The Cost in Lives of Learning to Use Introspective Minds

By Richard Hart, PhD, at http://residentialcarefortwo.blogspot.com 17 Oct 2017

“The Cost in Lives of Learning to Use Introspective Minds” is a summary of eight books that I have read and reread in the past few months. It views history as a series of memes: ideas that perpetuate themselves, as do genes in the cells of our bodies. When they confer an advantage they survive.

Our distant ancestors traveled in small groups. The dominant male ruled. The dominant male reproduced his genes. Copying the observed behavior of group members, transmitted culture.

Groups split when the environment provided the resources locally or did not provide the resources locally. Groups competed for resources. This basic behavior applies to genes and to memes.

Those that reproduce survive. There can be nothing conscious or planned about this before the bicameral mind.

The first appearance of religion has been labeled pagan: a spirit in everything, and then multiple gods.

The evolving brain developed speech: words. This provided the basis for oral traditions: memes that could “infect” anyone who knew the language independently from their genetics.

The bicameral mind is assumed to function without a sense of consciousness of what it is doing. It just does. The left brain (doing and acting) follows the commands of the right brain (whole picture) as commands (voices) from God.

This evolutionary stage of development is traced through all groups on the planet. “Thus says the Lord” in the Old Testament. This is God, not the prophet speaking. The prophet may not even understand what he is saying to people or to a scribe.

Writing was invented. Now memes could be stored and transmitted externally to the brain and mind.

Words, however, turned out to be “messy”. Their usage and meaning change over time. Written words are poor substitutes for transmitting oral traditions.

With the break down of the bicameral mind, the internal voices from God ended for most people. The prophets (the last who heard voices from God) are recorded in the Old Testament. They mourn the loss of hearing the voices.

The oldest books of the Old Testament show the bicameral mind; the more recent the introspective mind. BUT the new introspective mind came into being infected with memes from the past.

Jewish tradition seems to handle change over time more easily than Christian tradition. [Or gives that appearance in response to the additional persecution.] For me, there are the mysteries of the 10 lost tribes and the use of the words: Hebrew, Jew, and Israelite.

Christ became the word of God in the flesh, by Paul (36-68), as recorded in the New Testament. Debate over the true nature of Christ, politics, and military actions led to the split of the Catholic Church into East and West in 1054.

Introspective minds and the invention of the printing press made the scriptures available to everyone in 1517. Everyone could seek God within and without self.

The memes related to organized religion now had to compete with those related to heaven and hell being right here on earth. Improve the human condition now rather than tolerate situations imposed by theologians (purgatory for example).

Our US constitution does not include the word God. Religion is a personal matter. Religion had led to bigotry and persecution, and still does. ["Under God" was added to the pledge of allegiance in 1954 to combat the communist threat. One feared meme forced a questionable change in another meme with unforeseen consequences.]

It has taken two world wars, among religious people, killing over 100 million in the last 100 years to produce the European Union (1992) with a common currency (1999). Only after such a severe spanking have nations stopped acting as pre-schoolers. Muslims are still being killed, mostly infighting, at 100,000 per year.

Introspective minds in ancient Greece reasoned that man was the center of concern (humanism), not Gods. This meme did not compete well with the multitude of Gods in fashion at the time and later with the new Christian religion.

The introspective mind was handed the task of being responsible for mankind, once the voices of the Gods no longer commanded human affairs. It has now taken over 2,000 years to learn how to do this as the old religious memes still prevail; they have been found useful in many ways in religion, commerce, and government that often were not well suited to the health of those infected.

The environment after WW1 set up the desperate conditions that resulted in WW2. The bicameral mind (follow orders without question, remorse or quilt) resulted in the death of about 4% of the world population at the time.

The 10 Hebrew Lost Tribes reappeared as the Aryans, the pure white race of Germany! The seminaries were converted to produce the brown shirts to staff churches in just a few years. The extermination of Jews (6 million) went full speed.

The meme for a pure white race is still with us on the Missouri/Arkansas line: the Ozarks. This meme motivated Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Federal Building in Oklahoma. Desperate people use desperate means.

