by me, Kerry Burgess, posted by me: 9:37 AM September 12, 2023
a/
by me, Kerry Burgess, 09/12/2023
"This is it"
20 years slaving fruitlessly over this computer trying to find what I know must be there
20 years, finding something, happening to me, trivial details forming in my mind, clutching at for answers of how to use it and This Is It
b/
This is it, how do I use it, and it won't let me control it, it controls me, and This Is It
c/
20 years, searching for answers to 'why' and now after 20 years, finally, the day comes, This Is It
by me, Kerry Burgess, posted by me: 11:43 AM September 12, 2023
I know why those UFO-worshippers are so worked up in their UFO-porno frenzy:
Because of all the tv-shows cancelled before closure
Colony
The Crossing
Just a couple I can think of off-hand, I've seen several more scanning through Amazon
They never got closure
From 9/9/1908 ( ) To 9/12/2023 ( ) is 42006 days
42006 = 21003 + 21003
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 5/5/2023 ( premiere Apple-tv streaming-video serial "Silo" ) is 21003 days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_P._Lahm
Frank P. Lahm
From Wikipedia
Frank Purdy Lahm (November 17, 1877 – July 7, 1963) was an American aviation pioneer, the "nation's first military aviator", and a general officer in the United States Army Air Corps and Army Air Forces.
Aviation duties with the Signal Corps
On September 9, 1908, the Wright Brothers brought their 1908 Wright Flyer at Fort Myer for acceptance trials, and on its second flight Lahm accompanied Orville as a passenger, the first U.S. military officer to fly in a powered airplane
Stargate (1994)
(from internet transcript)
[Only one man in the front row remains. He awkwardly stands. Daniel steps off the podium to address him directly.]
DANIEL
I-I mean, I've been able to show a fully developed writing systems appeared in the first two dynasties, you know, which you know, almost as if it was based on an even earlier prototype.
[Catherine backs away. Daniel and the lone remaining man look around the now empty room.]
DANIEL
Is there a lunch or something that everybody...?
EXT—HOTEL ENTRANCE, DAY
[Rain pours down as Daniel, carrying two large suitcases, exits the hotel. He pulls his jacket's hood over his head to provide some protection and tries to cover his one suitcase with his coat. An uniformed man with an umbrella approaches from a car parked just outside the hotel.]
KAWALSKI
Doctor Jackson?
DANIEL
What? Yes?
KAWALSKI
Someone wants to speak with you.
INT—CAR
[Catherine flips through a file, which includes a diploma from UCLA, as the officer continues to talk to Daniel.]
DANIEL
The Air Force? What's this? What is this?
by me, Kerry Burgess, 12/02/2023 07:50 AM (and the point of this note, the content formed around it, including other observations and thoughts by me while working on it for posting)
"Wool" book 1 of the "Silo" series, by Hugh Howey, author
Chapter 37
"This is it," Walker said to himself, seeing what was happening, what he had started. He watched his friends and coworkers get all riled up, barking at the empty air for answers, their passions stirred. "This it," he said again, and he could feel it brewing, ready to burst out. "Thisisit, thisisit - "
Courtnee, still hovering over him, tending to him like he was an invalid, held his wrist with those delicatee hands of hers.
"What is it?" she asked. She waved down the others so she could hear. She leaned close to Walker. "Walk, tell me, what is it? What is this? What're you trying to say?"
"This is how it starts," he whispered, the room quiet once more. He looked up at all the faces, scanned them, seeing in their fury, in all the exploded taboos, that he was right to worry.
"This is how the uprising begins..."
by me, Kerry Burgess, 09/13/2023 11:51 AM
This Is It
by me, Kerry Burgess, 09/13/2023 12:02 PM
This Is It.
by me, Kerry Burgess, posted by me: 10:01 AM Sep 14, 2023
This is it.
by me, Kerry Burgess, posted by me: 6:32 PM Sep 16, 2023
f/
Bird Box: Barcelona (2023)
Netflix -36:45
Isabel: I guess it's time to go. (subtitles: I guess this is it.)
Roberto: I want to see you one last time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(TV_series)
Silo (TV series)
From Wikipedia
Silo is an American science fiction dystopian drama television series created by Graham Yost based on the series of novels of the same name by author Hugh Howey. Set in a dystopian future where a community exists in a giant underground silo comprising 144 levels, it stars Rebecca Ferguson as an engineer who becomes embroiled in the mysteries of its past and present.
