The Origins of Consciousness

Another book that this year I’m rereading. As a millenial I came across this text the way many people my age do through reading Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson. I never would have found it otherwise. While in its hayday it was quite a famous book, it has now fallen mostly into obscurity.

The message of the book is quite enticing and crazy which makes for an interesting and compelling theory to read. That said, it has been thoroughly debunked and is not seen as a viable theory in its own right anymore. It exists as a bit of a kooky cult classic of classical literary criticism and it is in that light that I found it interesting as opposed to a serious theory of cognitive science.

The main thrust of the book is that it is putting forward a theory about the evolution of consciousness in human history. The theory itself is not great but the way it tells the theory is great. The book operates as almost a piece of literary criticism and analysis of ancient classical texts.

It operates almost as a kind of psychoanalysis book before Lacanian theory existed and operating at a totally different level. In this text, the literary criticism is used to analyse the minds of ancient greek and pre-historical societies. The author makes claims about what we can infer about the inner workings of the minds of ancient peoples through the way they speak about themselves and their communities through text.

Overall it is a really cool and novel piece of literary criticism in a way that I found much more creative than what people usually put out. It stands out as an fantastic example of just what is possible when it comes to doing these sorts of critiques.