:43,120
Speaker 1: the difficulty which we find with Jane's hypothesis is that

1465
01:22:43,200 --> 01:22:46,920
Speaker 1: the conclusions he draws have a questionable basis in neuropsychiatric

1466
01:22:47,000 --> 01:22:50,760
Speaker 1: fact and quote. If Jane's hypothesis were to coincide more

1467
01:22:50,800 --> 01:22:54,280
Speaker 1: accurately with anatomic fact facts about what we find in

1468
01:22:54,320 --> 01:22:57,760
Speaker 1: the body, the right temporal area in question would more

1469
01:22:57,840 --> 01:23:01,479
Speaker 1: likely coincide with Broca's expressive area, a notion that does

1470
01:23:01,520 --> 01:23:06,759
Speaker 1: not conveniently fit Jane's theoretical constructs. Assad and Shapiro. Shapiro

1471
01:23:06,840 --> 01:23:10,320
Speaker 1: also claim, according to Share that quote lesions of the

1472
01:23:10,439 --> 01:23:14,280
Speaker 1: right sided areas corresponding to Broca's and Wernicke's areas seem

1473
01:23:14,360 --> 01:23:18,040
Speaker 1: more related to the negative symptoms of schizophrenia like restricted

1474
01:23:18,080 --> 01:23:22,760
Speaker 1: affect than to the positive hallucinatory symptoms unquote, and they

1475
01:23:22,800 --> 01:23:27,639
Speaker 1: also claim that Jane's oversimplified the phenomenology of hallucinatory experience

1476
01:23:27,680 --> 01:23:32,040
Speaker 1: to make them fit his hypothesis better. Um. Also in nine,

1477
01:23:33,000 --> 01:23:36,800
Speaker 1: the International Journal of Psychophysiology published a letter that wrote, quote,

1478
01:23:36,800 --> 01:23:40,479
Speaker 1: after many years of psychophysiological studies mainly carried out in

1479
01:23:40,520 --> 01:23:44,320
Speaker 1: the field, if evoked to neurocognitive bioelectrical events, I feel

1480
01:23:44,320 --> 01:23:46,679
Speaker 1: I can safely state that the concepts of the mind

1481
01:23:46,720 --> 01:23:50,599
Speaker 1: slash brain and the brain slash behavior dualisms, with their ancient,

1482
01:23:50,640 --> 01:23:54,840
Speaker 1: widespread and persistent philosophy, are now all outdated, as are

1483
01:23:54,920 --> 01:23:59,160
Speaker 1: those of the bicameral mind or the double brain. Then again, however,

1484
01:23:59,280 --> 01:24:02,639
Speaker 1: Shares says in nine paper published in The Lancet by

1485
01:24:02,640 --> 01:24:06,880
Speaker 1: Olan claimed that research in neuroimaging has quote illuminated and

1486
01:24:06,920 --> 01:24:11,240
Speaker 1: confirmed the importance of Jane's hypothesis. And this research includes

1487
01:24:11,680 --> 01:24:14,800
Speaker 1: a paper in the Lancet nine by Lennox at All,

1488
01:24:14,880 --> 01:24:19,040
Speaker 1: in which a right handed person with schizophrenia underwent neuroimaging

1489
01:24:19,120 --> 01:24:23,120
Speaker 1: during hallucinations, and the authors found that the auditory hallucinations

1490
01:24:23,120 --> 01:24:26,040
Speaker 1: occurred in the right hemisphere but not the left hemisphere,

1491
01:24:26,080 --> 01:24:29,439
Speaker 1: which would match up with Jane's predictions, the predictions made

1492
01:24:29,479 --> 01:24:33,280
Speaker 1: by the bicameral mind hypothesis. So I'd say it's still

1493
01:24:33,360 --> 01:24:36,400
Speaker 1: in the realm of something that is interesting but definitely

1494
01:24:36,439 --> 01:24:40,200
Speaker 1: not proven. But just imagine how fascinating it would be

1495
01:24:40,240 --> 01:24:43,080
Speaker 1: if more and more studies start lining up with stuff

1496
01:24:43,120 --> 01:24:48,200
Speaker 1: that could be predicted directly by the bicameral mind hypothesis. Indeed, yeah,

1497
01:24:48,240 --> 01:24:50,960
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's the great thing about the about

1498
01:24:50,960 --> 01:24:54,200
Speaker 1: this particular hypothesis is that we can continue to study it.