In June 2023, the series was renewed for a second season.
Original release
Network: Apple TV+
Release: May 5, 2023 – present
by me, Kerry Burgess, 12/02/2023 07:00 AM
"Wool" book 1 of the "Silo" series, by Hugh Howey, author
Chapter 36
Juliette smiled, set her teeth, and yanked back ferociously.
by me, Kerry Burgess, Pacific-time USA 12/02/2023 9:55 PM (3 hours behind NYC time)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30057116/
IMDb
Saturday Night Live
S49.E6
Emma Stone/Noah Kahan
Episode aired Dec 2, 2023
Host Emma Stone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrapersonal_communication
Intrapersonal communication
From Wikipedia
Intrapersonal communication (also known as autocommunication or inner speech) is communication with oneself or self-to-self communication. Examples are thinking to oneself "I'll do better next time" after having made a mistake or imagining a conversation with one's boss in preparation for leaving work early. It is often understood as an exchange of messages in which the sender and the receiver is the same person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrapersonal_communication
Intrapersonal communication
From Wikipedia
Intrapersonal communication encompasses a great variety of phenomena. A central type happens purely internally as an exchange within one's mind.
by me, Kerry Burgess, 12/02/2023 08:30 AM
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"
by Julian Jaynes, author
page 256 of 496, Amazon Kindle edition
Let us examine more closely what would have happened at the beginning of the breakdown of the bicameral mind. In I.4, we found that the psychological cuing of an hallucinated voice, whether in bicameral man or in a contemporary schizophrenic, is the stress of some decision or conflict. Now, as the voices of the gods became more inadequate and suppressed during this social chaos, we may suppose that the amount of that stress necessary to occasion an hallucinated voice would be raised.
It is quite likely, then, that as the bicameral organization of mind began to diminish, the decision-stress in novel situations would be much greater than previously, and both the degree and duration of that stress would have to become progressively more intense before the hallucination of a god would occur.
by me, Kerry Burgess, 12/02/2023 08:30 AM
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"
by Julian Jaynes, author
page 258 of 496, Amazon Kindle edition
The evidence that we are on the right track in these suppositions can be found in the Iliad itself. At the very beginning, Agamemnon, king of men but slave of gods, is told by his voices to take the fair-cheeked Briseis away from Achilles, who had captured her. As he does so, the response of Achilles begins in his 'etor', or what I suggest is a cramp in his guts, where he is in conflict or put into two parts (mermerizo) whether to obey his 'thumos', the immediate internal sensations of anger, and kill the pre-emptory king or not. It is only after this vacillating interval of increasing belly sensations and surges of blood, as Achilles is drawing his mighty sword, that the stress has become sufficient to hallucinate the dreadfully gleaming goddess Athene who then takes over control of the action and tells Achilles what to do.
by me, Kerry Burgess, 12/02/2023 8:34 PM (11:34 PM NYC time)
IMDb
Arrival
Quotes
Louise Banks: But now I'm not so sure I believe in beginnings and endings. There are days that define your story beyond your life. Like the day they arrived.
IMDb
Arrival
Quotes
Ian Donnelly: [narrating] Like their ship or their bodies, their written language has no forward or backward direction. Linguists call this "nonlinear orthography," which raises the question, "Is this how they think?"
IMDb
Arrival
Quotes
Louise Banks: The weapon is their language. They gave it all to us. Do you understand what that means?
Colonel Weber: So we can learn heptapod. If we survive.
Louise Banks: If you learn it, when you really learn it, you begin to perceive time the way that they do. So you can see what's to come. But time, it isn't the same for them. It's non-linear.
