Hold tight, horizon minds
It’s writing its name in the sky
It’s paradise
We fade away into the night
Beverly Hills, nuclear winter
What should we wear and who’s for dinner?
In the summer, for the summer
Hold tight, our love will fade out
It’s writing its name in the sky
And I’ll stop and stare
We’ll fade away into the night
It’s paradise
For now we go under the knife
For one time, oh, some doctors
Divided by night time
TV on the Radio, Forgotten
§ 4.1. Inside/outside (1)
Julian Jaynes’ controversial theory about the origin of consciousness (1.5) openly associates the bicameral structure that allowed the god-king to hear the voices of the gods with current psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia. According to this thesis, it is likely that the separation of the activity of the brain hemispheres led to a series of conditions similar to those found in today’s psychiatric hospitals.
The voices in schizophrenia, says Jaynes,
take any and every relationship to the individual. They converse, threaten, curse, criticize, consult, often in short sentences. They admonish, console, mock, command, or sometimes simply announce everything that’s happening. They yell, whine, sneer, and vary from the slightest whisper to a thunderous shout. Often the voices take on some special peculiarity, such as speaking very slowly, scanning, rhyming, or in rhythms, or even in foreign languages. There may be one particular voice, more often a few voices, and occasionally many. As in bicameral civilizations, they are recognized as gods, angels, devils, enemies, or a particular person or relative.1
If we stick to this thesis, “madness” would have played an essential role in the fabric of pre-modern societies; however, by losing its place, the neurological descendants of the king-god and the prophet would have become our psychotic and mentally ill, individuals unable to tell if their voices are actually within or without.
- Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 89. ↩︎
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