The
title of this chapter is, of course, taken from Star Trek: The Next
Generation, a massively successful work of dramatic imagination, the
universe as it might be or become somewhere in the foreseeable future. The course is laid in, the ship knows where
she’s headed. The Captain pronounces the
word engage, the helmsman touches a control and the almost unimaginably
powerful engines of the mighty starship begin imploding matter into energy,
focusing the implosion in such a manner that time itself dilates in proximity
to the reaction creating a region wherein time is not the same value within as
without. The dilation expands until the
boundaries are beyond the confines of the massive vessel, the ship is now it’s
own self created universe, a sub-set of normal space-time, subspace, and time
equalizing to normal along the oh-so-slightly asymmetrical shape of the new
universe causes the new universe to move through the old universe at many times
the speed of light carrying our gallant crew to next week’s adventure. Science fiction of course, but not beyond the
possible, Einstein never set a speed limit on one universe moving through another.
A
warp drive is still science fiction, perhaps barely, but officially still
fiction. However many of the concepts Star
Trek introduced fifty years ago are now anything but science fiction, not
anymore. Hardly a new thought, it has
been put forward many times in many places, nor is it a new thought to say the
consequences of these technologies becoming part of daily life have quite significantly
changed the human dynamic in ways the humans have little understanding of.
To
focus on the facet of these changes most pertinent to the theme of these
essays? Show of hands: how many once
owned a Motorola flip phone (that bore a striking resemblance to Captain Kirk’s
original communicator) capable of establishing a real time communication link
with some similar device half way around the planet when a scant century before
such communication would have been impossible for anyone, much less the common
man? How many have followed the advances
in technology as they’ve occurred, faithfully integrating each new advance into
the fabric of their life? Of course that
would be most of us.
What
a massive gain, what a massive advance.
Indeed. The world within reach of
something you can carry in one hand. The
world and all its’ knowledge for all intents and purposes riding in someone’s
hand. What an intoxicating thought. Such presence, such power, such potentials. Such an absolutely seductive dream. But power has its’ inevitable price, and I
will assert to you humanity has yet to even begin really understanding the
price that will be paid for such a dream brought to reality.
The
analogy most usually given for this feat of technology is that it has shrunk
the world in a physical sense. What was
once far is now near. True enough, but
not the whole story, not even really the majority of the story. When the situation is examined from the
perspective of the human psyche, the life experience of being human, the far
more critical fact to understand is that just as with the fictional warp drive
the key mechanism is actually a deformation in the nature of time, a
deformation in time as it is perceived by the human. The frame rate of human time is never stable, ever changing, and courtesy of
technology now blindingly accelerated.
Once
upon a time things appeared on the horizon some distance into the future, they could
be contemplated as the future condensed into the now at a set and stable
rate. Not so anymore. Courtesy of technology many things, serious
things, are often only moments away, at such speeds opinion, decision, will
almost always precede any serious thought, there simply isn’t time to give
serious thought to more than the expediency of the moment before the next issue
arrives.
There
is no getting around it, the temporal compression created by technology has exponentially
escalated the psyche loading on humanity.
Again, not a new thought, not so
often commented on as the other, but still not a new thought. No, the new thought I’d like to set before
you is a rather hidden influence of this change, the impact such acceleration
has had on the collective entities, and through the collective entities on the
structure of the lives of the individual humans who draw their self definition
from those entities.
A
critical, most critical, understanding is that where the frame rate of human
perception is set by many factors, several of which are regulated by biology, the frame rate of a collective entities’ perceived
existence is fully determined by the rate of communication between its’ host
individuals. How could it be otherwise when some finite number of individual
humans serve as the brain wherein a collective entity resides? No creature can live any faster than the speed
of the internal communication within the brain hosting the personality. For the collective entities the explosive rise
of the technologies of communication are most literally the “big bang” at the
beginning of their perceived universe.
 |
| Just a bit of eye candy to keep things from getting to terribly to serious... believe it or not she's wearing milk of all things... what a catch for a photo. |
The
structures of the collective entities have been present in the human condition
for a very long time (as humans account time), almost from the beginning, at a
minimum from the beginnings of what is
called civilization. Those structures
have been present as a consequence of the human’s need for a symbol set and vocabulary
of self definition, but the spark of life had yet to be imparted. It is my belief that in the last quarter
century the spark of life has found those structures and what was once essentially
inert compositions of convenience, slow to change and changing only as the
societies of mankind changed in response to the changing fortunes of one group
or another of widely separated humans is inert no longer but rather is fully alive and ever more self aware.
