WEBVTT - From the Vault: Bicameralism, Part 2 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:07.520 Hey, are you welcome to stuff to blow your mind? 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:10.320 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:12.479 it's Saturday. Time to go back into the vault. Now. 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:14.440 If you were with us last Saturday, you were here 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.919 for our rerun of the classic episode, part one of 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:22.239 our exploration of the bicameral mind hypothesis and Julian Jaynes 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:26.439 from from September I think it was originally, and so 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:28.159 at the beginning of the last episode we talked a 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:31.160 little bit about what our thoughts about the bicameral mind 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:33.800 have been since we first talked about this idea. My 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.879 basic take is that I don't think it's correct as 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.040 a theory of where consciousness came from, yet it remains 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:44.000 a fascinating, comprehensive hypothesis to explore, even if its main 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.000 point is I think probably wrong. Some sub points that 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:50.120 Jane's makes within his argument are really interesting and may 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.519 in fact have some historical purchase. And it's also just 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.800 a great, fun, fascinating book to read. I also think 0:00:56.840 --> 0:00:59.040 it's interesting how one can you can almost feel like 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:02.400 a religious zeal for it, you know, like and sometimes 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.160 I detected that in you. Yeah, Well, like I said 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:07.640 in the last episode, there's this there's this way that 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:12.760 the hypothesis can make the magic of religion and mythology, uh, 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:16.520 seem more believable and seem more possible. Uh, you know, 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:19.399 especially from more of a like a grounded skeptical point 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:21.440 of view, and uh and it but it's the kind 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:23.959 of thing too, I can imagine how like I can 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:27.560 easily envision some sort of alternate future or even an 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:31.840 alternate at present in which the bi cameral mind has 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:36.039 become a kind of religion. So anyway, it's a it's 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.640 a It was a fascinating pair of episodes to record, 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:41.720 and I wouldn't rule out returning to it at some 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:45.000 point in the future if we find enough new angles 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:46.880 to take on it and new things to say about it, 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:49.440 or find some individuals who would want to talk with 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:52.040 us about it. Yeah. I know. Since we did these episodes, 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.560 I've read articles about all of the all of the 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:59.880 like sort of popular mainstream academics and thinkers and sky 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.279 allers who are sort of secretly fans of this theory. 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:05.760 I think, maybe sort of in the same camp we are, Like, 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:09.160 they don't necessarily believe it's correct, but they're just they 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.160 can't stop thinking about it. I know I've seen Daniel 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:14.320 Dennett placed in this camp before that he's sort of 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:17.200 secretly a fan of it. I now have to say 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:19.840 that among the various ways I try and interpret attacks, 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:23.120 you know, you looking at it as literature, as as 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:26.040 some sort of you know, a true story, as some 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:29.200 sort of allegorical story, etcetera, I also throw in the 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.480 bicamera right mind, and I think, well, what's the bicamera 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.160 read on this? And it's a really fun fun way 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:37.840 to to to pass the time if you find yourself 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:41.320 being like bombarded with a kind of say, boring Bible story. Yeah, 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:43.160 I can totally see how it would play that kind 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:46.320 of role. I would be interested in returning to it 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.120 some day, especially if we could find a way of 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:51.000 bringing some fresh evidence to it, anything in in support 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:53.280 or in opposition. I mean, one thing I would I 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:55.800 have thought would be interesting is just try to find 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:59.280 lots of counter examples to Jane's idea that like ancient 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:03.880 literature is not display interiority, that the most ancient stories, 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:06.760 people don't seem to have inner minds, that they just 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:09.560 you know, their decisions come from deliverances of the gods, 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.760 and if you can just collect lots of examples where 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.440 that's not the case, that could provide some sort of 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:18.960 counter evidence to say, Okay, so he's probably not right 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:21.560 about this part of the theory, but other things might 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:25.480 might still have some purchase. Yeah. Absolutely, So on that note, 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:27.560 we're going to dive back in. We're gonna