“In a sense, we have become our own gods.”

— Julian Jaynes , book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 3, p. 79
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Context: And when it is suggested that the inward feelings of power or inward monitions or losses of judgement are the germs out of which the divine machinery developed, I return that truth is just the reverse, that the presence of voices which had to be obeyed were the absolute prerequisite to the conscious stage of mind in which it is the self that is responsible and can debate within itself, can order and direct, and that the creation of such a self is the product of culture. In a sense, we have become our own gods.

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Julian Jaynes 43

American psychologist 1920–1997

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