Article 5:
The Mentality that Shaped Human
Civilization
by Wendell Krossa
(From the series "Creating A Horizontal
God", Copyright, W. Krossa)
Julian Jaynes & Bicameral Mentality / Bicameral Minds / Voices in Our Heads / From Visual to Verbal Control: Language / The Institutionalization of Vertical or Animal Relating / The Origin of Controlling Male Gods / The Animal in God / Men At The Top / Monotheistic Patriarchs / Summary Of Jaynes / Emerging Humanity In Conflict With Vertical Institutions / Law as the New Mechanism of Social Control
Julian Jaynes & Bicameral Mentality
Using a somewhat different approach from other researchers on domestication, Julian Jaynes offers a fascinating look at some of the internal mental factors involved in the process of domestication. He provides some interesting evidence regarding the human mentality at that time. This material is important to understanding why vertically oriented hierarchical relating is still the dominant form of relationship in our contemporary social institutions.
His material on the nature of human mentality at the time of domestication shows that animal-like drives still occupied a prominent place in the minds of ancient people. Their mentality was responsible for shaping the worldviews, social orders, and structures of their time. Clearly, the vertical orientation that shaped their mentality influenced them to create vertically oriented relationships for their social orders and institutions.
While Jaynes' work is extremely useful for what it deals with, I would like to set it in a wider historical context by noting that the bicameral mentality that his study deals with was simply a more refined form of ancient animal mentality.
The bicameral mind outlined by Jaynes was a sort of pre-conscious mentality which spanned the period from approximately 15,000 years ago to about 3,000 years ago (1). The later stages of this mentality are still visible in early Greek and Hebrew literature and in the archaeological relics of a variety of ancient civilizations. This mentality first emerged around the same time hunter/gatherer humans were beginning to settle in more permanent communities. In fact, it enabled humans to domesticate.
People in the bicameral era did not yet possess a fully conscious self that could reflect on its own thoughts, feelings, and actions. They did not yet have the freedom to make their own choices or exercise personal control over their own behavior.
There was, says Jaynes, no 'interior mind space' (2) in bicameral humans in which a person could reflect, question, and freely decide on initiating action. This interior mind space for reflection, questioning, and choice is, according to Jaynes (3), the "substrate of (modern) human consciousness" (4).
An interior mind space or pause is the primary feature of truly human mentality. This interior mind space is the feature which most clearly distinguishes human mentality from animal mentality with its slavish response to aggressive drives or instincts. It is the space in which we introspect. It is the space or the pause where human beings self-consciously reflect on themselves and their emotions. It is the interior mind space where the human self questions, and makes choices about initiating action or not acting. It is an essential feature of emerging humane consciousness and of genuine freedom. Interestingly, much of this more human mental activity occurs in the cerebral cortex, the more human frontal area and more recently developed area of the brain in evolutionary terms.
But this mind space that is the substrate of a truly humane consciousness did not yet fully exist at the onset of domestication. The bicameral mentality of that time was a still very animal-like mentality in that human thought and behavior were still very much controlled by instinctual drives and by the voices of patriarchs. This mentality had no reflective pause or space between command and obedient response. There was no space or pause for independent thought, "no time space between your bicameral voice and doing what it tells you" (5). According to Jaynes, this mentality worked well in stable hierarchical organization that was undisturbed by social conflict or complexity, such as the hierarchies of hunter/gatherer society (6) and early domestication.
Jaynes says that bicameral mentality was a method of social control in which bicameral humans were ordered about like slaves in rigid hierarchies (7). They were organized in patterns of dominance and submission very similar to primate and other animal hierarchies.
Within such a strict controlling hierarchical existence there is no need for a mental space to question, choose or reflect. Those at the top issue commands and those at the bottom respond with immediate and unquestioning obedience. Life is relatively simple and secure. And in such a system of control there is security, certainty, and predictability at the cost of lost freedom to be truly human.
One of Jaynes' central points is that during the time of bicameral mentality people were controlled by the voices of gods (8). While the idea of control by voices may seem a bit flaky at first blush, Jaynes marshals a convincing body of evidence from a variety of historical sources to support his argument that these controlling voices actually existed in ancient human mentality.
