From Symbolic Consciousness To Insight Consciousness

Thursday, 9 January 2025, 2:37 pm
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

“Over three billion years after life established itself on Earth, we, alone among millions of descendents of our ancient common ancestor, somehow acquired not just a large brain – the Neanderthals had that – but a fully developed mind.”

Ian Tattersall, Paleoanthropologist



Do we humans have “a fully developed mind,” or are contradictions woven into the very fabric of our brain’s evolution “from which we shall never be freed?”

In an age of both global homogenization and intractable differences on the individual and collective level, it’s worth considering a basic fact. The disparities between the Stone Age Magdalenians 20,000 years ago that painted the frescoes of Lascaux that rival the greatest paintings of the Renaissance, and the first agriculturalists and city-builders over 7000 years ago in Mesopotamia, and we struggling humans in the Digital Age, are superficial.

Indeed, the human mind is not progressing but regressing, as our diminishing attention spans indicate; as young people’s widespread resignation confirms; and as imminent AI cognitive superiority threatens.

So it isn’t just that “fully modern humans” have not essentially changed since Homo sapiens sapiens emerged in Africa and displaced our cousin species, Homo sapiens neanderthalis around 40,000 years ago.

It’s that symbolic consciousness – the mind fed on words, images, memories and information, is saturated, and the cumulative past and present is suffocating us all.

More:
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2501/S00013/from-symbolic-consciousness-to-insight-consciousness.htm