/lit/ - Literature

>>6623183
>which posits that ancients did not actually have consciousness the way we do, but rather experienced auditory hallucinations coming from one side of their brain to the other, experienced as the voice of god(s)
lmao

>>6623183
only reference I've seen to Bicameral Mind is PKD, so it must not hold much theoretical water. neat idea though.

Does that theory have data to back it up? It could just as easily be that we socially select people who don't claim to have daemons now that we have a more sophisticated understanding of the world and social organization than the ancients did, now that we have concepts like mental illness that dictate what is and isn't acceptable. Plenty of people today have auditory amd hallucinations, it seems far fetched and even counterintuitive to think that the fact that they also did in the past indicates a change in brain structure across the entire species.

I'm old, so I remember when this book came out. Someone I was working for at the time made everyone read it. Anyway it's an interesting idea. I've wondered if maybe it's backwards...what if (ugh, there I go with "what if") God's voice has become absorbed into our brain, rather than our brain being the actual source of the voice. KnowhatI'msayin'? PS Fuck you sushi captcha

>>6623232
What was it like back in mesopotamia?

>>6623232
Sounds like Hegel's interpretation of Christianity. Subjective will becomes unified with divine law through the institution if the New Law following Jesus' death & resurrection.

>>6623183
I've read a book called Return to the Brain of Eden, in that the author had a theory about something like OP said.
If I remember correctly, they said that at one point in evolution our brain wasnt "split" like now, and when it became split, that was the time people began to experience the voice of god or call it how you like it. Its an interesting book, I'd recommend it for OP.

>>6623203
ayyyy

>>6623209
It is currently what modern cogsci researchers would probably classify as "esoteric" lol, but I like how it pokes holes in places most people wouldn't think to

>>6623232
It's plausible, but it doesn't solve any problems from the point of view of a religious person such as myself. God would have a lot to answer for if he were the dude in the back of Hitler's mind saying "all you have to do to secure a future for hundreds of millions of Germans is kill a few million minorities; do it bro"

>>6623237
That's neat; tell me more. Does Hegel reference old texts in his exegesis of this theory of his?

>>6623235
hell yeah, way back then. there were Hittites around.

>>6623253
>Return to the Brain of Eden

That sounds "interesting," but a cursory glance at the book on Amazon makes me think it's newage hogwash even less rigorously realized than the admittedly loose text referenced in the OP.

Give me one good, truly compelling reason to bother with it.

>>6623270
which was actually pretty neat; them hos was ratchet

>>6623267
God's already got a lot to answer for. Or not, 'cause he's God. I don't have a solid opinion on this, btw. Just fun to run my multicameral mind around.

>>6623267
>Does Hegel reference old texts in his exegesis of this theory of his?
Read him and find out. The short answer is yes, the long answer is that anyone who makes claims like that without using g 'old texts' to back them up is an idiot who wouldn't be well-known for proposing it 200 years after his death.

>>6623285
Can you recommend a specific text by Hegel for this? Thanks in advance.

>>6623318
Lectures on the Philosophy of History
The Spirit of Christianity

>>6623284
Again, as a religious person, I fully agree.

>god pls
>why evil tho
>god y r u hideing
>buttsex?
>aliums god?
>haha srsly tho

>>6623321
Thanks!

>>6623183

S'up?

This book posits a much more plausible explanation.

>>6625320

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-silva/darwins-pharmacy-sex-plan_b_884019.html

>In Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants and the Evolution of The Noösphere, the transhumanist philosopher focuses on his favorite technology: the psychedelic, "ecodelic" plants and chemicals (read: drugs) that can help make us process more information and make us aware of the effect of language and music and nature on our consciousness, thereby offering us an awareness of our own ability to effect our own consciousness through our linguistic and creative choices. And that, from an evolutionary perspective, is simply sexy.

I took a class with this guy, and he's legit. He could answer every question I thought to ask. Absolutely brilliant.

>>6625354
>>6625320
Does he have evidence? If not, these claims should not be accepted as true.

>>6623183
Bicameral Mind was interesting but it's widely regarded as a shower thought by academics.

>>6625376

I said plausible, not true. Coevolution with domesticated and wild plants is certainly conceivable, given our omnivorous diet.

Jaynes for instance had no scientific basis. Furthermore he restricted his studies to ancient Greek literature for some reason.