1499
01:24:54,240 --> 01:24:57,759
Speaker 1: We can continue to see how how it potentially lines

1500
01:24:57,880 --> 01:25:02,240
Speaker 1: up with their modern scientific understanding of consciousness and the brain.

1501
01:25:02,560 --> 01:25:04,599
Speaker 1: So yeah, I guess we can start wrapping up here.

1502
01:25:04,600 --> 01:25:06,479
Speaker 1: But I want to say, in the end, though I'm

1503
01:25:06,479 --> 01:25:10,280
Speaker 1: not convinced by I'm not advocating it as true, it's fascinating,

1504
01:25:10,439 --> 01:25:14,320
Speaker 1: very well argued, I would say, arguably quite brilliant in

1505
01:25:14,360 --> 01:25:16,519
Speaker 1: the way it pulls from so many disciplines into a

1506
01:25:16,520 --> 01:25:21,439
Speaker 1: coherent picture of a cross disciplinary hypothesis, but can't yet

1507
01:25:21,520 --> 01:25:24,280
Speaker 1: endorse it. Yeah, yeah, I would, I would agree, But

1508
01:25:24,360 --> 01:25:26,880
Speaker 1: it is it is fascinating to use it as a

1509
01:25:26,920 --> 01:25:30,280
Speaker 1: thought exercise for looking back on past cultures. And uh,

1510
01:25:30,320 --> 01:25:32,479
Speaker 1: you know, after I was reading it, I kept I

1511
01:25:32,560 --> 01:25:34,400
Speaker 1: was wondering, well, why don't we see this reference to

1512
01:25:34,479 --> 01:25:38,040
Speaker 1: more works of fiction. Well, it turns out it was

1513
01:25:38,120 --> 01:25:41,120
Speaker 1: apparently one of the key influences on Neil Stephens snow Crash,

1514
01:25:41,720 --> 01:25:44,120
Speaker 1: which we mentioned in our Tower of Babble episode. It's

1515
01:25:44,160 --> 01:25:49,719
Speaker 1: a cyberpunk classic then involves a linguistic momentic weapons um

1516
01:25:49,720 --> 01:25:51,759
Speaker 1: which you know, go back and listen to that episode

1517
01:25:51,760 --> 01:25:54,080
Speaker 1: of certainly read snow Crash if you want more than that.

1518
01:25:54,600 --> 01:25:57,200
Speaker 1: But I was not familiar with this book. There is

1519
01:25:57,280 --> 01:26:01,000
Speaker 1: a two thousand nine novel by Terence Hawkins titled The

1520
01:26:01,120 --> 01:26:04,360
Speaker 1: Rage of Achilles and get this. It's a novel of

1521
01:26:04,360 --> 01:26:08,600
Speaker 1: the Trojan War told within the confines of the bicameral

1522
01:26:08,760 --> 01:26:14,680
Speaker 1: mind hypothesis. So Odysseus is a conscious modern man in

1523
01:26:14,680 --> 01:26:18,080
Speaker 1: this and Achilles is a bicameral killing machine. That is

1524
01:26:18,120 --> 01:26:21,479
Speaker 1: a brilliant concept for a novel, and if there's any

1525
01:26:21,479 --> 01:26:24,280
Speaker 1: truth to Jane's vision, this might have actually been possible.

