May 24, 2018 • 38 mins
What happened to the worship of goddesses? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick explore Leonard Shlain’s hypothesis from his 1998 book “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess,” in which the author argues that the brain-altering power of written language unbalanced human civilization in favor of misogyny, tyranny and the worship of abstract, masculine gods.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And this is going to be part two of our
two part discussion about Leonard slain book The Alphabet Versus
(00:23):
the Goddess, which argues that literacy and writing, especially alphabetic writing,
led to a demotion of the status of women and
goddesses and a promotion or arise in patriarchal religions and cultures.
So if you haven't listened to that first episode, you
go back check that one out, so this one makes sense.
(00:44):
But for a basic refresher, last time we discussed goddesses,
we talked about Anano, we talked about Thetis, and we
outlined the basics of Leonard Slain's hypothesis. His main claim
is that human evolution led to a gender division and
brain hemisphere. Favorite is um that men and women biologically
with their brains, can do pretty much the same things
(01:04):
if they want to, but that the division of labor
and hunter gatherer culture tended to favor a brain lateralized
division of labor, where men were usually more left brain
oriented because men had to be the hunters, and that
that hunting required left brain emphasies on things like sequential
detail based thinking, uh, and emotional coldness and cruelty. And
(01:24):
then on the other hand, you had women more often
being selected for labor that favor favored right brain type
stuff like emotional intuitions, empathy, nurturing, education, speech as opposed
to written language and images. And so Schlain thinks, what
that the introduction of writing kind of messed things up.
(01:45):
It shifted human culture to favor the left brain perceptual
modes which traditionally had been associated with men males of
the species, and that that gave rise to patriarchy and
patriarchal culture. Yeah, it's such a puloss hypothesis. I'd really
I haven't been able to get it out of my
mind since we first started researching it. Yeah, it's one
(02:06):
of those that, as we said last time, even if
we don't necessarily think his argument is convincing, or if
you know, he hasn't necessarily made his case that this
is really how it happened, it certainly brings up a
lot of interesting subjects along the way, and so he
raises interesting questions. Even if he's not ultimately right, and
I'm I'm pretty sure I'm not convinced by his argument
(02:26):
in the end, But it's a fascinating book. Nonetheless. Yeah,
like I said, it forces you to to rethink what language,
what written language, does to us, and and why the
status of the goddess is so diminished in our world,
to the point where I was telling my son, who's
only he's only six, just barely six, I was telling
him about goddesses, and then later that day we see
(02:47):
a representation of a goddess and he refers to it
as a lady god. I'm like, no, actually, it's it's
a goddess. It is. Uh, it's not just a lady
version of this other thing it is. It's really kind
of the primordial thing you should be swing it a
man goddess. Yeah, exactly. That That makes me think, like
it's so deeply embedded. Now, I'm not calling your son
a sexist, but I'm saying, like, you know, how what
(03:10):
how come we see a goddess and we think that's
a lady god instead of seeing a male god and
think that's a male goddess. Yeah, I mean, it's he's
not sexist, but he he is growing up in a
world that is that is ruled by by by patriarchy,
and you can, you can try and balance out of
child's upbringing as much as possible, but they're still growing
(03:33):
up exposed to that larger world. Yeah, and growing up
with the legacy of you know, hundreds or thousands of
years of literature and archetypes, and you know, it's it's
they're not just in the full works of literature, but
it's there in the metaphors we use in everyday speech.
They tend to have a kind of patriarchal slant to them,
or at least one that associates valued cultural traits or
valued activities with men and men's behavior, and that goes
(03:57):
back through history. Uh, maybe only the fifty pages or
so of Schlane's book are actually the part where he's
outlining his hypothesis about evolution and brain lateralization um and
and how writing affects that, And then most of the
rest of the book is just him exploring cultures and
time periods throughout history when the status of writing changed
(04:20):
or when writing was introduced, and what happens to the
cultures there. Like one of the examples he talks about
is in ancient Mesopotamia, with the introduction of cune of
form and professionalized scribes and things like that, when writing
was professionalized, you know. He thinks that this leads to
the introduction of the idea of written law codes instead
(04:41):
of unwritten norms of behavior, govering what's acceptable and what's
not acceptable to do in society. And so Slaine looks
at some of the misogynistic qualities of the earliest written
law codes and says, hmmm, it looks it looks to
him like maybe the introduction of writing itself somehow coincided
with a sharp turn towards misogynistic standards of conduct in society. Now.
(05:04):
Of course, sh Lane spends a lot of time with
the Greeks because there's a lot of mythological and historical
content to discuss there. And he points to the comparison
to be made between Athens and Sparta as an example
of how the spread of the written word pushed uh
the goddess and just female power to the periphery of
Greek culture, and he says that they're it's they're perfect
(05:26):
examples to compare because they both spoke the same language,
they worship the same gods, they spoken and wrote the
same language, but the two big differences, he says, emerge
in their treatment of women and their attitudes towards the alphabet.
That's interesting. Yeah, so let's talk about Sparta. I will
I will present to you that this is Sparta. Uh yeah,
(05:48):
I mean you bring up the example by illusion. If
you were only to be trained on modern pop culture,
you would tend to think of Sparta as very macho.
So so you might be curious, how could how could
Sparta be more more pro woman than Athens? Yeah? How
could a place that is we we've we've come to
define it by beards and six packs, like what what?
What in there is empowering to women? Well? Certainly they
(06:10):
were a militaristic society with little use for literacy. They
produced no playwrights, philosophers, or historians that that really resonated
beyond their own age. Their law, which was formulated by Lesurgis,
was not written down. Everyone had to memorize it instead,
and Plutarch even reported that there was a Spartan law
(06:32):
against committing any law to writing. What Yeah crazy? Uh So.
On the other hand, they of course glorified deprecation and cruelty. Uh.
Their government was an oligarchy with with definite fascist leanings.
But then compare this this place to Athens, Okay. Athens
certainly is a fountain of culture, democracy, law, but it's
(06:54):
also a place where women were excluded from education, government
and public affairs. The the Athenian law of her Solon
denied women the right to buy or sell land, and
women were just considered property. A father could dissolve his
daughter's marriage. Uh. And even though the muses were considered
feminine deities, uh, the artists were not. The artists were male.
(07:16):
So Sparta, on the other hand, quote educated girls in
nearly the same manner as boys. Women wore less restrictive clothing,
and they also competed in athletic games. They ruled the
household while the men were away at war, and they
owned and sold property. In fact, by the fourth century
b C. Women owned two fifths of all Spartan land
(07:37):
Fritish land. Here's a quote from Slane's book. Spartan's honored
women's life giving role and considered it equal to that
of their warriors. To immortalize his name by having it
inscribed on his tombstone, a Spartan man had to die
in combat to win the same honor a Spartan woman
had to perish in childbirth. And another effect that he
(07:58):
points out is that ATHENI demanded fidelity, virginity, and chastity
among the women, but Spartan women were not so restrained.
So again he argues that this, this is a great
bit of evidence to support his hypothesis, because you have
you have kind of a wonderful uh uh, you know,
a versus b testing situation here with with Athens on
(08:20):
one hand and Sparta on the other. Yeah, these two
civic societies that, at least if he's correct, he's claiming
are are very similar, except by the cultural differences that
are derived from one being highly literate in the elites
and the other not being so fond of of written
down words. Yeah, it's a really interesting idea to compare
the two like that. And I wonder what a scholar
(08:41):
of ancient Greece would think looking at that. I mean,
would a scholar of ancient Greece say, yes, those those
comparisons are valid or or is picking? Yeah, Shlane cherry picking.
You always gotta wonder if Slane's cherry picking, because I
get the sense sometimes he may be doing that in
support of his argument, But at least in the moment
while you're reading it, it seems very persuasive. Yeah, I
can't help. But wonder if if one were to really
(09:03):
get into some of the details of Sparta's brutality, if
that would um, even that would go against Stoyan's argument here.