Before domestication, leaders in hunter/gatherer bands commanded their followers much in the same manner that primate patriarchs controlled group members- through face to face encounters. Over time, this eye to eye contact had evolved into the primary means of maintaining control in hierarchical relationships. As Jaynes notes, you were more likely to feel a superior's authority when staring into his eyes (9).
Others point out that such eye to eye contact required a major advance in human visual capability just before the onset of domestication (10). The advance made in visual capability was in terms of visual perception and the ability to pay attention. This was important for social control because seeing, perception, and paying attention enabled later hunter/gatherer humans to maintain authority in hierarchical relations. People paying attention to each other would also become very important in the control of larger groups in settled human society.
This advance in visual capability occurred during the later hunter/gatherer era and prepared the way for the development of the more formal hierarchical structures of civilization. It was another development which made wider domestication and social control possible.
From Visual to Verbal Control: Language
As larger groups were formed during the settling down of early domestication, it was no longer possible for the rulers to control all the members of their groups by means of eye to eye contact alone. Language then emerged in a manner which assisted patriarchs in controlling group members at a distance and this key advance enabled humans to domesticate.
Jaynes argues that this advance was the emergence of verbal hallucinations or voices in the minds of people (11). The voices of patriarchs evolved to become auditory hallucinations or voices which operated to control members (12). When members were not in direct contact with their leader, his voice, says Jaynes, continued to command them from inside their own minds (13).
Language or the commands of the patriarchs, in this new form of an inner voice, operated as a mechanism of strict control over the band member's behavior. These inner voices enabled patriarchal control to be extended further from the center of the group or from the immediate proximity of the controlling patriarch. The interior mental voices, according to Jaynes, functioned to keep members persisting at tasks when leaders were not present (14).
The voices are defined by Jaynes as auditory hallucinations which were heard by all bicameral humans (15). These voices originated from the right side of the Wernicke's area of the brain. While this area of the brain has become somewhat of a functionless evolutionary leftover in most people, the voices are still actively heard even today from this part of the brain by people with schizophrenia.
Experiments to stimulate this area of the brain, says Jaynes, have revealed "a residue of the ancient divine function" (16). The voices elicited in these experiments are not from within the self but are always from without the self, from the other (17). This reveals something of the divine origin, according to Jaynes.
The voices, says Jaynes (18), were also volition or will in bicameral humans and initiated responsive/obedient behavior. The voices were obeyed without pause for reflection or questioning. There was no space between commanding voice and obedient action. Consequently, the tight patriarchal control of behavior evident in all previous animal existence continued in the new bicameral mentality.
In one sense it can be argued that the emerging bicameral voices were simply replacing animal instinct. Instinct in animals is also volition and initiates action. And as animals obey instincts and drives without pause or question, so bicameral humans obeyed their voices without pause for reflection or questioning. Also, as instinct commanded animals in the daily activities of life, so the voices of bicameral minds functioned to direct humans in the daily activities of their lives.
With the emergence of bicameral mentality, people were then able to settle in larger groups and maintain control over all members of the larger groups. As Jaynes notes, the bicameral voices became the new mechanism of social control in early societies.
The Institutionalization of Vertical or Animal Relating
I am arguing that at the time of domestication people still possessed an animal-like mentality oriented to relationships of domination. The presence of this animal-like mentality influenced early domesticating humans to create institutions suited to their view of life and supportive of their drive to relate to one another vertically. Such domination was the only reality they knew. The presence of the bicameral mind at the time of domestication meant that the strict command/obey mentality of animal existence was still operating in human existence.
Bicamerality, then, was the mentality that shaped the social orders and institutions of the earliest societies of domestication. That animal-like mentality was responsible for shaping the basic relationships of early human social orders. Those relationships then became the pattern for human relationships in the societies of succeeding millennia. The resulting civilizations were in reality, more animal-like than human with male domination supported and validated by male gods.
The important thing to understand about the hierarchical arrangement of relationships in human society is that they are quite simply refined versions of animal domination or animal relating. The hierarchical organization of relationships is quite simply the formalization of animal relating in human institutions. Domestication was the process through which these patterns of vertical animal relating or hierarchy formally moved into modern human society and became entrenched in human social orders and institutions.
