4.0434 Names; Kinship (2/44)

Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 28 Aug 90 22:13:46 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0434. Tuesday, 28 Aug 1990.


(1) Date: Mon, 27 Aug 90 22:56:36 EDT (21 lines)
From: Julie Falsetti <JEFHC@CUNYVM>
Subject: names for people

(2) Date: Sun, 26 Aug 90 12:38 PDT (23 lines)
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 4.0422 Kinship

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 90 22:56:36 EDT
From: Julie Falsetti <JEFHC@CUNYVM>
Subject: names for people

Regarding names in general, Julian Jaynes in "The Origin of
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" suggests
that people first had names in the Mesolithic era (10,000 -
8,000 B.C.) Because of a warming trend, the populations
were larger and more fixed. Also the people lived longer and
the groups became larger so it was necessary to distinguish
the members. He mentions the question of names in reference
to the hallucinatory voices he claims these people heard emmanating
from the right half of the brain. That the voices were now
from 'named' persona they played an even greater role in
individual behavior.

As I am not a psychologist, I would be interested in hearing
the comments from other humanists who are familiar with his
theory of the bicameral mind.

P.S. This is a 'must read' for all lefties. :-)
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------27----
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 90 12:38 PDT
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 4.0422 Kinship (2/37)

Not only for property, but in the Napoleonic census that opened the
ghettoes too, and gave Citizen's names, so called, to all the Isaac ben
Solomon people, a not inconsiderable number of folk to put on the tax
(extortion) rolls. My friend the sculptor, Milton Hebald, finds no
Hebalds in any phone directory. He says it is a family story that his
great-great-great, etc., was not too bright, and was trying evade the
fellow with the quill writing down names, but at the end, lingering,
some Hussar threatened him with a saber, and he shouted, frunning `
towards the desk, He! Bald! Meaning Anon! Anon! And so Hebald came to
be their name. What is in it, for anyone? The confusions of identity,
perhaps, unless there is a crest, which you can buy for a fee in the
US, as the computers are put to work tracing (chimerical) lineages. I
was offered a Crest myself recently, all the Kesslers having been
tracked down by some assiduous fellow in Ohio, who now offers a
guarantee of distinction. I need Count Harry von Kessler for a
relative? (Check your library catalogue). NO, and besides, even the
Kessler was so me accident at Ellis Island, it seems...what matter? my
father used to mutter. Amor Fati! I cry with Nietzche, but not,
Excelsior! though the shades of night are falling fast.... Kessler