lbo-talk-digest V1 #2481

Dace edace at flinthills.com
Thu Feb 3 11:55:10 PST 2000



>Those who want to identify humanity with language (as well as thought
>and human social relations with language) will have a tough time accounting
>for about one-third of human history if current estimates are even roughly
>accurate. Biologically modern humans go back about 150,000 years;
>language goes back about 100,000 years, perhaps less, perhaps much
>less in some parts of the world. (The evidence of this last is that for
>10s of thousands of years homo sapiens and homo neanderthal coexisted
>in some parts of the world, and then very suddenly the latter disappeared,
>but not at the same rate every place. The hypothesis is that as humans
>achieved language they became more efficient destroyers of close
>cousins.)
>
>Any how, were humans not human for 50 thousand years? This is a puzzle
>I shouod think for a number of schools of thought, but particularly for
most
>versions of "humanism."
>
>Carrol
>
>------------------------------

The geneticist Luigi Cavalli-Sforza has demonstrated that the emergence of different languages parallels the emergence of different ethnicities. In other words, the genetic tree matches the language tree. This is clear despite the gaps in our knowledge of the language tree. Here we have strong evidence for the recent origin of language. If it were very old, language would have fragmented long before the human departure from Africa, which began around 100 thousand years ago (KYA). Since there was still roughly one language in existence 100 KYA, it couldn't have already been ancient by that time. Of course, this doesn't hold if we define language as symbolling. But the essence of human language is the complex grammar that allows us to express an indefinite number of concepts with a small number of sounds. This complex grammar could not have originated during the era when modern humans emerged between 500 and 200 KYA.

The great question is what happened during this period. During the previous period of brain expansion, between 1.8 and 1.4 million years ago, our ancestors greatly improved their tool-making skills and their understanding and exploitation of their natural environments. But nothing whatsoever seems to have happened between 500 and 200 KYA. Our manner of obtaining food and shelter was completely unchanged during this entire period and for a long time afterward. Our understanding of nature didn't improve until about the time of our departure from Africa. As to advanced tool-making and the emergence of what we understand as "culture," this didn't begin until about 60 KYA. (It's this development, not the development of language, that probably accounts for the displacement of Neanderthal in Europe.)

Brain size actually decreased a little during the period of intellectual and linguistic development. The Neanderthals had a bigger brain, because they never went through that development.

In order to make sense of this, we must de-link consciousness and intelligence. We have this idea that consciousness and intelligence increase in tandem. But the relationship may actually be inverse. Think of it like a TV set. If the brightness (consciousness) is all the way up, then contrast (intellect) is nonexistent. To establish contrast in the last hundred thousand years, the brightness had to be turned down. What happened between 500 and 200 KYA is that consciousness emerged in its full glory. Expansive consciousness, not culture or language, is the essence of humanness.

Unless you've had LSD or psilocybn or peyote, etc., you're not going to really understand what it means for consciousness to be expansive. The funny thing about these substances is that they bear no chemical relation to each other. Each one has a completely different effect on the brain. Given what we know about it, LSD should provide a bit of a mood boost, followed by a bit of a depression. The depression does actually occur after about six hours. But what happens until then is inexplicable. What could possibly account for this fantastic effect? And how is it that this same improbable effect occurs from such wildly different substances? Perhaps they all trigger the same memory. Perhaps we still have the memory of our original human consciousness, and these substances trigger that memory. It's possible, as I once experienced at a Zen retreat, to trigger this memory without the use of any substance. Fasting and sickness can also trigger it. Rimbaud liked to induce it with spider bite. Unless it's a deep, collective memory, I don't see how to explain where the psychedelic experience comes from. It must come from our past.

Consciousness-- the perception of mentality-- emerged in the mind of the common ancestor of apes and humans around five million years ago. It was an adaptational strategy within the social group. If you can read the mind of another chimp, you've got an advantage. To read someone's mind, you have to able to perceive mentality itself. The "brightness" of consciousness increased over time. After 500 KYA we must have reached a runaway effect. Our ancestors must have felt about consciousness the way we do about candy. It's just really good. It's not just a survival strategy-- it's intrinsically good. After that the brightness went up until the limit was reached.

The same thing is happening now, only in reverse.

The process of dimming which yielded abstraction and language and art and agriculture and cities is now turning us into a planet of consumerist morons. You can see where all this is headed. It's the Brave New World of prozac and virtual reality. The surest way to obliterate consciousness is to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. "Pain" would include things like questioning authority or abandoning the herd or thinking your way through difficult issues. As we become technologically more proficient we become ever more dim. That's the unconscious ideal of America, and it's why LSD, psilocybn, and peyote are illegal.

Consciousness is delicate, but language is durable. Even if our descendants have been reduced to a vegetable state, language will live on in the logical algorithms of self-perpetuating computer programs.

--Ted



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