Today's muse. What if the individual is the most unimportant concept of the whole? What if there is some complex evolutionary dance going on, that carefully mixes the individual into the whole of the present? That the type and mix of "minds" on the planet at any give time is a careful calibration, and that the study historical studies of who was whose contemporary is more that just the social milieu of of a person's experience at the time, but also a biological milieu, with much more interconnectedness than we assume.
So rather than attribution of creation, be it artistic or intellectual, to the individual, it is interesting to think of attribution of creation to the particular biological mix, or even brain mix, on the planet at any particular time. This concept manifests, tangentially at least, in common thought as the same idea being "discovered" by different people, far removed from each other, at roughly the same time.
It would be interesting to develop a language of describing the characteristics of what might be called the "global personality" at any given time in history. While this personality could of course include non-human conditions at any give time, I would propose that it would be most interesting to think about this personality in collective human terms and come up with some attributes for this "global personality" which, one would hope, be described as changing over time. Would this "global personality" have an attribute of age, i.e., maturity? Could it be described in truly universal cross-cultural terms, how about even cross-species terms?
This language will be challenging because we are so predisposed to the individual and to individual attribution. But if we look at ideas and tools as coming out of the perspective of the human collective, rather than the human individual, it may enhance our understanding of current trends, like what appears to be the incredibly rapid and powerful trend of the building of human networking tools.
So rather than attribution of creation, be it artistic or intellectual, to the individual, it is interesting to think of attribution of creation to the particular biological mix, or even brain mix, on the planet at any particular time. This concept manifests, tangentially at least, in common thought as the same idea being "discovered" by different people, far removed from each other, at roughly the same time.
It would be interesting to develop a language of describing the characteristics of what might be called the "global personality" at any given time in history. While this personality could of course include non-human conditions at any give time, I would propose that it would be most interesting to think about this personality in collective human terms and come up with some attributes for this "global personality" which, one would hope, be described as changing over time. Would this "global personality" have an attribute of age, i.e., maturity? Could it be described in truly universal cross-cultural terms, how about even cross-species terms?
This language will be challenging because we are so predisposed to the individual and to individual attribution. But if we look at ideas and tools as coming out of the perspective of the human collective, rather than the human individual, it may enhance our understanding of current trends, like what appears to be the incredibly rapid and powerful trend of the building of human networking tools.
One of the concepts put forth in one of Christianity's pockets is that we are co-creators with God, actively working to grow our persons, our community, and our environmental context. A '60's author important here is Teilhard de Chardin, whose book The Phenomenon of Man makes the point that the last stages of evolution are ones that we as a species participate in -- for good or for ill.
We can think of individuals who have influenced our evolution out of the 'nasty, brutish, and short,' but a contemporary illustration of how a paradigm shift can be caused is that of Michael Jackson. A NY Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/weekinreview/28segal.html) talks about his global media impact -- at a moment in time -- which probably cannot occur again.
We are tempted to think of a co-creator in terms of scientific advances, but what if the program is love? If so, how might we be doing better?