play the 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:30.799 second part of our bi cameral Mind episode we hope 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:37.160 you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:46.119 how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:48.360 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:50.640 McCormick in today. This is going to be part two 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:54.280 of our two part series on Julian Jaynes and the 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:58.520 bicameral mind and the origin of consciousness in the Breakdown 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.080 of the bi cameral Mind. So as this is part 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:03.280 two of a two part episode. If you haven't heard 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:05.640 part one yet, you should go back and listen to 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:07.880 that one first. Sometimes we say, you know, if you 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:10.000 feel like jumping right in and go for it, this 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:11.360 is one where I feel like you're really going to 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:13.200 have a hard time following us if you haven't heard 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:15.840 part one yet, because that's gonna be where we explain 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:19.160 what Julian Jamee's main hypothesis is and how he arrived 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:21.520 at it. And then in the second episode we're gonna 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.719 be talking about evidence for it from the ancient world 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:27.000 and from the modern world. Yeah, this episode is going 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.120 to be full of like falling kingdoms and whispering statues 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:32.320 and other great stuff, but you need that first episode 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.160 to understand it. Now, as with the first episode, we 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:39.200 want to make clear that we're not necessarily endorsing this hypothesis. 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.280 This is a very controversial hypothesis. It's not something that 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:46.680 is at all considered proven or even necessarily very well 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:50.320 attested by evidence. It's something that is controversial but very 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:53.960 fascinating I think worth exploring as a hypothetical. Yeah, it 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:58.080 is a it is a radical hypothesis and if nothing else, 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:01.160 it is just a fascinating thought experiments. So as we 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:04.599 discuss it again, you're going to hear us Uh discussing 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:06.400 it as if it was fact, as if this is 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:09.640 actually how ancient people thought. But that is just a 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:12.960 part of our exploration of the hypothesis. Now, to briefly 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.960 recap the core of Julian James theory, and we should say, 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:23.040 Julian James, when did he live? Nine? Yeah? So nine seven. 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.080 Julian James was an American psychologist. He's primarily known for 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:29.120 this book that was published in nineteen seventy six called 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:32.359 The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:37.039 And the thrust of that book is, until about three 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:41.680 thousand years ago, human beings were not conscious. They did 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:44.600 not possess consciousness and the way we do today. And 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:48.000 around that time, roughly three thousand years ago, modern human 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:53.240 consciousness began as a cultural invention, probably in Mesopotamia that's 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:56.320 spread around the world over time. And before that time, 0:05:56.400 --> 0:06:00.120 for thousands of years, almost all humans were not conscious 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.440 in the way we are, but instead we're unconscious beings 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:08.240 commanded in all novel behaviors by hallucinated voices that they 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:11.680 called gods or another way of putting it. And uh, 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:14.800 and James himself put it this way, everybody was schizophrenic 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.720 sort of. Yeah, I mean, so schizophrenia, as Jane's imagines, 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:22.440 it is one form or a modified version of a 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:26.599 regression to this bicameral mind state that used to be 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:30.680 the norm for how humans and ancient civilizations lived and 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:33.840 so this norm would be that most of the time 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:37.440 you would be going around unconsciously behaving out of habit 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.480 you know, you have a stimulus response behaviors, and you 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:43.240 would have habitual behaviors that you would enact, and this 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.600 would serve to do most things that would be you know, 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:50.679 recurrent repetitive behaviors over the day. But whenever something new happened, 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:53.479 whenever you needed to make a decision and there was 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.560 a stress point induced by that decision, you would be 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:00.720 told what to do by a hallucinated auditor or voice 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:03.840 that you would perceive as a god, and that you 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:06.440 would enact that. Now, this is, as you said, a 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.400 radical hypothesis. Yeah, because again the idea here is that 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:13.520 everybody heard these voices, that this was the universal human experience, 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:16.920 this was the norm, right, And so obviously I mean 