Global Consciousness

This last week I have spent much of my idle time thinking about Global Consciousness, so I thought it would be a good subject of discourse for this week's blog.

To begin, I will pose these questions to you:
Do you believe that there is currently a consciousness that could be acting on a global level?
If so, what are the mechanisms that make this consciousness possible?
If not, do you believe that our world is capable of a global consciousness?

In my own opinion, there must be the potential for a global consciousness.
Not only do I believe in the potential for a global consciousness, I actually think that we are in the beginning stages of this development. I'd like to go over some interesting ideas in support of my theory.

The "noosphere" was first proposed by Vladimir Vernadsky as the third phase of development for our planet earth, which would follow our current phase known as the "biosphere." The biosphere is the sum of all life on earth from humans to the smallest bacteria. Before the biosphere there was the "geosphere" which incorporates all non animate (non living) material on the planet. The significance of the noosphere is that the advent of human cognition could affect the biosphere as the advent of life first affected the geosphere. If cognition has the potential to change the planet as strongly as life first changed all activity on earth, then the noosphere is an idea of great significance to the development of global consciousness.

I have heard the noosphere explained in a number of different manners, two of which are of particular interest to my current thoughts of global consciousness. The first explanation seems to center more upon the evolution of humans into more a psychically connected race. Basically, we would become evolved into a race of beings with psychic abilities that far surpass anything that we see in today's society. This would lead to a civilization of people that could speak to each other solely through our thoughts or something of this manner. I think that this idea is very exciting but perhaps a bit less realistic. The second explanation I have read about centers more on the technological development of the human race. Some have even proposed that Vernadsky's idea of the noosphere predicted the advent of the internet. To me, this comparison is much more accurate and holds much more relevance to the developments that we are striving with right now.

Princeton University is host to an experiment called the Global Consciousness project which aims to monitor trends in random number generators all around the world in an attempt to detect the emergence of a global consciousness. The project hopes to find trends in dissipating randomness which could indicate the interconnectedness of our human conscious states. This project has been running for over 10 years, and so far they believe that their efforts have revealed a consistent trend toward lessening randomness. I think that this project in intensely interesting to study and monitor, but I do not have a great hope that this will reveal any great developments in our human situation. In fact I believe that the global consciousness has a much greater chance to develop from the growing connectedness that the internet offers us.

We have seen an amazing growth in our communication technologies over the past 100 years, and even more so in the last 10-15 years. When the internet was first born, none of us could have imagined the effect it would have on our daily lives at this point. Most us use Facebook or twitter on a daily basis to communicate with our friends and family. Not only that, but many of us also carry iPhones or other mobile technology that lets us communicate with the masses at any time from any place. We have seen the explosion of technology grow on an exponential level and I think we have no reason to believe that it will slow down any time soon.

What this means for us is that we have the opportunity to be more connected with our family and friends, we have the ability to share the moments of our lives no matter where we are, we are able to spread good will and positivity to all people of the world, we are more readily equipped to stomp out injustice and inequality in the world, we truly can make a difference more than ever in the history of the world.

The most exciting idea behind technology as a proponent toward global consciousness is that you are participating in it right now by reading this blog. By having open conversations and dialogue about these developments we are actively participating in the growth of our consciousness on a level beyond our ego-centered consciousness that we know now.

I hope that we can continue to see the quality of our lives increase with the use of technology.
So that being said, stay in touch!

Some interesting source material for this blog is listed below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Complexity/Consciousness
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere

Please check out all these sites/articles. They will make you think!

Peace
P Buck