Julian Jaynes Society Discussion Forum: Exploring Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind Theory since 1997

I am new with tons of questions.

I could write for hours but would like to simply ask if anyone has discussed the "Oracles at Delphi" and how over time they went further and further away from reality and how relates to politicians today. There were stages the Oracles went through because mystically bound so government also not being rooted in reality should in theory run the same course as the Oracles and slowely go completely insane. When I look at politics in America I see the "collective" are "attacking" everyday people that are "morally sound". This looks completely insane to me.

The final phase of the Oracles ended with them siding with the attackers and the people lost trust. So when In America see the exact same "attack" mentality. Morally sound people with flags are attacked, who own business are attacked , and just not for believing in social science or global warming you are attacked. Feelings can not be deemed moral. So the "collective" have no moral high ground to say their feelings are "moral" and guilt or coerce others to "feel" as they do or be attacked and today even "forced" into some social science "education" course to teach you how to feel.

Social sciences to me were the politicians afraid to make the honest rational decision which is they are not as needed as they once thought. Social science is like the Oracle taking drugs and making rituals to induce some sort of trance that will guide them.
I see the world has come full circle. The politicians are the craziest in society. Believe social science is craziest invention to date. Are we conscious yet? Or are there only a few conscious individuals ever at a time and consciousness may have been discovered but it has never been fully implemented into society. So much of today's world would have been created possible just like the pyramids, not by conscious individuals? Still the discover of "self" has never been excepted as a brilliant creation on how it can help us live in limitless size societies. As if 70,000 of collective evolution just will not allow people to except that "self" and thinking of "self" is not evil immoral or wrong. So we may have discovered "self" with the evolution of conscious but we never had enough conscious people to put the great creation of "self" and discovery of consciousness a real chance. They still are not even willing to think about "self" as a guide in most societies. I think "self" may be lost again at this pace. My children may understand but be alone in the future with this knowledge way they are hiding reality today.

You're covering a lot of different topics... just to touch on your main idea, I think the comparison of oracles with modern politicians may be a bit of stretch, but I see what you are getting at. Politically, I think we've seen many of these issues before, and in my view the pendulum kind of swings back and forth from one end of the collectivism vs. individualism spectrum to the other.

One can definitely view the impulse toward more totalitarian type government control in individuals or entire cultures as a vestige of bicameralism - a longing for external guidance where political institutions replace the gods. Some politicians have learned for their own political gain to exploit the tendency that some have to avoid conscious thinking and absolve themselves personal responsibility.

It is interesting to think about what a future highly conscious society might look like.

In this vein, Dr. Stefan Schindler, Professor of Philosophy at LaSalle University, is proposing that we can construct a world that returns to a bicameral state of mind.
His major opus is laid out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17Fs5QgBYI8

Basically, he decries the individualism of modern society, where everyone has their own goals, free will, and morality. He spends half the lecture explaining Julian Jaynes' theory, (rather well, I must say), and lauds the time in human history when there was a unitary mindset guiding human action, at least within a society. He thinks that developing a collective consciousness by getting rid of individual consciousness can usher in a new age where everyone is in agreement on political, social, economic, environmental, and religious issues.

Apart from criticizing his utopian vision of raising a generation of bicameral children on practical, ethical, and moral grounds, I would say that he is trying to invent a new global religion where the gods are managers of society, speaking directly to each and every person on the planet. In a way, this vision has strains of communism, where the proletariat develops a unitary consciousness, is in total agreement of how society is to operate, and there are no dissenting voices.