From 11/9/2017 ( ) To 12/2/2023 ( Saturday ) is 2214 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 11/25/1971 ( ) is 2214 days
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067851/releaseinfo/
IMDb
This Is It
Release info
United States November 25, 1971 (New York City, New York)
From 2/19/1951 ( from The Daily Princetonian publication, Princeton University: Pacific War Developed Landing Tactics; Marine Record Seen As Hope For Future ) To 3/20/2009 ( premiere USA film "Knowing" & premiere US TV series episode "Battlestar Galactica"::series finale episode "Daybreak" ) is 21214 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 12/2/2023 ( Saturday ) is 21214 days
https://theprince.princeton.edu/princetonperiodicals/?a=d&d=Princetonian19510219-01.2.15&e=-------en-20--81-byDA-txt-txIN-------
Princeton University
Daily Princetonian, Volume 75, Number 28, 19 February 1951
Pacific War Developed Landing Tactics; Marine Record Seen As Hope For Future
This is a good book to look over, and gets better the grimmer world conditions appear and the more confused and fouled up they become on the surface. This book gives reason for confidence and courage by showing that the American people can meet forbidding, nearly impossible situations, make a landing, secure a hair-hung and breezeshaken beachhead, and slowly carve out victory.
From 7/3/1973 ( premiere USA film "Oklahoma Crude" ) To 12/2/2023 ( ) is 18414 days
18414 = 9207 + 9207
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 1/17/1991 ( Operation Desert Storm begins AND from the thoughts in my conscious mind, coinciding with United States of America Veterans Affairs hospital psychiatric doctor medical drugs: the date of record of my US Navy Medal of Honor as Kerry Wayne Burgess chief warrant officer United States Marine Corps circa 1991 officially the United States Apache attack helicopter pilot ) is 9207 days
from my private journal, as me, Kerry Burgess, typed after being released from the USA Veterans Affairs psychiatric hospital enduring many months sitting in a grungy two-computer room in a homeless shelter on the waterfront in downtown Seattle:
From: Kerry Burgess {me}
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 11:04 AM
To: Kerry Burgess {me}
Subject: Re: Journal May 21, 2006
Kerry Burgess wrote:
I think it was my first thought after waking up this morning that I used to date Julia Roberts a long time ago.
I also have these unexplained thoughts that I was a fighter pilot in the U.S. military, although I'm not sure which service, but I may have been in two different branches over time. I am also confused about thoughts that I may have been a helicopter pilot. What's next? A space shuttle pilot? Seems like a lot for someone that is only 40. And, while I am not sure when this divergence happened, I am reasonably certain it was before I turned 33. So I must have been a pretty busy guy. Especially because I have thoughts that I was some kind of mathmetician too. I have these thoughts too that I was captured by enemy forces at some point and tortured while in captivity.
by me, Kerry Burgess, excerpts from my private journal: 9/26/2006 3:06 PM
As I was trying to go to sleep last night, I had a thought that I have a doctorate in computer science from Princeton.
and I had thoughts that I studied music as well at Princeton.
from my private journal, as me, Kerry Burgess, typed after being released from the USA Veterans Affairs psychiatric hospital enduring many months sitting in a grungy two-computer room in a homeless shelter on the waterfront in downtown Seattle:
by me, Kerry Burgess, excerpts from my private journals: 9/28/2006 7:13 PM
This sounds very interesting. In my memory of taking Physics my Senior year at Ashdown, I remember being very interested in the class, but we didn’t cover such an interesting topic.
http://www.princeton.edu/main/about/present/
Ayan Chatterjee (left) and Mark Daly measure piano strings as part of a lab project for professor Pierre Piroué's freshman seminar on "Sound, Music and ... Physics."
9/28/2006 7:37 PM
I think I even have memories of the graduate degree process. I am not sure of the terms to describe the process.
9/28/2006 7:47 PM
I actually do remember... something... I can’t explain it. It feels that I am holding an unmarked, undistinguishable book that I don’t know the name of or the contents but I know I have read it already.
9/28/2006 8:34 PM
A few minutes ago I started thinking that maybe I started at Princeton University in 1972. I would have been 13 at the time as Thomas Ray. I remember that Kerry Burgess started first grade in 1972. But then I decided that I probably started Princeton earlier than 1972 and maybe 1972 was the year I completed my first major degree. Or 1972 doesn’t really mean anything in particular to Thomas Ray; rather it is there for continuity sake for the life of Kerry Burgess.
by me, Kerry Burgess, posted by me: H.V.O.M at 3:06 AM Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Salesman
Also, "Salesman." I saw that in a dream while sleeping recently. I saw myself going through an induction process in the United States Marine Corps and I woke up understanding that I was dreaming of my actual experience in 1990. I saw a document that indicated I was being inducted to the United States Marine Corps with the officer grade of Chief Warrant Officer 2. I saw in the dream another document associated with my induction and that document indicated I had been assigned the informal name "Salesman."
by me, Kerry Burgess, 12/02/2023 6:25 PM
"Wool" book 1 of the "Silo" series, by Hugh Howey, author
Chapter 38
Most of the yelling, it seemed, was coming from Bernard. The head of IT stood outside the security gates and was barking at one tech after the other
Lukas opened his mouth to say something but his boss with fixated less on him and more on what was in his hands.
