The Secret History of the World, Mark Booth
Jun 8, 2021 01:00 PM
Jaynes claim is that prior to achieving the conscious state we currently enjoy, thoughts and inspirations were felt to be the whisperings of Gods and other beings outside the person, there was no introspection, the world was filled with all sorts of beings acting on and speaking to the human inhabitant. So when in Greek myth the hero is told what to do by a god or confronts a god or goddess or demon, it is all to be taken literally. That state of mind can be compared with schizophrenia: “a schizophrenic [is] someone who cannot distinguish between externally and internally generated images and sounds” observes Booth on page 210. But then on that same page he finally says something critical of Jaynes when he says of his analysis:
The kings of Sumeria and heroes of Greece are depicted by him as being, in effect, beset by delusions. In the ancient view, by contrast, these were not, of course, mere delusions but independent, living beings.
Leaving that aside, Booth then rightly asks on page 211 how were sophisticated civilizations conceived, created and managed in those times? His concluding observation is:
If the ancient world-view was a delusion, it had to have been a massive, almost infinitely complex and sophisticated delusion.
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