1526
01:26:24,360 --> 01:26:27,240
Speaker 1: Like during the long slow breakdown to the bicameral mind,

1527
01:26:27,560 --> 01:26:30,599
Speaker 1: conscious people and bicameral people would have had to encounter

1528
01:26:30,680 --> 01:26:33,400
Speaker 1: and deal with one another. And can you just imagine

1529
01:26:33,400 --> 01:26:37,759
Speaker 1: all the difficulty that would create. Yeah, but for both sides,

1530
01:26:37,800 --> 01:26:41,200
Speaker 1: because on one hand, the conscious human is capable of

1531
01:26:41,240 --> 01:26:44,680
Speaker 1: deception that the bicameral human has no ability to. Like

1532
01:26:44,720 --> 01:26:47,679
Speaker 1: basically comes down to that that duel in a game

1533
01:26:47,720 --> 01:26:52,240
Speaker 1: of Thrones between the Mountain and uh, what's his name?

1534
01:26:52,360 --> 01:26:55,360
Speaker 1: The over and Martel. Yeah, yeah, where one is one

1535
01:26:55,439 --> 01:26:57,760
Speaker 1: is crafty and deceptive and the other one is just

1536
01:26:57,880 --> 01:27:01,760
Speaker 1: pure brute strength and NonStop killing action. Yeah. So you're

1537
01:27:01,800 --> 01:27:05,120
Speaker 1: saying the Mountain is bicameral and the Red Viper of

1538
01:27:05,160 --> 01:27:07,479
Speaker 1: Dorn is conscious. I think so. And really, I mean

1539
01:27:07,520 --> 01:27:12,760
Speaker 1: he only becomes more bicameral story progresses, all right, So

1540
01:27:12,800 --> 01:27:16,280
Speaker 1: there you have it. Do you have an anything else, Joe? No,

1541
01:27:16,479 --> 01:27:18,600
Speaker 1: I guess that's it for now. I I found this

1542
01:27:18,680 --> 01:27:21,719
Speaker 1: a really fascinating topic to explore. It's one of those

1543
01:27:21,760 --> 01:27:23,720
Speaker 1: that I've said this a few times now, but I

1544
01:27:23,760 --> 01:27:25,880
Speaker 1: just want to stress again it's like I feel this

1545
01:27:26,000 --> 01:27:30,120
Speaker 1: conflict within me about the ideas that are so cool.

1546
01:27:30,280 --> 01:27:33,360
Speaker 1: I feel like I have to be especially suspicious of them,

1547
01:27:34,000 --> 01:27:36,639
Speaker 1: Like the more interesting they are, the more I feel

1548
01:27:36,680 --> 01:27:39,040
Speaker 1: like I have to really check my desire for it

1549
01:27:39,080 --> 01:27:43,760
Speaker 1: to be true. Yeah, especially an idea that's this expansive

1550
01:27:43,880 --> 01:27:47,200
Speaker 1: that concerns the history of our species and our civilizations

1551
01:27:47,640 --> 01:27:50,400
Speaker 1: and the very nature of consciousness. So it's not like

1552
01:27:50,720 --> 01:27:53,360
Speaker 1: buying into a single idea like, oh well, actually I

1553
01:27:53,360 --> 01:27:56,640
Speaker 1: think the Chinese discovered North America, you know, before the

1554
01:27:56,760 --> 01:27:59,400
Speaker 1: Vikings something like that, which I'm not saying that doesn't

1555
01:27:59,400 --> 01:28:04,160
Speaker 1: have large historical ramifications, but it's not something that just

1556
01:28:04,200 --> 01:28:08,280
Speaker 1: affects the absolute understanding of our species in our way

1557
01:28:08,280 --> 01:28:11,920
Speaker 1: of thinking. All right, well, of course we'd love to

1558
01:28:11,920 --> 01:28:13,680
Speaker 1: hear from all of you out there. What are your

1559
01:28:13,720 --> 01:28:17,360
Speaker 1: thoughts on the bicameral mind. Do you buy into it?