But but but I have not looked at that data yet. Yeah. Hey,
if you're a listener out there and you are an
ancient Greek historian or a historian of ancient Greece, especially
if you're an ancient Greek, if you travel through time,
do do rings up. We'll get somebody to translate. Yeah,
(09:23):
but either way, please get in touch with us. Let
us know what you think about that is. Is that
on target? Is it bunk? We'd be interested to hear
your thoughts. Um. But yeah, So he talks about many
ancient cultures. He talks about ancient Egypt, he talks about Mesopotamia,
giving examples as he goes throughout of where he sees
the introduction of the written word or parts of the
society that favored the written word, causing women's position to
(09:48):
go into a relative decline and even leading in many
cases to these types of violent misogyny that we see
in say, the Code of Hammurabi, the you know, the
written law codes of ancient Mesopotamia. But I think we
should look at another interesting example that maybe goes a
little bit counter to his theory, or at least see
how he deals with it. And that example would be China.
(10:09):
So we'll take a look at sh Lane's thoughts on
ancient China after we come back from this break. Thank you,
thank you. Alright, we're back, okay. So we were going
to discuss Leonard Schlane's treatment of ancient China. I was
curious what he would do with this, because part of
his idea is that the sequential reading of letters in
alphabetic script is what tends to favor this like this
(10:32):
male dominant way of thinking in the brain. But of
course Chinese script doesn't exactly work that way, right, that's right,
I mean China. The Chinese language does not have an alphabet,
so it would seem to be a very difficult thing
to fit into this theory. So I do want to
discuss some of the key points that he makes in
discussing Chinese culture Chinese language. So he points to the
(10:55):
evidence of preliterate female centric Chinese culture, and indeed there
are some very powerful goddesses in Chinese myths, such as
the creatrix goddess uh Nua. But he also makes the
following points about about Chinese language. He says, there's no
tensh calligraphy is is visual artistic in ways that Western
script doesn't have to be. There's more poetry, entity says,
(11:17):
and and so it would seem to be a right
hemisphere written language, and there's actually some sided evidence to
back that up, he says. Quote researchers tested a select
group of Chinese and English speaking individuals who had learned
to read and write both languages as small children, and
who later in life had experienced damage to one hemisphere
(11:38):
or the other. Right handed Subjects who had damage to
their left hemispheres lost the ability to speak either Chinese
or English, and although they could not write English, they
retained a limited ability to communicate in written Chinese. Those
with damage to their right hemispheres could still speak Chinese
and English, and although they could write English, they had
(11:58):
difficulty writing Chinese. However, Schlein stresses that that all of
this language, even though it might be tipped a little
more in the direction of the feminine, it still diminishes
the role of the nonverbal component of speech. Chinese character
still must be read in sequence. They and they are,
as we discussed in the Chinese Typewriter episode abstract inform,
(12:22):
there's a certain reductionism involved in consuming it. And so
he argues that the Chinese writing is still much closer
to the alphabet than it is to oral communication and uh.
And it's this proximity that makes it a masculizing influence
on Chinese culture. And he also points out that the
following he says that quote the tentacles of literacy began
(12:42):
to wrap around the minds of the Chinese people in
the sixth century b c. And then this is around
the same time that Taoism and Confucianism emerge, so that
this is fascinating. He points out that Taoism embodies feminine values,
no attempt to control others, and promotes mother Nature as
a guide. And and this is where we get the
symbol of the yin yang, of the of of of
(13:03):
the two opposing forces feminine and masculine. Yeah, he portrays
Daoism is very is very feminine friendly. Yeah. On the
other hand, he says that Confucism this touts masculine values,
UH structures, patriarchal society and UH and and a father culture.
And so these two systems of belief they coexist in
(13:24):
relative equilibrium until the Chinese invent the printing press in
around CE. Literacy rates sore, and soon after Daoism declines
and Confucism becomes China's dominant belief system. Now, Robert, I
know you're very interested in Chinese history. How how does
that square with your understanding of the development and culture
(13:45):
and the role of Daoism versus Confucism. Well, I love
the way he's looking at this, uh, this sort of
tug of war between Taoism and Confucism. But but then
to come back around and and say, but it's the
it's the written language that is the key, when clearly
you have these two different worldviews that are having, you know,
(14:06):
enormous effect on Chinese culture. Um. I think it's an
interesting read, but it feels like written language is just
one of several factors at work here, you know, which
I guess is kind of my my response to the
whole hypothesis. Well, I would say that throughout many of
his discussions in in different times in history. I think
(14:30):
one problem with his hypothesis is that he over generalizes
the the pro female or anti female characteristics of cultures
or ways of thinking. You know, he characters tends to
characterize something as either like, you know, this this way
of thinking was very anti woman, or this way of
(14:50):
thinking was very pro woman, when I think in both
cases there's usually a little more nuanced than he's letting on.
I agree, Like one example from the Western history is
when he gets into the idea of like medieval medieval
Catholicism being pro woman, but then the Protestant Reformation and
the subsequent Catholic reaction to the Protestant Reformation being anti woman.
(15:14):
I think you're more likely to find strong strains of
misogyny in both, but examples of women breaking through it
in both cases, right. And then also, of course we're
realizing that you have varying levels, varying class levels in
any given um group. So I mean, for instance, in
medieval Europe, you're gonna have some women who are who
are nuns and are a part of the religious hierarchy. Uh,
(15:37):
and then you're gonna have some that are that are
simply peasants. You're gonna have some that are royalty. Likewise,
in Chinese history, when you get into the era of footbinding,
you're going to have you're gonna have members of the
upper class who are who are who end up being
a part of footbinding culture. Then you're gonna have women
in lower classes who can who are not part of it,
part in many parts in many instances due the fact
(16:00):
they do have to work and contribute. Not to get
too much into foot binding, that it's another fascinating and
disturbing topic all on its own. So in Schlane's book,
we come back time and time again to the notion
that the medium is the message. We go from oral
tradition to written records, eventually compounded by the advent of
printing press technology. With any key upheavals in society aligned
(16:22):
and his hypothesis with the with the technology and the
literacy of its people, masculine powers entrenched themselves. The trend
continues unabated through the world wars of the twentieth century,
with some impact from the advent of photography. That's an
interesting thing. He essentially says that we're retreating back away
(16:42):
from some of the patriarchy and that women are gaining
more rights to some degree because of photography and the
introduction of the importance of the image back into society.
He even at one point talks about how it used
to be that a family was fleeing a burning home,
what would they grab. It would be the family bible.
That'd be the thing around which all of their family
(17:03):
memories were centered. It was a word, yeah, the printed text.
And then after the introduction of photography, it would be
the family photo album. Yeah. And then then he argues
that post World War Two, you see this television boom,
which which he says, really brings the feminine medium to prominence,
because this again is the triumph of the visual over
(17:25):
the text. Right. But one thing that's interesting is that
Schlane isn't always saying that, say, the left brain is
bad and the right brain is good. Right, that's right.
He brings up the example of Adolf Hitler's rise to
power in Germany, which he points out was a highly
literate nation at the time. And uh, and how did
(17:45):
Hitler rise to power will through the use of of
the of radio And he characterizes this is the dark
side of a sudden shift to right brain culture. Yeah,
So he says the ideas that Hitler used radio too
circumvent this sort of organized, sequential left brain thinking of
the printed word, and goes straight into people's brains by
(18:08):
talking to them in their ears. Is his quote, Hitler's
voice buried deep into the depths of the right hemisphere,
resurrecting tribal myths and rituals. Now, I wonder what he's
gonna make a twitter. Well, he does touch on the
Internet age a bit here. He points out that you
have the the invention of personal computer technology who would great,
which greatly changes the way people interact. You have graphic
(18:30):
icons increasingly replacing text commands, and he says that the
Internet and Worldwide Web are based on feminine images of
nets and webs. I don't know. That feels like kind
of a stretch, but but still, well, a lot of
his associations in the book are kind of stretching, like,
but then again, we're talking about the realm of symbols
and the power of symbols, and certainly symbols are powerful.
