Danny's Weblog
The bicameral mind and spectator sport
Many years ago I read "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes (referred to below as "BCM" ). It speculates – with an overwhelming collection of historical references – that the human mind worked in a fundamentally different way until just a few thousand years ago, so that people did not perceive that their own minds were functioning to produce plans, beliefs and judgements, but that spirits, gods or ancestors were supplying advice.
Wikipedia: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)]
I found the possibility fascinating but unproved and perhaps unprovable. However, I filed it away.
Recently I was wondering about rock concerts. Why do people bother going to them? They are very expensive, and the live version of music (even assuming it is actually live and not lip-synced) is almost always technically inferior to the recorded version. It occurred to me that a concert is very analogous to religious ceremonies as described in BCM. Jaynes speculated the experience of such a ceremony – immersed in sights and sounds designed to form a single experience, and surrounded by other devotees – amplified and solidified a shared belief into a shared fantasy. In the case of religious ceremonies, they culminated in the mass perception of gods and miracles. I have often heard reports of rock concerts which stress aspects which seem to me to involve supernatural elements, or at least aspects which have no rational basis: shared, synchronized emotions and perceptions.
But why would anyone *enjoy* this experience?
Jaynes saw the shift from bicameral consciousness as a gradual one. He believed that elements of it survived to today: for instance, in schizophrenics, or in the "general sense of need for external authority in decision-making". My own speculation is that many people still *enjoy* the experience of subjecting themselves to a shared hallucination – our minds are wary of *personalized* hallucinations, but when surrounded by fellow devotees our guard is let down. We can simultaneously perceive the internal certainty provided by the bicameral mind, and the external confirmation of everyone in our surroundings. And in the case of a hugely popular band, one is surrounded by tens of thousands who can be relied upon to largely support one's fantasies.
Still, if I were present at such a concert, even if it were by a band that I really liked, I know I would feel absolutely nothing of this shared consciousness. In fact, if I perceived it at all, I would find it creepy.
So, many people enjoy subjecting themselves to such shared experiences, and many do not. One can think of so many examples. For instance, there is a Monty Python sketch about Nazis who have gathered together in some quiet seaside town in England, and struggle to mobilize the local population; as the leader's incomprehensible harangues blare out, one of his confederates sidles up to one of the sparse crowd and says, "he's right, you know!". The local yokel stares at him, puzzled. Of course, it's easy to resist even a well-organized appeal to one's bicameral mind if only a handful of devotees are present. Once some critical mass surrounds the unwary, their innate vulnerability allows them to be overwhelmed.
So in one way my inability to respond is a strength. But viewed by the mass of people, it is a weakness. Most people *like* to behave like a mob; like "the madness of crowds". When I have watched programs about fashion, I am stunned by how ugly and tasteless the fashions are. There is one particular fashion presenter, Gok Wan: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gok_Wan]
Not only is his taste appalling, but his putdowns of the taste of the poor souls who he "advises" are brutally contemptuous. I could not imagine who would willingly subject themselves either to appearing on his show as a literal fashion victim, or to watching his show to pick up fashion advice. But now I realize that what he is doing is reinforcing the shared fantasy that fashion exists and is important, and that people who invest enough energy and time into chasing the phantasmic goals that Wan is pushing have bought their way into a shared fantasy. Whether they are the "winners" – the adequately fashion-conscious who meet Wan's capricious and inconsistent standards – or the losers that he ruthlessly derides, his devotees can feel the warm, close presence of their bicameral mind.
And once this shared fantasy – this "folie a la plupart" – has been built up, the devotees will fanatically defend it. If I wear clothes, or god forbid a hairstyle, that was popular in 1970, or 1930, or 2005, I can be identified as a rebel and rejected. I cannot escape this; I am allotted the role of "rebel" even if I have no idea of the "rules" and no intention of causing offence and exclusion.
Similarly, fans of organized sports seem to believe that the performance of "their" team has something to do with them, but in fact what they are responding to is a bunch of half-understood theatrical tricks essentially similar to those employed by Goebbels. And if I were to make that point to them, they would be as sympathetic as the SS.
My guess is that about 80% of humanity is still eager to hear the voice of its bicameral mind. This corresponds to Van Vogt's estimate that about 20% of men are what he calls the leader type. Even when I first read this many years ago, it was clear that this fraction is not actually particularly skilled at leading people. Instead, they are terribly unskilled at following. Many of the hobos one sees do not seem to be simply alcoholics or insane; instead, it's striking that they just do not want to engage with other people. Perhaps they have an inner voice, or perhaps they are tired of pretending to hear society's inner voice.
It must be wonderful to believe that you have supernatural powers. With the certainty of someone who is hearing his bicameral voice, you can believe, for instance, that you have perfect empathy with strangers, family members, or animals, when in fact people are collaborating on a shared narrative, and the animal has been socialized to play along. There was an old cartoon I remember, about a mole who lives in a beautiful fairyland until a wily fox sells him a pair of spectacles; when his eyes are sharp, he sees that he lives in a hovel in the middle of a garbage dump. At the end of the short, he kicks out the fox and throws the spectacles away so that he can live in paradise again.
