1972-73

[snyprrr]

I'm convinced that this is the cumulation of all history.

It's obvious that 1967 is too early, and 1975 is too late. Can anyone pinpoint/confirm the high point in history according to the dates I've provided? Plants? Stars? Politics? Religion? Anything to back up my theory?

[zamyrabyrd]

The saga of the Twin Towers began at that time:
The first tenants moved into the North Tower on December 15, 1970; the South Tower accepted tenants in January 1972. When the World Trade Center twin towers were completed, the total costs to the Port Authority had reached $900 million. The ribbon cutting ceremony was on April 4, 1973.

[mc ukrneal]

1973
I know you will like this one: Roe vs Wade decision in 1973.
For those in the UK, it's when they joined the EEC.
For us music folks: Sydney Opera opens.
Secretariat wins triple crown.
Oh, and battle of the sexes tennis match. Need I go on?!?!?

EDIT: Just saw that skylab was launched. There you go...
Bonus: Monica Lewinsky was born...

[Sergeant Rock]

1973 - Last American troops leave Vietnam

[drogulus]

     The New England Whalers won the Avco Trophy, beating the Winnipeg Jets in the finals.

[Jo498]

I tend to disagree but maybe I shouldn't as I was born in 1972

I'd nominate 1905.

[Klaze]

Larks' Tongues in Aspic

[drogulus]

I tend to disagree but maybe I shouldn't as I was born in 1972

     I tend to disagree, too. What are we disagreeing about?

     The Bronze age civilizations fell around 1200 BCE. One one possibly nutty theory says this is when people began to think the voices in their heads belonged to them.

Jaynes built a case for this hypothesis that human brains existed in a bicameral state until as recently as 3000 years ago by citing evidence from many diverse sources including historical literature. He took an interdisciplinary approach, drawing data from many different fields. Jaynes asserted that, until roughly the times written about in Homer's Iliad, humans did not generally have the self-awareness characteristic of consciousness as most people experience it today. Rather, the bicameral individual was guided by mental commands believed to be issued by external "gods" — commands which were recorded in ancient myths, legends and historical accounts. This is exemplified not only in the commands given to characters in ancient epics but also the very muses of Greek mythology which "sang" the poems: the ancients literally heard muses as the direct source of their music and poetry.

According to Jaynes, in the Iliad and sections of the Old Testament no mention is made of any kind of cognitive processes such as introspection, and there is no apparent indication that the writers were self-aware. Jaynes suggests, the older portions of the Old Testament (such as the Book of Amos) have few or none of the features of some later books of the Old Testament (such as Ecclesiastes) as well as later works such as Homer's Odyssey, which show indications of a profoundly different kind of mentality — an early form of consciousness.

     I was led to Jaynes from Dennett, who said:

The dangers of this top-down approach of course are many. Speculation is guided largely by
plausibility, and plausibility is a function of our knowledge, but also of our bad habits,
misconceptions, and bits of ignorance, so when you make a mistake it tends to be huge and
embarrassing. That's the price you pay in playing this game. Some people have no taste for this,
but we really can't do without it. Those scientists who have no taste for this sort of speculative
exercise will just have to stay in the trenches and do without it, while the rest of us risk
embarrassing mistakes and have a lot of fun.

     The rise of the first great empires and the subsequent plunge into a centuries long dark age, followed by documentation produced by a newly literate post-Homeric world marking the transition, provides us with a body of evidence for the recent consciousness hypothesis.

[Florestan]

December 13, 1972: Florestan is born.

'Nuff said.

[Jo498]

     I tend to disagree, too. What are we disagreeing about?

That 1972/73 was the high point of some civilization, or of human history. Maybe of post-war Western civ, but then the moon landing would certainly be more apt, wouldn't it.

The Jaynes bicameral mind + god's voices in the head hypothesis is far fringe and rejected both among mainstream neuro/psychologists and among ancient historians/classicists. Maybe that makes it more enticing to you. I tend to be skeptical but I never read the original Jaynes and only dimly recall what I read in other books countering his thesis. (For anyone reading Homer "naively" it seems obvious that these heroes deliberate and decide very similarly to us. There is a book by Bernard Williams on archaic ethics: "Shame and Necessity" that deals with some of these issues.)

[drogulus]

The Jaynes bicameral mind + god's voices in the head hypothesis is far fringe and rejected both among mainstream neuro/psychologists and among ancient historians/classicists.

     It will take more than that to convince me that Jaynes is literally right. Also, how disappointing would it be if the mainstream didn't defend the views built up by hundreds of years of prescience? How are they not supposed to do that? Last, I did say it was possibly nutty, though recent evidence of the bicameral effects related to hallucinations has supported Jaynes view.
     
     Jaynes did not intimate that archaic Greeks had nothing we would call consciousness. If they lacked the panoply of introspection we have they would still have deliberations. Animals that have less claim to self awareness than recent humans can be seen to deliberate. And with the benefit of language Bronze age humans should behave very much like us in a number of ways.