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:19.120 that that sounds kind of crazy to us, now, like 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:23.000 what really could could that be true? So if there 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:25.480 is any truth to Jane's theory, and as we said before, 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:28.360 we're not necessarily endorsing it as true, just entertaining it 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:31.520 as an interesting hypothesis, we should be able to find 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.000 some evidence of that theory. And so we can look 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:37.760 at psychiatry, and we can look at neuroscience, and we 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:40.320 can look at evidence from the ancient world. And today 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:42.760 we're going to start by looking at evidence from the 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:47.840 ancient world, from history, from archaeology, from ancient literature. If 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:51.320 there was a bicameral mind state, this divided mind state, 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:53.560 where one half of the brain spoke to the other 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.360 as the voice of a god and commanded the unconscious 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:58.840 other half, we should be able to see that in 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:01.840 the behaviors of a people's and the traces left of 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:05.240 those behaviors. Right, So, a lot of this episode is 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:09.040 going to be uh, Joe and I discussing some of 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:13.360 the examples that James brings up in the book. We 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.760 can't possibly touch on all of the examples because much 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:18.760 of the book, and much of the real joy of 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:22.720 the book is is him bringing up these various examples 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:27.640 from from historical accounts, from archaeology, from literature, and using 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:31.200 that to support the idea of the by bicameral mind. Yeah, 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.440 and one of the pleasures of the book is even 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:38.240 if Jane's hypothesis does turn out to be entirely incorrect, 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.240 you know, if there never was any bicameral mind, if 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.480 consciousness is not a recent invention. If he's wrong about 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:48.200 all that, it's still a fascinating book just because of 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.480 the way he pulls in so many different disciplines and 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:56.320 ranges throughout history, incorporating evidence in such an amazing and 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:59.320 fascinating way. All right, well, let's jump into it a 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:01.319 bit here and are discussing some of the evidence that 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:04.120 James brought up in the book. Okay, Well, one of 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:06.960 the things that we probably should be able to think 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:12.480 about is if ancient people's perceived auditory hallucinations that they 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.400 regarded as gods, and these gods told them what to do. 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:18.960 There should be some evidence of this in what traces 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:23.120 they left of their relationship to the gods they believed in. Right, Yeah, 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:26.520 And one of those examples, Jane's argues is the positioning 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:30.400 of the houses of the gods. So this is the 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:33.000 basic idea. Well, so today you travel to a big city. 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:35.679 Let's say you go to Washington, d C. All right, 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:37.880 this is our example, not James. So I'm in Washington, 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.360 all right, and you seek out the grandest, most centralized home, 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:43.920 the one that just really stands out from the rest, 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:46.079 is the most protected it has them. You know, the 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:51.480 most central status of any other habitat. Okay, so I'm 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.280 imagining it is the home of an extremely tall, thin 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:58.079 person that stands looking out over the water. Yeah, that's 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:01.040 that's one one interpretation. No way, that thing isn't a home, 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.319 is it. No, well, it's not a home. But I 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:05.240 mean that is an example of a of a building 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:08.439 of prominence with a with a statue in it, which 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:10.480 kind of gets into some additional arguments that we're going 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:12.439 to make here. But no, no, no no, you'd expect to 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:14.920 find the home of a king, right, yeah, yeah, you would. 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:17.240 That's the thing, right, you would want to you would expect, 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:19.400 all right, this is the center of the town. The 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:23.000 whole town is built around this. It occupies a spatial 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.120 center as well as just the center of meaning and purpose. 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:29.320 Or maybe sorry, that was probably my sexism talking to 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:31.560 a king or a queen. In any case, you would 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:35.719 expect the ruling person to live there. But what have 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:38.240 you entered into this grand building at the center of 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:40.160 the city and you found that it was home only 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:44.240 to a quote hallucinated presence, perhaps a statue of that 0:10:44.320 --> 0:10:46.880 presence in the case of Abraham Lincoln, if you will. 