WEBVTT - Bicameralism, Part 2: The Silent Pantheon 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:01.680 Are you a Stuff to Blow Your Mind fan? Are 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:03.880 you a New Yorker? Do you plan to attend this 0:00:03.960 --> 0:00:06.800 year's New York Comic Con. If so, then you've got 0:00:06.800 --> 0:00:10.600 to check out our exclusive live show NYCC presents Stuff 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:14.000 to Blow Your Mind Live Stranger Science. Join all three 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:16.840 of us as we record a live podcast about the 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:21.640 exciting science and tantalizing pseudo science underlying the hit Netflix 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:25.840 show Stranger Things. It all goes down Friday, October six 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.240 from seven pm to eight thirty pm at the Hudson 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:32.279 Mercantile in Manhattan. Stuff You missed in History class has 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:34.920 a show right before us, so you can really double down, 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:37.920 learn more and buy your tickets today at New York 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:46.239 Comic Con dot com slash NYCC hyphen presents Welcome to 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:55.880 Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuff Works dot com. Hey, 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:57.800 welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:00.600 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Into Day. This is 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:03.440 going to be part two of our two part series 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:07.440 on Julian Jaynes and the bicameral mind and the origin 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:10.440 of consciousness in the Breakdown of the bi cameral Mind. 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:13.240 So as this is part two of a two part episode. 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.760 If you haven't heard part one yet, you should go 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:18.319 back and listen to that one first. Sometimes we say, 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:20.000 you know, if you feel like jumping right in and 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:21.760 go for it, This is one where I feel like 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:23.520 you're really going to have a hard time following us 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:25.880 if you haven't heard part one yet, because that's gonna 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:29.000 be where we explain what Julian james main hypothesis is 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:31.319 and how he arrived at it, and then in the 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:34.440 second episode we're gonna be talking about evidence for it 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:37.240 from the ancient world and from the modern world. Yeah, 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:39.360 this episode is going to be full of like falling 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.280 kingdoms and whispering statues and other great stuff, but you 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:44.640 need that first episode to understand it. Now, as with 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:47.680 the first episode, we want to make clear that we're 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:52.360 not necessarily endorsing this hypothesis. This is a very controversial hypothesis. 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:55.600 It's not something that is at all considered proven or 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:59.760 even necessarily very well attested by evidence. It's something that 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:03.440 is controversial but very fascinating and I think worth exploring 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:05.480 as a hypothetical. Yeah, it is a it is a 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:09.880 radical hypothesis, and if nothing else, it is just a 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:13.440 fascinating thought. Experiment. So as we discuss it again, you're 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:16.160 going to hear us Uh discussing it as if it 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:19.079 was fact, as if this is actually how ancient people thought. 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:21.920 But that is just a part of our exploration of 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:26.560 the hypothesis. Now to briefly recap the core of Julian 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:29.040 James theory, and we should say Julian James, when did 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:34.800 he live? Nine? Yeah? So seven. Julian James was an 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.639 American psychologist. He's primarily known for this book that was 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.480 published in nineteen seventy six called The Origin of Consciousness 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.600 in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. And the thrust 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:48.960 of that book is, until about three thousand years ago, 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:54.040 human beings were not conscious. They did not possess consciousness 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:56.640 in the way we do today. And around that time, 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:00.120 roughly three thousand years ago, modern human consciousness be and 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:04.760 as a cultural invention, probably in Mesopotamia that's spread around 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.000 the world over time. And before that time, for thousands 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.200 of years, almost all humans were not conscious in the 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:15.240 way we are, but instead we're unconscious beings commanded in 0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:20.680 all novel behaviors by hallucinated voices that they called gods 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:23.160 or another way of putting it and uh, and James 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:27.040 himself put it this way, everybody was schizophrenic sort of. Yeah. 