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Kiran's avatar

"If we are now re-entering an age of bicamerality, then it is more important and powerful than ever to remain agentic, to retain our individual sense of self. To be agentic is to be godlike. Per Jaynes: "It is the self that is responsible and can debate within itself, can order and direct, and...the creation of such a self is the product of culture. In a sense, we have become our own gods."" - I liked how you touched upon the retaining our individual sense of self; it's very important to retain & hone your sense of self. Once you do, you really see the whole range of what's possible in today's world, including alternate futures than where your current path may lead. :)

Great writing as always Nadia

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Rainbow Medicine-Walker's avatar

Interesting food for thought. But to posit that humans were not conscious until 3,000 years ago is a wild over generalization. I am sure some humans were operating from a mostly right brain operating system, but to say that all ancient civilizations were built exclusively from right brain or supernatural directives is pretty far fetched and I don't feel is credible at all. It often appears that the main purpose of the left brain linear mind is to implement the creative imaginings of the right brain. But it is not a closed loop. The left brain linear mind also takes in information constantly and feeds it back to the right brain and vice versa. They are designed to work togther, just like the right and left sides of the body. It is true that ancient humans were less individiated than we are now, but I believe that has more to do with hard wired survival genetics than 'consciousness' or lack thereof. Ie if we all had to live in close quarters inside bomb shelters today we would become less individiated pretty quickly because strong individual egos and opinions would make bomb shelter living intolerable and make us all less likely to survive the experience.

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