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:51.840 But still for our purposes here an unreal entity, a god, 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:55.160 a goddess. Um. You can also look to two cities 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.280 in which a church still occupies the central ground, and 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:00.760 James argues that this is an ect, perhaps an echo 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:03.920 of the bicameral past. So why would that, why would 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:06.920 that be evidence of a bicameral past. To find churches 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.079 or temples at the center of a city as opposed 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:13.080 to the house of a king. Well, the idea here 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:15.160 is that the voice occupied the center of our thoughts, 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:16.920 and so to it occupied the center of the town 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.200 or the city, and that the house of the God 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:21.920 or the house of the gods was quite literally the 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:24.560 house of the gods. Yeah, yeah, this is true. So 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.319 if I remember hearing when I was a kid people saying, 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.360 you know, be be respectful when you're in church because 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:32.880 it's God's house. But the churches I was going to 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:37.000 didn't literally believe that the God they worshiped lived in 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:40.600 the church. That was just where humans congregated to worship. 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:43.240 That's not so much the case in ancient religions. It 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:46.840 really does seem like in many ancient religions, the place 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.600 of worship or the the you know, the sacred building 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:53.760 was literally where the God inhabited. Yeah, where the God inhabited, 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.079 and then as things sort of go on, the place 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:59.400 where God may visit, the place where God maybe uh 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:02.840 contact did so. He draws on examples from the god 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:07.200 houses at Jericho, the zigarato or which we discussed in 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:11.360 our Tower of Babbel episode, as well as the city 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:15.199 of Hatasus, the Bronze Age capital of the hitt Eede Empire, 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:18.440 and in the ladder this was actually a mountain shrine 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:21.360 with images of the overwatching gods rather than a city center, 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:23.640 but he said it's kind of an exception that that 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:29.640 also lines up with the argument. He also looks to 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:35.400 the old mec and Mayan empires as Bicameral Mesoamerican empires 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:39.560 due to the presence of quote huge otherwise useless, centrally 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:43.720 located buildings, in chief among these the Pyramid of TiO 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:47.360 Tiwakan in modern Mexico. And I love how he mentioned, 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:50.320 you know, otherwise useless buildings because this touches on on 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:53.600 our discussions in the Tower of Babbel episode regarding the ziggurats. 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:56.439 A lot of our our study of the past has 0:12:56.480 --> 0:13:00.800 been us trying to figure out what was this for purpose? 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:03.080 And a lot of times we try and figure out 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:07.360 a practical purpose. You know what purpose did this structure have? Absolutely? 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:11.199 I mean these building projects consumed vast resources. I mean 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.719 to build the most prominent and the highest and well 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:18.960 defended building in the middle of an inhabited space. That 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.520 just seems like, why would you waste that on being 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:24.680 there for a being that is not that does not 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.600 physically need a house. Yeah, unless you are a people 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:33.400 for whom the voice of God is real. Again, this 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:35.760 is just the wonder of this theory is that it 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:39.000 turns so much of ancient history on its head. Uh. 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:41.920 And and then also you know more recent history, as 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.080 this is all an echo of the past. Now, in 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:47.280 the previous episode, we pointed out that you know the 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.839 by the voice of the bicameral mind it is it's 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:53.400 coming in to help you deal with novel experiences that 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:55.800 pop up, and how it might be helpful but it 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:58.520 might also be destructive. Well, in the same way that 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:01.800 a conscious person can make good decisions or can make 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:05.880 bad decisions, the God guiding the behaviors of the unconscious 0:14:05.920 --> 0:14:09.080 bicameral person, if this person ever existed, could be giving 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:11.520 good advice or bad advice. I mean it's based on 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:15.400 the integrated powers of the brain. In both cases, it's 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.040 just that is it consciously happening or is it being 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:21.920 delivered to you as a command that must be obeyed. Yeah. 