Julian Jaynes quotes - page 2

Idolatry is still a socially cohesive force - its original function. (Julian Jaynes)
Memory is the medium of the must-have-been. View quote
Julian Jaynes
Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. View quote
Julian Jaynes
We know too much to command ourselves very far. View quote
Julian Jaynes
Paradise Lost, A further observation could be made upon the story of the Fall and how it is possible to look upon it as a myth of the breakdown of the bicameral mind. View quote
Julian Jaynes
I therefore believe that these and many other movements of our time are in the great long picture of our civilizations related to the loss of an earlier organization of human natures. They are attempts to return to what is no longer there, like poets to their inexistent Muses, and as such they are characteristic of these transitional millennia in which we are imbedded. View quote
Julian Jaynes
The central assertion of this view, I repeat, is that each new stage of words literally created new perceptions and attentions, and such new perceptions and attentions resulted in important cultural changes which are reflected in the archaeological record. View quote
Julian Jaynes
I am emphasizing individuals set apartfrom others as ill, because, according to our theory, we could say that before the second millennium B. C., everyone was schizophrenic. View quote
Julian Jaynes
Our sense of justice depends on our sense of time. Justice is a phenomenon only of consciousness, because time spread out in a spatial succession is its very essence. View quote
Julian Jaynes
The Trojan War was directed by hallucinations. And the soldiers who were so directed were not at all like us. They were noble automatons who knew not what they did. View quote
Julian Jaynes
These esoteric poses of philosophy and even the paper theories of behaviorists are mere subterfuges to avoid the material we are talking about. (Julian Jaynes)
It is something of a lovely surprise that the irregular conjugation of our most nondescript verb is thus a record of a time when man had no independent word for 'existence' and could only say that something 'grows' or that it "breathes.”. View quote
Julian Jaynes
And when it is suggested that the inward feelings of power or inward monitions or losses of judgement are the germs out of which the divine machinery developed, I return that truth is just the reverse, that the presence of voices which had to be obeyed were the absolute prerequisite to the conscious stage of mind in which it is the self that is responsible and can debate within itself, can order and direct, and that the creation of such a self is the product of culture. In a sense, we have become our own gods. View quote
Julian Jaynes
And in this development lies the origin of civilization. View quote
Julian Jaynes
Behavior now must be changed from within the new consciousness rather than from Mosaic laws carving behavior from without. View quote
Julian Jaynes
Reading in the third millennium B.C. may therefore have been a matter of hearing the cuneiform. View quote
Julian Jaynes
There is a complete lack of reference to business profits or loss in any of the cuneiform tablets that have been so far translated. View quote
Julian Jaynes
Subjective conscious mind is an analog of what is called the real world. View quote
Julian Jaynes
In a sense, we have become our own gods. View quote
Julian Jaynes
The bicameral mind with its controlling gods was evolved as a final stage of the evolution of language. And in this development lies the origin of civilization. View quote
Julian Jaynes
Behavior now must be changed from within the new consciousness rather than from Mosaic laws carving behavior from without. Sin and desire are now within conscious desire and conscious contrition, rather than in the external behaviors of the decalogue and the penances of temple sacrifice and community punishment. The divine kingdom to be regained is psychological not physical. It is metaphorical not literal. It is "within" not in extenso. (Julian Jaynes)