1560
01:28:17,640 --> 01:28:19,760
Speaker 1: Do you do you think it's complete bunk? Do you

1561
01:28:20,000 --> 01:28:22,639
Speaker 1: have some sort of middle ground there? And what are

1562
01:28:22,680 --> 01:28:26,200
Speaker 1: some really cool examples of its utilization in various sorts

1563
01:28:26,200 --> 01:28:28,559
Speaker 1: of fiction that you've encountered. Here's something I would like

1564
01:28:28,600 --> 01:28:32,800
Speaker 1: to employ your imagination on, if this could happen, If

1565
01:28:32,800 --> 01:28:34,400
Speaker 1: you could go from a bi cameral mind to a

1566
01:28:34,439 --> 01:28:38,760
Speaker 1: conscious mind. How much more could human mentality change? Like

1567
01:28:38,920 --> 01:28:41,760
Speaker 1: if you go three thousand years into the future from now,

1568
01:28:42,320 --> 01:28:45,719
Speaker 1: could our mindsets be as different from from hours now

1569
01:28:45,880 --> 01:28:50,280
Speaker 1: as the conscious mind is from the hypothetical bi cameral mind? Yeah,

1570
01:28:50,320 --> 01:28:53,040
Speaker 1: I mean, am I engaging in a bicameral experience when

1571
01:28:53,080 --> 01:28:55,679
Speaker 1: I let my GPS device tell me where to drive?

1572
01:28:56,320 --> 01:28:59,679
Speaker 1: I don't know, do you totally relinquish conscious control? Yeah?

1573
01:28:59,720 --> 01:29:03,040
Speaker 1: I almost, It's almost to that level. Uh that I

1574
01:29:03,160 --> 01:29:06,120
Speaker 1: was hanging out with my family over the weekend and

1575
01:29:06,360 --> 01:29:08,280
Speaker 1: my sisters were like asking me, like, why did you

1576
01:29:08,320 --> 01:29:09,800
Speaker 1: make this turn in that it's said of this turn?

1577
01:29:09,840 --> 01:29:11,800
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I just do what the machine tells

1578
01:29:11,840 --> 01:29:13,960
Speaker 1: me to told me to drive into the ocean. Yeah,

1579
01:29:14,000 --> 01:29:17,599
Speaker 1: I put my trust in the machine. It's by and large,

1580
01:29:17,800 --> 01:29:20,280
Speaker 1: there's a less uh, there's less of a chance that

1581
01:29:20,439 --> 01:29:22,120
Speaker 1: it will drive me in the ocean that I will

1582
01:29:22,200 --> 01:29:25,120
Speaker 1: drive me into the ocean. So uh, that's how it

1583
01:29:25,120 --> 01:29:27,240
Speaker 1: shakes out, all right. Well, you can find is It's

1584
01:29:27,240 --> 01:29:29,200
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll

1585
01:29:29,240 --> 01:29:32,960
Speaker 1: find all the episodes that you will find, blog post videos,

1586
01:29:32,960 --> 01:29:34,639
Speaker 1: you will find links out to our verious social media

1587
01:29:34,640 --> 01:29:38,479
Speaker 1: accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, and more. Hey,

1588
01:29:38,520 --> 01:29:42,439
Speaker 1: Facebook has that great UH Discussion module group where you

1589
01:29:42,479 --> 01:29:45,240
Speaker 1: can join up and you can interact with us, but

1590
01:29:45,280 --> 01:29:49,200
Speaker 1: also other listeners to the show and you can discuss

1591
01:29:49,240 --> 01:29:52,680
Speaker 1: episodes such as these with those individuals. And if you

1592
01:29:52,680 --> 01:29:54,599
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us directly, as always,

1593
01:29:54,640 --> 01:29:57,000
Speaker 1: you can email us at blow the Mind at how

1594
01:29:57,040 --> 01:30:10,040
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

1595
01:30:10,040 --> 01:30:35,200
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.

1596
01:30:18,760 --> 01:30:18,800
Speaker 1: The