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:30.600 I mean, so schizophrenia, as James imagines, it is one 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.840 form or a modified version of a regression to this 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:38.240 bicameral mind state that used to be the norm for 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:42.400 how humans and ancient civilizations lived. And so this norm 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:45.240 would be that most of the time you would be 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.840 going around unconsciously behaving out of habit you know, you 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:52.400 have a stimulus response behaviors, and you would have habitual 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:55.240 behaviors that you would enact, and this would serve to 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.640 do most things that would be you know, recurrent repetitive 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:02.120 behaviors over the day. Whenever something new happened, whenever you 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.960 needed to make a decision and there was a stress 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:08.240 point induced by that decision, you would be told what 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:12.320 to do by a hallucinated auditory voice that you would 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:16.360 perceive as a god, and that you would enact that. Now, 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.360 this is, as you said, a radical hypothesis. Yeah, because 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:21.840 again the idea here is that everybody heard these voices, 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:25.720 that this was the universal human experience, this was the norm, right, 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.880 And so obviously I mean that that sounds kind of 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:31.640 crazy to us now, like, what really could could that 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.560 be true? So, if there is any truth to Jane's theory, 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:37.719 and as we said before, we're not necessarily endorsing it 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:41.120 is true, just entertaining it as an interesting hypothesis, we 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.680 should be able to find some evidence of that theory. 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:47.440 And so we can look at psychiatry, and we can 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:49.720 look at neuroscience, and we can look at evidence from 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:52.520 the ancient world. And today we're gonna start by looking 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:56.560 at evidence from the ancient world, from history, from archaeology, 0:04:56.680 --> 0:05:00.960 from ancient literature. If there was a bicam moral mind state, 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:03.559 this divided mind state, where one half of the brain 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:05.600 spoke to the other as the voice of a god 0:05:05.640 --> 0:05:08.880 and commanded the unconscious other half, we should be able 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:11.680 to see that in the behaviors of ancient people's and 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.360 the traces left of those behaviors. Right, So a lot 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:18.240 of this episode is going to be UH, Joe and 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:22.640 I discussing some of the examples that James brings up 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:26.560 in the book. We can't possibly touch on all of 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:28.440 the examples because much of the book, and much of 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:31.920 the real joy of the book is UH is him 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:36.600 bringing up these various examples from from historical accounts, from archaeology, 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:40.279 from literature, and using that to support the idea of 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:43.240 the by bicameral mind. Yeah. And one of the pleasures 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:47.680 of the book is even if Jane's hypothesis does turn 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:50.080 out to be entirely incorrect, you know, if there never 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:54.240 was any bicameral mind, if consciousness is not a recent invention, 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:57.680 if he's wrong about all that, it's still a fascinating 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.000 book just because of the way he pulls in so 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:05.520 many different disciplines and ranges throughout history, incorporating evidence in 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:09.640 such an amazing and fascinating way. All right, well, let's 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:11.640 jump into it a bit here and start discussing some 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:14.680 of the evidence that James brought up in the book. Okay, Well, 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.279 one of the things that we probably should be able 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:23.000 to think about is if ancient people's perceived auditory hallucinations 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:25.920 that they regarded as gods, and these gods told them 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:28.520 what to do, there should be some evidence of this 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:31.840 in what traces they left of their relationship to the 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:35.400 gods they believed in, right, Yeah, And one of those examples, 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:38.920 James argues, is the positioning of the houses of the gods. 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:43.320 So this is the basic idea. Well, today, you travel 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:45.600 to a big city. Let's say you go to Washington, 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:48.120 d C. Okay, this is our example, not James. So 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:50.640 I'm in Washington, all right, and you seek out the grandest, 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:54.240 most centralized home, the one that just really stands out 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:56.679 from the rest, is the most protected. It has them, 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:59.640 you know that, the most central status of any other 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:03.680 um habitat. Okay, so I'm imagining it is the home 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.880 of an extremely tall, thin person that stands looking out 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:10.960 over the water. Yeah, that's that's one one interpretation. No way, 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:13.520 that thing isn't a home, is it. No, well, it's 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:15.160 not a home, But I mean that is an example 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:18.320 of a of a building of prominence with a with 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:20.120 a statue in it, which kind of gets into some 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.360 additional arguments that we're going to make here. But no, 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:25.480 no, no no, you'd expect to find the home of a king, right, Yeah, yeah, 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:27.600 you would. That's the thing, right, you would want to 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:29.280 you would expect a right, this is the center of 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:32.440 the town. The whole town is built around this. It 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.960 occupies a spatial center as well as just the center 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:38.680 of meaning and purpose. Or maybe sorry that that was 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:41.400 probably my sexism talking to a king or a queen. 