"This is it?" Bernard asked, snatching the box from him.
"It - "
"Everything that greaser owned fits in this little damn box?" Bernard tugged the flaps open. "Is this everything?"
"Uh...that's what I was given," Lukas stammered. "Marsh said - "
"Yeah, the deputy wired about his cramps. I swear, the Pact should stipulate an age limit for their kind.
by me, Kerry Burgess, 7:44 PM 12/02/2023 (10:44 PM New York City)
Started following Saturday Night Live again last month
Tonight is a new episode following the Thanksgiving holiday. Last Saturday was a rebroadcast
The Saturday before that was a new episode with Jason Momoa and he was fairly entertaining. I think his career, in my estimation, as actor was salvaged by his role I've watched in season 1 of the Apple-tv streaming-video serial "See". Haven't started on season 2. Undecided if I will watch it and the final season 3. Just becomes more work for me.
Anyway, that was Novembeer 18th. The previous new episode was Nov. 11th. Don't know that guys name. I saw advertisements for his role starring in the remakes of "Willy Wonka"
On the 18th, the episode of SNL ended and I was suddenly urged to watch an episode of The Expanse on Amazon Prime
This was precisely seven days after the new SNL episode and its Weekend Update segment on the 11th.
The Expanse
"Paradigm Shift"
TV-series season 2, episode 6, 03/01/2017
Chrisjen Avasarala, UN Secretary-General: You have a different theory about Eros?
Dr. Michael Iturbi: Different, yeah. More like radical.
Avasarala: This is not a time to keep these things to yourself.
Iturbi: The problem with Colonel Janus, as a scientist, I mean, his personality disorders are obvious, but his problem is that he lacks imagination.
Avasarala: [Chuckles.]
Iturbi: It's true. He can only conceive the world in terms of things he's already seen.
Avasarala: His job is to explain science to politicians. In that regard, it's a useful skill.
Iturbi: But it's of no use here. Eros Station was under quarantine, the result of a mysterious bio-weapon unleashed by Mars, which Mars believes was unleashed by us, which we did not. Did we?
Avasarala: We did not.
Iturbi: Ah, I never doubted that for a moment. Suddenly, Eros, the entire asteroid, moves - In a way that practically defies every single known law of physics. Now, Janus thinks that means there's a new Martian weapon, some staggering breakthrough on an incredible scale of a technology they've been pursuing utterly unsuccessfully for years. But ask yourself this question Does it make any sense at all that Mars would want to test their ground-breaking technology in a bio-hazard zone, that they themselves created?
Avasarala: I suppose not.
Iturbi: So what if this bio-weapon isn't a bio-weapon after all? What if it is responsible in some way we can't yet fully understand, for Eros moving? I believe Eros was infected by an entirely new order of technology, something from somewhere else, somewhere beyond the reach of our species. I believe the Eros incident was our first contact with alien life.
Chrisjen Avasarala, UN Secretary-General: I have a file with 900 pages of analyses and contingency plans for war with Mars, including 14 different scenarios about what to do if they develop an unexpected new technology. My file for what to do if an advanced alien species comes calling. It's 3 pages long, and it begins with "Step one: find God".
Stargate (1994)
(from internet transcript)
DANIEL
Now, something happened—where is it—back on Earth. A rebellion or uprising, and the Stargate was buried there.
[Another picture shows the uprising.]
FLASHBACK
[The people carry the bodies of the jackal headed guards, raising their weapon-filled arms.]
END FLASHBACK
INT—CAVE
DANIEL
Fearful of a rebellion here, Ra outlawed reading and writing. He didn't want the people to remember the truth.