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.160 And and along these lines, he attributes the construction of 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:29.800 ancient meso American cities that are located in inhospitable areas, 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.240 such as you on top of a mountain or uh, 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:33.800 in the middle of a swamp on the you know, 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:37.880 on the side of a cliff. He says that, uh, 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:41.120 that these are areas that yeah, again, we're inhospitable, and 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.400 they may have been abandoned at some point later on. Uh. 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:46.600 And this is because they were linked to the commands 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.920 of quote hallucinations, which in certain periods could be not 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:53.520 only irrational but downright punishing. Now that's possible, but it's 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:55.760 also possible that we in the modern world are just 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:59.480 not seeing correctly what the benefits of these spaces were. 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.960 That's right, I mean, we're always working with imperfect data. Um. 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:04.800 He does not reference this, but I couldn't help but 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:08.920 think of Montezuma Castle in modern Arizona. These were cliff 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:13.480 side dwellings of the Sinegua culture that were abandoned around 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:19.440 four after centuries of occupation. Now now, various explanations for 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:25.040 the abandonment of Montezuma Castle include a drought, resource depletion, 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:29.760 tribal conflict, and interestingly enough religious religious inclination to move. 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:32.440 Now you can get into a discussion of of how 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:36.280 that would possibly line up with james timeline for the 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:40.400 bicameral mine, but he does point out that by the 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:43.920 time the Incans encountered Europeans in the fifteenth century, uh, 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:47.080 there was perhaps a combination of things bicameral and things 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:50.840 proto subjective subjective. Yeah, and that is one feature of 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:53.200 his theory that for a long period of time it 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:56.800 wasn't just like everyone was bicameral and then everyone was conscious. 0:15:56.880 --> 0:15:59.520 You had a long period of the slow death of 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:05.440 bike emeral society turning into being taken over by conscious people. 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:07.720 You know, this makes me think of shows like Game 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:11.840 of Thrones and other fantasy worlds where magic slowly bleeds 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:14.760 out of the world, because that's essentially the argument here 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.120 is that over time, fewer and fewer people are hearing 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:21.240 the voice voices of the gods. Fewer people are hearing 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:25.520 the voices of the spirits of the departed loved ones, etcetera. 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.400 And yet they're surrounded by the cultural memory of people 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:30.880 who did hear the voices of the gods, or people 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:33.240 who still hear the voices of the gods today even 0:16:33.280 --> 0:16:36.000 though they can't. So you have this society in which 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:40.200 there are conscious people who are are constantly being reminded 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:42.440 that they could be in contact with the gods, but 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:45.600 they're not, and this, I imagine is very distressing and 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:48.440 frustrating to these people. And you know, this is also 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.920 interesting in that you eventually have this clash between the 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.520 Inca Empire and the Spanish Empire. And he says that 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:57.760 this was as close, too close to anything in our 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:01.760 history as to a meeting of these two different minds, 0:17:01.840 --> 0:17:04.520 of the bicameral mind and the conscious mind, like two 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:10.159 different cultures uh encountering each other. Um And yet he 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:12.760 points to a number of different arguments for and against 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:17.520 the Inca Empire being a bicameral empire. Well, it could 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:19.960 have been an empire in transition, as many of these 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:22.760 others were for so long. Yeah, I think basically, he 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:27.080 says that he believes that if there was a transition 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:30.280 from a bicameral society to a conscious society. That it 0:17:30.359 --> 0:17:35.680 began in Mesopotamia about you know, roughly one thousand BC. Uh, 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:38.119 you know, a few hundred years on each side. It 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:41.639 was a slow transition and spread around the world from there. Yes. 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:45.399 So with the Inca in particularly, he um, he points 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.600 out that on one hand, uh, the administrative demands and 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:52.240 politics were probably beyond something that a purely bicameral culture 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:55.280 could handle. Yet they had a god king who was 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:58.360 the Inca among them, and there were you know, other 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:01.840 aspects of bicameral culture as well. Uh. And these may 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:04.720 have been again to your point, mere traditional echoes of 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:07.800 the past, but he points out that that you you 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:10.560 had these gold and jeweled spools that members of the 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:13.639 top of Inca hierarchy they wore in their ears and 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:16.240 sometimes with images of the Sun on them. That these 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:19.840 may have indicated that those same ears, we're hearing the 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.880 voice of the Sun, since the Sun was a god. Yeah. Yeah. 