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:45.040 In any case, you would expect the ruling person to 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:48.160 live there. But what have you entered into this grand 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:50.040 building at the center of the city and you found 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:53.280 that it was home only to a quote hallucinated presence, 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:56.200 perhaps the statue of that presence in the case of 0:07:56.240 --> 0:08:00.320 Abraham Lincoln, if you will, but still you for our 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:04.560 purposes here an unreal entity, a god, a goddess. Um. 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:06.560 You can also look to to cities in which a 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:10.200 church still occupies the central ground, and James argues that 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.000 this is an perhaps an echo of the bicameral past. 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:15.600 So why would that why would that be evidence of 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.560 a bicameral past, to find churches or temples at the 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:22.400 center of a city as opposed to the house of 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:24.640 a king. Well, the idea here is that the voice 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:26.680 occupied the center of our thoughts, and so to it 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:28.880 occupied the center of the town or the city, and 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:31.200 that the house of the God or the house of 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:34.760 the gods was quite literally the house of the gods. Yeah, yeah, 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.120 this is true. So if I remember hearing when I 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:40.240 was a kid people saying, you know, be be respectful 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:42.760 when you're in church because it's God's house. But the 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.040 churches I was going to didn't literally believe that the 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:49.320 God they worshiped lived in the church. That was just 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.960 where humans congregated to worship. That's not so much the 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:55.280 case in ancient religions. It really does seem like in 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:59.080 many ancient religions, the place of worship or the the 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:03.560 you know, the sacred building was literally where the God inhabited. Yeah, 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.040 where the God inhabited, and then his things sort of 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:08.839 go on the place where God may visit, the place 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:13.160 where God may be contacted. So he draws on examples 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.559 from the God houses at Jericho, uh the ziggarat of 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:20.000 r which we discussed in our Tower of Babel episode, 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:24.800 as well as the city of Hatasus, the Bronze Age 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.920 capital of the Hittite Empire, and in the Ladder this 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:30.839 was actually a mountain shrine with images of the overwatching 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:32.800 gods rather than a city center, but he said it's 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.720 kind of an exception that that also lines up with 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:41.960 the argument. He also looks to the Old mec and 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:47.320 Mayan empires as Bicameral Mesoamerican empires due to the presence 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:52.160 of quote huge, otherwise useless, centrally located buildings in chief 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:56.960 among these the pyramid of TiO Tiwakan in modern Mexico. 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.760 And I love how he mentioned, you know, otherwise useless buildings, 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.440 because is this touches on on our discussions in the 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.600 Tower of Battle episode regarding the ziggurats. A lot of 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:08.240 our our study of the past has been us trying 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:12.520 to figure out what was this for what purpose? And 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:14.120 a lot of times we try and figure out a 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:18.239 practical purpose. You know, what purpose did this structure have? Absolutely? 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:22.160 I mean these building projects consumed vast resources. I mean 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:26.160 to build the most prominent and highest and well defended 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:29.880 building in the middle of of an inhabited space. That 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.480 just seems like, why would you waste that on being 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:35.640 there for a being that is not that does not 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:39.520 physically need a house. Yeah, unless you are a people 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:44.360 for whom the voice of God is real. Again, this 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:46.680 is just the wonder of this theory is that it 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.959 turns so much of ancient history on its head. Uh. 