The voices in your head.

[Audley Strange]

(1)

(2) The sky.

So... When I perceive the image (1) or the actual thing that represents it, or any other manner of actual physical entities there is no voice that says to me "sky" I might comment to myself that "that sky is lovely", upon apprehension of it, but in and of itself it is not neccessary for the internal narrator (which we call "I" I assume) to comment.

However when I perceive the symbols of (2) even though I've had those symbols ingrained into me from the very start, even though I am still just apprehending photons arranged in a manner to conceptualise, the narrator is automatic is saying "sky". We call that "reading".

With me so far?

So there was a point when most people could not read or write whatsover which means that the ego/self/I developed it's responses to the physical world rather than the literary one which we tend to inhabit since language is part of our physical landscape as well as our interior one.

I think it worth considering that the first person narratives are a late development in writing, yet stories of God and Legends in the third party are common and almost fundamental to the development of it as a stable form of communication. Even the Pentateuch, said to have been written by Moses, refers to him in the third Person. Though it does make an interesting point about "I am that I am." Which gets me somewhere approaching a point.

I've read people claim that they could "hear the voice of god" in the bible. And it makes me wonder that when people thousands of years ago were taught the keys to understanding literature, if it was not ritualised in such a way that the internal voice that "reads" (which remember is uncommon) became a revelation. Perhaps almost like waking the ego from a slumber or something, and since people were not used to that voice, thought it the voice of God because they were told it was such?

Is God a primitive concept of the Literary self?

[FBM]

Not sure on this. Did the Hebrews have a writing system before a concept of God? The OT is a collection of oral traditions written down much later, aren't they? And if a god-concept and the associated soteriological concerns pre-existed literacy, I"m not sure of the connection.

[Rum]

I have gone through the same thinking myself from time to time. Perception without language is still perception but it is very unclear what language brings to it. In humans it seems to be something highly significant. Without it - well we would have very little of the modern world if any of it.

I'm not sure about the 'voice of god', though of course 'in the beginning was the word'...so maybe!

[Audley Strange]

Not sure on this. Did the Hebrews have a writing system before a concept of God? The OT is a collection of oral traditions written down much later, aren't they? And if a god-concept and the associated soteriological concerns pre-existed literacy, I"m not sure of the connection.

The hebrew alphabet is a later symbol system (though the cabalists say it was divinely inspired by transmission by metatron). You are correct of course about the oral Torah and thus the concept of God, but the concept of God was not in itself Hebrew. For example the Egyptian Atum's creative shenanigans bears directly upon that creation myth. The Sumerians and the Egyptians were symbolising them and making mystical cults out of literacy before those doofi wandered out into the desert but like the Hebrews and like the mystics of all ages and places, they consider language, especially written language infused with magical properties.

And the point I was making was that hearing an elder speak the words of god may not be like "hearing" the voice of god that came from being chosen to be taught the symbols that allowed the "reader" to hear that voice. We're talking about a radically innovative technology at the time.

[Atheist-Lite]

You can get lost in speculation. Suffice to say people don't know much. There would be no comparison with the mindset of today so God as a literary device is unlikely. The series Inside The Medieval Mind (available on Youtube http://tinyurl.com/medievalmind ) is a great documentary series to show how a few hundred years has shaped our thinking, so a few thousand? Anyone's guess...?

[JimC]

Reading may well have caused a real shift in human consciousness, and reading plus religion may have altered the revelatory component of religious experience.

However, shamanistic ritual and the like, certainly pre-literate, had gods or spirits speaking to its practitioners. Some undoubtedly was a con-job by priests and shamans (gotta keep the customer satisfied), but by all accounts, there were many who took the internal dialogue of human consciousness as the Other speaking to them with purpose. And Purpose is something hominids are predisposed by selection to look for; the hungry tiger is indeed an active agent, with a very real agenda. So, why not that thunderstorm, or something very like a voice whispering in my ear...

Very interesting topic, Audley...

[Audley Strange]

Exactly I'm talking roughly about 6000 years ago not a few hundred. From what I've gleaned, writing was considered magic, that those who were in charge of literacy were the priesthood. Initiates were ritualised and the technology was earth shatteringly novel. Ink scratches on paper could be transfered across distance and time without signal degradation. So I have no problem in considering that the ego was different for "readers" than the illiterate, especially if we consider the techniques they were taught and how they were taught, which was within the setting of mystery cults.

"When you read the symbols you hear the voice of God." To unsophisticated egos I could see that being quite potent.

[Audley Strange]

Reading may well have caused a real shift in human consciousness, and reading plus religion may have altered the revelatory component of religious experience.

However, shamanistic ritual and the like, certainly pre-literate, had gods or spirits speaking to its practitioners. Some undoubtedly was a con-job by priests and shamans (gotta keep the customer satisfied), but by all accounts, there were many who took the internal dialogue of human consciousness as the Other speaking to them with purpose. And Purpose is something hominids are predisposed by selection to look for; the hungry tiger is indeed an active agent, with a very real agenda. So, why not that thunderstorm, or something very like a voice whispering in my ear...

Very interesting topic, Audley...

Cheers. I agree that shamanistic ritual had goes and spirits and it's own "chemical" technologies, but it also had it's own symbols, which may not have been ink lines representing phonetic hoots, but such things as seasons and omens which were themselves a set of complex correspondences with internal processes.

Now here's a thing, now you mention that, shamanism seems to personify the natural. To anthropomorphise (more or less) the intelligences of animals etc. I don't think it hard to train someone to compartmentalize different "voices." Obviously some people who have mental issues like serious abuse trauma may experience these internal conversations as different voices. So if you consider that perhaps shaman (as some literature claims) were Holy fools, perhaps they were either inculcated to live in some kind of schizoid state through trauma ritual (which are still used in mysticism today) or were chosen from the mentally ill in the first place.

Most religious cultures consider that kind of transfer of language/knowledge a gift from supernatural creatures (Prometheus, Thoth, Metatron, The Serpent, etc) and dangerous in the wrong hands, so even then I think they knew they were dealing with something very very potent technology.

[GrahamH]

Language predates writing by many generations. I don't see why an inner voice should be dependent on reading. The difference between the wired "sky" and looking at the sky is that one is linguistic and the other is not.

[Audley Strange]

Language predates writing by many generations. I don't see why an inner voice should be dependent on reading. The difference between the wired "sky" and looking at the sky is that one is linguistic and the other is not.

Well obviously. I wasn't saying dependent upon, but developed by and possibly manipulated to be recognised not as self. Well obviously.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Exactly I'm talking roughly about 6000 years ago not a few hundred. From what I've gleaned, writing was considered magic, that those who were in charge of literacy were the priesthood.

It was magic. Write something down. Send it to the next town, on the other side of the mountain. Your exact words could be read out loud, almost as if you were there. Telecommunications, the early days.

[Audley Strange]

Exactly I'm talking roughly about 6000 years ago not a few hundred. From what I've gleaned, writing was considered magic, that those who were in charge of literacy were the priesthood.

It was magic. Write something down. Send it to the next town, on the other side of the mountain. Your exact words could be read out loud, almost as if you were there. Telecommunications, the early days.

[orpheus]

Somewhat different, but in the same territory, is Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Fascinating - truly fascinating. Probably bullshit, but entirely worthwhile reading.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

Just as a point of interest; I think I remember an edition of QI where it was revealed that the ability to read without moving the mouth or reading silently is a pretty recent development.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Just as a point of interest; I think I remember an edition of QI where it was revealed that the ability to read without moving the mouth or reading silently is a pretty recent development.

It's also unimportant.