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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Fields Recordings From The Sea
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Hob
Hob
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Re: and as for the stones and mounds...
Apr 21, 2004, 12:53
<The fact that so many groups of people can have so many different ways of thinking implies to me that even if there is a common root-psyche in us we have some degree of control over it.>

I'm struggling to coherently express my thoughts here. One of the reasons why humans are different from most other animals (and we are, no value judgement intended), is that we adapt. The ability to adapt is genetically inherited. But the results of the adaptations are not. They are determined by the changes in environmental conditions that require adaptation in the first place. So when the environment alters (i.e. Ice ages ending etc.) humans can adapt their thinking about their behaviour in order to survive the altered environment. It doesn't happen quickly, and just as the illusion of gradual changes in the genome is losing suppport in favour of the idea that there are sudden quantum leaps every now and then, the idea that human behaviour patterns have evolved smoothly from animalistic lack of awareness, to a modern "Oooh aren't we the cleverest monkeys in the jungle"is, to my mind, tosh.
Instead, what we see the traces of when we consider human conciousness pre-history, is evidence of the same kind of unsmooth evolution.
The thing that lets us screw up our planet on such a grand scale is our ability to adapt our neuronal pathways to fit whichever environment we were brought up in. At a push we can change in our own lifetimes, but we won't always be too happy about it. The next generation however, whilst having more or less the same genetics as their parents, will consider ithe new conditions normal, becuase the genes that produce the human brain are such that they contain the capacity for plasticity. But the brain is not the mind, the map is not the territory etc... So we can't look just to objective evidence if we ever are to have a chance of understanding our place in the multiverse.

I guess what I'm trying to stumble towards here, is that what makes us a particularly strange species of primate, is that we can learn and adapt. Also, that we have learned that we can learn, and that we can alter our behaviour and adapt the environment as a result.

So, I'd say, there is a 'root psyche'. It's the hardwired parts of the brain that allow us to be flexible in response to our surroundings. And if there has been any major change since the last ice age, it's been that our environment has allowed us the leisure to realise that we do have some control over the way in which we behave. Hence the appearance of social norms, rituals, religions and taboos etc...

I have an irresistible urge to make light of this, but I won't do so too much, 'cos it's a bloody important subject. But I am aware that the above probably reads like irrelevant drivel.

You're all a bunch of freakin' headcases, and I love it!

My eternal respect to your synaptic firing patterns.
In reply to:
Re: and as for the stones and mounds... (FourWinds)		 Replies:
spot on (morfe)
Re: and as for the stones and mounds... (FourWinds)
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