[Kawalski comes back around the corner from where he'd been exploring another part of the cave.]
KAWALSKI
Jackson? I think you'd better take a look at this.
[Daniel and O'Neil follow Kawalski where Brown and Skaara are. A round stone, similar to the center of the Earth Stargate cover stone, is imbedded in the wall.]
DANIEL
That's it! That's what we're looking for! They must've hidden it here in hopes that one day the 'gate on Earth could be reopened. I knew they'd have it written down someplace.
From 12/18/1936 ( ) To 10/28/1994 ( premiere USA film "Stargate" ) is 21133 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 9/12/2023 ( by me, Kerry Burgess ) is 21133 days
From 11/28/1964 ( premiere USA TV series episode "The Outer Limits"::"The Inheritors - Part 2" ) To 9/12/2023 ( ) is 21472 days
21472 = 10736 + 10736
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 3/26/1995 ( premiere USA TV series "The Outer Limits" ) is 10736 days
https://theprince.princeton.edu/princetonperiodicals/?a=d&d=Princetonian19361218-01.2.33&e=-------en-20--81-byDA-txt-txIN-------
Princeton University
Daily Princetonian, Volume 59, Number 161, 18 December 1936
"Campus Wire" Of Princeton Professor In Use Before Famed Morse Telegraph
excerpts
https://siarchives.si.edu/oldsite/siarchives-old/history/jhp/joseph20.htm
Joseph Henry: Inventor of the Telegraph?
By David Hochfelder
PhD Candidate, Case Western Reserve University
Morse seized upon three particulars in Henry's 1831 paper to discredit his competence and integrity. First, Morse claimed that the anomalous result Henry had obtained, that magnetic force increased with wire length, demonstrated that Henry was either a bumbling experimenter or an incompetent theoretician.
excerpts
https://siarchives.si.edu/oldsite/siarchives-old/history/jhp/joseph20.htm
Joseph Henry: Inventor of the Telegraph?
By David Hochfelder
PhD Candidate, Case Western Reserve University
Henry chose to respond in a more dignified fashion. Claiming that Morse's assertions called into question his character and his scientific ability, and therefore his fitness to serve as the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, he asked the institution's Board of Regents to exonerate him. They did so in a series of brief resolutions and allowed him to attach a statement outlining his contributions to electromagnetism. Henry was not reticent about his accomplishments, but the difference in tone between the two pieces is quite striking. While Morse's "Defence" was polemical, bitter, and edgy, Henry's statement was measured, calm, and confident.
Conclusion. We are now in a position to return to the question posed at the beginning of this paper: Was Joseph Henry the inventor of the telegraph? A reasonable answer to this deceptively simple question is that Henry did not invent the telegraph, but that its invention would have been delayed for many years, if not been impossible, without him.
Henry never claimed to have invented a telegraph. In fact, he was quite clear in his depositions and other public statements that he did not concern himself with reducing his scientific discoveries to practice. Here Henry was perhaps conscious of the wide gulf separating a lecture-hall demonstration from a commercial communications system, between ringing a bell through a mile of wire and actually sending messages reliably between two distant cities. Furthermore, had he regarded himself as an inventor of a telegraph, he would not have provided Morse with valuable technical assistance and public endorsements between 1839 and 1842.
However, Henry did insist quite strongly and correctly that he discovered the principles upon which telegraphy rested, and that he demonstrated how they could be applied. His research and apparatus--his quantity and intensity magnets, and his relay--served as the basis for much of Morse's machinery. All that Henry required from Morse was an acknowledgment of his scientific achievements and his willingness to share them freely. This the inventor could not do without risking the invalidation of key claims in his patents.
From 2/15/2001 ( premiere USA TV "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?") To 9/12/2023 ( by me, Kerry Burgess ) is 8244 days
8244 = 4122 + 4122
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 2/14/1977 ( from Princeton Weekly Bulletin publication, Princeton University: New Book By Jaynes On Origin Of Consciousness Is Sure To Spark Controversy ) is 4122 days
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"
by Julian Jaynes, author
page 312 of 496
While the Old Testament, even as it is hedged with great historical problems of accuracy, still remains the richest source of our knowledge of what the transition period was like. It is essentially the story of the loss of the bicameral mind, the slow retreat into silence of the remaining elohim, the confusion and tragic violence which ensue, and the search for them again in the vain among its prophets until a substitute is found in right action.
