- At Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world, the descendants of the Uros Indians live on incredible floating islands. Here, 250 families make their living from this vast freshwater sea, creating an unusual world suspended between heaven and reeds.
- The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Wikipedia)
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is a 1976 book by the Princeton psychologist, psychohistorian and consciousness theorist Julian Jaynes (1920-1997). The book addresses the problematic nature of consciousness – “the ability to introspect” – which in Jaynes’ view must be distinguished from sensory awareness and other processes of cognition. Jaynes presents his proposed solution: that consciousness is a learned behavior based more on language and culture than on biology; this solution, in turn, points to the origin of consciousness in ancient human history rather than in metaphysical or evolutionary processes; furthermore, archaeological and historical evidence indicates that prior to the learning of consciousness, human mentality was what Jaynes called “the bicameral mind” – a mentality based on verbal hallucination.