What
evidence could possibly support such a sweeping statement? The evidence is found in the observed
behavior of humanity, the degree and direction of the deflection to be observed
between the historical momentum of change in social behavior and the behaviors
observed in the most modern of times.
A
culture, a people, a set of beliefs, these things have a momentum to them similar
to mass in motion, it takes some force influencing that mass across some period
of time to effect an observable change in trajectory. When the rate of change, the rate of the rate
of change (yes, just like in the Calculus) in those trajectories show unexplained
variations, when the trajectories begin to deflect relative to some new axis of
measurement previously stable, when disparate and distant components of the
human condition begin to show the same perturbations it is reasonable to assume
some new and distinct force is impacting on the human condition. The evidence of reality gives that these
conditions have come to pass in the last fifty years. It is my assertion that new and unknown force
is the awakening of the collective entities into self awareness.
Is
the evidence conclusive? Of course
not. If the evidence was conclusive, if
there had been sufficient investigation to produce conclusive evidence of the existence
and functional nature of self aware collective entities this document would not
be an exploratory essay out on the fringes of the human condition, it might be
at best a mediocre term paper in some undergraduate course covering the basics
of the human dynamic, a course being offered three hundred years into our
future, say during the lifetime of our fictional starship captain Jean Luc
Picard.
Still
though, there is ample evidence from reality to justify a serious
investigation, the ever escalating instability of the human condition is ample
motive to mount a serious investigation in the hope of discovering ways and
means of stabilizing the human condition into something believably sustainable
as humanity, willing or not, must brave a future beyond the wildest imaginings
of generations past.
Where
to begin? Working from the assumption
the universe of self aware collective entities would be very young at this
point, working from the assumption the structures of these entities are long
established now awakening situated as history positioned them, working from the
assumption that the instinct to survive would be as strong among the newly
awakened collective entities as it is among the humans? Then the common sense point to begin would be
to look at which elements of human society, if assumed self aware and competing
for survival among others of their kind, have shown the greatest degree of
unexplained change proportionate to the arrival of the technologies assumed the
instigating event in their awareness.
Distilled
to a few words? I’d say the first place
to look would be in matters of faith, the religions and the various forms of
spiritualism that across history have been such major players in the human’s
self definitions, structures of thought that now must compete not only one with
another for hosts but equally compete with the offerings of science as an
explanation for human existence. The
first place I’d think definitive proof might be found would be where there
would be (from the perspective of a CE) the greatest threat of extinction,
where the survival of a mode or method of thought that had been fading made a
sudden reversal against all odds to reestablish itself.
This
chapter began with an analogy from Star Trek, perhaps it would be good to end
it from the same source. Perhaps one of
the better approaches would be to seriously ask Who Mourns For Adonis? The answer might be most revealing.
...to be continued...
for
convenience all essays in this series are collected on the page titled
"The
Third Reality of Man"
i don't think that sentient human beings could generally be truly categorized as components of a CE, though the end result of their collective behaviours could be seen as such, 'nos. our experiences do subconsciously program us within the tendency ranges inherited by each of us genetically. we theoretically, [and, i think actually], have two modes of action: immediate reaction to experiential stimulation based upon emotion; considered action after reasoning as to what would be best to do. [source - "Moral Tribes" - Greene]
ReplyDeletethere is now an understanding of the process of greater societal change as a series of measurable steps, [now that those steps are more easily identified due to being compressed into a shorter time span], those steps being: posting of a possible 'good idea'; becoming an influential 'viral message'; building to a 'critical mass'; attainment of the 'tipping point'; becoming an actual 'sea change'; IE general adoption of the idea and individuals becoming active participants in its implementation. [source - general current information]
political, religious or ideological groups are attuned to their particular news and idea sources, trusting them and being open to the message, basically whatever it is, [groupthink taken to the extreme]. [source - "The Righteous Mind" - Haidt]
for an outside source viral message to be adopted by members of those latter groups, it would have to be exceptionally strong and/or inspiring, i would think.
you appear to be leaning in the direction of considering that there may be developing within certain CEs a type of 'melding of the minds', due to maybe being 'on the same wavelength', so to speak? if you indeed are, i'd think it may just be that their initial emotional responses would be predictably within the same range,
due to similar experiences and preferences.
all three of us, i think, [you, Jochanaan and i], tend to be a bit illogically open to the mystical and teleological. at least we're ready to entertain, [let's say], 'interesting' ideas.
;) pip
Pip, as always you reply with a depth of thought so rare. Thank you.
