Morning, a.m. Redsun sky and how that sun appears to be sidearally a side-rally, solstice movements across horizon; are the days longer than nights already? So I woke up this morning (relief) due to sun and
SPICE on my httpmind, drifting through the ole Mollucas ofthat. School runs. Someone's comment from Chicago. A Writer's question: are we by nature bad? Another homophobic and racist slogan imported from Chicago; how we can perpetuate the problem by over focus on the "tee">> whatever that tee is... (the writers Tony Buzan & also Michael Gelb both hint at this example) used the example of "The Fifth Tee" for the Golfer who ..... jojoga;kjgoeol;aglr and further examples (to follow)....made it an impossible goal by over-practicing and visually "not" dropping that ball into the drink again.....meaning Right Practice and by extension (RIGHT) learning for jugglers.... The Spice book is marvelous. Right up my street. Perfect because I've been on both the trade routes of the explorers and the explorations of the traders and mostly because I'm interested in Abel Tasman and C Cook and Darwin. My Intro to this subject coming from a three month trip to Mexico, and five short visits to Florida and a very quick drive through Louisiana and Alabama. And having looked at Tim's Spice book properly am going to enjoy the poetry and the learning of all these new words: tropes, historical contingency.... Dryden. My own work-Chapters of my own Life-http/Present Logos Mind awareness are to do with de Vaca and Coronado (eventually one gets to and from them there in Panama, up the glades in Pensacola, through the wild woolies of the interior to reach the northern place, off I 70 somewhere in Indiana where de Vaca gave up.....looking for that Folding flowery garden of silver petals and running gold. Some indian guy telling him..."Mate, just keep heading North.... you'll find what yr looking for there; an inland sea full of..". but old Vaccy had had enough, turned round (phew) saying: Damn, this Fantasy island is a lot bigger than i thought (and he did think that, and WE KNOW he thought that). .. as the actual geography of the Americas slowly revealed itself; the first lineaments of its coastline and the mad depth of its interior cutting like a knife into the idea (the tiny idea) of a neat0 paradise.
Hard to believe (it happened) at all. The past, that is, what we've lived forward through; what we're understanding backwards. The picture, new and nowish, assembling itself as a possibility. A map made in the mind, driven by an idea. Here, the Frau Map, and a linguistic and symbolic metaphor of the brain (surely-subconsciously-that's what they were drawing); with all the features of consciousness at its disposal and the bicameral mind, flitting in and out (as it did in 1542, as it still does now) scoping for confusions. Ascertaining threats. And genuine surprise (especially in Cortez!) at the lack of resistance (explained and explainable only by Julian Jaynes). If the archeologists and Adventurers are to be believed (see Ceram) that meeting (sic) between Corteza nd Montezuma was as if we were to step up and shake Howdy Deedoody with Queen Ned. or Cleo Herself. World's apart (yes) only bicamerally so. Here, the discourse of Cook's second visit (sic.... well, at least the first one was to "measure Venus") is instrumental: word had gotten around by 1769, and this time they were not so hospitable. But, I digress through 200 years gap here and must jump back again to Hispaniola--the early idea: thin sliver of island, mounted, dripping with sumptiousness and especially gold). Facts. That a thousand years apart we had witness to an encounter with our own (and we must, I think own) "our" history.
Perhaps a note is important here: What if "we" don't? What if "we" say it "wasn't me" it was them. "Besides, I wasn't even alive then." What if we say that? What if we don't own this history of Ours; this encounter we have had with consciousness, language and mind. What if we don't ask what it is we have witnessed, bearing it irrelevant? What do we occlude by doing that?
My short answer to this is that we occlude a whole lot; particularly our heritage as an arabic-sumeric-egypto-Grecian-Indus-Castillian-Greco-Roman mindscape that vertically and horizontally has proved to itself that its common ancestors had indeed met; had indeed shook hands and gone to wars; (but not only wars); that the Spain of 1224 had met the China of 1224. That the Iran had met with the Iraq inside the growth after Thera. That tide in and tide out, we were, had been and quite consciously, were mapping the world. And if we don't side with Jaynes on this, and if we don't redeem the peculiar features of that past as the material from which we must draw our conclusions about our journey from language to consciousness (putting our minds where our mouth is, so to speak) then we really reallly reallly do miss something important.l
It is consciousness, emerging out of the schism that mounds of metaphors and nouns collecting together first caused to the bicameral Mind; those voices which had instructed, on command: Do. Build. The hyper-Hyper Voices of those Gods now latent in the right brain aptic, language structures that are now latent in our Hominid Brain. Silent languages we only hear now casually, easily disregarded, were once Life itself. Those statues really did speak. But the very Civilizations that those Voices had commanded of Bicameral Man collapsed, rose again, collapsed, struggled to reascertain itself, demonstrated learning (the Gods, learned) the Right side Brain Aptic structures were, after all, Hominid Man's to possess, and possess he did, much later as Poesie in its purely modern utterly bereft of bicameral form. A pure I. A physicist might type > A0(p) R= I<>
We were indeed stunned, both sides of the Pond (and inside all Ocean Waters) at the Encounter, as we popped out (Splash!) like Finn from the Salmon Rush, up into the Slipstream of Awareness. Oh! We said. Oh! Hello! (to ourselves) and our own bicamerality went one degree more quiet. ("Those Gods were dead long ago").