But imagine how horrible it is when someone in the group does not play along. You can't just allow him to exist: everything about his actions makes it clear that your sparkly universe does not exist for him. You have to exclude and reject him, or he may actually break down your entire reality system. Apparently it's not unusual for many fans of soap operas to behave as if the characters are real: knitting clothes for newborns etc. Such people may be completely able to function in real life, but somehow have this one hole in reality. The fact that such a thing is possible suggests the existence of a larger mental system that is otherwise dormant, or invisible. Apparently early literature was normally presented as true; I wonder if it was normally accepted as such? [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LiteraryAgentHypothesis]
What happens when two separate shared worlds collide? For instance, football fans from two teams? It's like Jaynes' picture of two competing city-states: both sides agree that what they are doing is good and important and worth dying for, when unconcerned observers are wondering what the fuss is about.
Here are a few notes on Jaynes' book. The page numbers refer to the Pelican (USA) 1982 edition. I include several example of weird English usage by Jaynes; I wonder if his book would have led to a real revolution in Western thought if he had not thrown away the version of his manuscript that the publisher's editor handed him.
1. Book 2 Chap 2 p176 (Literate Bicameral Theocracies): He states "writing proceeds from pictures of visual events to symbols of phonetic events". He asserts "writing of the latter type, as on the present page, is meant to tell a reader something he does not know. But the closer writing is to the former, the more it is primarily a mnemonic device to release information which the reader already has".
He intends this as support for his theory that men developed over this period from the bicameral mind to the conscious mind.
I note it however as relevant to a pet theory of my own: that writing developed before speech. I have never seen anyone else make this speculation because, I'm sure, everyone is used to children learning speech years before they can read and write. But imagine the situation in prehistory before *either* has developed. How much harder is it really to make pictogram notes *for oneself*, whose significance one *does not need to first communicate*, compared with making sounds, which are almost impossible to correctly identify, let alone emulate, without growing up in a society using that speech for years?
2. Book 2 Chap 5 p278 (Foolish Perses): "The often tedious recital... and without development".
I don't wish to reproduce the text here because my point is that his argument in some places, as here, is embarrassingly weak. If something fits his chronology he eagerly adduces it, and if it doesn't fit he insinuates that it must therefore be wrong! Similarly his chronology of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
3. Book 2 Chap 5 p290 (The Invention of the Soul): "According to the theory of the bicameral mind, hallucinations of a person in some authority could continue after death as an everyday matter".
I must admit I rather lost the thread of his argument. In his discussion of brain functions he seemed to be saying that audible hallucinations had a special relevance to bicamerality, but he also speaks of mass hallucinations involving all the senses, at least in earlier periods.
4. Book 2 Chap 5 p290 (The Invention of the Soul): "For there is nothing here of dead strengthless souls wailing about in a netherworld, guzzling hot blood to get their strength back..."
This note is not about bicamerality at all. I am simply struck by the similarity of this description "added into the Odyssey as book 11" to the modern vampire idea.
5. Book 2 Chap 6 p297 (Some observations on the Pentateuch): "Indeed, in trying to do so, whatever our religious backgrounds, we feel, if not blasphemous, at least disrespectful to the profoundest meanings of others".
I have noted that down because of the phrase "profoundest meanings". I just don't know what he meant by that phrase, and that usage is representative of hundreds of others that are at least as foreign. He may mean "profoundest opinions" (like "Meinungen" in German), or he may mean something like "profoundest semantic distinctions". It reminds me of a character in a TV play by Stoppard, who gives a paper at a conference on philosophy and asserts a distinction between "what we mean and what we want to say". Stoppard shows us the interpreters struggling with the simultaneous translation of that, and rolling their eyes at each other.
Jaynes several times in the book gives the impression that he can read classical Greek in the original. It may be that his usages have been colored by this. It may also be an affectation. I have certainly felt the urge many times to use a peculiar form of words in English for the sake of a pun in another language... however weak.
6. Book 3 Chap 2 p355 (Possession in the Modern World): "The vestiges of the bicameral mind do not exist in any empty psychological space... Instead they always live at the very heart of a culture or subculture, moving out and filling up- the unspoken and the unrationalized."
The most interesting part of Jaynes' theory for me is its relevance to the current world, and to current societies and systems of thought. It is a commonplace observation that people brought up in different societies not only believe different things, but interpret the same events in radically different ways.
Or to put it another way, as Gilbert and Sullivan did, isn't it strange that every Englishman born becomes a little Liberal or a little Conservative.
To what extent do the rulers of modern societies understand, or at least unknowingly emulate, the theatrics of Egyptian god-kings and Greek seeresses? When the spectators at a football match spend a hundred pounds to watch a game, grow hoarse with shouting, and then run through the streets scuffling with rival supporters, are they being watched by cold-eyed psychologists with stopwatches and spreadsheets?
7. Book 3 Chap 3 p368 (The Nature of Music): "Try hearing different musics on two earphones at the same intensity". "Musics"? This kind of usage makes me wonder if Jaynes was a native English speaker at all.
8. Book 3 Chap 4 p403 (Objection: Does Hypnosis Exist?): "We are learned in self-doubt, scholars of our very failures, geniuses at excuse and tomorrowing our resolves". Just another example of weird English.
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