Words and the human condition

"Let no one think these are just word changes. Word changes are concept changes and concept changes are behavioral changes. The entire history of religions and of politics and even of science stands shrill witness to that. Without words like soul, liberty, or truth, the pageant of this human condition would have been filled with different roles, different climaxes. And so with the words we have designated as preconscious hypostases, which by the generating process of metaphor through these few centuries unite into the operator of consciousness" (p. 292).

As quote in Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"

Poems and uncertainty

"Poems are rafts clutched at by men drowning in inadequate minds" (p. 256).

As quoted in Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"

Control and Uncertainty

"In the contemporary world, we associate rigid authoritarian governments with militarism and police repression. This association should not be applied to the authoritarian states of the bicameral era. Militarism, police, rule by fear, are all the desperate measures used to control a subjective conscious populace restless with identity crises and divided off into their multitudinous privacies of hopes and hates" (p. 205).

- from Julian Jayne's "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"

2000 B.C. emo poetry

"One who has no god, as he walks along the street,

Headache envelops him like a garment." 

- Assyrian cuneiform inscription circa Tukulti's rule

As quoted in Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," (p. 225)

Hive pheromones and god symbols

"Like the queen in a termite nest or a beehive, the idols [of deceased god-kings] of a bicameral world are the carefully tended centers of social control, with auditory hallucinations instead of pheromones" (p. 144).

 - Julian Jaynes "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"

occult door

 The bright light of chaos casts a long shadow on the occult door of consciousness. 

on living in your head

My imagination is declaring its sovereignty.