Animal domination was then built into the relationships of early human institutions. In the process of civilization, those ancient forms of domination were made legitimate features of the new human settlements and societies. And despite subsequent millennia of effort to refine and validate such relationships, they are still destructive animal forms of relating simply dressed up in the formal organizational structures of human societies.
So the new structures of early settled society were not shaped to accommodate some new and truly humane reality or existence. They were shaped to accommodate the ongoing operation of ancient forms of animal relating. The hierarchies of early civilization still embodied the competitive domination of animal existence which was the defining characteristic of animal mentality and behavior. As new formal institutions of domesticated people they may have appeared to be an advance in human existence, but they still embodied essentially animal relating with its vertically oriented domination of weaker group members by stronger members in the fierce competition for resources.
God consciousness led to the perception of vertical forms of relating as the divinely ordained pattern for human relationships. The hierarchical order of social relationships was then considered a sacred order. The introduction of the idea of the sacred gave additional validation and permanence to emerging vertical social relationships and institutions. Vertical relating was viewed as the natural and even divinely ordained way for people to relate to each other.
Millennia later, genuine human consciousness would emerge into this vertical environment and would begin to struggle for freedom and would initiate movement toward more egalitarian relationships and existence. But the old vertical structures continued firmly in place as they were considered the sacred order. It was considered blasphemy and rebellion against God to even think of changing these sacred relationships of superiors to inferiors.
Consequently, the hierarchical structures created for bicameral mentality continue to operate through succeeding millennia of settled human society and these structures have caused immense suffering and conflict among human beings. Vertically oriented relationships have hindered the development of true humane forms of relating. The free cooperation and equality necessary for the development of humanity simply can not operate within the vertical orientation of traditional institutional relationships. The conflict between emerging humanity and archaic structures of domination continues into the present and generates profoundly damaging effects on human well-being.
Despite the emergence of a more humane consciousness, hierarchical relating continues to be the dominant form of institutional relating in nation states and organizations worldwide.
Further, domestication, with its new formal structures of organizing, granted people the ability to extend their control more widely over all of life and nature. The emerging states were a new form of organization that eventually enabled humans to extend control over the entire face of the earth. It is highly questionable if this has been an advance for humanity or a benefit for life in general.
The Origin of Controlling Male Gods
God consciousness emerged to provide the ultimate validation for control in human societies. There would never be a greater idea than God to support domination of others.
As I noted earlier, bicameral mentality with its controlling patriarchal voices made the onset of domestication possible. The voices of the dominating patriarchs evolved to become inner mental voices of control as settled groups grew larger and group members could no longer be controlled by face to face encounters. Male leaders were then able to control larger groups of people from a distance.
During early domestication the patriarchs or clan leaders of hunter/gatherer existence were gradually being viewed more and more as special people and eventually as monarchs or kings. Those leaders surrounded themselves with the trappings of monarchical office such as validating ritual, titles, and ideology. Formal armed forces and priesthoods were also instituted to support the elite leadership of the settled communities.
Cohen and Service make some insightful comments on the process of sacralization or the making of rulers into sacred or divine persons. Their argument states that as hunter/gatherer bands were settling together in larger communities some bands emerged as stronger groups able to dominate weaker bands. These stronger groups were then able to continue their domination through the development of royal dynasties. They adopted titles, royal courts, and ideologies to support their emergence as kingships (19).
The hierarchy that already existed in hunter/gatherer society was becoming formalized and sacralized in the newly emerging kingships and institutions of early civilization.
In this process of formalizing hierarchy, the leaders of the emerging dynastic families were viewed as being "endowed with supernatural powers" (20) says Cohen. The political position and duties of these leaders were gradually sacralized, which is to say- made sacred or god-like. The sacred dimension, says Cohen, often developed from what was believed to be the supernatural powers previously held by these local headmen.
When the patriarchs died, they were dressed elaborately and placed in large central houses and used to continue exerting control in the minds of their people, according to Jaynes (21). This was part of an effort to maintain their rule and authority after their death. The dead kings in central houses or temples would act as a visual reinforcement to assist the inner voices of bicameral minds in maintaining hierarchical control of people (22).