(18:51):
Now beyond that, he doesn't get really get much into
the contemporary world. He died in in two thousand nine
and this book was published in Uh, there's much I
think that one might say about the role of say,
hate speech in the primarily written world of Twitter and Reddit.
Um And yet at the same time, meme culture makes
use of images as well, often to drive home some
(19:14):
rather problematic ideas. Yeah, what about how about podcasts? Right? Well,
that's true right now, everybody that's listening, that's that's taking
in this podcast. You were listening to our voices. You're
not reading it. Um So Yeah, I feel like that
the world of podcast represents more of the the the
feminine energy that he's he describes in his book. There
(19:35):
are quite a few reasons that he seems to think
that the modern technological situation is going to be a
positive thing for the elimination of the influence of patriarchy.
One of which is that you've got photography and imagery everywhere.
Another one of which is that we depend now so
much on electricity, which he characterizes is as always being
(19:56):
described in terms of feminine power or him and in
type words. Another thing is that the keyboard has very
much changed the way we compose even written texts. Now,
the previous idea of how you'd compose a written text
would be that you'd write it out by hand with
your dominant hand, which is controlled by the dominant hemisphere
(20:16):
of the brain. So if you're a right handed person,
left hemisphere dominant brain, you'd be writing with that hemisphere.
But now we type with both hands, and so if
you're composing things on a keyboard or on a typewriter,
maybe that would somehow circumvent part of the way that
he believes that the left brain has been dominant in
alphabetic cultures. He even points to the fact that when
(20:39):
typewriters first came into prominence, the people who mainly focused
on typing for a living were women, and that typing
was seen as like it was kind of men who
were trying to get into typing were tweeted dismissively. Is like, oh,
that's the thing for women to do. That's a great point, yeah,
and not something I would have necessarily thought about going
(20:59):
into this spite. I mean, we had the fact that
we had a whole episode that that discussed the the
technology of typewriters and its effect on culture. Now, I
will say Slane was optimistic about where we were headed
and what our trajectory was. Slash is as a as
a people should be consider this a disproof of his hypothesis.
(21:21):
It depends how you look at it. Again, you have
to you have to think about the various uh um
um you know, peaks and valleys in this various timeline
of feminine versus masculine. Yeah, it's true, we shouldn't. You know.
It's easy to be negative about how things are in
the present. You know, you have that bias, nativity bias,
and it's like, you know, you'll give it some time.
(21:42):
You had a few decades and then you can see
how things were. But this is this is what he
said in his epilogue. He said, quote, I am convinced
we are entering a new golden age, one in which
the right hemispheric values of tolerance, caring, and respect for
nature will we begin to ameliorate the conditions that have
prevailed for the too long period during which the left
him spheric values were dominant. Images of any kind are
(22:03):
the bomb bringing about this worldwide healing. I will take
more time for change to permeate and alterate world cultures,
but there can be no doubt that the wondrous um
permutations of photography and electromagnetism are transforming the world, both
physically and psychically. The shift to write hemispheric values through
the perception of images can be expected to increase the
(22:25):
sum total awareness of beauty. Yeah, one could hope some
version of that is true, you know. And in the
book he does point out that when you look at
the twentieth century, what are two of the most um
widespread images, like what, what are two pictures that are
probably going to show up in any discussion of the
twentieth century? And one is the picture of Earth as
(22:48):
a whole from space, and then the other is, uh
is the the detonation of an atomic bomb. There's a
sense of revelation in the photo in in the photograph
that is that it's harder to grasp in the word
I guess, or it's or at least it's it's harder,
it takes longer to convey the meaning. When I think
about those two images juxtaposed with one another, I think,
(23:10):
you know, they both kind of indicate that line from
Auden's poem September one, ninety nine where he just says
we must love one another or die. I have a
feeling we're going to come back to that that kind
of proposal at the very end of this episode. Okay,
but first let's take a quick break, and when we
come back, we'll discuss some criticisms of Slane's argument. Thank you, alright,
(23:30):
we're back. So I guess at the end here we
should focus on a few general criticisms of Slane's theory.
I mean we we've peppered some of our critical thoughts throughout.
I don't want to sound too critical because on one hand,
I do think he brings up a lot of interesting
ideas and this is actually a book worth reading, even
though I think in the end I'm not persuaded by
(23:53):
his main argument, and I think his style of argumentation
is very loosey goosey, And it is important to and
drive home that it is. It is an argument, It
is a hypothesis. Is that he has not written the
Bible for us here and say here, here is the
absolute word he's saying, this is my hypothesis. And here's
how I would support that with our with with the
(24:14):
existing body of scientific, historical, cultural, archaeological evidence. Yes, I
do want to mention briefly one critical review, which was
by the science writer Sandra Blakesley. If you're writing any
of her books, Robert, I don't believe so I think
I might there's one I've been looking at that was
about um. But she writes a lot about topics related
(24:36):
to neuroscience, and she co authored this book about how
stage magic can show us certain ways our mind plays
tricks on us. It seemed kind of interesting. I think
it's called Slights of Mind. But anyway, she wrote a
critical review for The New York Times in nine and
her main criticism is just that the book is she
accuses Schlaane of peddling just so stories. Now, this is
(24:58):
a term that often comes up to describe historical narrative
explanations for things that are offered without proof. And one
example would be I think this was actually somewhere in
the book, if I remember right. But anyway, why do
men in some cultures wear neckties? Well, let's say the
answer is it's because in our evolutionary history, dangling genitalia
(25:20):
was a sign of virility in males, and it was
a sign of good mate quality. So men want to
show off some kind of dangling object to set off
the same responses, so they wear neckties. Now, notice I
didn't provide any evidence that that's the reason. It's basically
just like I told a plausible story. I told a
story and you say, oh, I can see how that
(25:40):
might be the case. And these types of explanations are
often referred to pejoratively as just so stories. I just
told you a story, and well, that's just how it is,
and it has that kind of truthiness to it, and
so you just buy into it. Yeah. Now, I do
think that the accusation of being a just so story
is unfairly leveled sometimes that explanations based in evolutionary anthropology
(26:03):
and psychology, because you know, after all, a hypothesis is
often just an unproven, plausible explanation that's awaiting some supporting evidence.
And so sometimes I think you see attacks on things,
uh that attacks on things, calling them just so stories,
when really what you should be doing is, well, you know,
let's allow people some room to speculate. It's okay to
(26:24):
speculate as long as you remember what you're doing. You know,
you're not saying like, well, here's the facts, this is
how it is. You're saying, hey, what if this were true?
Would that you know, could we find some evidence to
support it? Yeah. It's not like say a conspiracy theory,
where you're saying, uh, where you're exploring that you're leaning
a bit too heavily into the what if exactly, And
(26:45):
you definitely can lean a little bit too heavily into
the what if, And I think maybe she Layne does
that in the book. I think we're slippery creatures. Often,
in the heat of our zeal to explain things, we
sort of forget that the ideas were entertaining for the
purpose of speculation are just speculation and want of good evidence,
we start treating them as if the last thing I speculated, well,
(27:07):
We've got that proven. Now now I'm moving on to
the next thing, when really you haven't proven anything in
any step. You're just offering a lot of plausible, possible
explanations in a row. Yeah, and run the risk of
creating something that is more like a religious framework for
understanding the past. Not that I'm saying that that this
(27:28):
is religion or aspiring to be religion, but sometimes I
feel like say that I feel that something like the
um the bicameral mind kind of it satisfies me. It
satisfies me in ways that I might look to religion
to satisfy me, and that it can it gives me
a model upon which I might make sense of the
(27:50):
mysteries of the past. Yeah, it satisfies you because it's
interesting and because it gives you a way of contemplating
possible answers to two questions you you're probably never going
to have a really solid evidential answer for, you know,
that kind of thing. And that's why, you know, hypotheses
like this and like the bicameral mind are interesting exactly
(28:11):
for this reason. They take a really big fundamental question
or really big fundamental issue, offers some kind of radical
solution to it, and then they range over all different
types of subject matter and across different disciplines, drawing on
different types of evidence to to answer it. And so
for some reason that process is really fun. Like to
(28:33):
engage in that game of solving the puzzle and ranging
across all these different disciplines and going to all these
different places in history. It feels very good, at least
to me, it does. It. It's very satisfying, an emotionally
exciting journey. I'm not sure it necessarily provides the best,
strongest explanations for things. Yeah, it's like you're looking for shape.
