>[!warning] >Not fond of this term, but keeping it for lack of a suitable replacement. an important concept in the [[Rewilding]] argument. Preconquest consciousness is a mode of cognition attributed to primitive tribal communities, first [defined](http://ranprieur.com/readings/preconquest.html) by E. Richard Sorenson while observing aboriginal peoples in Papua-New Guineau. This is otherwise defined as **[[liminal awareness]]**, a mode of cognition that senses separateness but integrates it into communal roles and environmentally situated behavior. Separateness between people creates [[inferential distance|inferential distances]] where modes of awareness and cognition become incompatible with each other. These distances result in a set of **outstanding conditions** that inform this type of consciousness. The outstanding conditions are: - **Intuitive rapport** derived from infant-child nurture - Outstanding social condition - Empathetic tactile stimulation - Continuous bodily contact with caregivers - Infants touch for attention instead of crying. - Heart-felt rapprochement & integrated trust - Outstanding psychological condition - How compare to [[anonymous trust]]? - Small populations surrounded by large tracts of territory - Diffusion into wilderness - Outstanding demographic condition - Absence of private property, contradictory to [[primitive communism]]. - Outstanding economic condition - Spatial and social boundaries are hazy, inconsistent, and ambiguous. This is a type of pre-rational psychology typical of pre-modern societies that corresponds to [[adult stage theory#Stage 3 Communal, Monism, Pre-rational|communal]] mode of adult stage theory. It could be considered a form of raw [[choiceless awareness]], similar to that of a small child immersed in the world. This is its own sophisticated type of cognition. It is a layer of awareness that lies below the commonly accepted paradigm of intelligence that relies on symbolic representation. Postconquest consciousness, or supraliminal awareness, represents an in-depth readjustment requiring new relationships between the awareness and manipulation centers of the cerebral cortex and the centers of emotion in the mid and lower brains. These induce physiological as well as psychological change and therefore raise important questions about the human condition. All four (Western, Sinic, Indic, and Islamic) major civilization developments of the world have conquistadorial features, suggesting there is a transition from **integrative human mental evolutionary development → adversarial human mental evolutionary development**. Subjugation/enclosure suppresses preconquest consciousness, either as a result of enforced colonization or expansion and congestion into the edges of a defined geography. This is an interesting observation in that it suggests that shifts in consciousness have already occurred, and can therefore be considered as systemic responses to climate change, etc., supporting the postulation of human beings' [natural state](https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/a-non-definitive-non-guide-to-non) as "fluid interconnectedness without abstraction." A sketch of civilizational process based on a pre-civilizational perspective: * Congestion of native region → Expansion into new regions and absorption of inhabitants → Confinement to geographic barriers, confrontation with physiological and sociological constraints, conflict within those parameters → Psychological transformation (recognition of boundaries) to cognitive abstraction; symbols and logic; concept of property (enclosure) * This transformation is in effect the "othering" described by colonized peoples. The imposition of boundaries within a world previously experienced as "free" shifts the paradigm from integrative to adversarial. * This transformation occurs more forcibly in "conquered" populations as "postconquest" people move more frequently and more forcibly into neighboring regions. It paralyzes, then disables intuitive rapport. The observed behavior is a regression into basic human behaviors. Instinctive compassion succumbs to savagery, generosity to greed, and tactile affection to basic sexuality. * These behaviors emphasize the need to establish and secure domain, property, and settlement. These create the basis for [[the social contract]]. * Is there a similar, perhaps less obvious pattern in the process of [[gentrification]]? * The older psychic unity maintains its relevance through arcana such as the Eleusinian and Dionysian mysteries, occult practices, the mystical philosophies of Christian [[love]], and later, concepts such as the "noble savage" and "wilderness." Taken together, this is a good description of ecopsychological wholeness, with special consideration for the idea that it can be entered into from a perspective of progressive motion. It is not regressing into a previous state of consciousness: >[!quote] [Sasha Chapin](https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/last-year-my-mind-exploded-and-now) >The feeling of wholeness is simple and immediate. It’s that the promised land is right here—nirvana and samsara are one, as they say. All of the mystics throughout history who have talked about how we are with God right now, we just don’t have eyes to see it? This is what is being discussed. And this is, in my experience, staggeringly obvious once all the obstructing bullshit is blasted away. It is clear in every sensation. Everything shows it, bright as day. If you have this experience in a hotel room, as I did, then you will see wholeness in dingy hotel carpeting. And in water pressure, little bottles of shampoo and conditioner, the view of a parking lot from a dingy window, the groan of a giant AC unit. These will all serve as demonstrations of the primordial perfection that is experiencing itself in all of us. I love LA. The restaurants, nature, architecture, people-watching. But I became indifferent to it, for the duration of that trip. I didn’t really leave the four-block radius around my hotel, because I didn’t need to leave paradise. The waiters at the closest restaurant were the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. I was happy to be annoyed, happy to breathe the smog off busy streets, happy to have a body that could get tired and hungry.