Group mind and the speed of change

Not too long ago I finally got pissed off enough about the insanity of the ethanol situation that I posted a blog about it here, and also made some posts and diaries on other blogs. Not too long after that, I started to see negative news reports about ethanol in lots of places, including an op-ed piece in the Washington Post. It seems as though a whole group of us are having our minds made up at the same time. One year ago, the issue was on the radar of only a few people; now it is getting attention from many different sources and a new (not necessarily conventional) wisdom is in the process of being shaped.

What we see arising, in more powerful forms than before, is group mind. The internet is continuing to make massive changes in the way we think about things. I don't see it as bad; we need the wisdom of groups to tackle the complexity of the problems we will be facing. But it is an eerie feeling to sense that you are operating in the midst of a group mind.

Blogger Dave Pollard is concerned with the costs of group mind, suggesting that we are so affected by what others think that we are in danger of losing contact with our essential self. He says: "unless we are extraordinarily diligent and extremely self-aware and self-competent, we give up everything that make us us – we give up being nobody-but-ourselves and we become everybody else."

I think that the notion that we are separate from everyone else is an illusion. A statement like that demands proof from someone older, wiser, more well-read than I am. So many different mystics, philosophers, poets and theologians have already come to this point of view, I am hard pressed to find only one to confirm this statement. More than 60 years ago, Teilhard de Chardin hypothesized the development of a global nervous system, fueled by the communication which has now been made possible by the internet. "A world network on economic and psychic affiliations is being woven at increasing speed, " Chardin said, in The Phenomenon of Man. "It constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every passing day it become more impossible for us to act or think otherwise than collectively."

For some, this statement may evoke the fear of being caught in a collective trap. But for me, it is hopeful, because the more we can inform one another's point of view, the better decisions we can make for all of us. The painting that I have been working on illustrates my notion of the self within the whole. I am a speck within one of the small circles, which is itself in the midst of a larger circle, which overlaps with other circles and is itself encompassed by a larger circle and square, and so on. When I see my emerging views about ethanol, or any other topic, begin to merge with, and be informed by those of others, I feel hopeful. In the past year, the discussion about global warming and its consequences has begun to move at a very fast rate. Will it be fast enough to make a difference? Who knows? At the very least, it will be very interesting to see how our collective consciousness grapples with, and addresses this reality.