(28:54):
It provides a shape. Is it the shape? Well maybe not,
but it forces you to ask questions. So then why
does this shape line up with at least certain aspects
of realities we understand it? And that's where that's where
it becomes such a a fascinating internal exploration. Now, one
way in which I would actually compare the b Cameral
(29:16):
Mind favorably to this book is that I think that
Bi Camera, I think that Julian James is actually a
little bit more cautious than than Slayne is. I don't
know if you'd agree with that, but I feel like
he tends to take things slower and makes fewer broad generalizations. Yeah, yeah,
I would say so. And uh, you know, Julian Jayes
(29:36):
also was He seemed willing to say is this right?
I don't know this is? But what this is the
model I'm presenting? You know, he would, well, and she
Leyne does that in his opening He basically says, this
whole book is a hypothesis. But then if you read
sentence to sentence throughout the rest of it, he doesn't
he doesn't continually acknowledge that. Well, but then again he
(29:57):
is making an impassioned argument for it, and the kind
of right brained argument. Yeah, so you kind of and
and I guess that's kind of a trap one risk
falling into as a writer that you you become so
passionate about the theory that you're not stopping every few
paragraphs to remind everybody that's a hypothesis. I should also
point out in my saying this that I have read
(30:18):
more of Julian Jayne's work, like from from different points
in his career, and I have only read um this
one work of Schlaine's, and he has written other books,
So I don't know if this is I don't know
to what extent he comes back and subsequent um um
his subsequent writings and and sort of revisits any of this. Yeah,
I'd be interested to see that. I mean I I
(30:41):
so I didn't find anything about this theory being picked
up in an academic context. I mean Slaine was writing
for a popular audience, so he makes the argument in
a in a popular kind of way, and I think
that probably also gives him the freedom to take some
license with making kind of broad generalizations when he talks
like the Greeks were like this, and you know, the
(31:04):
right brain is like this, and men are like this
in every case, like the critical reader and me wants
to put a big asterisk every time he says something
like that and be like, well, wait a minute, So
you're saying, like, in what percent of the time is
it like that? How this also sounds like a great
framework for stand up comedy routine, the alphabet versus the
(31:25):
goddess as stand up I like it. All Right, we're
basically out of time here, but I do want to
touch on one last topic, one last goddess, and that
goddess is goes Er. Well let's goes there. Yeah, So
I am talking about the fictional entity from the the
film Ghostbusters goes through the Gazarian, goes through the destructor,
(31:46):
goes through the Traveler, et cetera, an entity of many names.
I have a question is Goeser in Anna? I think
should they say she's supposed to be Sumerian? She is
described as being a Sumerian, so she's a She's a
Type seven for starters. That's her like her spirit ranking
within the Ghostbusters um system. And we're told that it
(32:09):
was worshiped as a goddess by the Sumerians around six
thousand BC. That's significantly earlier than any Anana we know about, right,
So the timeline is not going to perfectly line up
with what we've been talking about here. For instance, we
were talking about how Marduk worship began to to rise
in sec etcetera. But anyway, I do want to ask
(32:31):
everyone to consider consider the following in regards to Gozer.
So Gozer is a world destroying traveler, yet despite her
worship in ancient times, she did not lay waste to
the ancient world. Why not? Well, uh, let's let's remember
what we know about how Gozer functions. So Gozer's form
(32:53):
is chosen by the mortals it encounters our heroes and ghostbusters.
Imagine it is a Imagine it as a seemingly harmless
yet masculine corporate logo, and it's still rampages. Oh the marshmallow. Yeah.
The ancient Sumerians, however, chose the form of a goddess,
one attended to by a pair of demi gods representing
(33:14):
each gender, both the vins Clortho the key Master and
Zul the Gatekeeper, and they seem to share equal footing
in their service to Gozer. Oh man, I'd say, if anything,
Zul is more powerful than Vince clarthough I don't know. Well,
it's hard, Well, can Evince Claro can do is just
run around saying your parish in flames. Here, you're thinking
(33:34):
of the of potential um complications based on their mortal hosts.
So yeah, Sigourney Weaver's character clearly the more powerful human
host that was chosen. Well, I'm sorry for jumping me on.
I will wait for the sign. Okay. So this is
my theory. Gozer does not destroy the ancient world because
(33:56):
it manifested during a time of goddess worship and was
bound to a form, bound to a form by a
right brain culture rather than a left brain culture. So
the true way to avoid extinction at the hands of
gozer Uh is to choose a form that emanates from
right brain qualities, or at least a more balanced mind state.
(34:16):
The modern brain, especially the modern male brain, is so
dominated than by the left brain the alphabet and infected
patriarchal energy that that even a cartoon marshmallow Man can
be nothing but a force of conquest in mass slaughter.
And perhaps I'll even go so far as to say
maybe that's Gozer's true purpose, to wipe left brain dominated
(34:39):
species from the cosmos, because right brain dominated species are
going to see it as a goddess. Now there is
actually a great idea for a sci fi fantasy story.
You've got like a hemispheric lateralization culture where one side
brain culture fears being taken over by the other side
(34:59):
brain culture and they create a memetic weapon to destroy it. Yeah,
look at that. And we're giving it away for free
right here. We're not giving it away. You can't use it.
But but but yeah, inevitably, in talking about gods and goddesses,
I can't help but come back to fictional entities in
uh books and movies, and uh, it's really it's really
(35:22):
given me a new respect for Ghoser, not that I
ever disrespected Gozer. To be clear, anyway, you should tune
into our upcoming fictional podcast, The Ancient brain Bomb. I
mean it is telling to that Gozer is then defeated
in Ghostbusters by a pack of men with phallic lightning swords. Yeah,
so predictable. And hey, I'm gonna say it here. As
(35:43):
funny as the movie is, as much as you love
the character, is that Binkman, he's not a nice guy.
He's no, he's he's a patriarchal jerk. Yeah, And so
that you have it a little bit of Ghostbusters to
cap off an exploration of the alphabet versus the Goddess. Now,
I think we should try to come back to some
of the more interesting questions raised by this book in
the future. I want to come back to the idea
(36:05):
of visual perception styles affecting the perception of time, uh,
the way that the way that our media really do
shape us. I mean, I'm sure there's all kinds of
research on how on how keyboard driven communication is changing
the what people communicate. Yeah, indeed. Plus there's so many
just little, you know, brief moments in the book where
(36:26):
he touches on this culture or that or or For instance,
there's a bit where he talks about the Sistine Chapel
and I realized, oh man, there are a number of
kind of cool uh reads on the Sistine Chapel that
have come out over the years. Would be neat to
corral them all into a single podcast. He's got a
really interesting and really fun chapter on Dionysus and the
mine Ads and and that kind of stuff in ancient Greece.
(36:48):
I actually think it doesn't help his art, doesn't help
his overall argument all that well, but it's just interesting
to revisit his treatment of it. On its own and
again if you want to check out the book and
its entirety, I will I'm going to include a link
to it on the landing page for this episode of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com, as well as
a link to the homepage for it, which has a
(37:10):
wonderful timeline for the hypothesis as well listing out various
historical UH moments and UH technological achievements that line up
with his hypothesis. And while you're at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com, you can check out all the
episodes of the podcast. You can check out links to
our various social media accounts and UH. As I've been saying,
(37:31):
if you want to support this podcast, a great way
to do it is to rate and review wherever you
get your podcasts. Big thank you as always to our
wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you
would like to get in touch with us directly to
let us know feedback on this episode or any other
suggest a topic for the future, UH, to share your
thoughts with us on anything you think we might be
(37:52):
interested in, or just to say hi, you can always
email us at blow the Mind at how stuff Works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
does it, How stuff works? Dot Com, The biffer Ma
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And this is going to be part two of our
two part discussion about Leonard slain book The Alphabet Versus
(00:23):
the Goddess, which argues that literacy and writing, especially alphabetic writing,
led to a demotion of the status of women and
goddesses and a promotion or arise in patriarchal religions and cultures.
