Origins of Consciousness
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Psychologist Julian Jaynes was best known for his theory of the origins of consciouness, which he claimed occured after the breakdown of the "bicameral mind", a psychological state where when a difficult decision needed to be made, the it would be communicated from right hemisphere to left by way of auditory hallucination.
Jaynes puts the development from this primitive for of mentality into modern consciousness ("conscious interiority") at around 1600 BC, theorising that the eruption of Thera was important in some way. He elsewhere mentions that conscious interiority may have emerged due to decreased stress. My working theory is that it had something to do with the Indo-European migrations; Jaynes is dismissive of biology/genetics and insists that the development of consciousness is a cultural/historical/social phenomenon.
However the lower stress endured by steppe herders relative to agricultural populations are reasonable grounds for an assumption that consciousness did develop on the steppe.My bioenergetics knowledge is however not good enough to formulate a solid theory for how consciousness may have developed due to these bioenergetic advantages enjoyed by the steppe peoples.
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Agriculture is work, work, work. Much like being in a factory constantly occupied by assembly work. Or white collar work pushing paper. Sharing a monotony that crowds out the creative process. Unlike in hunting, lying patiently in wait for prey. Or even herding. Plenty of long pockets of time in thoughts, empty or creative.
Perhaps this is why we hardly get 9-5 folks here. They are always in the matrix. Programmed and sticking with the programming. Stuck with Google and the curated ideas fed its servers. They are without the consciousness that allows them to go beyond the artificial intellectual walls set by their overlords.
