Point-i | Blog / 20210505

.01

On p.69 and 70 of his book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Jaynes explains the psyche of the Iliad, later meaning soul or conscious mind, as life-substances like blood or breath. So, a few pages later, on p.72/3 he does seem to use ego as metaphor for psyche, or what psychology is about.

When, toward the end of the war, Achilles reminds Agamemnon of how he robbed him of his mistress, the king of men declares, "Not I was the cause of this act, but Zeus, and my portion, and the Erinyes who walk in darkness: they it was in the assembly put wild ate upon me on that day when I arbitrarily took Achilles' prize from him, so what could I do? Gods always have their way." (19:86-90). And that this was no particular fiction of Agamemnon's to evade responsibility is clear in that this explanation is fully accepted by Achilles, for Achilles also is obedient to his gods. Scholars who in commenting on this passage say that Agamemnon's behavior has become "alien to his ego,"⁵ do not go nearly far enough. For the question is indeed, what is the psychology of the Iliadic hero? And I am saying that he did not have any ego whatever.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin p.472/3

The point is that psychology or sociology is not applicable to the Iliadic hero except in terms of what exists in its absence. Also, to what extent is our mythical personification of ourselves, animals and inanimate things (everything) formally constitutionally analog-I anthropomorphic, thus devoid of the animate (spirit(word-meaning!)), and filled with ego?

Jaynes in general was not prescriptive. He saw himself more as a psychological historian.

The chicken and the egg evolve together, as cyclical or parallel processes, as a question not separable from tautological emergence, or what the I (in our age becoming the lidless all-seeing eye of the collective magnanimously responsible for our empowerment) sees as seeing.

Noos. Re. The Origin, p.70: the body-spirit noos, what Zeus sees, or something like Word-meaning as such? And continuing on p.70, the seeing of seeing emergent, or the subject seeing the object, thus as subject-object seeing the object properly as subject. Is the I responsible (for that)? Yes, at the cost of chronically shaming each other as guilty of mere spirit-meaning, as "wretched things of shame, mere bellies" (p373), or in terms of our usefulness to the polis, non-existent.

There are the basic affects of mammalian life and then our emotions, which are the consciousness of such affects located inside an identity in a lifetime, past or future, and which, be it noted, have no biologically evolved mechanisms of stopping.

The Afterword of The Origin p.461

So is it in the afterword because Jaynes thought of it as speculative?

Is it a warning that we're on a runaway train towards totalitarianism, of mutually submitting to chronic fear-mongering paradoxically facilitated with loving intentions of our togetherness, or what I call, begging the question, ad hominem; unified?

.02

Schizophrenia is like bicameral mind, but not quite. We're being massively led down the garden path. I don't know if this is relevant, but I notice so many talking heads MEN with lazy left eyes, all the while in the self-contradiction of the psychopath-holy paradox of nothingness, smoothly promoting right-brain.

John Wayne Syndrome mentioned, also known as acting brave.

Not only "normal/abnormal" is in play in the sacralization of chaos or abyss as holy. Notions like formal/informal, natural/unnatural and good/bad abound with every self-deception (by psychology), fallacy (by philosophy) and mental disorder (by psychiatry) coined and engaged, and conveniently or opportunistically labeled anything between totally useful and useless.