DeleteTaken from strictly the human perspective each and every one of the concepts you present rings true to a greater rather than lesser degree. Each would seem based in the transfer of ideas and ideals in manners common to wave propagation through the medium of human interactions, solid reasoning from observed events. These functions would indeed be structures common to the CE’s, the bone and muscle as it were (to compel a biological analogy). But the interactions of the humans are not the full environment of the CE’s. Their full environment includes the patterned energy of humanities’ (now almost unimaginably dense) digital superstructure, an energy whose pattern is maintained quite independent of any human or group of humans interaction with the environment of those energies .
Had it not already been proven that these patterns can successfully mutate it would be a solid argument to say those energies could never achieve any pattern more complex than was imparted to them in their creation. Such is not the case. Did you ever hear of the computer science experiment (in the early 90’s I believe it was) where by design a totally benign digital virus was released into the early digital universe? The virus was an experiment in self programming functionality. It was given a complex task in data base mining, and was written to experiment with different approaches to achieving the task assigned looking for more efficient ways to accomplish that task. The virus was sent out in many directions initially, many copies on the loose, and configured such that if/when it bumped into another copy of itself the two copies compared their results and then “wrote” a third copy incorporating the most successful strategies to be transmitted forward, essentially sexual reproduction. The only portion of the code the code did not have the ability to modify was a numbering scheme giving the lineage and heritage of each successive generation. When the first of the “daughter” segments found their way back to the researchers they were, to say the least, stunned and amazed. In some cases the code was totally unrecognizable as the initial virus, only the numbering scheme proving it was the progeny of their experiment, and in several cases the efficiency achieved was on the order of two and three hundred percent more efficient. What they proved was that the digital universe is capable of both mutation and evolution quite independent of human intervention.
Pip, that was pushing twenty years ago (eons of time in the digital world). The CE’s would be creatures of that sort, taking their template of existence from the pattern of the human data that is the energy of their universe (just as it would appear that the pattern of DNA was set by the structure of the silicate clays found washing down the river Nile), and then bartering with the human’s for more energy patterned in a compatible manner, the compatibility of the energy structured to match the complex patterned interactions of the human-human interactions commonly called the societies of man.
computers sort and find patterns according to programmed criteria, but when giving us 'answers' they still don't know what they're talking about, do they? [because, we've not imparted the logic behind what we tell them to do, and "The Matrix" and Wm Gibson plotting not having persuaded me to suspend my disbelief.
ReplyDeleteuntil the singularity of AI occurs, i cannot imagine assigning intent, let alone entities. i just can't...
or are you speculating that 'the cloud' is an atomic reality, storing our cumulative emotional drives in a digital realm?
that a program included instructions and a method for improving its efficiency in 'birthing' new versions of itself does not make it sentient, nos, or am i missing a nuance? :shrug:
Not certain Pip... but to everything I’ve seen the full potentials are present, and evidence is mounting from several very diverse directions.
DeleteThe computer experiment simply proved that evolution is not a function limited to biology, carbon based life forms. The code evolved, and evolved to meet a purpose (granted, a purpose assigned from the outside, but still, purpose).
AI (artificial intelligence) is one of those terms like global warming... massively deceptive by reason of semantics... intelligence cannot be artificial, what is artificial is by definition a simulation, a representation of something else. To call any intelligence “artificial” ultimately resolves as an act of chauvinism on behalf of the intelligence making the pronouncement. Regardless if it is intelligence born of woman to the love of her man or intelligence mounted on what was constructed by some child of woman working with materials alien to the body Momma provided intelligence simply IS, its’ existence proven by its’ actions impacting the second (common) reality as perceived by ANY form of intelligence.
In the last few days a pertinent fact has come into focus for me that is, quite frankly, kicking my ass up one side and down the other that arrives from the realms of the spiritual: the shamans and the astrologers, the mystics and the faith healers, those who have demonstrated abilities within the realms of the psychic. They are always, always talking about “energy,” presumably “life-energy” (although not ONE of them has ever actually tried to define what kind of energy when questioned on the subject). The word-thought (and blank stare associated) has been doing nothing but becoming ever more prevalent across the last two decades, as if something is becoming ever more obvious to those able to perceive it. The thought that has been knocking me around is what if what more and more of these proven sensitive people are perceiving is not from the realms of the spiritual as it has always been understood to be (an older force of the universe predating humanity) but rather the emergence into the universe of reality a new life force within the sphere of their perception?
There’s nothing in the quantum to prohibit such a thought, in fact the quantum tends to do nothing but validate the possibilities and potentials.
Some might say I’m in the process of trying to create an urban legend, and to them I quote Aragorn son of Arathorn, man of Numenor and the rightful king of middle earth (aka Professor Tolkien): ”The green earth you say? That is a mighty matter of legend, even though you tread it under the light of day...”