The fearful resistance to federal control has cost Missouri millions of dollars in grants that other states have received. Missouri is/was the last state to pass legislation to register abused drugs, for example. This year expectations are there will be more deaths from drug overdoses in Missouri than from car accidents!

On the other hand, humanism, by use of the introspective mind, is again surfacing, in part by people becoming tolerant nontheist. We no longer need to convert or kill, to suppress religious memes (unless in self-defense).

Our culture and education determine the development of each person's introspective mind. We then have the choice to use it or just function with an unquestioning copycat bicameral mind.

For me, the questioning started 70 years ago. It is only now that I have the time and the new resources that I can go from believe, to know, to understand. I can still choose to believe as well as understand. My wife, in memory care, can continue to believe.

Religion is at its best as a personal matter; shared with others of similar belief, and also tolerant of different beliefs. We need to encourage the memes for compassion, sharing and multiculturalism; and root out the memes for extreme domination that yield fragile,  non-resilient cultures that litter the past from city states to the present.

“I believed it is time, once again, to promote a national narrative of inclusion, equality, justice, and peaceful coexistence.” By Dr. Larry Brown (30 Oct 2017).

Consider: is “doing it ourselves” rather than waiting for God, perhaps God’s will? We have been given the introspective mind that is designed to do just that; just as we were given the bicameral mind earlier in preparation for taking charge.

Resources:

Brown, Larry, 13 Nov 2017, White Nationalism On The Ozark Landscape: The Rise of the Christian Identity Movement. Tucker Hall, MU, Columbia, MO. The Department of Religious Studies Religion in Missouri Lecture Series.

Brown, Larry, Fall 2017, Faith In The Face Of Tyranny: The Life, Times, and Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. MU Extension Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

Brown, Larry, 30 Oct 2017, White Nationalism: New Voices with an Old Message. First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, MO (I did not attend.)

Armstrong, Karen, 2001. The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism, 442 pages. “Fundamentalism cannot be defeated … they tend to downplay compassion … the primary religious virtue …  At the root of fundamentalism are nihilism (the destruction of all existing political and social institutions, by acting on an impulse to destroy; my understanding), hopelessness, and despair.” page 448. This use is different from when used as a "fundamental" Christian faith. ISBN: 0-345-39169-1

Armstrong, Karen, 2006. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, 565 pages. ISBN: 978-0-385-72124-0

Armstrong, Karen, 1993. The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 460 pages. ISBN: 0-345-38456-3

Jaynes, Julian, 1990. The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind, 491 pages. ISBN: 0-618-05707-2

Kuijsten, Marcel, 2016. Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes, 312 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9790744-3-1

Cohn, James, 2014. The Minds of the Bible: Speculations on the Cultural Evolution of Human Consciousness Kindle Edition, 78 pages. Kindle review:

Two developments in the history of the Bible are deeply related, and not merely coincidental. One is the lamentation of the loss of the experience of hearing God’s voice. The other is the rise of the language of introspection: an interiorized subjective dialogue with oneself. 

Click Kindle Edition, above, for full review. 

McGilchrist, Iain, 2012. The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning: Why are We so Unhappy? Kindle Edition.  ISBN: 978-0-300-1902-1 (What the left and right brain sees.)

Ackerman, Diane, 2004. An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain, 300 pages. ISBN: 0-7432-4672-1 (Emotions and the pursuit of happiness.)

Bible, King James Version, PDF searchable.

Yet to Read:

Armstrong, Karen, 1983. The First Christian: St. Paul’s Impact on Christianity, 192 pages. Amazon

Ackerman, Diane, 2000. Deep Play Kindle Edition, 258 pages.

Goebbels, Joseph, 1999. Adolf Hitler-A Chilling Tale of Propaganda Amazon ISBN:158-279-0310

Ullrich, Volker, 2016. Hitler Ascent 1889-1939 Kindle Edition.

Neibuhr, Reinhold, 1932. Moral Man and Immoral Society. Kindle Edition. Influenced Obama and McCain.