Language → Consciousness
August 12th
Why did no one tell me that before? Why wasn’t this information provided to me in school or college? Why isn’t this information a piece of more common knowledge? Why do mainstream psychologists and biologists and anthropologists ignore this subject and/or actually try very hard to diminish the importance of this discovery? Why is now so clear to me, where before reading this book I was like a blind man? Why, why, why?
I am talking about one of the main points of this book (and that book has many important points and exposures) — that consciousness is a recent development in humankind, and definitely follows the development of language. And since language was developed only about 50,000–40,000 years ago, for thousands of years our ancestors as biological humans had no consciousness. They had recognition and behavior (either learned or ingrained) but no idea of self and no introspective and no basic emotions like guilt. Talented, hardened automata — that is all we once were.
The proof of that is extremely simple. There is no consciousness without words. There cannot be any ideas and thoughts beyond simple needs (hungry, thirsty, angry, scared that are biological in themselves), without the ability to describe them to ourselves or others in words. Try to think about what happened to you this morning, or describe in your mind any recent idea you had — you need words to form a conscious thought in your mind. Words to describe or be a symbol of a place or person or shape or color or emotion or level of significance. Without word s— no consciousness.
And our consciousness changed with our brain, which underwent genetic changes over only last several thousand years. And it seems like this idea cannot be accepted by mainstream science. There seem to be a very strong feeling in mainstream science that we as humankind share the same consciousness as our ancestors from generations ago. And that simply cannot be. Mass movements over the last century show how easy it is to change the consciousness of people for religious or political reasons or for personal gains. Our consciousness is extremely malleable and capricious. And it is not quite ours to have. Seems quite common to accept and take on the consciousness of others (no matter how stupid or brutal it might be) just to avoid thinking for ourselves.
Why think and look for solutions and answers in ourselves (which might be hard and unpleasant work) when we can just turn to any new or well-established school of thought? There we can find easy answers or reasons to blame something/somebody for all the surrounding ills. Losing oneself to simple solutions seems common and preferred than hard and conscious work on ourselves.
