Controversial ideas in History I
Oct 14, 2021 19:04:28 GMT
Gerd von Rundstedt, John Marston, and 2 more like this
Post by Deleted on Oct 14, 2021 19:04:28 GMT
A new series of posts I will be making which details some controversial ideas that appeared throughout human history. They are a mix between widely known and less known, although I would be focusing more on lesser known ideas. The topics aren’t specifically about history, and are rather about ideas that are controversial during their time, controversial today, or both. I'm still not sure exactly how to write them, but one thing's for sure, atleast for now, is that i won't go too much into detail on the topics, and just focus on why the ideas are controversial, lest i'd be spending a week writing down a single post that would just remind people of their dreadful days at college. The purpose of these posts are a mix of entertainment(hopefully) and sharing information (and a way for me to feel like I haven’t wasted hours reading on them out of curiosity). It’s also a way for me to have a reason for keeping my newsletter editor title after being MIA for almost 2 years.
Part 1: The bicameral mind
When we think of the word bicameral, the first think that enters our mind is probably something of dual nature. Or, if it’s your first time hearing of the word, it’s probably some new app about cameras, or just a plain old question mark that appears in your heads. So what the hell is the bicameral mind? The first controversial idea in the series is that of the bicameral mind, which is a term coined by prominent American Psychologist Julian Jaynes in his 1976 book: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind , wherein he argues that human beings dating around as recently as 3000 years ago had an interesting state of human mental state, in which the right hemisphere is dominated by a “voice of god” which gives commands to the left hemisphere. As described in his book: “bicameral mind was experienced as a different, non-conscious mental schema wherein volition in the face of novel stimuli was mediated through a linguistic control mechanism and experienced as auditory verbal hallucination. “
So what is Julian Jaynes talking about here? Seems like he smoked a bit too much kush and just wrote down a bunch of jibberish words. What he's talking about here is that human beings from around the inception of humanity and until as recently as 3000 years ago, human beings have been sort of a semi-conscious state where they would be hearing auditory hallucinations that would give them orders that comes from the right hemisphere of the brain. Basically, some random guy would be telling you to eat your wheat, plow the fields, kill your neighbor because he stole your prized goat. To people who is a bit familiar with psychology, it sounds suspiciously similar to Schizophrenia. Which it is. According to him, people before wouldn't be thinking about doing something, rather they would be hallucinating a voice of "god" which would command them to do it. This makes ancient human beings not self-conscious at all, and have no concept of meta consciousness . The left hemisphere, or the part of our brain associated with language and self-awareness, is less developed. Which is interesting in itself, does this imply that a human being is more conscious when he/she understand or knows more languages?
So what caused the bicameral mind to go away? Julian Jaynes theorized that in 2000 years ago, during the bronze age collapse, a large amount of stress due to environmental issues like droughts, food shortages, and the appearance of large groups of sea people looking to migrate, caused our brain to be more creative and flexible, along with the fact that more efficient forms of communication was necessary to combat such crisis. The bicameral mind slowly got replaced by our current conscious mind as it became a necessity for us to be able to communicate much more efficiently. Like the bicameral mind which had evolved to deal with human beings evolving as we lived in small city states, the conscious mind developed due to the crisis that helped them survive; a culturally evolved solution to the problem. Critics would challenge this notion, asserting that other civilizations who didn't experience such crisis were able to develop a conscious mind, tho it's not really a strong argument against bicameralism but rather a strong argument of how language could have an effect in the development of our current consciousness.
The bicameral mind isn't completely gone tho, more likely that the conscious mind simply built itself over it. This would explain why some of us are more likely to obey authority, are more easily hypnotised, or are more likely to believe in divination and oracles than others. The bicameral mind would also explain the strong prominent superstitions we hold, along with strong beliefs in divinity.
Why is it Controversial:
First of all, what is the first thing you would think if some guy in a lab coat holding some papers and would come to you and say : "hey, did you know that your ancestors from around 3000 years ago and before that weren't conscious at all, and instead they would be hearing a voice from "god" which tells them to wipe their *Auto corrected* using a stick made of a special kind of wood rather than some reeds lying on the side?" Personally, i would be thinking about how underfunded the mental institutions have that they either let go a mentally ill man from the institution or that meds cost too high that he probably couldn't afford them. But of course, the first thing most would think of aside from him being crazy is that his ideas are absurd. And that's what most of his critics thought when he release his book back in 1976. That's not even thinking of the implications it had on the current religions which we had today, although it didn't get too much traction that would have warranted any religious scholarly debate, aside from individual religious scholars who got to read about the topic.
Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006) wrote of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind: "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius; Nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."
Gregory Cochran, a physicist and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, wrote: "Genes affecting personality, reproductive strategies, cognition, are all able to change significantly over few-millennia time scales if the environment favors such change—and this includes the new environments we have made for ourselves, things like new ways of making a living and new social structures. ... There is evidence that such change has occurred. ... On first reading, Breakdown seemed one of the craziest books ever written, but Jaynes may have been on to something."
It is still quite a controversial theory among scholars, and his idea has quite a lot of supporters in the field, and also a lot of detractors. It wouldn't be controversial if it weren't.
Summary:
The reason as to why this idea is controversial is from how the idea proposes that ancient humans were not conscious but would rather be directly following orders from the voice of "god" that arises in the right hemisphere of the brain, making them semi-conscious at best. It has alot of implications that may challenge current religions(especially monotheistic ones) as it may erode the notion of some omnipotent god, and also how some scholars found it simply as an entertaining brain snack, or outright absurd, along with the fact that other scholars think the opposite. It is more controversial on the side of scholarly debate rather than popular culture, so you won't be hearing from your friend rambling about how Julian Jaynes was right and that the Simpsons predicted it or something.