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:52.840 And and then also you know, more recent history, as 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:55.000 this is all an echo of the past. Now, in 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:58.240 the previous episode, we pointed out that you know, the 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:01.800 by the voice of the bicameral mind, it is it's 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:04.360 coming in to help you deal with novel experiences that 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:06.720 pop up, and how it might be helpful but it 0:11:06.800 --> 0:11:09.440 might also be destructive. Well, in the same way that 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.760 a conscious person can make good decisions or can make 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:16.840 bad decisions, the god guiding the behaviors of the unconscious 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.040 bicameral person, if this person ever existed, could be giving 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.440 good advice or bad advice. I mean, it's based on 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:26.319 the integrated powers of the brain. In both cases, it's 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:28.959 just that is it consciously happening or is it being 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.880 delivered to you as a command that must be obeyed? Yeah. 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:36.080 And and along these lines, he attributes the construction of 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:40.719 ancient meso American cities that are located in inhospitable areas, 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:43.160 such as you on top of a mountain or uh, 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:44.720 in the middle of a swamp on the you know, 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:48.800 on the side of a cliff. He says that, uh, 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.679 these are areas that again we're inhospitable, and they may 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.440 have been abandoned at some point later on. Uh. And 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:57.599 this is because they were linked to the commands of 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:01.200 quote hallucinations, which in certain periods could be not only 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:04.720 irrational but downright punishing. Now that's possible, but it's also 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:06.880 possible that we in the modern world are just not 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.920 seeing correctly what the benefits of these spaces were. That's right, 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:14.000 I mean, we're always working with imperfect data. Um. He 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:16.040 does not reference this, but I couldn't help but think 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:20.280 of Montezuma Castle in modern Arizona. These were cliff side 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:24.640 dwellings of the Senegua culture that were abandoned around four 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:30.400 s after centuries of occupation. Now now, various explanations for 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:36.000 the abandonment of Montezuma Castle include a drought, resource depletion, 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:41.680 tribal conflict, and interestingly enough, just religious inclination to move. Now, 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:43.480 you can get into a discussion of of how that 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:48.160 would possibly line up with james timeline for the bicameral mind. 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:51.640 But he does uh point out that by the time 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:55.079 the Incans encountered Europeans in the fifteenth century. Uh, there 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:59.880 was perhaps a combination of things bicameral and things protosubjective, subjective. Yeah, 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.640 and that is one feature of his theory that for 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.400 a long period of time it wasn't just like everyone 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.240 was bicameral and then everyone was conscious. You had a 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:13.040 long period of the slow death of bicameral society turning 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:17.120 into being taken over by conscious people. You know, this 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:19.360 makes me think of shows like Game of Thrones and 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:23.520 other fantasy worlds where magic slowly bleeds out of the world, 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.240 because that's essentially the argument here is that over time, 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:30.440 fewer and fewer people are hearing the voice voices of 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:32.880 the gods, Fewer people are hearing the voices of the 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:37.040 spirits of the departed loved ones, etcetera. And yet they're 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:40.160 surrounded by the cultural memory of people who did hear 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:42.640 the voices of the gods, or people who still hear 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:44.959 the voices of the gods today even though they can't. 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:47.720 So you have this society in which there are conscious 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:51.760 people who are are constantly being reminded that they could 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:54.560 be in contact with the gods, but they're not, and this, 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:57.800 I imagine is very distressing and frustrating to these people. 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:00.840 And you know, this is also interesting in that you 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:04.080 eventually have this clash between the Inca Empire and the 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:07.240 Spanish Empire. And he says that this was as close, 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.120 too close to anything in our history as to a 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:14.160 meeting of these two different minds, of the bicameral mind 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:17.920 and the conscious mind, like two different cultures, uh, encountering 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.520 each other. Um. And and yet he points to a 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:25.080 number of different arguments for and against the Inca Empire 0:14:25.520 --> 0:14:28.720 at being a bicameral empire. Well, it could have been 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:31.520 an empire in transition, as many of these others were 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:34.320 for so long. Yeah, I think Basically, he says that 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:38.280 he believes that if there was a transition from a 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:41.880 bicameral society to a conscious society, that it began in 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:47.120 Mesopotamia about you know, roughly one thousand BC. Uh, you know, 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.320 a few hundred years on each side. It was a 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:52.560 slow transition and spread around the world from there. Yes. 