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"""At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we think it was our right to take what we wanted? . . . When did we first

"""At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we think it was our right to take what we wanted? . . . When did we first ask the question, how can I be free?""" I'd suggest The Odyssey documents an earlier history of the desire for self-determination.

uoaei 3y ago
Julian Jaynes' The Origin Of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind uses a comparative analysis between Iliad and Odyssey to explain his theory. In short, he says that for a long while we had two relatively separate functions acting together in the brain: the planner and the doer. The planner would be represented by gods, god-kings, or any other form of authority whose voice and sometimes image would deliver orders for the doer to do. The doer would mostly just orient itself toward satisfying the needs of the planner. Jaynes says that Odysseus was the first expression in culture (that still remains today) where a person joined those two forces into one and recognized their own agency as planner-doer, hence all his cunning and wit that defied "physics" at the time. He uses more arguments beyond that (e.g. the origin of funerary rites as being ways to silence or "put to rest" the god-king who, after death, still speaks to and visits those who lived under him as the physical form of the planner that emits instructions from within people's minds) which are compelling but it's a bit hard to know what to do with them except inform one's own crackpot theories about psychology and civilization. The theory is untestable but fascinating in its ingenuity. And kinda feels on the right track. The physiological explanation was pretty much bunk according to 70s and 80s neuroscience (planner lives in one brain hemisphere, doer in the other), but interpreting this fusion of planner-doer as "ego" in modern terms seems to track with how the ego operates and how people respond to its needs.
- tinideiznaimnou 3y ago
  >but it's a bit hard to know what to do with them except inform one's own crackpot theories about psychology and civilization. But that's exactly what you're supposed to do with it! Personal crackpot theories are beautiful in a way that no mainstream ideology will ever be. More useful, too - as they're attuned to one's own lived experiences in this world, and not to the ideal spherical rational agent in a vacuum that the bean-counters assume.

uoaei 3y ago

Julian Jaynes' The Origin Of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind uses a comparative analysis between Iliad and Odyssey to explain his theory. In short, he says that for a long while we had two relatively separate functions acting together in the brain: the planner and the doer. The planner would be represented by gods, god-kings, or any other form of authority whose voice and sometimes image would deliver orders for the doer to do. The doer would mostly just orient itself toward satisfying the needs of the planner. Jaynes says that Odysseus was the first expression in culture (that still remains today) where a person joined those two forces into one and recognized their own agency as planner-doer, hence all his cunning and wit that defied "physics" at the time. He uses more arguments beyond that (e.g. the origin of funerary rites as being ways to silence or "put to rest" the god-king who, after death, still speaks to and visits those who lived under him as the physical form of the planner that emits instructions from within people's minds) which are compelling but it's a bit hard to know what to do with them except inform one's own crackpot theories about psychology and civilization. The theory is untestable but fascinating in its ingenuity. And kinda feels on the right track. The physiological explanation was pretty much bunk according to 70s and 80s neuroscience (planner lives in one brain hemisphere, doer in the other), but interpreting this fusion of planner-doer as "ego" in modern terms seems to track with how the ego operates and how people respond to its needs.

tinideiznaimnou 3y ago
>but it's a bit hard to know what to do with them except inform one's own crackpot theories about psychology and civilization. But that's exactly what you're supposed to do with it! Personal crackpot theories are beautiful in a way that no mainstream ideology will ever be. More useful, too - as they're attuned to one's own lived experiences in this world, and not to the ideal spherical rational agent in a vacuum that the bean-counters assume.