In this manner, over time the dead kings came to be viewed as living gods, says Jaynes (23). The kings tomb became the god's temple. Gradually, the perceived location of these gods shifted heavenward and they came to be viewed as sky gods.
It appears that the animal-like mentality of that time led people to view the divine in terms of the vertical orientation of the hierarchical social order. So it was quite natural that as god consciousness developed in such a context, the developing views of gods would take on and perpetuate the features of the pagan male patriarchs that they evolved from. God consciousness simply absorbed patriarchal domination as the defining essence of divinity. A god consciousness shaped by such an animal environment then led to the development of a view of gods as little more than predators dominating and controlling human behavior.
But to be fair, there was little else to link god consciousness to. A truly egalitarian understanding of humanity had not yet emerged or even been imagined by those early peoples. So ideally, where god consciousness should have been used to support emerging forms of more egalitarian relating, instead, it was co-opted and used to validate and entrench animal-like domination as a main feature of human existence. Later developments in humanity would not effect much change on the vertical orientation of early human societies as the new developments would continue to be overwhelmed and buried by animal-like existence embodied in the widespread vertical ideologies and structures of those societies.
Unfortunately, then, the very earliest use of god consciousness was to support patriarchal rule and domination. Some of the earliest ideas of gods became those of dominating patriarchs hierarchically relating to humans in relationships of control. That was an essentially animal orientation.
Jaynes does not view the emergence of god consciousness as being due to some sort of special intervention from God. He views it more as the natural development of people beginning to view their patriarchs as special or divine.
In the preceding material I presented an outline of the process through which the animal-like features of contemporary views of God originated. The features of early gods were simply inherited from the patriarchs who were coming to be viewed as gods. As people gradually came to view the patriarchs as divine, their basic features were simply sacralized. As they were transformed into gods they carried their basic features over into their new identity as gods. That animal-likeness is notable in a variety of fundamental characteristics.
1. God as above or superior, a ruling patriarch.
2. Vertical relating to God in domination/submission relationships similar to animal hierarchies.
3. Domination and control as the central function of God, expressed in ideas of the will of God or God omnipotently determining all.
4. The control of behavior by authority outside of the individual.
5. Male gender in God
6. Male domination in hierarchy.
These features exhibit direct links to an animal past. For instance, the emerging gods were primarily dominating males. There is a direct line of descendence from animal patriarchs.
A further link to animal existence can be seen in the fact that the main function of the gods was similar to and may even have directly replaced animal instinct. In animals, instinct is volition or will and operates to control behavior. Instinct leads to aggressive competition in the struggle to control resources. It is intensely selfish. Such instinctual control allows no space for conscious reflection or for freedom of choice to respond in a more humane manner.
The emerging gods, then, were strikingly similar to predatory dominating animals and the predatory behavior of these gods in turn validated and encouraged the continuation of animal-like relating in early human society. Instead of obeying instinct as in their animal past, human mentality simply evolved to obey dominating gods. The gods took the place of animal instinct in controlling behavior. They simply supplanted instinct as commanding, dominating volition in humans.
Those early gods were the next stage in evolution. They were a more refined class of predators; predators made sacred, but animal predators all the same. They shared the same basic features of their animal predecessors. The dominating male patriarchs of the animal world were their direct line of ancestry.
In the above process it is possible to trace how base animal domination became embedded in the greatest idea to ever enter the human mind- God. The new god consciousness and subsequent ideas of gods which should have promoted truly human reality, was instead co-opted to embody the worst features of animal existence and then used to validate those features in succeeding worldviews and social orders as sacred reality. In the worldviews of early humanity, all of life was seen as a vertically oriented reality- predatory, competitive, and controlling. All relationships were viewed as vertical with domination and submission being the natural components of this arrangement. This was true of relationships to gods, animals, and humans. All of this vertical relating was made sacred and legitimate by developing god consciousness.
This helps us to understand why even today people can commit the most inhumane acts against others in the name of God. The old patriarchal God represents brutal animal domination and therefore validates the worst of residual animal drives in people to dominate and control others. The tragedy is that such brutal drives are often viewed as sacred or inspired by God. The highest idea to have ever entered human thought has been wrapped around the very worst of residual animal features that remain in human mentality.
By noting how the emerging gods were shaped to validate the basest drives, it is also possible to understand how male dominance may have become entrenched in emerging human society. I noted that the worldview of early domesticating people was still very animal-like in that it viewed male patriarchs as supreme rulers. To those early people, the universe was quite naturally male dominated and vertically oriented. And as those patriarchs were transformed into gods, their rule came to be viewed as the sacred order. Viewing male rule as sacred gave it an almost untouchable position in human society. Male dominance and control then became the essence of the new ideas of gods and the natural form of leadership for human society. Those were very animal-like gods and animal-like societies.
The patriarchs (who were viewed as godlike) were primarily responsible for formalizing hierarchy in the structures of the newly settling communities. Consequently, the very earliest ideas of gods and societal leadership were then associated with institutions and male hierarchical control in such institutions. God originated as an idea associated with states and state rule by an elite few, most commonly a male elite.
The entire system of early societal governance was one of male animal-like domination sacralized or made sacred and therefore more permanent and resistant to change. The sacralization of vertical relating and control in ideas of God has given these essential animal features a permanence in human worldviews and societies that has been hard to challenge or alter in subsequent millennia. Any questioning of this sacred order or of the old God is considered to be blasphemy. In this manner, animal relating has become deeply entrenched in human ideologies, social orders, and institutions. It is not difficult to see how this divine order continued to be replicated in societies and institutions over subsequent millennia. Sacred tradition is a powerful force for permanence and longevity.
The society that results from men creating structures to support their domination is in reality a very animal-like existence simply made formal. Male animal-like gods sit at the top of the hierarchies and validate the entire social order as sacred, as the 'natural' way to relate in human society. Domination then becomes a formalized and legitimate manner of relating in all early societal institutions. While there are some female exceptions to the rule of male domination, they are not common enough to disprove the general rule. Most social orders and social institutions since early domestication have followed the same pattern. These institutions have embodied and encouraged the expression of male domination in vertical arrangements of relationships known as hierarchy.
Later in history a horizontally oriented consciousness would emerge but would often be overwhelmed and buried by the archaic relationships of the past. This modern consciousness would emerge into societies structured for an archaic mentality of control. This would cause great conflict and misery for succeeding generations of people forced to live within structures shaped to accommodate a radically different form of controlled mentality.
The vertical relating and related domination that is still found in contemporary hierarchical organizations is very similar to the relationships of people in ancient bicameral hierarchies. It is a form of relating that often violates the essential function of the human mind space or consciousness which should exist as a space free from all control in order to allow personal choice and responsibility. Hierarchical domination permits little room for the operation of truly human consciousness with its need for reflection, questioning of authority, and free choice. To the contrary, hierarchical relationships too often demand unquestioning submission and obedience. Consequently, vertical forms of relating encourage and promote an animal-like response and discourage the development of human response and relating.
The denial of freedom or space for reflective and questioning consciousness with its need for free response violates the essential nature of conscious human beings. Consequently, it produces the many negative impacts on people that have been documented in organizational theory studies on the damaging effects of hierarchy on human well-being (24). Some of these will be noted later.
The animal-like features of early gods were eventually passed along through succeeding generations of gods to finally become lodged in views of monotheism which are the predominant views of God today, at least in the western world.
But the monotheistic God would become the same dominating male patriarch who would relate down to inferiors in a controlling manner. The new supreme God would eventually sit at the top of all hierarchies. This God would become in one sense the supreme animal dominating all other predators.
It has been especially difficult to challenge contemporary vertically oriented social orders and their supporting worldviews precisely because they have been supported by views of a vertically oriented and dominating God. Everything about this God is viewed as sacred and unchanging and it is considered utter blasphemy to question any of his traditional features.
But if we are ever going to move forward to a more humane existence, we need to challenge the pagan features found in traditional views of God and come up with a more humane version. As distasteful as this may be for many people, it is necessary if we are going to create more humane and genuinely free social orders. As Brinsmead has argued, "It is impossible to be fully human until we have a view of God which is fully human" (25).
Jaynes' work on the bicameral mind enables us to make some links to our animal past and offers insight as to how animal relating and dominatioin may have entered and become entrenched in human societies. His work shows that the bicameral mind was a mentality which replaced the earlier instinct/obedient response relationship in the mentality of animals and hunter/gatherer humans. Bicamerality continued the tight control of animal mentality during the critical early phase of domestication when the basic ideologies and patterns of institutional relating for settled human societies were being shaped and formalized.
It is also worth noting the point that bicameral mentality was a mentality which may have inspired humans to domesticate in the first place. If, as Brinsmead suggests, it was the animal drive to dominate that led to the domestication of other humans (26), then it was the bicameral mind that enabled leaders to control more people over extended areas in the larger settled communities of civilization. It enabled humans to extend control much further beyond the face to face control of small animal and hunter/gatherer bands.
With the controlling bicameral mind as the inspiration, domestication must then be viewed in some ways as simply as extension of animal-like control over larger groups of people. Domestication was not such a noble advance in human evolution as the term civilization connotes. In some ways it was simply a more refined and extensive system of control than animal reality had been able to create and operate.
Emerging Humanity In Conflict With Vertical Institutions
Over subsequent millennia human consciousness would continue to develop and progress. But it would often be overwhelmed within the structures or arrangements of relationships that had been formed to accommodate the drive to dominate. Human mentality would develop toward a consciousness of freedom and equality. But the structures that it developed within were not suited to encourage freedom or equality. The emergence of modern consciousness within those archaic vertically oriented systems helps to explain much of the current alienation and conflict experienced in our institutions and societies. We, as developing human beings, are becoming more conscious of the nature of humanity as free, inclusive, and egalitarian, but we still exist within controlling organizations- whether work, school, religious, or other social institutions. We continue to exist within primitive structures that orient us to the drives of our animal past. The coexistence of these two mutually antagonistic realities produces alienation and conflict because vertically oriented relationships violate the essential nature of our horizontally oriented consciousness.
Jaynes research supports in other ways the view that early human civilization was a continuance of animal existence. He notes that the voices of bicameral humans were organized in a strict hierarchical manner (28). The bicameral era was a world of rigid hierarchy with the patriarchal gods at the top. This type of relating evidenced little advance on basic animal relating or existence.
The point has also been made by Jaynes that the bicameral mind was a form of social control that enabled early humans to shift from hunter/gatherer bands to larger agricultural groups (29). With that mentality, the strict hierarchy of the primate world and the controlled mentality required to maintain that hierarchy were carried over into emerging human civilization. The result was a more formal animal system supported with more sophisticated structures than existed in the animal world. Those structures of control included organized military force, an ideology of the sacred, centralized government, and legal authority. A very animal-like form of relating has been formalized in these systems.
Law as the New Mechanism of Social Control
Writing also became a further important element to the early process of domestication. It played a vital role in the transition from bicameral civilization to the form of social organization that would follow. Writing would lead to the creation of law, which emerged as the method of social control that has continued into the present and now dominates in most societies and institutions on earth (30).
Jaynes points out that while language evolved to assist in the development of voices in the evolution toward bicameral mentality, writing evolved to supplant the bicameral mind as the mechanism of social control (31). The form was changing but the basic function of controlling behavior continued through each of these stages- instinct, patriarchal command, the voices of gods, and law.
As law emerged to replace the fading voices of the gods it served the same purpose of maintaining domination in hierarchy. Law was simply the written form of the god's commands. Law therefore embodied and continued to promote the domination of patriarchs.
The time period in which law emerged was near the end of the third millennium BC or about 4000 years ago, according to Jaynes (32). Increasing population was producing increasing social complexity. This complexity challenged the control of the bicameral mentality and ultimately weakened this control over people (33).
The authority of the bicameral system started to break down and with the collapse of bicameral authority (control by the voices of gods) there was the development of law from the new tradition of writing (34). By 2100 BC, the judgments or commands of the gods were being written on tablets and this was the origin of the idea of law, says Jaynes. By the second millennium BC, writing or law had become the means of a new form of government control (35). And this new method of control was the direct predecessor of our own contemporary government by written constitution, law, and rules.
Written law made it possible to continue the strict hierarchical control of people. The written commands of the gods replaced the auditory hallucinations of the bicameral mind as a new means of controlling behavior in hierarchy. It was the new form of social control or behavior control, which supplanted animal instinct and the subsequent voices of the gods. Written law also made it possible to extend domination and control even further from the center of government. It was possible for rulers to control larger geographical areas with their larger populations.
Rothschild also notes that in contemporary society and organizations, law continues to serve the same function of extended social control. It enables powerholding elites to extend their control further from centers of power. Rothschild says, "From a Weberian point of view, organizations are tools, instruments of power for those who head them. But what means does the bureaucracy have of ensuring that lower-level personnel, people who are quite distant from the centers of power, will effectively understand and implement the aims of those at the top? This issue of social control is critical in any bureaucracy. Perrow examines three types of social control mechanisms in bureaucracies. The first type of control is the most obvious- direct supervision. The second is less obtrusive, but no less effective: standardized rules, procedures, and sanctions. Gouldner shows that rules can substitute for direct supervision. This allows the organization considerable decentralization in everyday decision making and even gives the appearance of participation, for the premises of those decisions have been carefully controlled from the top. Decentralized decision making, when decisional premises are handed down from the top via standardized rules, may be functionally equivalent to hierarchical authority. ‘Topdown’ rules have the same consequence as centralized authority" (36).
So law became the new authority in hierarchical organization and it introduced a new element to the ancient command/obey relationship between subjects and masters. Law created distance between patriarchs/gods and their subjects. It broke the tight relationship of command/obey that had existed under bicameral mentality. While this was regretted by many bicameral people as a shift toward a more insecure existence, others would find freedom in this distance.
Jaynes says that it is possible to isolate written commands and keep them at a distance and therefore avoid the immediate obedience demanded by the inner voice. "Once the voices of gods are silent and written on clay tablets, then the gods commands can be avoided in a way that internal voices could not be avoided" (38). In the early phase of law the commands of the gods had a "controllable location" (39) rather than an immediate presence with power to evoke instinctual obedience. This helped break the tight control of bicameral hierarchies.
Law may then be seen as an advance for emerging humanity in that it provided space or distance between the commanding gods and people. It was a break from direct patriarchal control. But it still functioned to maintain hierarchical control. It simply supplanted the voices of the gods as the mechanism for controlling human behavior. It was the latest in a series of advances and refinements on instinctual and patriarchal control of behavior. These advances were new in form but still very much the same in their basic function of vertically controlling behavior.
Works cited
1. Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, p.129- 143.
2. Ibid, p.450.
3. Ibid, p.261.
4. Ibid, p.263.
5. Ibid, p.204.
6. Ibid, p.205.
7. Ibid, p.128.
8. Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness In The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, p.73.
9. Ibid, p.169.
10. Wilson, Peter. 1988. The Domestication of the Human Species, p.15, 20.
11. Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, p.134, 140.
12. Ibid, p.134.
13. Ibid, p.136.
14. Ibid, p.134.
15. Ibid, p.134-140.
16. Ibid, p.108.
17. Ibid, p.111.
18. Ibid, p.99.
19. Burns, Tom and Walter Buckley, Eds. 1976. A Natural History of Hierarchy, p.208.
20. Cohen, Ronald and Elman Service. 1978. Origins of the State: The Anthropology of Political Evolution, p.16.
21. Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, p.188.
22. Ibid, p.188.
23. Ibid, p.163.
24. Oldenquist, Andrew and Menachem Rosner, Eds. 1991. Alienation, Community, and Work.
25. Brinsmead, Robert. 1991. "Jesus and a Post-Modern Worldview" in Quest, No. 9, p.6.
26. Ibid.
27. Zwemer, Jack. 1994. "The New World Order" in Quest, No.33, p.1.
28. Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, p.80, 202.
29. Ibid, p.126, 149.
30. Ibid, p.198.
31. Ibid, p.198.
32. Ibid, p.198.
33. Ibid, p.204.
34. Ibid, p.198.
35. Ibid, p.198.
36. Rothschild, Joyce. 1989. The Cooperative Workplace, p.54.
37. Brinsmead.
38. Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, p.208.
39. Ibid, p.208.
From the series 'Taking The
Vertical Out Of God'
copyrighted material.