So if you haven't listened to that first episode, you
go back check that one out, so this one makes sense.
(00:44):
But for a basic refresher, last time we discussed goddesses,
we talked about Anano, we talked about Thetis, and we
outlined the basics of Leonard Slain's hypothesis. His main claim
is that human evolution led to a gender division and
brain hemisphere. Favorite is um that men and women biologically
with their brains, can do pretty much the same things
(01:04):
if they want to, but that the division of labor
and hunter gatherer culture tended to favor a brain lateralized
division of labor, where men were usually more left brain
oriented because men had to be the hunters, and that
that hunting required left brain emphasies on things like sequential
detail based thinking, uh, and emotional coldness and cruelty. And
(01:24):
then on the other hand, you had women more often
being selected for labor that favor favored right brain type
stuff like emotional intuitions, empathy, nurturing, education, speech as opposed
to written language and images. And so Schlain thinks, what
that the introduction of writing kind of messed things up.
(01:45):
It shifted human culture to favor the left brain perceptual
modes which traditionally had been associated with men males of
the species, and that that gave rise to patriarchy and
patriarchal culture. Yeah, it's such a puloss hypothesis. I'd really
I haven't been able to get it out of my
mind since we first started researching it. Yeah, it's one
(02:06):
of those that, as we said last time, even if
we don't necessarily think his argument is convincing, or if
you know, he hasn't necessarily made his case that this
is really how it happened, it certainly brings up a
lot of interesting subjects along the way, and so he
raises interesting questions. Even if he's not ultimately right, and
I'm I'm pretty sure I'm not convinced by his argument
(02:26):
in the end, But it's a fascinating book. Nonetheless. Yeah,
like I said, it forces you to to rethink what language,
what written language, does to us, and and why the
status of the goddess is so diminished in our world,
to the point where I was telling my son, who's
only he's only six, just barely six, I was telling
him about goddesses, and then later that day we see
(02:47):
a representation of a goddess and he refers to it
as a lady god. I'm like, no, actually, it's it's
a goddess. It is. Uh, it's not just a lady
version of this other thing it is. It's really kind
of the primordial thing you should be swing it a
man goddess. Yeah, exactly. That That makes me think, like
it's so deeply embedded. Now, I'm not calling your son
a sexist, but I'm saying, like, you know, how what
(03:10):
how come we see a goddess and we think that's
a lady god instead of seeing a male god and
think that's a male goddess. Yeah, I mean, it's he's
not sexist, but he he is growing up in a
world that is that is ruled by by by patriarchy,
and you can, you can try and balance out of
child's upbringing as much as possible, but they're still growing
(03:33):
up exposed to that larger world. Yeah, and growing up
with the legacy of you know, hundreds or thousands of
years of literature and archetypes, and you know, it's it's
they're not just in the full works of literature, but
it's there in the metaphors we use in everyday speech.
They tend to have a kind of patriarchal slant to them,
or at least one that associates valued cultural traits or
valued activities with men and men's behavior, and that goes
(03:57):
back through history. Uh, maybe only the fifty pages or
so of Schlane's book are actually the part where he's
outlining his hypothesis about evolution and brain lateralization um and
and how writing affects that, And then most of the
rest of the book is just him exploring cultures and
time periods throughout history when the status of writing changed
(04:20):
or when writing was introduced, and what happens to the
cultures there. Like one of the examples he talks about
is in ancient Mesopotamia, with the introduction of cune of
form and professionalized scribes and things like that, when writing
was professionalized, you know. He thinks that this leads to
the introduction of the idea of written law codes instead
(04:41):
of unwritten norms of behavior, govering what's acceptable and what's
not acceptable to do in society. And so Slaine looks
at some of the misogynistic qualities of the earliest written
law codes and says, hmmm, it looks it looks to
him like maybe the introduction of writing itself somehow coincided
with a sharp turn towards misogynistic standards of conduct in society. Now.
(05:04):
Of course, sh Lane spends a lot of time with
the Greeks because there's a lot of mythological and historical
content to discuss there. And he points to the comparison
to be made between Athens and Sparta as an example
of how the spread of the written word pushed uh
the goddess and just female power to the periphery of
Greek culture, and he says that they're it's they're perfect
(05:26):
examples to compare because they both spoke the same language,
they worship the same gods, they spoken and wrote the
same language, but the two big differences, he says, emerge
in their treatment of women and their attitudes towards the alphabet.
That's interesting. Yeah, so let's talk about Sparta. I will
I will present to you that this is Sparta. Uh yeah,
(05:48):
I mean you bring up the example by illusion. If
you were only to be trained on modern pop culture,
you would tend to think of Sparta as very macho.
So so you might be curious, how could how could
Sparta be more more pro woman than Athens? Yeah? How
could a place that is we we've we've come to
define it by beards and six packs, like what what?
What in there is empowering to women? Well? Certainly they
(06:10):
were a militaristic society with little use for literacy. They
produced no playwrights, philosophers, or historians that that really resonated
beyond their own age. Their law, which was formulated by Lesurgis,
was not written down. Everyone had to memorize it instead,
and Plutarch even reported that there was a Spartan law
(06:32):
against committing any law to writing. What Yeah crazy? Uh So.
On the other hand, they of course glorified deprecation and cruelty. Uh.
Their government was an oligarchy with with definite fascist leanings.
But then compare this this place to Athens, Okay. Athens
certainly is a fountain of culture, democracy, law, but it's
(06:54):
also a place where women were excluded from education, government
and public affairs. The the Athenian law of her Solon
denied women the right to buy or sell land, and
women were just considered property. A father could dissolve his
daughter's marriage. Uh. And even though the muses were considered
feminine deities, uh, the artists were not. The artists were male.
(07:16):
So Sparta, on the other hand, quote educated girls in
nearly the same manner as boys. Women wore less restrictive clothing,
and they also competed in athletic games. They ruled the
household while the men were away at war, and they
owned and sold property. In fact, by the fourth century
b C. Women owned two fifths of all Spartan land
(07:37):
Fritish land. Here's a quote from Slane's book. Spartan's honored
women's life giving role and considered it equal to that
of their warriors. To immortalize his name by having it
inscribed on his tombstone, a Spartan man had to die
in combat to win the same honor a Spartan woman
had to perish in childbirth. And another effect that he
(07:58):
points out is that ATHENI demanded fidelity, virginity, and chastity
among the women, but Spartan women were not so restrained.
So again he argues that this, this is a great
bit of evidence to support his hypothesis, because you have
you have kind of a wonderful uh uh, you know,
a versus b testing situation here with with Athens on
(08:20):
one hand and Sparta on the other. Yeah, these two
civic societies that, at least if he's correct, he's claiming
are are very similar, except by the cultural differences that
are derived from one being highly literate in the elites
and the other not being so fond of of written
down words. Yeah, it's a really interesting idea to compare
the two like that. And I wonder what a scholar
(08:41):
of ancient Greece would think looking at that. I mean,
would a scholar of ancient Greece say, yes, those those
comparisons are valid or or is picking? Yeah, Shlane cherry picking.
You always gotta wonder if Slane's cherry picking, because I
get the sense sometimes he may be doing that in
support of his argument, But at least in the moment
while you're reading it, it seems very persuasive. Yeah, I
can't help. But wonder if if one were to really
(09:03):
get into some of the details of Sparta's brutality, if
that would um, even that would go against Stoyan's argument here.
