Cults and Archaic Psychosocial Organisations

Religious behavior and psychosocial structures, particularly those of the more extreme variety currently referred to as 'cults', provide strong inferential support for the most controversial and counterintuitive of Julian Jaynes' propositions: that individualised modern mental-egoic consciousness developed much later than one would expect. Jaynes suggests that this occurred, in Western Culture, as late as the early first millennium BC, and was preceded by a long period during which language and social structure became increasingly complex, yet individual rational mental-egoic consciousness as we experience and exemplify it today had yet to develop. I agree in principle, tho' I feel that there was a transitional period, perhaps marked in Western Culture by the Epic of Gilgamesh, during which the God-King was conscious in something like the modern sense and the rest of the population was in a state of participation mystique.

Because of the close linkage in modern awareness between egoic and linguistic function, it is natural to assume that either one presupposes the other. Jaynes argues that this is in fact false: he does not dispute that egoic function presupposes linguistic function, but argues that there is not a reciprocal dependency. Language processing can occur in states in which egoic function is either absent or altered beyond recognition. Modern examples of this are hypnotic and dream states and drug or meditation-induced ASCs (Altered States of Consciousness), severe psychosis, and brainwashed-zombie-style 'cult' group-mind.

This seems counterintuitive, but the contemporary rabid barking-mad 'cult' provides a model which while very probably as much a part of modern consciousness as an example of archaic consciousness, still provides an empirical phenomenon which is clearly a pattern of psychosocial organisation substantially at variance with the norms of industrialisation. It is noteworthy that there is to my knowledge no clear psychopathology or other indicator that reliably predicts who is at risk for zombification: many cult members are of above-average intelligence and social status, and not the bunch of slobbering losers that one might expect. I will conjecture that those who are most deracinated, who our twisted genius Unabomber referred to correctly as 'oversocialized', are likely to be at highest risk, but this is another topic.

While cult members are invariably convinced that they represent the future of consciousness, it is much more likely that they represent something akin to the regressive, degenerate phenomenon Erich Neumann referred to as "recollectivisation". While they are clearly a pathological version of whatever they represent, they appear to be at least an attempt at a regressive return to an archaic psychosocial organisation. This hypotheses receives support from the fact noted above that fairly normal people are at risk of zombification or mass-hysterical recollectivisation. The parallels between Nazism, Cultural-Revolution-Maoism, and the typical heavily-armed whacko cult should be evident. It is clear that ordinary people, even highly-intelligent and well-educated people, can become Nazis, Scientologists, Moonies etc. This indicates that the cultic/mass-hysterical psychosocial organisation is essentially a strong attractor, perhaps even stronger than 'normality', in the phase-space or state-space representing all the possible states of the psychosocial process as instantiated in individuals. In other words, it doesn't seem to take too much to push someone out of normal consensual reality into what we might call an ambulatory mass-psychosis. The ease with which this alternate conformation of psychic contents can be constellated indicates strongly that this sort of group-Gestalt-mind has a place in human history. While it may have a place in the future (hopefully on a much more evolved level than the way it appears at present), the most parsimonious conclusion, and also the only one subject to more than speculation, is that it has a place in the past. The power of the cultic group-mind-mode and the ease with which it can propagate suggests archaic roots that are both broad and deep.

Cults as a rule at least aspire to something akin to a state of participation mystique. Cult members stress their sameness, unity, and unquestioned obedience to their all-wise, divine or at least superhuman leader. Individual characteristics of any kind, especially desire or opinion, is uniformly discouraged and viewed as sinful rebellion. Just as the historical record makes plain was the case in the days of the God-King, the leader of the cult is the only one who is supposed to have will, desire, critical thought and so forth. The cult leader assumes all of the privileges and responsibilities of egoic consciousness for the cult. The members are expected to be expendable, interchangeable units to be disposed of as needed by the God-King in the furtherance of his goals, which are by definition the goals of the cult and all cult members. It is a social structure perhaps more akin to the social insects than to ordinary contemporary industrial culture.

