Our Current Form of Mental Organization
So why do I call it our form of mind organization? I have covered this earlier on how the written evidence of earlier civilizations shows a different mentality than ours. This was done to get you ready and to back up the fact that these civilizations did in fact exist.
I tell you this, because according to the cuneiform tablets those earlier civilizations had very different mental structures and methods of functioning. That didn’t make them inferior to us today, just different.
We are not to judge them, because it worked for them! Today; however, we have a very different form of mental structure in that we have a form of consciousness we use to navigate our current dispensation.
So let me digress a little as we delve into how this current form of mental structure most likely came about as far as we know. Al we have are the archaeological findings which we have to decipher, and it’s like reading a code that no longer used, or even not completely understood.
Since archaeologist have been able to read and understand as best they can about a civilization that’s no longer here. The best they can do is attempt form opinions from the cuneiform tablets as to what the lives of the people that lived during those earlier times was actually like.
Modern Day Consciousness
The one thing that seems to be clear is that the people who lived back in those times did not have the ability to introspect. Let me first explain what introspection is. This is something that all modern day people do just about every moment of every day.
In approximately 5000 B.C. from what we can tell people didn’t have that ability. Let me explain, Introspection is when you think of something you are planning to do next, and weather it makes sense to do it, or should you choose another action. You have the ability to see different out-comes and choose which to follow.
Remembering that in the previous chapter of this dissertation I said that the people were controlled by their hallucinated gods. That they would receive an auditory hallucination as a command to do this or that behavior.
And I also said that much of these behaviors were driven by hypostatic feelings emanating from their bodies. Such was the mental structure of the peoples back then evidenced in the early writings like the Iliad.
How did the Modern Mentality come about?
What has been ascertained? Remember that all we have to go on are the old writings that were left behind by these early civilizations. And sometimes it’s not exactly clear. But here is what is believed to be the case.
Since civilizations were growing and the peoples from diverse groups were coming in contact with one another, the complexities of these interactions were much greater. The old mental structure just couldn’t keep up.
Thus the need for a better mental structure, you could compare this to a computers operating system. Obviously the computers today have much improved operating systems that they had previously.
But that explanation isn’t really complete, I need make my case in a much more substantive way.
The Development of Language as an Operating System
To be continued…