But but but I have not looked at that data yet. Yeah. Hey,
if you're a listener out there and you are an
ancient Greek historian or a historian of ancient Greece, especially
if you're an ancient Greek, if you travel through time,
do do rings up. We'll get somebody to translate. Yeah,
(09:23):
but either way, please get in touch with us. Let
us know what you think about that is. Is that
on target? Is it bunk? We'd be interested to hear
your thoughts. Um. But yeah, So he talks about many
ancient cultures. He talks about ancient Egypt, he talks about Mesopotamia,
giving examples as he goes throughout of where he sees
the introduction of the written word or parts of the
society that favored the written word, causing women's position to
(09:48):
go into a relative decline and even leading in many
cases to these types of violent misogyny that we see
in say, the Code of Hammurabi, the you know, the
written law codes of ancient Mesopotamia. But I think we
should look at another interesting example that maybe goes a
little bit counter to his theory, or at least see
how he deals with it. And that example would be China.
(10:09):
So we'll take a look at sh Lane's thoughts on
ancient China after we come back from this break. Thank you,
thank you. Alright, we're back, okay. So we were going
to discuss Leonard Schlane's treatment of ancient China. I was
curious what he would do with this, because part of
his idea is that the sequential reading of letters in
alphabetic script is what tends to favor this like this
(10:32):
male dominant way of thinking in the brain. But of
course Chinese script doesn't exactly work that way, right, that's right,
I mean China. The Chinese language does not have an alphabet,
so it would seem to be a very difficult thing
to fit into this theory. So I do want to
discuss some of the key points that he makes in
discussing Chinese culture Chinese language. So he points to the
(10:55):
evidence of preliterate female centric Chinese culture, and indeed there
are some very powerful goddesses in Chinese myths, such as
the creatrix goddess uh Nua. But he also makes the
following points about about Chinese language. He says, there's no
tensh calligraphy is is visual artistic in ways that Western
script doesn't have to be. There's more poetry, entity says,
(11:17):
and and so it would seem to be a right
hemisphere written language, and there's actually some sided evidence to
back that up, he says. Quote researchers tested a select
group of Chinese and English speaking individuals who had learned
to read and write both languages as small children, and
who later in life had experienced damage to one hemisphere
(11:38):
or the other. Right handed Subjects who had damage to
their left hemispheres lost the ability to speak either Chinese
or English, and although they could not write English, they
retained a limited ability to communicate in written Chinese. Those
with damage to their right hemispheres could still speak Chinese
and English, and although they could write English, they had
(11:58):
difficulty writing Chinese. However, Schlein stresses that that all of
this language, even though it might be tipped a little
more in the direction of the feminine, it still diminishes
the role of the nonverbal component of speech. Chinese character
still must be read in sequence. They and they are,
as we discussed in the Chinese Typewriter episode abstract inform,
(12:22):
there's a certain reductionism involved in consuming it. And so
he argues that the Chinese writing is still much closer
to the alphabet than it is to oral communication and uh.
And it's this proximity that makes it a masculizing influence
on Chinese culture. And he also points out that the
following he says that quote the tentacles of literacy began
(12:42):
to wrap around the minds of the Chinese people in
the sixth century b c. And then this is around
the same time that Taoism and Confucianism emerge, so that
this is fascinating. He points out that Taoism embodies feminine values,
no attempt to control others, and promotes mother Nature as
a guide. And and this is where we get the
symbol of the yin yang, of the of of of
(13:03):
the two opposing forces feminine and masculine. Yeah, he portrays
Daoism is very is very feminine friendly. Yeah. On the
other hand, he says that Confucism this touts masculine values,
UH structures, patriarchal society and UH and and a father culture.
And so these two systems of belief they coexist in
(13:24):
relative equilibrium until the Chinese invent the printing press in
around CE. Literacy rates sore, and soon after Daoism declines
and Confucism becomes China's dominant belief system. Now, Robert, I
know you're very interested in Chinese history. How how does
that square with your understanding of the development and culture
(13:45):
and the role of Daoism versus Confucism. Well, I love
the way he's looking at this, uh, this sort of
tug of war between Taoism and Confucism. But but then
to come back around and and say, but it's the
it's the written language that is the key, when clearly
you have these two different worldviews that are having, you know,
(14:06):
enormous effect on Chinese culture. Um. I think it's an
interesting read, but it feels like written language is just
one of several factors at work here, you know, which
I guess is kind of my my response to the
whole hypothesis. Well, I would say that throughout many of
his discussions in in different times in history. I think
(14:30):
one problem with his hypothesis is that he over generalizes
the the pro female or anti female characteristics of cultures
or ways of thinking. You know, he characters tends to
characterize something as either like, you know, this this way
of thinking was very anti woman, or this way of
(14:50):
thinking was very pro woman, when I think in both
cases there's usually a little more nuanced than he's letting on.
I agree, Like one example from the Western history is
when he gets into the idea of like medieval medieval
Catholicism being pro woman, but then the Protestant Reformation and
the subsequent Catholic reaction to the Protestant Reformation being anti woman.
(15:14):
I think you're more likely to find strong strains of
misogyny in both, but examples of women breaking through it
in both cases, right. And then also, of course we're
realizing that you have varying levels, varying class levels in
any given um group. So I mean, for instance, in
medieval Europe, you're gonna have some women who are who
are nuns and are a part of the religious hierarchy. Uh,
(15:37):
and then you're gonna have some that are that are
simply peasants. You're gonna have some that are royalty. Likewise,
in Chinese history, when you get into the era of footbinding,
you're going to have you're gonna have members of the
upper class who are who are who end up being
a part of footbinding culture. Then you're gonna have women
in lower classes who can who are not part of it,
part in many parts in many instances due the fact
(16:00):
they do have to work and contribute. Not to get
too much into foot binding, that it's another fascinating and
disturbing topic all on its own. So in Schlane's book,
we come back time and time again to the notion
that the medium is the message. We go from oral
tradition to written records, eventually compounded by the advent of
printing press technology. With any key upheavals in society aligned
(16:22):
and his hypothesis with the with the technology and the
literacy of its people, masculine powers entrenched themselves. The trend
continues unabated through the world wars of the twentieth century,
with some impact from the advent of photography. That's an
interesting thing. He essentially says that we're retreating back away
(16:42):
from some of the patriarchy and that women are gaining
more rights to some degree because of photography and the
introduction of the importance of the image back into society.
He even at one point talks about how it used
to be that a family was fleeing a burning home,
what would they grab. It would be the family bible.
That'd be the thing around which all of their family
(17:03):
memories were centered. It was a word, yeah, the printed text.
And then after the introduction of photography, it would be
the family photo album. Yeah. And then then he argues
that post World War Two, you see this television boom,
which which he says, really brings the feminine medium to prominence,
because this again is the triumph of the visual over
(17:25):
the text. Right. But one thing that's interesting is that
Schlane isn't always saying that, say, the left brain is
bad and the right brain is good. Right, that's right.
He brings up the example of Adolf Hitler's rise to
power in Germany, which he points out was a highly
literate nation at the time. And uh, and how did
(17:45):
Hitler rise to power will through the use of of
the of radio And he characterizes this is the dark
side of a sudden shift to right brain culture. Yeah,
So he says the ideas that Hitler used radio too
circumvent this sort of organized, sequential left brain thinking of
the printed word, and goes straight into people's brains by
(18:08):
talking to them in their ears. Is his quote, Hitler's
voice buried deep into the depths of the right hemisphere,
resurrecting tribal myths and rituals. Now, I wonder what he's
gonna make a twitter. Well, he does touch on the
Internet age a bit here. He points out that you
have the the invention of personal computer technology who would great,
which greatly changes the way people interact. You have graphic
(18:30):
icons increasingly replacing text commands, and he says that the
Internet and Worldwide Web are based on feminine images of
nets and webs. I don't know. That feels like kind
of a stretch, but but still, well, a lot of
his associations in the book are kind of stretching, like,
but then again, we're talking about the realm of symbols
and the power of symbols, and certainly symbols are powerful.