The modern cult clearly aspires to but probably does not in general achieve a fully collectivised pre-egoic state for the members of the flock. In modern cults, concepts of sin and punishment are still required to keep rogue elements at bay. Disobedience is at least a theoretical option for present-day cult members, coming as they do from modern individualist culture. According to Jaynes, in the genuine archaic pre-egoic consciousness, disobedience was not possible because the masses were not conscious enough to conceive that they could want to do anything at variance with the commands spoken by the Gods. One supposes that they had at least a body-egoic level of awareness that enabled them to feed and clothe themselves without requiring divine intervention. But for any activities outside of known routines occurring in the here and now, the Voice of the Gods was required. Primary-process cognition is adequate and probably superior for here-and-now physical activities; anything requiring conceptual operations involving things not immediately present requires secondary-process cognition.

Reasonably complex language must have developed far back in the Paleolithic, among flexibly-hierarchical hunter-gatherer groups. These archaic tribal humans were probably somewhat like contemporary tribal peoples, and can be expected to have had a sense of individual self which, while characterized by an animistic participation-mystique and perhaps a body-egoic and primary-process organisation, was not the almost social-insect-like collectivism that Jaynes describes. It would certainly have been quite different from the deracinated atomization of contemporary industrial civilisation, but still recognizable as human awareness. I suspect the God-King phase was transitional, perhaps lasting only a few thousand years in any one place. In that I am at variance with Jaynes, who I think envisioned a longer duration.

The God-King rulership could have come into being at the transition from Paleolithic to Neolithic, in particular with the beginning of settled agriculture. A level of complexity would quickly be reached where a primate hunter-gatherer system would not be adequate to manage the planning and delayed reward of settled agriculture. Also, along with settled agriculture, substantial social stratification developed. Agriculture made it possible to free some from all manual labor, but this required that the peasantry do little other than work. This extreme disparity does not appear to occur among tribal people; clearly a different psychosocial form is required. This would be a logical point for the God-King rulership to develop. The God-King absolutism is like fascism an extremely efficient socioeconomic form in some respects, such as militarily, tho' these centralised dehumanizing systems fortunately appear to be inherently unstable. The differentiation and organisation of labor which absolute social control made possible appear to have given the God-King rulerships a selective advantage over the happier but less powerful tribal societies. The degree to which the people in this social form were conscious is an open question: modern examples of absolutist collectivism show that they need not have been lacking in self-consciousness to be voluntarily completely obedient even to the point of death. But Jaynes' proposals of submerged identity and hallucinated voices is intriguing and not without some support.

The theocratic despotism of the God-King would probably have been the most efficient organisation for social groups small and simple enough to be managed by a single individual working thru subordinates capable of executing orders but not of independent thought. For a king, "l'etat, c'est moi". The people and all wealth belong to the king. His natural desire is to manage his extended self well. If he is not so deranged or debauched as to preclude this, his kingly rule should result in an efficient conflict-free organisation of economic activity. This would seem to be a very durable form of government, and Jaynes suggests that it persisted until populations and socioeconomic complexity grew to the point where an essentially rule-based reactive consciousness was inadequate to the tasks at hand.

Eventually the point was reached at which situations requiring original thought occurred frequently enough to cause the system to break down. More and more questions would have arisen to which the internalized ruleset was inapplicable. The Gods would increasingly fall silent, forcing the ruler to try another means to find an answer: forcing the ruler to think, to analyze, to plan. The ruler would thus be forced into individual consciousness: the voices would speak less and less to him, and he would have to speak more and more with his own voice when ruling his subjects. A transitional period would ensue, in which the subjects dreamed on, perhaps not quite so peacefully, and the ruler was awake. Consider Gilgamesh. He clearly seems to be a conscious actor. Most likely the woman who was also the Goddess Inanna was also a conscious actor. Gilgamesh slept with her once a year and had a battle of wills with her the rest of the time. If they were both simply following the same ruleset, conflict would be unlikely. Here we have a lupine social structure: an alpha male and an alpha female, with the rest all ranked below.

Increasing complexity undermines centralisation. History shows a diffusion of power from God-King to King and nobles to constitutional monarchy and democracy. Concurrently one sees a diminishing of the King and court and the emergence of ideas of universal rights. The peasant rises from draft animal to citizen. Clearly progress in this direction is not steady, and outbreaks of fascism and modern 'cults' demonstrate the enduring power and appeal to some of collectivist absolutism.