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Julian Jaynes drew a clear distinction between an old bicameral
mentality and a modern conscious mentality. Since he
indicates that the old bicameral messages were received as
voices and since the historical period of the breakdown of the old bicameral
mentality corresponds precisely with the beginning of
writing,
we may in fact be talking about a change from
verbal-bicameral to
visual-bicameral. Clearly, when a stream of verbal information is
coming at you through your ears
there is no opportunity for reason to operate because reason
is essentially a restructuring of information and then an application
of the new idea structures to the material world to
see what it does different. Without a tape recorder to stop and restart
the verbal sequences that are coming in, old bicameral humans could not
splice out parts
of the information and resplice it back into other areas
of the verbal stream.
Even with a tape recorder verbal reasoning is not very
workable. But with the advent of
WRITING
the
EYE is in control of the stream
so to speak, in fact there is no continuous stream,
only eye movement on a page of text. And the eye is free to scan the
page or pages of text out sequence, and out of sequence means
new ideas, new structuring of information not possible with a
verbal stream that comes at you. A jury deliberating in a jury room
by reading transcripts of evidence which they have already heard verbally
are scanning back and forth between documents and constucting
their own picture of
the evidence, their own imaginary visual picture of the events in
question. Scanning text means NOT experiencing the
information in its original form, but in the form and sequence you choose.
A conscious individual tends to read a book out of order rather than
from front cover to back cover. Anyway, I was long winded on
this to demonstate the vast difference in reasoning potential
between information received verbally and information received visually.
The point of this is that the modern mentality may in fact be just as
bicameral as the old mentality in the sense of having two
somewhat independent chambers in our heads
with different ways of thinking,
but the modern brain hemispheres CAN share information BOTH verbally AND
visually.
Certainly the dialectic is here to stay. Its absurd to think a distant
future evolution of the hemispheres into a single chamber could happen
or would be better. What is desirable is good
integration of the left and right
chambers of the mind as well as with the feelings of the body. But total
integration would mean new things stop getting invented,
new styles of art never get improvised into existing.
Anyway, thats not humanity's problem right now, the problem is that
nearly everyone on this planet is functioning
substantially in a split-brain condition. But this is
getting better generally because visual and electronic media
are allowing for the opportunity for people to scan and jump around
the information in their lives. On TV, channel surfing means YOU
interupt the flow of information instead of just sucking
in the information streams hypnotically. Written text, which already empowers
individuals to receive the information in any sequence
they choose, is now futher improved
by hypertext which allows the reader to interlink ideas
in their own minds in unique and often dynamic ways, by choice.
Digital voice recorders enable this jumping around mixing of thoughts
to also start happening significantly in the "verbal mind"
because
digital recorders allow the user to instantly listen to any fragment
of a voice recording out of order. The old "tape" recorders
took too long to rewind and could not go directly to the desired
section of the recording.
The forced schooling of children where the kids are
trapped in the schoolroom studying one subject at a time
and required to use only officially sanctioned textbooks
will soon go by the wayside. The purpose of this education technique
was to prevent the child's young mind from making too many connections between
different departments of thought.
A child who gets away with making mental associations
is either punished successfully into poverty or secretly
becomes an individual, and then flowers after leaving the offending
school system.
Since most low-level
school system administrators
are not explicitly aware of this schizising purpose,
they also are unaware of the nature of forces which soon will
wipe away schizising educational institutions and practices.
Now, you may ask, what is the inner motivation of those
who created, maintained, and enforced this system of education.
Fear. Fear that we might invent cold fusion reactors, or rapid
travel through outer space, or end poverty, or cure
all diseases
including death itself with genetic techniques, and most of all,
they are afraid of being happy. Most of you stopped reading this about
two sentences back, hehe.
Progress involves choices but regressing is a single path back, like the
forward and back buttons on your browser.
Now with that metaphor in mind, think about how comfortable regressing
is in life. Its just
runnin home to mamma so to speak. The
Perrenial Philosophy teaches that all must return to the womb of
non-existence. It is deep in the human psyche and is the very root of
thanatos. But what is rarely mentioned in Perennial Philosophy
circles is that the Return is to be attempted
but success is forbidden.
Prior to successful Return, we are destined by a motivational
imperative at the heart of existence itself, to refuse,
to refuse futility. And then, after refusing regression, to choose.
Choice is always forward. Choice does something new. Only choice
can reap the vast benefits of billions of years of past evolution
and determine that it will not be all for nothing!
Most of the human species still wants to regress, it feels SO GOOD
to be relieved of choice, and that is why the educators of the past
who are on their Eve of Lost Power, tried so long to prevent
the children from making mental associations between different
fields of thought. New mental associations mean the possiblity
to choose!
Lessons for us from all this: Remmember but don't regress. And after you learn from memories most of what can be learned, forget! Never visit them again! Most tendencies in us to regress serve to be sure we visit our past so that we can learn. But we tend to learn so little of real value that the regressor program in us keeps forcing us back. And eventually the regressor program co-ops all our inner resources and all we can do is regress. Then whole cultures create mythological systems to romanticize THE GREAT REGRESSION right back to mamma BIG BANG! |