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For anyone reading this above comment, I believe wpietri has the gist of it. To form a conception of this otherwise impossible to conceive-of social/psychological dynamic, one has to imagine people and civilization which has no reverse focus on the self whatsoever. There would be no collectively determined subjective language to refer to one another and to oneself. For example, I could say "NAME1 verbed NAME2!" and "NAME3 verbed NAME1!" Even when NAME3 is "myself" remember that there is no "myself." That is to say "I verbed NAME1" would not be a statement. NAME3 would be "me" without there being a concept of "me" whatsoever. To make matters even more difficult, the "past tense" would be very shaky or even non existent without attributing an almost ritualistic re-occurrence to the action, and in addition to that, a driving force which was the "god" or spirit equivalent of that force. In Jayne's theory, the phase of "bicameralism" was a middle phase that allowed for hydraulic agricultural civilization without something that could be described as "literacy of the self." To express day-to-day behavior, there would be no conceptual active participants to describe AT ALL. Instead, an external force would be used to explain most behaviors - namely gods, ancestors, what have you - who ever's voice would be identified with the behavior. The "hearing voices" part is both real and figurative, as it would be necessary without that neurological self having existed. It came into existence, according to Jaynes, right along with the language "I" "myself" "you" and so on, and a careful reading of antique civilization's language would help one to notice that there truly was no such language structure to describe the self until that concept formed civilization-wide. Until then, there was no "it" except that which was attributed to a very real pantheon of voices and compulsions which moved people to act. [edited for clarity] |
Well said.
If it seems unlikely to anyone that society could transition to the state described to one where they have a full conception of self, just think of all the societies that didn't have any concept of zero. Yet they now use zero in their everyday life.
Like zero, self is a concept that now seems hard to imagine not having. Yet we know for a fact that societies at one time had no idea of zero.