*On a more serious note, the topic of the Bicameral Mind is a really fascinating subject, and i recommend further reading about it, as i just scratched the surface about the topic. I have an idea for the next topic, which is about ancient Polytheism.
Part 1: The bicameral mind
When we think of the word bicameral, the first think that enters our mind is probably something of dual nature. Or, if it’s your first time hearing of the word, it’s probably some new app about cameras, or just a plain old question mark that appears in your heads. So what the hell is the bicameral mind? The first controversial idea in the series is that of the bicameral mind, which is a term coined by prominent American Psychologist Julian Jaynes in his 1976 book: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind , wherein he argues that human beings dating around as recently as 3000 years ago had an interesting state of human mental state, in which the right hemisphere is dominated by a “voice of god” which gives commands to the left hemisphere. As described in his book: “bicameral mind was experienced as a different, non-conscious mental schema wherein volition in the face of novel stimuli was mediated through a linguistic control mechanism and experienced as auditory verbal hallucination. “
So what is Julian Jaynes talking about here? Seems like he smoked a bit too much kush and just wrote down a bunch of jibberish words. What he's talking about here is that human beings from around the inception of humanity and until as recently as 3000 years ago, human beings have been sort of a semi-conscious state where they would be hearing auditory hallucinations that would give them orders that comes from the right hemisphere of the brain. Basically, some random guy would be telling you to eat your wheat, plow the fields, kill your neighbor because he stole your prized goat. To people who is a bit familiar with psychology, it sounds suspiciously similar to Schizophrenia. Which it is. According to him, people before wouldn't be thinking about doing something, rather they would be hallucinating a voice of "god" which would command them to do it. This makes ancient human beings not self-conscious at all, and have no concept of meta consciousness . The left hemisphere, or the part of our brain associated with language and self-awareness, is less developed. Which is interesting in itself, does this imply that a human being is more conscious when he/she understand or knows more languages?
So what caused the bicameral mind to go away? Julian Jaynes theorized that in 2000 years ago, during the bronze age collapse, a large amount of stress due to environmental issues like droughts, food shortages, and the appearance of large groups of sea people looking to migrate, caused our brain to be more creative and flexible, along with the fact that more efficient forms of communication was necessary to combat such crisis. The bicameral mind slowly got replaced by our current conscious mind as it became a necessity for us to be able to communicate much more efficiently. Like the bicameral mind which had evolved to deal with human beings evolving as we lived in small city states, the conscious mind developed due to the crisis that helped them survive; a culturally evolved solution to the problem. Critics would challenge this notion, asserting that other civilizations who didn't experience such crisis were able to develop a conscious mind, tho it's not really a strong argument against bicameralism but rather a strong argument of how language could have an effect in the development of our current consciousness.
The bicameral mind isn't completely gone tho, more likely that the conscious mind simply built itself over it. This would explain why some of us are more likely to obey authority, are more easily hypnotised, or are more likely to believe in divination and oracles than others. The bicameral mind would also explain the strong prominent superstitions we hold, along with strong beliefs in divinity.
Why is it Controversial:
First of all, what is the first thing you would think if some guy in a lab coat holding some papers and would come to you and say : "hey, did you know that your ancestors from around 3000 years ago and before that weren't conscious at all, and instead they would be hearing a voice from "god" which tells them to wipe their *Auto corrected* using a stick made of a special kind of wood rather than some reeds lying on the side?" Personally, i would be thinking about how underfunded the mental institutions have that they either let go a mentally ill man from the institution or that meds cost too high that he probably couldn't afford them. But of course, the first thing most would think of aside from him being crazy is that his ideas are absurd. And that's what most of his critics thought when he release his book back in 1976. That's not even thinking of the implications it had on the current religions which we had today, although it didn't get too much traction that would have warranted any religious scholarly debate, aside from individual religious scholars who got to read about the topic.
Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006) wrote of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind: "It is one of those books that is either complete rubbish or a work of consummate genius; Nothing in between! Probably the former, but I'm hedging my bets."
Gregory Cochran, a physicist and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, wrote: "Genes affecting personality, reproductive strategies, cognition, are all able to change significantly over few-millennia time scales if the environment favors such change—and this includes the new environments we have made for ourselves, things like new ways of making a living and new social structures. ... There is evidence that such change has occurred. ... On first reading, Breakdown seemed one of the craziest books ever written, but Jaynes may have been on to something."
It is still quite a controversial theory among scholars, and his idea has quite a lot of supporters in the field, and also a lot of detractors. It wouldn't be controversial if it weren't.
Summary:
The reason as to why this idea is controversial is from how the idea proposes that ancient humans were not conscious but would rather be directly following orders from the voice of "god" that arises in the right hemisphere of the brain, making them semi-conscious at best. It has alot of implications that may challenge current religions(especially monotheistic ones) as it may erode the notion of some omnipotent god, and also how some scholars found it simply as an entertaining brain snack, or outright absurd, along with the fact that other scholars think the opposite. It is more controversial on the side of scholarly debate rather than popular culture, so you won't be hearing from your friend rambling about how Julian Jaynes was right and that the Simpsons predicted it or something.
*On a more serious note, the topic of the Bicameral Mind is a really fascinating subject, and i recommend further reading about it, as i just scratched the surface about the topic. I have an idea for the next topic, which is about ancient Polytheism.
