some musings to add to any conversation here... my gift to the One Year Anniversary, lol.
i'm not coming in at this from any particular angle, so here it goes.
does it not seem like something is genuinely happening on a grandscale in the world? the internet is like a magnifying glass for the collective consciousness, and with social media psychological engineering, its becoming this very proto-Brave-New-World-ish. soma is becoming the pocket-screen, the black mirror. and I think people as a whole are beginning to recognize this, but one of the most popular solutions to it all is identity politics, which is no real solution. and a lot of people aren't even participating in identity politics, its simply all about the pocket-screen soma or something along these lines.
and it seems like New Age has really reached an all-time high, for better and worse. it seems like more people are open to esoteric notions, but no one has any idea how to approach them, so they go to the spiritual section of the barnes and noble or wherever...
you can find some great books at these mainstream shops, but its so hit or miss that a lot of folks are coming up short on their hunts. it's almost like people are right on the cusp of really sinking their teeth into good subject matter, but not quite there. I really think that scientists engaging in philosophy like Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson (two biggest examples) are starting to put people on a better track. this is not a new track for me, but I've started to see more and more people than before try to approach philosophy once more, whereas it seemed dead for quite some time....
I hope I am not just a cynic, but the generations that are coming up behind me are starting to really concern me. there's a major disconnect. i'll be candid, i'm the first class of Generation Z (23 yrs old). if y'all oldheads thought millennials were bad, I hate to herald the news, but its not looking any better. Gen X and the Baby Boomers did their share in mucking things up, no one is guilt free here, but the screens are really doing something wonky to the millennials and Z's. I don't like the looks of it. I can certainly say that I use screens minimally, I even keep a flip phone on me. i'm not down with smart phones anymore, haven't been for years.
but if this technological magnifying glass doesn't lead to our end, it will become a potent adaptation. but it appears to me that technology requires a radical sense of self-responsibility as a species. this adaptation has to occur VERY rapidly, at least keeping up with the technological adaptations. and that is quite a task.
what I am saying is not new, of course. this is the classical argument behind the Manhattan Project and the stark moral ambiguity that these scientists seemed to have. technology calls upon psyche to step up to the plate, and we can no longer afford to keep it amoral. Technological amorality is becoming an apparent and stark maladaptation.
like Prometheus bringing fire to man and being punished by Zeus... there is a lesson to be learned in overstepping the boundaries of technological advancement. i'm not saying I don't appreciate the help of Prometheus', just saying the allegory can be approached from both sides. as it should.
let me wrap this up by taking it a step back. think of the inklings of technology as we know it. at its very beginnings, when we were only learning plant medicines and constellations... Dr. VS Ramachandran: "By hyper-developing the mirror-neuron system, evolution in effect turned culture into the new genome. Armed with culture, humans could adapt to hostile new environments and figure out how to exploit formerly inaccessible or poisonous food sources in just one or two generations—instead of the hundreds or thousands of generations such adaptations would have taken to accomplish through genetic evolution. Thus, culture became a significant new source of evolutionary pressure, which helped select brains that had even better mirror-neuron systems and the imitative learning associated with them.” [p.30
The Tell-Tale Brain]
presumably the adaptational curve itself gave way to our development of the cerebral cortex... but if the internet is like a magnifying glass to the cerebral cortex or even collective consciousness, then what the *$%# is happening to us as a species right now?
Think about meme culture. Symbols out the whazoo, whole subcultures of fans living and dying on the internet in a day. wtf is happening, seriously?
I for one, do not know. But I hope we are being primed to handle more gracefully handle the esoteric notions of the psyche. I really think philosophies like alchemy will only start to rise as time goes on, I think New Age is capitalizing on this fact but it will die out soon enough. people aren't going to settle for ambiguity anymore. we need a radical update in our individual moralities. these technologies are corroding a lot of us from the inside out and if the wheat starts to separate further from the chaff than its gonna get uglier before it gets better. Human beings simply cannot afford to make and consume anymore. time is of the essence, for real. we have to start thinking more about what compels us to make, and to do that we must consider how we are made, as individuals and as a species. and, so far, the only way for us to really wrap our heads around this, and to even get our sciences estimated in the right direction oftentimes, is to discover the Metaphorical, memetic archetypal truth. The Metaphorical eventually paves the way for the Literal, in due time.
that's all for now. as if I didn't say enough already. hope I provided some interesting food for thought. more to come!
cheers:
