Article 6:
When We First Became Truly Human
by Wendell Krossa
(From the series "Creating A Horizontal
God", Copyright, W. Krossa)
The process of emerging human mentality / The Break with Animal Domination / Human in an Animal World / Longing for Past Securities /
The process of emerging human mentality
The emergence of a truly human mentality and the beginning of the struggle toward more truly human forms of relating finally began with the breakdown of bicameral authority and the bicameral mind which Jaynes traces so well. This process of emerging human mentality has been called a process of emergence because humane consciousness is still an emerging reality in all human beings. We are all still in process toward becoming fully human.
The origin of modern subjective human consciousness some 4 millennia ago was one of the more significant movements away from animal relating and existence. The emergence of modern consciousness led to the first movement toward freedom to become truly human. Freedom from control (the revolution inspired by the new consciousness) would become the essence of what it means to be human.
People who work in the field of consciousness, however, are still puzzled at the emergence of modern human consciousness. They are at a loss to explain the reason why it should ever have emerged in the first place. The selfish gene theory of evolution states that human motivation and activity is oriented to the preservation of the self. But the new human consciousness, to the contrary, leads people to act selflessly for the interests of others in true cooperation, sharing, and community spirit. Human consciousness inspires humane response, not the instinctual animal responses that are oriented toward the aggressively competitive pursuit of personal survival and personal advance.
Also, human consciousness does not promote animal-like domination of others, but rather, it inspires people to relate in equality and freedom. Consciousness is an inspiring and truly humane reality which operates to override the selfish and competitive orientation of animal drives with a new cooperative orientation in egalitarian relationships. It is an entirely new reality moving in an entirely new direction from animal mentality and existence.
And contrary to selfish gene theory, in times of crisis people will often act heroically to help complete strangers, to the point of losing their own lives. Human consciousness apparently breaks through and overcomes the selfish drives that are oriented to personal survival. While selfish gene theory may explain some things about early life development, it can not explain the most important thing about human beings- consciousness, and the unselfish motivations that consciousness has produced.
In making a distinction between animal mentality as competitive and human mentality as essentially cooperative, I am not concluding that this is rigidly true. There is also much evidence of cooperation among animal species which may point to emergent forms of more humane consciousness among other forms of animal life. But the emergence of modern human consciousness has led to entirely new levels of cooperation associated with emotions such as love that only fully conscious beings could experience.
This is not a scientific or academic study, so let me assume that God was involved in granting consciousness to humanity and that God's purpose in granting consciousness was (as suggested by some writers) to lead the human race toward freedom from the selfish and competitive reality of animal relating and existence. I would assume that God's purpose was to set human beings on the way to becoming truly and fully human. I would conclude then that God is responsible for the spark of consciousness and the freedom that it leads to.
Just as an aside, let me say that the consciousness of humane reality (consciousness of inclusion, equality, freedom, serving, and sharing) that God has inspired in humanity is what religious people refer to as the image of God.
I would argue that it is God who inspires and empowers truly humane response. All true humanity originates with God and is an expression of the character of God. The emergence of humanity and the emergence of the truly human values of love, freedom, service, equality, forgiveness- this is God revealed in human life.
In light of the direction emerging consciousness has taken the human race, I would assume then that the central purpose of human life is freedom; freedom from control and domination to become fully human and to relate in horizontal equality with all others. Many have summed up this freedom and equality in the word love.
Understanding the nature of emerging consciousness is vital to shaping new views of a truly humane God. By understanding what it means to be human, only then can we understand what the originating source of our humanity is like. It is important then to understand the nature of humanity in order to appreciate the humane reality that is God. It has been said that God is the supremely humane God (1). All true humanity originates with this God and emerging human consciousness is the image of this God in us. Emerging consciousness provides valuable insight regarding the character of the reality that sustains all life.
Much conflict in modern human society can be understood more clearly in light of this view of history as emerging humanity. Human consciousness emerges and develops within social orders and institutions that were created to accommodate pre-human forms of mentality and response. It emerges into a vertically oriented world populated with vertically oriented structures. These structures support vertical arrangements of relating, which undermine truly humane response. This has an immense impact on human well-being. The control that is essential to all vertically oriented relationships, effectively undermines human response and relating and consequently retards human development. I will repeatedly emphasize this point because it is one of the central themes I am focusing on in this study.
Not only do we experience conflict with structures that are oriented to supporting the vertical relating of our animal past, but we also still experience internal conflict with residual animal drives and emotions. These residual animal drives lead many people to prefer the security of controlled existence in hierarchy. These drives also prompt some people to engage actively in the domination of others. Unfortunately, vertical relationships encourage the expression and operation of these residual animal drives.
This conflict with our inherited animal nature will continue, as millennia of selecting for animal features in the animal substrate of our brain will not be erased suddenly. There is a notable reservoir of animal drives and emotions in human mentality to support the continued use of vertical arrangements in human relationships and institutions.
But there is hope for progress as emerging consciousness inspires people to struggle against the inhumanity of vertical relating and domination. It inspires brave effort to break the grip of relationships of control. Fortunately, brain evolution continues to move toward a more humane reality and that consciousness of humane reality will lead to the creation of more humane structures.
The Break with Animal Domination
The wider context of the breakdown of bicameral mentality and bicameral control of humans was found in the growing crowdedness and complexity of early societies and the social chaos resulting from that complexity (2). This began to occur sometime in the second millennium BC. Bicameral hierarchies of that time, says Jaynes (3), were collapsing.
As we noted earlier, according to Jaynes, the primary feature and the substrate of modern consciousness is an internal mind space (4). It is in this internal mind space that a person reflects and introspects.
Animal and bicameral minds had no such internal space. The commanding voice of the god spoke and his human followers responded with immediate unquestioning obedience. There was no space between commanding voice and obedient response. This is very much like an animal responding to an aggressive instinctual urge or to patriarchal domination. This controlled form of mentality had existed since animal life first emerged on earth. It was a mentality that operated well in strict hierarchies and under conditions of competitive dominance.
But with increasing social upheaval and the mixing of different peoples some 4000 years ago, a space erupted or emerged between the commanding voice of the gods and obedient human response. Jaynes suggests that the mixing of followers of different patriarchs/gods may have led to a pause to reflect on and question the different authority of the other gods (5). This pause or space to reflect on and question controlling authority was the beginning of modern subjective consciousness.
With the introduction of this interval between the god's control and human response, we have the first emergence of a truly modern and humane consciousness. This new consciousness signaled the beginning of a shift to a radically new and altered mentality, says Jaynes (6).
This pause between command and responsive action was the first break from "the tyranny of the gods" (7). The opening of such a space was the first opportunity for humans to begin reflection, to challenge control, to resist domination, and to exercise choice for alternative action to the commands of the gods (8). People began to question and challenge the authority of the gods and the strict control by patriarchal authority.
That first stirring of genuinely humane consciousness was the first human experience of freedom from control and the first time people would begin to take responsibility for their own destiny. Humans, in making the break with animal-like control, were entering a completely new trajectory in history. They were starting to take responsible personal control of their own lives and behavior. For the first time, people were beginning to develop the ability to choose and to control their own behavior. The center of authority was shifting from the patriarch, outside and above, to the individual and his personal consciousness.
The process of taking self-control or personal responsibility for behavior became essential to human development. It set people on a radical new path that diverged significantly from animal mentality, relating, and existence with its strict outside control of behavior in hierarchy. Personal responsibility for choice became vital to human growth and existence. Reflection, questioning control, and responsible personal choice became the essence of the new emerging human consciousness and humanity. They are essential to what it means to be truly human and truly free.
The break with animal domination defined developing humanity in terms of freedom from all control or domination. Nothing else would as profoundly define what it means to be a human being as this movement toward personal uncoerced choice and self-determination. This new consciousness of freedom became the essence of modern humanity.
The French philosopher Henri Bergson, almost a century ago made the same point in saying, "Consciousness is essentially free; it is freedom itself" (9).
So the emerging mind space or pause between command and obedience was the first glimmer in history of freedom. All subsequent freedom would involve freedom from commanded relationships and freedom to be responsible for one's own life and behavior. The freedom to reflect, question, and exercise personal choice was the first freedom that humanity had experienced from eons of animal domination and control. It would define all subsequent freedom by the same features of reflection, questioning, and personal responsibility.
It is interesting to note that the first people to advocate for social freedom were Greek slave women in the 7th century BCE. The new consciousness appears to have inspired women to act before men.
The pause or break with animal-like control is therefore critical to understanding the essence of human nature and existence. True humanity can only emerge and develop in a horizontally oriented relating and existence, where all relate as free and fully responsible equals with no element of control.
With the introduction of this new mind space, the bicameral mentality, with its tight and dominating god/human relationship where the gods commanded and humans obeyed without question, was breaking down. The ancient relationships of vertical domination were breaking down. The bicameral mind was undergoing a transition to a more human mentality with subjective consciousness as its fundamental feature. This shift is noticeable in ancient Greek and Hebrew literature (9).
Jaynes says that the emerging consciousness challenged and disrupted the stable authority of the hierarchical systems of the bicameral era (10). The authority of the god's began to weaken and eventually collapsed. There was, according to Jaynes, a crisis of authority in the old hierarchies (11).
With the weakening of authority and outside control by the gods, there was the opportunity for newly emerging consciousness to inspire people to make a radical break with vertical relating and existence. There was the opportunity for people to move toward a more egalitarian existence and create relationships of equality. Unfortunately, over succeeding millennia the surrounding vertical social order and institutions would overwhelm the new consciousness and repeatedly force it back into the old vertical forms and existence.
The emergence of modern human consciousness has resulted in an ongoing struggle between this consciousness and the vertically oriented structures of control that it must often exist within. Today this struggle continues everywhere in modern institutions and organizations. It is the struggle of emerging humanity to express itself as truly human. It is the struggle of people to relate more humanely to one another. It is the struggle for freedom and equality.
I want to press this point home. Freedom and equality are not just 'nice' values that the West decided to adopt in recent history. They are essential to what it means to be human and they have been essential to the basic nature of human consciousness since its earliest emergence. You can not exist as truly human or relate as human without freedom and equality.
Unfortunately, our social orders and institutions have continued to employ vertical arrangements of relationships and this use of the vertical to structure relationships between horizontally oriented beings has seriously damaged human well-being and it retards human progress and development.
The relationship between the new mentality and the old social orders has never been a happy one, according to Jaynes. The new consciousness can not help but reflect and question. This is now its essential nature. It can never again thoughtlessly submit to control from external authority. It has now tasted the experience of freedom from control and a sense of true equality. This new consciousness has led humanity into the revolution for freedom and there will be no turning back. This revolution will lead to a more humane existence.
The struggle of emerging consciousness for freedom is evident in the historical struggle for freedom from slavery. Without explicitly referring to Jaynes, Orlando Patterson has traced the original advocacy for freedom from slavery to Greek slave women in the 7th century BC. This would be within a century of the dates that Jaynes set forth for the emergence of modern human consciousness with its orientation to freedom from control. As Brinsmead has said, the history of the emergence of freedom is the history of the emergence of human consciousness.
In the millennia subsequent to its emergence, instead of fully embracing the freedom to be human, the new consciousness often reverted to the old commanded existence. The new freedom was full of uncertainty and chance which were frightening to people long used to the supposed security that came from a commanded and tightly controlled existence. So, ignoring the new impulse to be free, many people found it safer to retreat into the security of the old hierarchical existence.
And we need to remember that human consciousness emerged within a brain that still carried deep bicameral imprints. It was a brain developed for and long used to control and domination in hierarchical relationships. It was a brain from which there still emanated powerful emotions for ancient forms of domination.
Jaynes makes an interesting point about this bicameral longing for old authorities and ancient forms of control. He states that with the loss of the authority of the commanding gods, humans were left adrift in "unbearable uncertainty" (12). This led to millennia of searching for the lost authorities and for the security of a commanded existence such as was experienced in the old hierarchies. Jaynes states that this desperate search for lost authority was evident in the emergence of "new cultural themes" (13).
All of the new themes of human history were responses to the breakdown of bicameral authority and to the loss of the commanding voices of the gods. Some of those responses listed by Jaynes were prayer, omens, divination, casting of lots, belief in angels and demons, possession, and a variety of other religious beliefs and practices. Formal institutional religion absorbed, embodied, and became the expression of many of these new practices.
The new cultural themes were the expression of people with a new consciousness reacting to the uncertainty of their new freedom. These themes reflected the effort of people with a residual bicameral mentality to reclaim bicameral-like existence and bicameral-like authority. According to Jaynes, the new themes were part of a desperate search to find out what to do when the voices of the gods no longer controlled human life (14). Much human endeavor in subsequent history can be understood better in light of this ancient desire for security, certainty, and predictability.
Freedom can be a frightening thing for people used to the security of a tightly controlled existence. Freedom means responsibility to make choices and to live with the consequences of those choices, including mistakes. Life seems much simpler and appears to be more secure when you can retreat to some authority or let another take responsibility for the difficult choices of life. But the retreat to being controlled is a denial of our humanity and a choice to move backward into the animal-like existence of a commanded creature.
The residual desire to be controlled may then, in part, explain the irresponsible but persistent drive in many people to place themselves under human leadership, to be led by others. Such subservience to leadership alleviates the fear of insecurity that may accompany true freedom. But it effectively undermines the personal responsibility that is essential to human development.
We are responsible to create our own future and contribute to human destiny and that responsibility has often driven people to create ideologies and systems of organizing that will provide the appearance of control over life. There is great comfort and security to be found in a strictly determined existence versus the uncertainty of random, unpredictable and free existence.
In this regard a newspaper article noted recent research by psychologists who have pointed out that "many people are searching for meaning in a stressful, chaotic world. They are looking for an orderly belief system that offers a modicum of control over life's uncertainties...The fact that 90 percent of Americans profess belief in God suggests that most people need belief systems that offer structure and control in the form of rituals and prayers they hope will be answered" (Bill Hendrick, 1997, Vancouver Sun).
This same report notes that "there is plenty of evidence that people may be 'wired at birth' to look for beliefs that offer a sense that there is order in the world and they have some control over random events...Religion is one of the most lasting belief systems...It helps us predict the world and what will happen in life. Some people are naturally drawn to create some kind of order, even a false order. The idea for most of us that the world is random and arbitrary is frightening".
The evidence of people being wired at birth to search for order and certainty is exactly what Jaynes has pointed to in his research on residual bicameral longings. And when we recognize that residual bicameral longings are still present in human mentality then we can understand why some people will give up their freedom to subject themselves to dehumanizing control by others despite overwhelming evidence of the damage that such control has on human development.
Jaynes then notes that religion is one of the most obvious expressions of the desire for the lost authority and commanded existence (15). Religion emerged as a "nostalgic anguish" (16) and yearning for the recently lost bicamerality. He says "The mind is still haunted with its old unconscious ways, it broods on lost authorities, and the yearning, the deep and hollow yearning for divine volition and service is still with us" (17).
And while I appreciate Jaynes' point that religion is the expression of bicameral longing for lost authorities, and while I realize that it is not the purpose of Jaynes to trace the more primal roots of bicameral traits, I feel that it is more helpful to recognize that the desires that are expressed through religion have their roots further back in the drives and instincts of animal reality. I would argue that those new themes that emerged at the time of bicameral breakdown were more than just expressions of bicameral longing. To fully understand these longings for authority and control, they must be understood as more primal animal responses for animal relationships of domination. I noted earlier Dennis Sandole's comments on the substrate animal brain and its ongoing influence in human mentality. I would like to place Jayne's ideas in that wider context of animal origins.
I would argue, then, that religion or the religious impulse is simply another expression of the residual animal drive for relationships of domination/submission. This yearning for authority explains the historical development of religious ideas of God as a controlling patriarch. These views of God arise directly out of the residual felt need for a dominating band leader and the felt need to be controlled as in ancient band hierarchies.
As Sandole has stated, "Humans appear to have been pre-wired by the reptilian brain to be ritualistic, to be in awe of authority, to develop social pecking orders". Bicameral mentality, which certainly drives religion, derives from animal mentality and is simply a more advanced form of ancient animal mentality.
For millions of years animal life selected for the drives and instincts of animal existence. That ancient heritage continues to impact human mentality. Even in the present we experience and respond to those archaic drives to dominate and control. The animal brain is still the substrate of the higher human brain.
So the desperate bicameral longing for lost divine authority and a commanded existence helps in part to explain the continuance of vertical relating in hierarchies today. Modern hierarchy is the remnant from that commanded past. And even though the direct control by voices of gods has been lost, law emerged as a replacement. It became the new authority maintaining hierarchical control. So even with the collapse of the bicameral existence we are still in one sense commanded by the gods in the form of their written commands (19). Law, says Jaynes, is the best substitute men have found for governing themselves in complex society (20). It is the best substitute that people have come up with for maintaining the commanded relationships of the bicameral past.
The residual longing for lost authority continues to support control by law and animal-like arrangements of relating in the form of contemporary hierarchical institutions and social orders. As I noted earlier, these vertical structures produce conflict with emerging human consciousness and the result is alienation and conflict. As Jaynes says so well, "While the characteristics of the new consciousness develop swiftly, the larger contours of civilization and culture change only with glacial slowness. The matter and technic of earlier ages of civilization survive into the new eras uneroded, dragging with them the older outworn forms in which the new mentality must live. Also living in these forms is a fervent search for archaic authorization" (21).
Jaynes points to a variety of other efforts which he says also express the longing for a return to bicameral existence. These include the history of logic, the struggle for systems of ethics, and politics (22). He notes that even science can be viewed as a search for lost certainties and invariants.
Jaynes also notes the effort of Jesus to change bicameral existence. He calls the effort by Jesus to reform Judaism and to introduce a new religion as a "necessary new existence for conscious humans" (23).
Others have noted Jesus' endeavor to establish a radically horizontal existence among people (24). This would involve horizontally oriented relating and a new view of God as a radically horizontal reality, relating to humans as an equal, not as a superior ruler. Jesus, they argue, showed a supremely human God who came not to dominate but to serve.
But the followers of Jesus soon buried his radical egalitarian message (25) and returned to the old existence of domination and subservience. The longing for bicameral authority was too strong and the new freedom was too frightening. Jesus was then co-opted to support the old commanded existence. He was then transformed and presented as just another dominating God, another patriarch who validated the same old hierarchical order of relationships. Institutional Christianity subsequently emerged to embody and represent this vertical orientation.
The origin of modern human consciousness in the break with patriarchal control calls into question all views of vertical controlling authority and gods. If the human self has emerged as something which in its essential nature is defined by freedom from control then ideas of submission to controlling gods violates the very essence of what it means to be human.
Works Cited
Ø Shillebeekx quoted in Jesus Before Christianity by Albert Nolan, 1976, p.138.
Ø Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness, p.204-209.
Ø Ibid, p.204.
Ø Ibid, p.236, 261.
Ø Ibid, p.204-207.
Ø Ibid, p.261.?
Ø Ibid, p.207.
Ø Ibid, p.302.
Ø Ibid, p.226.
Ø Ibid, p.214.
Ø Ibid, p.302.
Ø Ibid, p.227.
Ø Ibid, p.228.
Ø Ibid, p.320.
Ø Ibid, p.297.
Ø Ibid, p.297.
Ø Ibid, p.313.
Ø Sandole, Dennis. The Biological Basis of Needs in World Society: The Ultimate Micro-Macro Nexus, p.70.
Ø Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness, p.320.
Ø Ibid, p.320.
Ø Ibid, p.320.
Ø Ibid, p.434.
Ø Ibid, p.318.
Ø Brinsmead, Robert. 1989. "Dare to Blaspheme and Dare to be Free" in Quest, Essay 1, p.7.
Ø Ibid, 1990. "Where Human Liberation Movements Fall Short" in Quest, Essay 5, p.3.
From the series 'Taking The
Vertical Out Of God'
copyrighted material.
