Hi Robin,
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You paint a pessimistic picture of things. I have to admit though, looking at what the world has become you seem to be right, but hasn't it always been like this? Humans are born to lie - it is called politeness and a means of promoting social cohesion. Then there is conscience, the sense of right and wrong most of us carry within us. (I suppose this is some kind of 'Maat' ?). But its absence demonstrably allows psychopaths to gain unfair social advantage. And 'the rabble' are kept docile with mobile phones and bread and circuses. And competitions! Winning and losing, and all the rest...
I admire the wisdom of people who wanted to make society better and came up with such concepts as Maat, karma, etc. Although these concepts are highly illusory and untestable, they fundamentally change the perception of the world (and, accordingly, the actions) of the person who believes in it. Living in the company of such people is probably very pleasant
However, any behavioral restrictions (living according to Maat is also a restriction) still remain restrictions, so a person who is free from any of them (psychopath) has an advantage in some aspects. Proceeding from this, in the long term, the model of a society based on invented restrictions is not viable, and such a society always collapses, returning more or less to its original "wild" state, when the behavior of individuals is generally determined by more primitive, but objective factors (if you haven't eaten you will be eaten; the goal justifies any methods, etc. or their modern analogies).
Unfortunately, science destroys faith. The society of "faith and law" is increasingly being transformed into a society of "accurate knowledge and benefit", when everything is measured in terms of usefulness for a particular moment and situation, including human life. The progress of knowledge and technology by light years outstripped the progress of spirituality, which in our time has already been replaced by regression.
But we have already gone deep offtopic regarding to the declared theme of the thread.
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Just my 2 cents. Actually I've been pondering whether to start a thread on the subject of Egyptian consciousness but I don't know that anyone would be interested. Here's a summary -
In 1976 Julian Jaynes published his controversial book 'The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind', introducing the hypothesis of a two-chambered brain-mind model that preceded the evolutionary development of the conscious mind.
Jaynes proposes that ancient man was not fully conscious but that the left ('practical brain') received instructions from the right (intuitive brain) in the form of auditory hallucinations. For example, in Egypt the 'Ka' was man's volition, his will, and it was synonymous to the hallucinated voice of authority that guided men and kings. "The king's ka is, of course, the ka of a god, operates as his messenger, to himself is the voice of his ancestors, and to his underlings is the voice they hear telling them what to do." People without consciousness are effectively 'machines'.
In 1991 Reber argued that each individual act of learning mimics our species history - "consciousness is a late arrival on the evolutionary scene...sophisticated unconscious perceptual and cognitive functions preceded its emergence by a considerable margin."
A very interesting point of view. Unfortunately, I have not read this book, so I cannot support the discussion on this topic at a sufficient level.
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Anyway back to the shafts. […] Academic papers or reports by Gantenbrink must exist in the appropiate database, if they exist.
I cannot find any mention of publication of the results of Gunterbrink's research, other than a paper co-authored with Stadelmann in MDAIK 50 (1994).
The issues of the MDAIK from 1st to 20th can be found in the public domain here [
www.egyptologyarchive.com], but the 50th is not available. Maybe someone has the 50th volume of interest to us in electronic form to read the original source?
Alex.