Relations Between Subconscious Ideas and Conscious Thought

Lately, I've been thinking about the relations of my subconscious and conscious selves. I remember back in philosophy class we were discussing how the people viewed the world back in the Old Testament times versus how modern society sees the world. Our guest speaker at the time told us something that I found very interesting, but I didn't really apply what he said to this realm until just recently. He asked us to imagine ourselves back then, suggesting that we would be in a world where everyone believed that the sky had a ceiling, including ourselves.

I found that to be a very interesting notion in and of itself, though, I didn't doubt it. It was easy for me to understand the implications of being in a world where scientific fact was not so readily available, a place where human assumption was all there was to go on. I could see how the sky and the stars might seem different to me if I believed that they were merely the highest ceiling on Earth.

It's a simple notion, yes, but, I believe that it has striking implications toward the relation of subconscious and conscious thought. Let me explain: You see, before this I had not thought of that scenario before. However, upon hearing the scenario, I immediately recognized it's legitimacy. My question is why. I believe that it was from my position within the stream of knowledge that we find ourselves in today. So, perhaps to make it a bit clearer, let me create an illustration.

We have this person who understands psychology really well. Given the proposition of assuming another person's identity in a certain degree, i.e. asking this person to see the sky through the eyes of a man who lived thousands of years ago, seems easy enough. The thing is, though, that this idea did not previous exist within the person's mind before it was mentioned, however, the person's mind already had an understanding of how the idea worked, and held its intrinsic legitimacy based solely on experiences after the fact, such as comparing the views of a man who lived thousands of years ago to modern man. Therefore, could a phantom thought such as imagining how it must have felt for said man existed somewhere within the subconscious understanding before the conscious mind was made aware of it, thus profoundly influencing the progression of thought and belief within the conscious mind?

I think so. Especially if we assume a Hegelian model of thought. Say that this idea of the sky, flawed as it was, continues to exist in the subconscious as perhaps a distant grandparent to the idea of the sky that we have today. It would seem to me that the subconscious might be this mind of building blocks of thought, having theses and antitheses of ideas bouncing around dynamically, ready for the conscious mind to put together, or rather find the perfect combination of the two to create a new, more true thought.

A quick overview of the Hegelian model of thought goes like this: Within each idea lives its thesis and antithesis, or more popularly known as its "seeds of destruction". Let's take democracy for example. This is a really rough analogy, but it should do the trick. Democracy could be considered the more true form of government as it is the combination of the idea of monarchy and anarchy. In this light, maybe the creation of new thought rests almost entirely on the subconscious rather than the conscious mind.

This leads me to a very interesting conclusion, for now. Hegel stated that each idea is "imperfect" and that with time, the idea will change and develop according to the new antithesis it faces. That means that the conscious mind also contains the building blocks of ideas. Does that mean that the subconscious takes from the conscious mind to create more perfect ideas? The answer seems obvious, yes. But, that also means that there exists within the conscious mind a gap, similar, if you will, to the gap in appearance between a grandmother and her granddaughter. I wonder if historically we don't see these same gaps, these rapid leaps in knowledge? I think we do.

Looking at just modern history alone, we see the rapid advent of Einsteinian thought followed by a pause, then another leap with the advent of quantum theory. Historically, we see the Roman Empire followed by the dark ages, then the Renaissance. What I'm suggesting is that human history is more enthralled with the nature of subconscious and conscious relations than previously suspected. A more curious notion, though, is what thought, what idea was left in the void of the subconscious before it turned into the building block for a new, better idea to be taken by the conscious? If truth exists in all ideas, then it might be worth knowing each idea, whether or not it is less perfect than the one that has taken its place.

I might be taking a few jumps here and there, probably so, but, it's interesting. I'd love to hear some thought from other people.