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:25.560 So he spends a lot of time with various examples 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:30.640 discussing the importance of eye symbolism, ear symbolism, as as 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:34.840 showing that that the individual or the statue is somehow 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.800 involved in speech or hearing. Now, one of the things 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:40.040 I wanted to revisit from our last episode is just 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:44.720 the idea that James is not necessarily saying that, for example, 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:48.520 the bicameral mind is not as good as the conscious mind. 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.720 I know, we with our conscious bias, uh, you know, 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:54.199 would naturally kind of feel that way. But it's not 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:58.880 necessarily that conscious minds are better or more valuable or 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.240 even smarter. Mean, that's not just that's just not necessarily 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.320 the case. It's that they have different adaptive strengths, and 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:09.760 so having different strengths, a sudden clash of a conscious 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:13.480 culture against a bicameral culture could be very disastrous for 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:15.520 one or the other. Yeah, I mean, this is this 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.480 is basically the the the key example of an outside 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.000 context problem in our world. And uh, and James has 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:25.320 a just a beautiful little description of how this would 0:19:25.320 --> 0:19:28.439 have gone down. Assuming that this is a meeting of 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:31.840 a bicameral or partially bicameral culture in the Inca and 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.639 a conscious culture in that of the Spaniards, He says, quote, 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:38.920 it is possible that it was one of the few 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:43.440 confrontations between subjective and bicameral minds that for things as 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:48.080 unfamiliar as Inca at a Wappo was confronted with these rough, 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:52.360 milk skinned men with hair drooling from their chins instead 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:55.680 of from their scalps, so that their heads looked upside down, 0:19:56.160 --> 0:20:00.639 clothed in metal, with avertive eyes writing strain ange lama 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:05.000 like creatures with silver who's having arrived like gods in 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:09.480 gigantic quampas uh teared like mockagan temples over the sea, 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.160 which to the Inca was unsailable that for all this 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:16.720 there were no bicameral voices coming from the sun or 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:20.440 from the golden statues of Cuzco in their dazzling towers, 0:20:20.720 --> 0:20:24.680 not subjectively conscious, unable to deceive or to nar narraw 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.399 to rize out the deception of others, the Inca and 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.680 his lords were captured like helpless automatons. Oh man, it's 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:35.000 a horrible thing to imagine, as I mean, reading anything 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:38.159 about the European conquest of the Americans is always like 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:41.760 a horrible thing to Yeah, you don't have hold have 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.439 to imagine a separate state of mind for it to 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:48.879 be a rather horrific uh encounter, But yeah, that is 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.760 One of the features of his hypothesis is, so one 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:56.200 of the things that consciousness gives us is a capability 0:20:56.240 --> 0:21:00.320 for treachery. Yes, that really the bicameral person, and it's 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:03.280 not very much capable of treachery. I mean, they can't 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:09.240 prolong a deceptive behavior, right because they can't run this 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:12.320 internal narrative of how they should behave if they were 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:15.680 to believe one thing versus how they you know, really 0:21:15.720 --> 0:21:19.320 what goal they'll be working towards secretly, it just doesn't 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.520 seem like that works out very well. But these conscious 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:27.679 people are capable of extreme deception and treachery and the 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:32.639 ability to just be jerks all right. Now. Another area 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:35.840 that that he brings up is that of essentially the 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.560 love to dead. He points to the burial of the 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:41.680 dead as if they were still alive as being a 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.880 key evidence for by the bicameral mind. So we've covered 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:47.480 a number of different mommification practices on the show over 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:49.480 the year. So I think everyone here knows the drill 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:52.919 the corpse as an astronaut on a cosmic journey to 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:55.159 the other side. You know, there's some sort of an 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:58.760 elaborate tomb. Maybe fill that tomb with items that that 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:01.800 individual loved in a low life and therefore might continue 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:04.439 to need on a trip. And then beyond that, you 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:06.720 may even supply them, as we see in the case 0:22:06.720 --> 0:22:11.080