     We can have knowledge to make decisions without introspection, like our animal forbears. The question is when did we get the last "update" and what precipitated it. If I understand what the theory involves it wouldn't bear on what the ancient Greeks that we know about thought.

     The most controversial aspect of what Jaynes proposed is not that something like what he said happened, but that the events were only a few thousand years ago and not a few ten thousands. He moves it up close to literacy and after the first great dark age, so first high civilzations>a universal collapse>disturbances in the bicameral balance brought about as self conscious thought encroached on the space occupied by the now silent gods. It was a reinterpretation leading to something new, people thinking they were conscious. We still think like that, that the voices are us, and why not?

[Jay F]

1972: Watergate...Mark Spitz...Thick as a Brick.

[Wendell_E]

1973: I graduated from high school, and began college.

[snyprrr]

1973 - Last American troops leave Vietnam

I have to save droggy's Posts till later, but the above - and the moon thing- and such...


I'm kind of looking for any astro-LOGICAL ,perhaps, clues... or, rather, could there be a time, 1945, 2020, where the stars where in such a rare setting...>>...


Sarge's Post hints at the bigger picture, which of course I'm looking for...


I suppose if I reveal my motivation it might color the comments.... I have been plotting some patterns, and, looking at the Modern Culture, post-WWII, The Modern Age, The Space Age,... all that great "humanity hope" we were all having back then... it's obvious that by the middle of the bleak and conspiratorial 70s, 1975... "it" was all over...

I mean, even the SUMMER OF LOVE only started out as that, By Halloween of 1967, the downside of all that free-love and drugs stuff had given way to typical inner city criminals bashing, and overdoses, and the Idealism being squashed by the all pervasive HumanCondition of meMeME.


I mean, in 1967 we have this Neo-Baroque thing going on briefly, and then, six years later, 1973, we're in the middle of a ragged realism- I'm sort of channeling Friedkin's matter-of-fact style to somewhat define the era... if you buy that, then stick around...


By 1975, we have The Eagles first ever (for any band) "World Tour", in which they were pegged as some Ugly Americans, and the Rock Star Ass was born, which all of punk rebelled against... so, the "beauty" of The Eagles was destroyed because of their self serving humanity.

Which is kind of the trajectory of the point.

All of history's idealism peaked in the 60s, man, (right?), and that idealism was quashed pretty good by the bleak 70s. I'm looking for the fulcrum.



gotta go..............................

[snyprrr]

droggy, didn't have time...............

[Karl Henning]

I have to save droggy's Posts till later, but the above - and the moon thing- and such...


I'm kind of looking for any astro-LOGICAL ,perhaps, clues...

Miss Cleo on the line for you, snypssss.  Iridescent pink telephone.

[vandermolen]

Last man on Moon (Apollo 17) 1972

I went to university 1973 

These two events are not connected.

[fridden]

This reminded me of the book "What you want is in the limo" by Michael Walker which is described as an epic joyride though three history-making tours in 1973 that defined rock and roll superstardom -- the money, the access, the excess--forevermore.

Quote from Goodread:

As the sixties ended and the seventies began, an altogether more cynical era took hold: peace, love, and understanding gave way to sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

But the decade didn't become the seventies, acclaimed journalist Michael Walker writes, until 1973, a historic and mind-bogglingly prolific year for rock and roll that saw the release of countless classic albums, from The Dark Side of the Moon to Goat's Head Soup; Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.; and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Aerosmith, Queen, and Lynyrd Skynyrd released their debut albums. The Roxy and CBGB opened their doors. Every major act of the era—from Fleetwood Mac to Black Sabbath—was on the road that summer, but of them all, Walker writes, it was The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Alice Cooper who emerged as the game changers.

/fridden

[snyprrr]

This reminded me of the book "What you want is in the limo" by Michael Walker which is described as an epic joyride though three history-making tours in 1973 that defined rock and roll superstardom -- the money, the access, the excess--forevermore.

Quote from Goodread:

/fridden

tack so mycket!


Yea, so that seems to be part of it- so, from 1973 to The Eagles 1975 World Tour... so...


And I like to point out that 'The Exorcist' was released Christmas Day 1973, so, it really had its impact in 1974.


Yes, the point of that book you speak, where all these things are happening within weeks days or hours, that's what I'm looking for...

I'm almost afraid of what I'll find at the very bottom...gulp...

Miss Cleo on the line for you, snypssss.  Iridescent pink telephone.

astrologic is certainly not my forte... but I am curious if anyone here is into it and knows if there was "something in the (air)"STARS...

seriously, all of a sudden I had a Nimoy Moment, lol!!






Nixon was all holding together as best he could...




















didya like that one?

[snyprrr]

I admit I'm treating this Thread like a Murder Mystery