(18:51):
Now beyond that, he doesn't get really get much into
the contemporary world. He died in in two thousand nine
and this book was published in Uh, there's much I
think that one might say about the role of say,
hate speech in the primarily written world of Twitter and Reddit.
Um And yet at the same time, meme culture makes
use of images as well, often to drive home some
(19:14):
rather problematic ideas. Yeah, what about how about podcasts? Right? Well,
that's true right now, everybody that's listening, that's that's taking
in this podcast. You were listening to our voices. You're
not reading it. Um So Yeah, I feel like that
the world of podcast represents more of the the the
feminine energy that he's he describes in his book. There
(19:35):
are quite a few reasons that he seems to think
that the modern technological situation is going to be a
positive thing for the elimination of the influence of patriarchy.
One of which is that you've got photography and imagery everywhere.
Another one of which is that we depend now so
much on electricity, which he characterizes is as always being
(19:56):
described in terms of feminine power or him and in
type words. Another thing is that the keyboard has very
much changed the way we compose even written texts. Now,
the previous idea of how you'd compose a written text
would be that you'd write it out by hand with
your dominant hand, which is controlled by the dominant hemisphere
(20:16):
of the brain. So if you're a right handed person,
left hemisphere dominant brain, you'd be writing with that hemisphere.
But now we type with both hands, and so if
you're composing things on a keyboard or on a typewriter,
maybe that would somehow circumvent part of the way that
he believes that the left brain has been dominant in
alphabetic cultures. He even points to the fact that when
(20:39):
typewriters first came into prominence, the people who mainly focused
on typing for a living were women, and that typing
was seen as like it was kind of men who
were trying to get into typing were tweeted dismissively. Is like, oh,
that's the thing for women to do. That's a great point, yeah,
and not something I would have necessarily thought about going
(20:59):
into this spite. I mean, we had the fact that
we had a whole episode that that discussed the the
technology of typewriters and its effect on culture. Now, I
will say Slane was optimistic about where we were headed
and what our trajectory was. Slash is as a as
a people should be consider this a disproof of his hypothesis.
(21:21):
It depends how you look at it. Again, you have
to you have to think about the various uh um
um you know, peaks and valleys in this various timeline
of feminine versus masculine. Yeah, it's true, we shouldn't. You know.
It's easy to be negative about how things are in
the present. You know, you have that bias, nativity bias,
and it's like, you know, you'll give it some time.
(21:42):
You had a few decades and then you can see
how things were. But this is this is what he
said in his epilogue. He said, quote, I am convinced
we are entering a new golden age, one in which
the right hemispheric values of tolerance, caring, and respect for
nature will we begin to ameliorate the conditions that have
prevailed for the too long period during which the left
him spheric values were dominant. Images of any kind are
(22:03):
the bomb bringing about this worldwide healing. I will take
more time for change to permeate and alterate world cultures,
but there can be no doubt that the wondrous um
permutations of photography and electromagnetism are transforming the world, both
physically and psychically. The shift to write hemispheric values through
the perception of images can be expected to increase the
(22:25):
sum total awareness of beauty. Yeah, one could hope some
version of that is true, you know. And in the
book he does point out that when you look at
the twentieth century, what are two of the most um
widespread images, like what, what are two pictures that are
probably going to show up in any discussion of the
twentieth century? And one is the picture of Earth as
(22:48):
a whole from space, and then the other is, uh
is the the detonation of an atomic bomb. There's a
sense of revelation in the photo in in the photograph
that is that it's harder to grasp in the word
I guess, or it's or at least it's it's harder,
it takes longer to convey the meaning. When I think
about those two images juxtaposed with one another, I think,
(23:10):
you know, they both kind of indicate that line from
Auden's poem September one, ninety nine where he just says
we must love one another or die. I have a
feeling we're going to come back to that that kind
of proposal at the very end of this episode. Okay,
but first let's take a quick break, and when we
come back, we'll discuss some criticisms of Slane's argument. Thank you, alright,
(23:30):
we're back. So I guess at the end here we
should focus on a few general criticisms of Slane's theory.
I mean we we've peppered some of our critical thoughts throughout.
I don't want to sound too critical because on one hand,
I do think he brings up a lot of interesting
ideas and this is actually a book worth reading, even
though I think in the end I'm not persuaded by
(23:53):
his main argument, and I think his style of argumentation
is very loosey goosey, And it is important to and
drive home that it is. It is an argument, It
is a hypothesis. Is that he has not written the
Bible for us here and say here, here is the
absolute word he's saying, this is my hypothesis. And here's
how I would support that with our with with the
(24:14):
existing body of scientific, historical, cultural, archaeological evidence. Yes, I
do want to mention briefly one critical review, which was
by the science writer Sandra Blakesley. If you're writing any
of her books, Robert, I don't believe so I think
I might there's one I've been looking at that was
about um. But she writes a lot about topics related
(24:36):
to neuroscience, and she co authored this book about how
stage magic can show us certain ways our mind plays
tricks on us. It seemed kind of interesting. I think
it's called Slights of Mind. But anyway, she wrote a
critical review for The New York Times in nine and
her main criticism is just that the book is she
accuses Schlaane of peddling just so stories. Now, this is
(24:58):
a term that often comes up to describe historical narrative
explanations for things that are offered without proof. And one
example would be I think this was actually somewhere in
the book, if I remember right. But anyway, why do
men in some cultures wear neckties? Well, let's say the
answer is it's because in our evolutionary history, dangling genitalia
(25:20):
was a sign of virility in males, and it was
a sign of good mate quality. So men want to
show off some kind of dangling object to set off
the same responses, so they wear neckties. Now, notice I
didn't provide any evidence that that's the reason. It's basically
just like I told a plausible story. I told a
story and you say, oh, I can see how that
(25:40):
might be the case. And these types of explanations are
often referred to pejoratively as just so stories. I just
told you a story, and well, that's just how it is,
and it has that kind of truthiness to it, and
so you just buy into it. Yeah. Now, I do
think that the accusation of being a just so story
is unfairly leveled sometimes that explanations based in evolutionary anthropology
(26:03):
and psychology, because you know, after all, a hypothesis is
often just an unproven, plausible explanation that's awaiting some supporting evidence.
And so sometimes I think you see attacks on things,
uh that attacks on things, calling them just so stories,
when really what you should be doing is, well, you know,
let's allow people some room to speculate. It's okay to
(26:24):
speculate as long as you remember what you're doing. You know,
you're not saying like, well, here's the facts, this is
how it is. You're saying, hey, what if this were true?
Would that you know, could we find some evidence to
support it? Yeah. It's not like say a conspiracy theory,
where you're saying, uh, where you're exploring that you're leaning
a bit too heavily into the what if exactly, And
(26:45):
you definitely can lean a little bit too heavily into
the what if, And I think maybe she Layne does
that in the book. I think we're slippery creatures. Often,
in the heat of our zeal to explain things, we
sort of forget that the ideas were entertaining for the
purpose of speculation are just speculation and want of good evidence,
we start treating them as if the last thing I speculated, well,
(27:07):
We've got that proven. Now now I'm moving on to
the next thing, when really you haven't proven anything in
any step. You're just offering a lot of plausible, possible
explanations in a row. Yeah, and run the risk of
creating something that is more like a religious framework for
understanding the past. Not that I'm saying that that this
(27:28):
is religion or aspiring to be religion, but sometimes I
feel like say that I feel that something like the
um the bicameral mind kind of it satisfies me. It
satisfies me in ways that I might look to religion
to satisfy me, and that it can it gives me
a model upon which I might make sense of the
(27:50):
mysteries of the past. Yeah, it satisfies you because it's
interesting and because it gives you a way of contemplating
possible answers to two questions you you're probably never going
to have a really solid evidential answer for, you know,
that kind of thing. And that's why, you know, hypotheses
like this and like the bicameral mind are interesting exactly
(28:11):
for this reason. They take a really big fundamental question
or really big fundamental issue, offers some kind of radical
solution to it, and then they range over all different
types of subject matter and across different disciplines, drawing on
different types of evidence to to answer it. And so
for some reason that process is really fun. Like to
(28:33):
engage in that game of solving the puzzle and ranging
across all these different disciplines and going to all these
different places in history. It feels very good, at least
to me, it does. It. It's very satisfying, an emotionally
exciting journey. I'm not sure it necessarily provides the best,
strongest explanations for things. Yeah, it's like you're looking for shape.