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.320 So with the Inca in particularly, he um he points 0:14:56.360 --> 0:15:00.200 out that on one hand, uh, the administrative demands and politics, 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:03.800 we're probably beyond something that a purely bicameral culture could handle. 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:06.800 Yet they had a god king who was the Inca 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:09.840 among them, and there were you know, other aspects of 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:12.800 bi cameral culture as well. Uh. And then these may 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.640 have been again to your point, mere traditional echoes of 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.640 the past. But he points out that, uh that you 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:21.440 you had these gold and jeweled spools that members of 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:24.400 the top of Inca hierarchy they wore in their ears, 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:26.800 and sometimes with images of the sun on them that 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.680 these may have indicated that those same ears we're hearing 0:15:30.720 --> 0:15:33.760 the voice of the sun, since the Sun was a god. Yeah. Yeah, 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:36.480 So he spends a lot of time with various examples 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:41.120 discussing the importance of eye symbolism, ear symbolism, as uh 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:45.400 as showing that that the individual or the statue is 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.480 somehow involved in speech or hearing. Now, one of the 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:50.800 things I wanted to revisit from our last episode is 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:54.600 just the idea that James is not necessarily saying that, 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:58.560 for example, the bicameral mind is not as good as 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:02.280 the conscious mind. I know, we our conscious bias, uh, 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:04.720 you know, would naturally kind of feel that way, But 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:08.760 it's not necessarily that conscious minds are better or more 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:12.360 valuable or even smarter. I mean, that's not just that's 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:14.600 just not necessarily the case. It's that they have different 0:16:14.640 --> 0:16:18.920 adaptive strengths, and so having different strengths a a sudden 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:23.080 clash of a conscious culture against a bicameral culture could 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:25.920 be very disastrous for one or the other. Yeah, I mean, 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:28.640 this is this is basically the the the key example 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:32.200 of an outside context problem in our world and Uh, 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:35.560 and James has a just a beautiful little description of 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.480 how this would have gone down. Assuming that this is 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:41.800 a meeting of a bicameral or partially bicameral culture in 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:45.360 the Inca and a conscious culture and that of the Spaniards, 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:49.360 he says, quote, it is possible that it was one 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.520 of the few confrontations between subjective and bicameral minds, that 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:57.160 for things as unfamiliar as Inca at a Wappa was 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:01.560 confronted with these rough, milk skinned men with hair drooling 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:04.960 from their chins instead of from their scalps, so that 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:09.440 their heads looked upside down, clothed in metal, with avertive 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:14.440 eyes writing strange lama like creatures with silver hoofs having 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:19.080 arrived like gods in gigantic quampas uh teared like mockagan 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:22.640 temples over the sea, which to the Inca was unsailable 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:26.680 that for all this there were no bicameral voices coming 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.720 from the sun or from the golden statues of Cuzco 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:34.440 in their dazzling towers. Not subjectively conscious, unable to deceive 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.719 or to nar narrat a rise out the deception of others, 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.280 the Inca and his lords were captured like helpless automatons. 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.479 It's a horrible thing to imagine, as I mean, reading 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:49.399 anything about the European conquest Americans is always like a 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:53.119 horrible thing to Yeah, you don't have told have to 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.480 imagine a separate state of mind for it to be 0:17:55.840 --> 0:18:00.080 a rather horrific, uh encounter. But yeah, that is of 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:03.000 the features of his hypothesis. Is so one of the 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:08.440 things that consciousness gives us is a capability for treachery. Yes, 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:12.600 that really, the bicameral person is not very much capable 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:17.399 of treachery. I mean, they can't prolong a deceptive behavior, 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:21.760 right because they can't run this internal narrative of how 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:24.320 they should behave if they were to believe one thing 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:27.480 versus how they you know, really what goal they'll be 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:31.159 working towards secretly, It just doesn't seem like that works 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:35.880 out very well. But these conscious people are capable of 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:40.399 extreme deception