But oh! what a battle. What a series of unbelievable encounters! What a history! What a nutcase job! And why? Because the civilisational structures that we have inherited were, in their genesis, instructions from the Aptic Bicameral (Rightside) (Makes no sense to say "either side" (or Or) then) because in those days the Voices were heard. Quite literally (until it got up our noses to listen anymore)... upping and leaving the stones to ruin (because the voices had stopped). It was those commanding Imperatives of Hominid Man's Brain that he sought and looked (and listened to) that were navigating the complexity. So it makes sense now that we would sniff this out in ourselves. This silence that is ok; that doesn't "need" or look to OR HEAR) that. (What are those aptic structures doing, remains to be thought through and much more research is required). This silence that is the understanding that we have pulled ourselves through something. The only problem with that, it seems to me, is that it raises the Big Question: if those were only necessary to birth consciousness (and consciousness in Hominids is from language, not before language), what are we therefore to Value today?
Do We need any More Icons?
Both sides are, thankfully, in agreement over one thing: there is a slippery slope. Visnulala-ised either as Lord of the Flies, or some nutty shamanistic bad acid trip, both sides sense the slippery slope can exist and render consciousness once again secondary to Bicameral Voices. Concluding: we'd better keep some Bicameral Order Here, and get a few more Iconic Buildings Built because civilisation (viewed here as the ability to perceive (to have) consciousness actually has to be preserved if we are to get to the other order of job which is a higher job of continuing to see ourselves, and our history. Whihc is f course, a case f looking at things the wrong way round.
But what is that saying? I think it's saying that the objects Can speak to us, but only under very highly stressed circumstances, and even then, with nothing like the perceptual clarity and LOUDNESS which our circa 2000BC-1972 AD people heard. (Over time, obviously this is a gradually descending graph). Add in some stunning periods when Bicamerality appeared to be "back with a vengeance" as indeed the Gods voices were in their later stages angry because they were indeed being ignored (tho now we discover, that we were only ignoring our own Hominind (Homini Mind... the associations linguistically really are infinite) HENCE and it really is a big Hence: da Ecology problem: you have to be able to Hear what the trees says when asked: would you like to be Moved?
Or does it mean whatever it means to the individual only when and if they now as individuals choose to open up those latent aptic structures? Because the content would be completely personal unless yoked by some group formation-inherited Aptic Agreement
Quite plausibly the answer to this question may take another century. However, we do have some recollection of the Aptic opening of the 1960's. And we are quite cognizant (even in adim shadowy way) that during the 1820's and 1880's; that between Marco's Epic to Mongolia, between Arab pontoon and Indus Jaboo, 964 Ad. 1123.BC Arabian Peninsula. Round India. Up Malaysia. Through the Biscyne Bay up Newfunded Land, as dolphins now, swimming in the Viscous Stream of Origins. Cook dying in Hawaii. Darwin's relative "late" arrival in Galapagos. That we have at various times slipped into Bicamerality. Building things, destroying things. And people.
What caused all the fuss? Being around a lot of other People. That's what did it originally. The tipping Point of Language was then and is probably now the reason for the "overwhelm". Our present day Endless "Never before have we..." at first looks to the Bicameral Voices for guidance (and despite periodic outbursts) finds only the silence there, and the strange presence of our own consciousness in it all. Thinking about it...needs only language. And it goes on very fine without consciousness! (this, I siisasuppose, is the point I had to find via the ur Document-for our textual, Sumeric history shows us writing is antecedent consciousness.... therefore remembered now as Internet discharges onward we all occasionally have to stop and ask "What was the point again?"... after all, we're not looking to become overwhelmed! we're navigating with the tools that we have, right?
And so I land, like Cook or de Vaca, land on land ON-in consciousness itself, Jaynes' first feature of consciousness: it narratizes. And when it narrates, it conciliates disparate themes. And when it sees it sees something other than itself, somewhere other than where it is...a neato paradise or a neato hell, either way, it needs conquering, assimilating to itself, as information about the world and as we have seen "doesn't rest til it's done so"...it's a spatial thing (as Steve Lehar said). And it has everything to do with maps. And as it approximates by association with language...
from ~Metaphors and Metephrands
A Blank Stale Mate vs ecosophere diary-journal.Vol Xi. p, 223. !987. Prs,To. press.
That is actually a good thing to clarify. I read both Homo Sacer and State of Exception before I read, say, Security, Territory, Population. Foucault doesn’t treat sovereignty in merely reactive or repressive ways in those lectures. It would not be that hard to convince me that I had a bad reading of some of Foucault’s earlier writings. Or even that Foucault’s notion of sovereignty might have changed.
By: Scu on November 19, 2010
at 2:39 pm
Peter,
The link to Infinite Thought is misdirected (to Larval Subjects).
By: Michael Flower on November 19, 2010
at 3:56 pm
here’s the link:http://infinitethought.cinestatic.com/index.php/site/anonymous_goldsmiths_lecturers_respond_to_evening_standard_headline/#When:21:00:58Z
By:philosophyinatimeoferroron November 19, 2010
at 5:51 pm