>>6625419
I agree completely. I'm skeptical only because Terence McKenna proposed a similar hypothesis that was Jaynes-tier.

>>6625354
>Darwin's Pharmacy
why does he talk about sex ?

>>6625525

sex is rather phenomenally important to the human psyche.

He's also specifically talking about sexual selection, and how ideas inspired by plants provided a fitness coefficient, thus strengthening certain behaviors.

>>6625616
I have watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0E60dI9FoE

and he seems like the typical hippy. He even has thebit on some illness curred instantly.

Sex matters for those who want it to matter. IF you say that sex matters, you assume that it is unlikely to find another activity to achieve whatever is achieved from the importance of sex.

>>6625727
there is also the question of what happens to those who do not have access to this drugs, say in the Hymalya, or somewhere else. Are they doomed ?

Als, he seems to forget that a drug is just drug, , just a high-yield technic for some purpose.

>>6625727
> IF you say that sex matters, you assume that it is unlikely to find another activity to achieve whatever is achieved from the importance of sex
...what?

>>6627132
you say that somehow sex matters, but there can be another activity which achieves the exact same thing as sex in doing it better

>>6627161
Do you mean reproduction? I genuinely don't understand what you're trying to say here. It doesn't seem like if sex is important, only sex is important.

>>6627205
Is there anything else that will reach the important place that sex holds for humans?

>>6627408
You're begging the question. Why do you assume that sex is the most important thing for humans? Why does it follow from sex being the most important thing psychologically that nothing else matters to us?

>>6627416
Well, I'm not him so I'm not begging any questions. Just trying to help him get out what he wanted to say.

Sex is part of who we are. It's the stuff we are made out of. We did not invent the laws of nature, but found them already in place. Sure, we can buck the trend, we can go against nature. But this an anthropological hypothesis. Is it not insipid to believe our stone age ancestors shared this detachment from nature? Wouldn't the converse be true? Wouldn't they be closer to the mean, and we the deviation?

>he seems to forget that a drug is just drug, , just a high-yield technic for some purpose

No he doesn't. A drug can only give you what you already have. Our brain filters our experiences according to a rational regime. Activation of these memory cells is a punctuated equilibrium.

So for example, the memory that sparks fly from banging rocks. A lesser beast would quickly forget. What Doyle posits, is that intoxication, whether intentional or otherwise, lowers the threshold for neuronal activation, when the action potential would normally be too low to trigger a conscious response.

This then, by my own estimation, serves as a better example for the voice of God in ancient texts. It is no secret that oracles imbibed of many intoxicating chemicals, and these practices no doubt existed in the folk tradition long before writing came about.

>>6623183
If early humans didn't have the same kind of consciousness as we do now, they existed tens of thousands of years ago, way before Gilgamesh was created and probably before there were any stories being exchanged period. Gilgamesh is really not THAT old, certainly not old enough that the humans who created it were so biologically different from us they didn't even have what we understand as human consciousness.

Ancient literature is cool though, almost scary in a way. Imagine what literature existed before Gilgamesh that we just don't have any records of. What was THE first motif in literature ever? Was it light vs. dark like Jungians posit? What was the first piece of literature to really have the "great flood" in it, or the woman as the seductress who tempts man into self-awareness? Were these based on historical accounts, or always just poetic symbols, or both? It's an interesting topic and feels like you're diving into the lowest roots of the human mind and sentience in general.

>>6629054

The most interesting flood myth comes from China. It's hilariously altruistic compared to Noah, for example, who in an act of severe douchebaggery, lets people drown in favor of carrying elephants and giraffes. If the western mythos is about a surrender to a vengeful and evil god, the founding Chinese mythos is one of the triumph over the caprice of nature.

(fucking spam filters, just google it)

>the flood usually results from natural causes rather than "universal punishment for human sin". Another distinct motif of the myth of the Great Flood of China is an emphasis on the heroic and praiseworthy efforts to mitigate the disaster.

"Another key motif is the development of civilization and bettering the human situation despite the disaster of the deluge.

>These and other developments are integral to the narrative, and exemplify a wider approach to human health and societal well being than emergency management of the flood and its immediate effects. "

>>6623342
Did Plato steal from the Aboriginals?

>>6625727

He also does ted talks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFY5KIkzSmA