and treachery and the ability to just be 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:45.080 jerks all right. Now. Another area that that he brings 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.600 up is that of essentially the loved dead. He points 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:50.560 to the burial of the dead as if they were 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:53.879 still alive as being a key evidence for by the 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:57.159 bicameral mind. So we've covered a number of different momification 0:18:57.200 --> 0:18:59.240 practices on the show over the year. So I think 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:02.560 everyone here knows the drill the corpse as an astronaut 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:05.399 on a cosmic journey to the other side. You know, 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:07.760 there's some sort of an elaborate tomb. Maybe you fill 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:11.080 that tomb with items that that individual loved in life 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.199 and therefore might continue to need on a trip. And 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:17.000 then beyond that, you may even supply them, as we 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.119 see in the case of Egyptian tombs, with food stuffs, 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:24.359 with with perishable goods to uh to aid them in 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:26.879 the journey. And the idea here is that if this 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:30.239 goes beyond the mere idea that oh, well, they like 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:32.800 to cheeseburger, so let's put a cheeseburger in there as 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:35.240 a you know, a token is some sort of uh, 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:39.240 just at tribute to them. It's the idea that that no, 0:19:39.560 --> 0:19:42.920 I still hear their voice, they are still speaking to me, 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:45.600 even though the body has stopped moving, I will put 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.120 a cheeseburger in there for them to eat, exactly. Yeah, 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:51.080 So we think of tokens to the dead today primarily 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:56.439 as uh it's something representing the way the living feel Yeah, 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:59.200 but no, the belief here was that the dead person 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:02.119 still need at that. Yeah. And he says that this 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:05.680 spills over to the treatment of ordinary dead as well 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:08.359 as royal dead and many of these ancient cultures. But 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:11.160 the concept of bearing the dead and massive tombs preserving 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:15.040 their bodies, providing them with physical luxuries and even food, uh, 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:17.359 this is key. And and and and in cases where there 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:21.280 was no food, such as the graves at Larsa and 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:26.639 Mesopotamia from around the uh. He says there these areas 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:29.800 were foodless because the tombs were beneath human habitation, so 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.959 that the dead essentially still lived among the living, so 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:35.200 that they would wander up into the house and you 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:39.320 would literally hallucinate them doing so and telling you what 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:42.439 to do. Yeah. Now, James admits that grief could have 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:45.040 been the core motivation and most of these rights. And certainly, 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:47.440 I think that's the way we think about it when 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:50.000 we're trying to put ourselves in the shoes of ancient people, right. 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:53.320 I Mean, another very plausible and perhaps the more probable 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.640 answer is just that people wished their loved ones were 0:20:56.640 --> 0:21:01.240 still alive and wanted to behave as if they could now. Yeah, now, 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:04.560 he argues that grief alone wouldn't be able to account 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:08.399 for all of these practices. I mean, I think it 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:12.359 depends on your example and uh and you know what 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:14.640 your experience with bereavement is. I think that a lot 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.439 of this can a test that. Yeah, that that the 0:21:17.480 --> 0:21:19.520 loss of a loved one, or even the loss of 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:23.040 just a you know, I loved celebrity in many cases 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:25.560 can can have a big impact, a huge impact on 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:28.280 your life. So uh, yeah, I don't know to what 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:31.320 extent I completely agree with that assessment, but I still 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:33.200 think it's a it's an interesting case to be Yeah, 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:35.760 I mean, in a bicameral culture, you could imagine that 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.640 when Prince died, everybody would still be hearing him sing 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:43.719 into their ear. Yeah, because what is prince but a 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.080 you know, royal of the modern age. All Right, we're 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:48.600 gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:51.040 we will keep looking at evidence from the ancient world 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:55.640 that may indicate a bicameral past. Okay, we're back. You know, Joe, 0:21:55.680 --> 0:21:59.600 you mentioned uh uh Statue of Lincoln to the top 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:01.560 of this step said, I know, oh you know what 0:22:01.680 --> 0:22:04.000 I think I think I was talking about. What's it 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:06.480 called the Obelisk the Washington I thought you meant when 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:10.879 you were talking about a statue of a tall, slender figure, 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:14.440 I thought you meant Lincoln slender dude. There's a miscommunication 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:19.159