Astrogenetics

An examination of the astronomical ("astrological") factors on human genetics
and the formative structure and activation of human culture.

[...]

-3147 to -1492
The splitting of the human being into subjectively conscious 'ego' and objectively unconscious 'Self'

Drastic shifts in our local interplanetary (indeed, interstellar) system, followed by a period of perturbations in our planet's orbit and length of year had immensely significant effects on human history. In short -- Humans "evolved" radically after Paradise was lost. The collective response to these catastrophic events seems to have determined how, exactly, we became the deeply tormented yet persistently hopeful human individuals we are today.

Back of all this lies a 'new mutation' of human being brought about by x-ray and gamma-ray radiation exuded from the electric arcing between Jupiter and Saturn. The radioactive fallout from this event -- not to mention the fallout from the stupendous Saturn nova event just a little more than a thousand years earlier -- stimulated the development of our prodigious (and all too often psychopathologically private) subjective consciousness.

Remarkably unperspectival for many generations to come, this 'new mutation' nevertheless distinguished itself most clearly in the "splitting-off" of localized, separate 'senses of self' ("egos") from the otherwise non-localized, communal consciousness of a culture's common genetic forebears. This effectively 'schizoid' condition became the acculturated commonplace consensual norm in the new theocratic (and deeply hierarchical) cultures that emerged over the next several thousand years. #(Cook, Chapter 3)

As Cook posits, toward the opening of his opus:

To say it would have happened anyway does not hold up. There could have been any number of other outcomes. We could still be chipping flints. After all, we did that for more than a million years.

'Subjective Consciousness'

The concept of subjective consciousness was developed by Julian Jaynes in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976). Subjective consciousness involves the ability to recognize yourself as seen by others -- an "analog I" -- which is internalized and placed into the space of the imagination. This represented a new mental space based on a metaphorical displacement of the self, and had not been seen (or recorded) before about 1500 BC. The "space" suggested here is a concept predominantly defined in Indo-European languages. People in cultures based on other grammars have formed equivalent solutions.

You can look through the "eyes" of this "substitute I" or even observe yourself from afar in your mind. Biologically it involves the separation of volition and consciousness in the speech centers of the brain. "Memory" and "self-awareness" are not subjective consciousness, they are simply aspects of consciousness. All animals have memories, all animals are aware of themselves.

Some people never achieve subjective consciousness, yet they appear fully functional. Pre-subjectively-conscious people are almost completely indistinguishable from subjectively conscious people. Pre-subjectively-conscious people can learn anything, including mathematics, and certainly they can joke, have emotions, and carry on convoluted dialogues with others. However, they rely heavily on the learned admonitions of parents and authority figures ("oughts" and "shoulds") and have difficulty with novel situations. Pre-subjectively-conscious humans do not have the ability to imagine the reflective thinking of others, that is, how others might imagine them as thinking.

#(Cook, Chapter 2 n4)