But the mind is still haunted with its old subconscious ways; it broods on lost authorities; and the yearning, the deep and hollow yearning for divine volition and service is still with us.
From 9/23/1939 ( Sigmund Freud dead ) To 1/5/1951 ( from The Daily Princetonian publication, Princeton University: Acceleration Program Ready, Dodds States ) is 4122 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 2/14/1977 ( ) is 4122 days
From 12/19/1956 ( from The Daily Princetonian publication, Princeton University: 'Alumni Rebellion' At Harvard Caused By Oppenheimer Bid Grads Rap Lecture Offer, Says Ivy ) To 4/2/1968 ( premiere US film "2001: A Space Odyssey" ) is 4122 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 2/14/1977 ( ) is 4122 days
From 11/1/1952 ( Ivy Mike - the first hydrogen bomb is test detonated by the United States of America ) To 2/14/1964 ( premiere USA TV series episode "The Twilight Zone"::"From Agnes - with Love" ) is 4122 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 2/14/1977 ( ) is 4122 days
From 5/21/1969 ( from the thoughts in my conscious mind, coinciding with United States of America Veterans Affairs hospital psychiatric doctor medical drugs: the Princeton University doctor of medicine degree graduation of my biological brother Dr Thomas Reagan MD and in 1973 the law-doctorate graduate of University of Oxford, England ) To 2/14/1977 ( ) is 2826 days
2826 = 1413 + 1413
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 9/15/1969 ( premiere USA TV series "My World and Welcome to It" ) is 1413 days
From 7/20/1969 ( my biological brother Thomas Reagan the US Navy Commander circa 1969 was United States Apollo 11 Eagle spacecraft US Navy astronaut landing and walking on the planet Earth's moon ) To 2/14/1977 ( ) is 2766 days
2766 = 1382 + 1384
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) to 8/15/1969 ( Woodstock begins ) is 1382 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) to 8/17/1969 ( from the New York Daily News newspaper: Hippies Mired in a Sea of Mud ) is 1384 days
https://theprince.princeton.edu/princetonperiodicals/?a=d&d=WeeklyBulletin19770214-01.2.7&e=-------en-20--81-byDA-txt-txIN-------
Princeton University
Princeton Weekly Bulletin, Volume 66, Number 16, 14 February 1977
New Book By Jaynes On Origin Of Consciousness Is Sure To Spark Controversy
Julian Jaynes was seven years old when he first became conscious of the problem of consciousness. The young Jaynes was standing in the yard of his home near Boston, staring at a forsythia bush, when "it suddenly dawned on me that I could never know if another person, looking at the same bush, also saw the flower as yellow, even though he used the word." Jaynes was conscious of his consciousness of yellow, and that it might be different from someone else's.
Eventually Jaynes became a psychologist and has devoted most of his career to the question of consciousness. Now, some 46 years after his metaphysical encounter with the forsythia bush, Houghton Mifflin has published a book by Jaynes on The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. It is expected to provoke controversy not only in the field of psychology but in anthropology, archeology, philosophy, religion, and classical literature and history. Reviewers are calling Jaynes's "bold" and "revolutionary" hypothesis the "Big Bang Theory of consciousness," and "a total rewrite of history and psychology."
A member of the psychology department since 1964, Jaynes bases his argument on recent laboratory studies of the brain, archeological evidence, and a re-examination of ancient literature and history. He shows how the people of such early civilizations as in Mesopotamia and Egypt could not "think" as we do today, and were therefore not "conscious" in the sense that we would understand. Instead of solving a problem by reasoning through it, they were directed by auditory hallucinations
excerpts
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"
by Julian Jaynes, author
The Bicameral Mind
The Authority of Sound
page 93 of 496, Amazon Kindle version
That he alone hears the voices is not of much concern. Sometimes he feels he has been honored by this gift, singled out by divine forces, elected and glorified, and this even when the voice reproaches him bitterly, even when it is leading him to death. He is somehow face to face with elemental auditory powers, more real than wind or rain or fire, powers that deride and threaten and console, powers that he cannot step back from and see objectively.
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 12:36 AM Pacific-time USA Sunday 12/03/2023
