{"id":197,"date":"2016-03-19T00:40:46","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T00:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/?page_id=197"},"modified":"2017-03-13T15:58:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T15:58:59","slug":"impcon-lecture-overview","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/?page_id=197","title":{"rendered":"IMPCON Lecture Overview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XBBLp9AdP_U?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the IMPROVISING CONSCIOUSNESS lectures Professor \u00c5rnstay links different mind configurations to radical upheavals in the earth\u2019s climate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Walkthrough Mind<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (2.5M 12K BCE) is a prelinguistic, collective consciousness that allows early humans to detect complex analogical patterns in the world and exploit them for survival. Over the millennia the brain develops distinct and sophisticated cognitive modules grounded in specific worldly domains: \u00a0food; earth\/space; sky\/time; wayfaring; materials etc. (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/impcon.org\/?page_id=457\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">lecture one)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In <\/span><b>The Reconfigurable Mind <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Professor \u00c5rnstay discusses the switch from the ancient Walkthrough Mind to the Bicameral Mind, with its two very different chambers. \u00a0First she backtracks to explain the evolution of the language module (~400K BCE), specialized for the group domain &amp; handling social interactions, \u00a0located on the left side of the brain. Then she describes the \u00a0chaotic time at the end of the last ice age (~12K BCE). Rapid climate swings lead to food shortages. \u00a0The right side of the brain (the modules specialized for the domains of the world) leverages the new language module \u00a0sending auditory hallucinations to the left side, telling \u00a0the group what to do: plant here, water, come back tomorrow, do it again. Humans survive by developing agriculture. (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/impcon.org\/?page_id=460\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">lecture two)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>The Bicameral Mind <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is the dominant mind configuration from 12K- 3K BCE. Over this period humans come to belief that the voice in their head in the voice of God. Consciousness \u00a0and memory reside not at the level of the individual but at the level of the village, and as as the villages grow, at the level of the city. Professor \u00c5rnstay tries to destabalize your everyday mindset and give you a sense of what it\u2019s like live with such a mind. (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/impcon.org\/?page_id=462\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">lecture three<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Next Professor \u00c5rnstay discusses the origin of <\/span><b>Linguistic Consciousness<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the breakdown of the Bicameral Mind in ~3K BCE. This adaptation is in response to another round of chaos both environmental and human-made: volcanic eruptions, climate disturbance, food shortages and \u00a0wars. An individualized linguistic consciousness supported by narrative operations emerges; an <\/span><b>I <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that is not dependent on the city for existence, but can carry itself and the stories\/memories of itself around in its own head. The Istruct Mind<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that emerges is your own familiar mind configuration. (<a href=\"https:\/\/impcon.org\/?page_id=491\">lecture four<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Istruct Mind <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0(3K BCE 2.5K CE) This period sees the complete domination of the language module of the brain. This is a successful adaptation as can be attested by the increasing global dominance of humans. However, that success carries the seeds of disaster. As human activity spawns the Anthropocene collapse it becomes clear that the domination of a cognitive module specialized for handling the human social group has become a problem. (<a href=\"https:\/\/impcon.org\/?page_id=549\">lecture five<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Dislocated Mind<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> ( 2,500-3,000 CE) develops in response to the chaos of the Anthropocene. This new mind configuration, with multiple and non-linguistic consciousnesses rooted both in the deep history of humans in landscape and technological advances, makes survival of the Anthropocene possible for humans and non-humans. (<a href=\"https:\/\/impcon.org\/?page_id=540\">lecture 6<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the IMPROVISING CONSCIOUSNESS lectures Professor \u00c5rnstay links different mind configurations to radical upheavals in the earth\u2019s climate. The Walkthrough Mind (2.5M 12K BCE) is a prelinguistic, collective consciousness that allows early humans to detect complex analogical patterns in the<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/impcon.org\/?page_id=197\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":34,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-197","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":594,"href":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197\/revisions\/594"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/impcon.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}