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Comment by norir | Hacker News Reader

I am coincidentally reading the Iliad right now. Which of the warriors exactly weren't bloodthirsty assholes? Odysseus goes on a raid with Diomedes in book 10 and stands by while Diomedes kills a bunch of sleeping soldiers. They also murder a Trojan they easily could have taken hostage. And what about the part of the Odyssey when he comes home and murders the suitors until the goddess steps in?

The Iliad is particularly challenging when we project our current values back onto this ancient story. If we can suspend that, it contains timeless human questions, particularly on the role of fate and the forces that drive us. I feel that we lose the thread if we focus too much on whether the characters are likable.

Also, why are you so certain that the bards would have found the analysis boring? Truly great works can operate on multiple levels.

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The target audience was like that -- warriors. They like warrior things. Like detailed depictions of strikes and injuries.

The general public likes warrior things too. To think the iliad was 'written' ( or sung ) for warriors is naive and simplistic.

Would you change your opinion if I say that it's not my words, I just cited a professional archeologist?

From this myth-busting movie review (sorry not in English I should probably make a translation) at 17:45

https://youtu.be/f77h_-wFYGo

Interesting take: Thats because at the time people had not developed consciousness yet.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_...

The book it's bit bullshit once you read about the Sumer or Chinese civilisations.

That's a strange offhand comment. The Mesopotamian civilizations are explicitly addressed by Jaynes, and China is at least mentioned, although not talked about. However, Shang dynasty China had many of the features that Jaynes' hypothesis would expect to see in a civilization when the bicameral mind is breaking down - in particular, lots and lots of augury.

What about Sumerian or Chinese history makes the book "bullshit" according to you?

Gilgamesh has heroes. Someone to be reflected at.

Well, so does the Illiad. It's Jaynes's entire argument that having a personal identity does not imply having consciousness.

I think this mostly hinges on whether you interpret Jaynes' argument of the origin of consciousness as being a cultural artifact or an evolutionary trait. We usually think of it as the latter and tying it to a certain recent point in history in the West suggests a perspective of people outside that sphere as "less human" based on how we usually think about consciousness.

I think Jaynes' actually seems to argue for consciousness as a cultural construct. While this makes sense in a way, it largely conflicts with how consciousness is commonly understood, especially in the context of moral, ethical or religious arguments.

I'm also not sure to what degree the "bicameral mind" would have been a universal experience. While self-talk is extremely understudied we now at least know that some people have inner dialogues (which we usually consider a form of hallucination or schizophrenia), most have inner monologues and some have no active inner voice whatsoever (if we ignore subvocalizations and only focus on internal "thought"). In religious contexts we still often treat ancient stories of people "hearing the gods" at face value even if it is no longer culturally acceptable to claim the same today (i.e. you'd rightfully be considered to be suffering from hallucinations). I'm unconvinced the examples Jaynes gives are more than just artifacts of cultures that treated hallucinations as a meaningful part of the human experience the same way some cultures (including people as recent as Freud and Jung) treat dreams as meaningful parts of the human experience or religious practice.

Also externalization of intrusive thoughts or emotions is actually part of therapeutical approaches to disorders like depression. Even meditation and mindfulness often involves viewing the inner mind as a detached observer. I'm not convinced attributing these uncontrolled experiences to an internal "id" (with full acknowledgement of the caveats that come with referring to Freud in the context of modern psychology) is much more sophisticated than attributing them to external "gods" or demons. So in a way the "bicameral mind" still seems to exist, except that we have changed our cultural narrative around it to one that favors the fiction of individual responsibility over the fiction of supernatural forces outside our control.

I think the only reason the book has been so influential is that people misread the argument as an evolutionary one rather than a cultural one and conflate Jaynes' meaning of the word "consciousness" with the popular and religious concepts of it. I also think this mistake is particularly appealing to those already looking for reasons to justify treating "Europeans" (i.e. white people) as biologically superior to others as it neatly fits into the colonial era racist idea of the "industrious Asians" only being intellectually superior by having a "hive mind" mentality and being individually empty and lacking original thought (and likewise Black people being too primitive for complex thought and thus stronger and more violent). I'm not saying Jaynes would agree with any of these ideas, I'm just saying people looking to justify these ideas (whether or not they're willing to openly state them in public) will happily misinterpret Jaynes' work to do so.

Asians and hive mind? I doub't it, Southern Europe has been making contact with the Japanese for centuries. Heck, we even have in Spain a town with people surnamed "Japón" for obvious reasons.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coria_del_R%C3%ADo

The Anglo-Saxon mindset it's really outdated then...

I didn't say Asians have a hive mind. It used to be a widespread racist stereotypes of Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian people. Luckily it seems to have fallen out of favor but it's hardly ancient.

Too bad your comment got buried so far down, I think it's a very interesting critique of the Jaynes fandom here on HN. Of course, the point that Jaynes's arguments are unconvincing because his examples could also be interpreted differently is hardly sophisticated, especially since not all of his examples from, say, the Illiad, even mention hallucinations explicitly (instead, Gods sometimes just suddenly disappear, leaving those who were following their commands confused - Jaynes argues this is exactly because the God had been a hallucination all along), and he spends some time on showing that the very concept of an internal mind-space didn't exist in early Greek civilization.

Your point on the Jaynes fandom is interesting, though. I'll make sure to keep the in mind the next time the topic comes up here.

I'm a bit confused, the quoted article says that the Iliad doesn't discuss mental activity, and that might be true since I haven't read it, but I have read Homer's Odyssey, which certainly does...

You're accusing Odysseus of being a bloodthirsty asshole because he "stood by" while someone else killed a bunch of sleeping soldiers and because he, himself, killed the suitors who ganged up against him yelling "he's just one man, guys, let's get him" (liberally translated)? Clearly, we do not have the same definition of "bloodthirsty".

Which of the warriors were not bloodthirsty? Ajax, for example, was not bloodthirsty, who stood strong with his shield and without the help of the gods, a defensive bullwark for the Acheans. Hector, was not bloodthristy, who was just trying to defend his city and his people from the calamity brought on by his idiot brother who couldn't keep it in his pants. Aeneas was not bloodthirsty, who escaped the burning Troy to found Rome. Patroklus was not bloodthirsty but was just trying to save his friend's honour (by killing people, no doubt, but in the middle of a war).

Achilles killed Hector and dragged his dead body behind his chariot to desecrate it. He refused to hand it over to Priam, Hector's father, the king of Troy, when he, an old man, came begging on his knees in grief asking for Achilles to do the right thing by the gods. Achilles was an asshole. It is a disgrace that an entire epic poem was written for his "rage". Screw his rage.

Edit: remember also that Achilles was the only one of the Achean lords that didn't have to fight, because he hadn't taken the oath at Menelaus' and Helen's wedding (he was living as a girl at the time). He accepted the invitation to go to the war for glory- the glory of killing men. What a glory. Unlike the rest, he did not leave behind wife and children, and loyal dogs and slaves, because he had none to leave (though he did have a wife, I think). Not to mention: he was invulnerable (mostly) so he could cover himself in guts and glory without fear. Yeah, what a great hero.

On Achilles, wasn’t he told he a god / oracle that he can choose between going and having his name remembered as a hero for all time at the cost of dying young or staying home, living a happy life, and nobody remembering him after he passed in old age?

Well I don't remember that. I remember the prhophecy given to Thetis, his mom, that he was going to be killed in battle, I believe- hence her dunking him in the Styx to become invulnerable.

There's a lot of mythology around the Iliad and you're probably right and I just don't remember it.

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