(28:54):
It provides a shape. Is it the shape? Well maybe not,
but it forces you to ask questions. So then why
does this shape line up with at least certain aspects
of realities we understand it? And that's where that's where
it becomes such a a fascinating internal exploration. Now, one
way in which I would actually compare the b Cameral
(29:16):
Mind favorably to this book is that I think that
Bi Camera, I think that Julian James is actually a
little bit more cautious than than Slayne is. I don't
know if you'd agree with that, but I feel like
he tends to take things slower and makes fewer broad generalizations. Yeah, yeah,
I would say so. And uh, you know, Julian Jayes
(29:36):
also was He seemed willing to say is this right?
I don't know this is? But what this is the
model I'm presenting? You know, he would, well, and she
Leyne does that in his opening He basically says, this
whole book is a hypothesis. But then if you read
sentence to sentence throughout the rest of it, he doesn't
he doesn't continually acknowledge that. Well, but then again he
(29:57):
is making an impassioned argument for it, and the kind
of right brained argument. Yeah, so you kind of and
and I guess that's kind of a trap one risk
falling into as a writer that you you become so
passionate about the theory that you're not stopping every few
paragraphs to remind everybody that's a hypothesis. I should also
point out in my saying this that I have read
(30:18):
more of Julian Jayne's work, like from from different points
in his career, and I have only read um this
one work of Schlaine's, and he has written other books,
So I don't know if this is I don't know
to what extent he comes back and subsequent um um
his subsequent writings and and sort of revisits any of this. Yeah,
I'd be interested to see that. I mean I I
(30:41):
so I didn't find anything about this theory being picked
up in an academic context. I mean Slaine was writing
for a popular audience, so he makes the argument in
a in a popular kind of way, and I think
that probably also gives him the freedom to take some
license with making kind of broad generalizations when he talks
like the Greeks were like this, and you know, the
(31:04):
right brain is like this, and men are like this
in every case, like the critical reader and me wants
to put a big asterisk every time he says something
like that and be like, well, wait a minute, So
you're saying, like, in what percent of the time is
it like that? How this also sounds like a great
framework for stand up comedy routine, the alphabet versus the
(31:25):
goddess as stand up I like it. All Right, we're
basically out of time here, but I do want to
touch on one last topic, one last goddess, and that
goddess is goes Er. Well let's goes there. Yeah, So
I am talking about the fictional entity from the the
film Ghostbusters goes through the Gazarian, goes through the destructor,
(31:46):
goes through the Traveler, et cetera, an entity of many names.
I have a question is Goeser in Anna? I think
should they say she's supposed to be Sumerian? She is
described as being a Sumerian, so she's a She's a
Type seven for starters. That's her like her spirit ranking
within the Ghostbusters um system. And we're told that it
(32:09):
was worshiped as a goddess by the Sumerians around six
thousand BC. That's significantly earlier than any Anana we know about, right,
So the timeline is not going to perfectly line up
with what we've been talking about here. For instance, we
were talking about how Marduk worship began to to rise
in sec etcetera. But anyway, I do want to ask
(32:31):
everyone to consider consider the following in regards to Gozer.
So Gozer is a world destroying traveler, yet despite her
worship in ancient times, she did not lay waste to
the ancient world. Why not? Well, uh, let's let's remember
what we know about how Gozer functions. So Gozer's form
(32:53):
is chosen by the mortals it encounters our heroes and ghostbusters.
Imagine it is a Imagine it as a seemingly harmless
yet masculine corporate logo, and it's still rampages. Oh the marshmallow. Yeah.
The ancient Sumerians, however, chose the form of a goddess,
one attended to by a pair of demi gods representing
(33:14):
each gender, both the vins Clortho the key Master and
Zul the Gatekeeper, and they seem to share equal footing
in their service to Gozer. Oh man, I'd say, if anything,
Zul is more powerful than Vince clarthough I don't know. Well,
it's hard, Well, can Evince Claro can do is just
run around saying your parish in flames. Here, you're thinking
(33:34):
of the of potential um complications based on their mortal hosts.
So yeah, Sigourney Weaver's character clearly the more powerful human
host that was chosen. Well, I'm sorry for jumping me on.
I will wait for the sign. Okay. So this is
my theory. Gozer does not destroy the ancient world because
(33:56):
it manifested during a time of goddess worship and was
bound to a form, bound to a form by a
right brain culture rather than a left brain culture. So
the true way to avoid extinction at the hands of
gozer Uh is to choose a form that emanates from
right brain qualities, or at least a more balanced mind state.
(34:16):
The modern brain, especially the modern male brain, is so
dominated than by the left brain the alphabet and infected
patriarchal energy that that even a cartoon marshmallow Man can
be nothing but a force of conquest in mass slaughter.
And perhaps I'll even go so far as to say
maybe that's Gozer's true purpose, to wipe left brain dominated
(34:39):
species from the cosmos, because right brain dominated species are
going to see it as a goddess. Now there is
actually a great idea for a sci fi fantasy story.
You've got like a hemispheric lateralization culture where one side
brain culture fears being taken over by the other side
(34:59):
brain culture and they create a memetic weapon to destroy it. Yeah,
look at that. And we're giving it away for free
right here. We're not giving it away. You can't use it.
But but but yeah, inevitably, in talking about gods and goddesses,
I can't help but come back to fictional entities in
uh books and movies, and uh, it's really it's really
(35:22):
given me a new respect for Ghoser, not that I
ever disrespected Gozer. To be clear, anyway, you should tune
into our upcoming fictional podcast, The Ancient brain Bomb. I
mean it is telling to that Gozer is then defeated
in Ghostbusters by a pack of men with phallic lightning swords. Yeah,
so predictable. And hey, I'm gonna say it here. As
(35:43):
funny as the movie is, as much as you love
the character, is that Binkman, he's not a nice guy.
He's no, he's he's a patriarchal jerk. Yeah, And so
that you have it a little bit of Ghostbusters to
cap off an exploration of the alphabet versus the Goddess. Now,
I think we should try to come back to some
of the more interesting questions raised by this book in
the future. I want to come back to the idea
(36:05):
of visual perception styles affecting the perception of time, uh,
the way that the way that our media really do
shape us. I mean, I'm sure there's all kinds of
research on how on how keyboard driven communication is changing
the what people communicate. Yeah, indeed. Plus there's so many
just little, you know, brief moments in the book where
(36:26):
he touches on this culture or that or or For instance,
there's a bit where he talks about the Sistine Chapel
and I realized, oh man, there are a number of
kind of cool uh reads on the Sistine Chapel that
have come out over the years. Would be neat to
corral them all into a single podcast. He's got a
really interesting and really fun chapter on Dionysus and the
mine Ads and and that kind of stuff in ancient Greece.
(36:48):
I actually think it doesn't help his art, doesn't help
his overall argument all that well, but it's just interesting
to revisit his treatment of it. On its own and
again if you want to check out the book and
its entirety, I will I'm going to include a link
to it on the landing page for this episode of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com, as well as
a link to the homepage for it, which has a
(37:10):
wonderful timeline for the hypothesis as well listing out various
historical UH moments and UH technological achievements that line up
with his hypothesis. And while you're at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com, you can check out all the
episodes of the podcast. You can check out links to
our various social media accounts and UH. As I've been saying,
(37:31):
if you want to support this podcast, a great way
to do it is to rate and review wherever you
get your podcasts. Big thank you as always to our
wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you
would like to get in touch with us directly to
let us know feedback on this episode or any other
suggest a topic for the future, UH, to share your
thoughts with us on anything you think we might be
(37:52):
interested in, or just to say hi, you can always
email us at blow the Mind at how stuff Works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
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