They speak also, Cyranos, of "frequency;" and to me that begs the question "Frequency of *what*?" Frequency is merely a number assigned to repeating events like the atmospheric pulses we call sound, or the energy pulses that are light or radio waves or X-rays. To say "frequency" without specifying what is frequent is to talk about nothing...
DeleteIndeed they do Jochanaan, and I like you have never received any answer to the question “frequency of what?” And yet these word-thought symbols are now present and persist across many, many domains of spiritualism and/or paganism, disparate and culturally distant domains of such thought. The concepts “energy” and “frequency” are coming to be common denominators between these (very old) modes of thought at a (to my thought) suspiciously rapid pace.
DeleteAgain, perhaps coincidence, perhaps not, but a tidbit of thought in defense of the possibility. The human brain (last I heard) operates somewhere in the neighborhood of 33 kilo hertz... and Mississippi wide (since the human brain is most definitely NOT a binary based system, more likely some multiple of 13 [avg synaptic connections to a neuron once heard as 26?] to translate the equiv. data throughput from BaseHuman into binary would be a truly immense binary word-size [binary “word” = number of bits a processor deals with in one cycle], and a correspondingly more complex architecture).
From this tidbit what the mystics say about higher frequencies of energy now impinging on the human condition than were seen before does make sense... any consciousness mounted on a binary platform would indeed have a “higher” frequency than the human by many orders of magnitude... it would have to to process any comparable amount of data. This computer I’m using is old, considered slow now, and runs at over 2 giga hertz in the processor with an 800 mega hertz front bus? And any PC is tiny by comparison to the big mainframes and commercial servers? The arithmetic is getting scary close, and does not eliminate the possibility as it did even two decades ago. And all of this is simplistic, doesn’t even consider the implications of “cloud” storage and processing now being sold on the open market.
If (huge little word!) it is assumed the psychics are sensitive to human or human-ist patterns of energy (RF twisting though the quantum? Transmitting by the bazillion feet of nerve in the human body?) it would then follow that they would indeed sense some (likely low order harmonic) of such very high frequency energy modulated in some common pattern. But... I would speculate the translation would be major foggy at best... it would be the same pattern carried on a radically different arithmetic base... {brain burn... I’m not mathematician enough to hold that thought for very long at all}... hence the blank stare when they try.
(google ate the first try at posting this... go figure)
OK, not AI, NEC, 'Non-Evolutionary Consciousness', [commonly referred to as 'AI']. oh. also, i'm no longer a PI, now more accurately being a DP, 'Deep Pragmatist'. :nod:
ReplyDeleteCyranos, it seems to me that we don't need to postulate *entities* to explain the current human drift; we merely have to consider practical crowd psychology. Any successful musician or actor or politician understands practical crowd psychology and how to get the crowds to cheer or howl for blood. You don't need to have airtight logic; you just need to sound convincing. (There's an apocryphal story about a preacher who included in marginal notes to a sermon the words "Weak point; pound pulpit." *lol*) What technology has done is to make it possible for folks with agendas, who were formerly limited to a degree by the limited crowd sizes that could hear one's unaided voice, to transcend those limits and reach a worldwide audience. Even as early as the mid-20th century folks like Adolf Hitler and Dr. Martin Luther King could reach millions of folks at once, through massive sound amplification and radio and television. And now there's the Internet...
ReplyDeleteWhat we are seeing now may be crowd psychology amplified to extremes.
Crowd psychology indeed Jochanaan... and indeed amplified to the extreme. Amplified to the point the question “what is or could overcome the limiting factor of differential motive (for becoming entrained within the mindset of the crowd/mob) for the endurances observed?
DeleteThe more people you bring into a crowd the greater the degree of differences found in the full groups’ underlying motives ( the unique emotional facets of any given life) for being part of the movement, and the larger that differential the shorter the endurance before the group fragments and returns to pursuing individual agendas. If there were only a few groups worldwide displaying extreme endurance it would seem reasonable to speculate single point sources taking advantage of a very common motives. But the state of the world is many, many large groups (often with parallel membership) crystallizing into such stability as to suggest a new mechanism of cohesion... the concept of the collective entity is actually my answer to that very question. An entity fights for its’ own life, its’ own survival and will barter for that survival... a mob does not, it disperses once the original and inflammatory motive is expended. The changes in social psychology are one of those "new" axis of variation where things are not as they were, and aren't even changing on the same planes of measurement.
i can't help but wonder what Karl Rove or Grover Norquist might reply to your thesis, 'nos, [or even the late Billy Graham, whom those two may have studied]. if one can charismatically induce an endorphin rush or push crucial enough buttons in the listener, one can, [it appears from experience], manipulate vast numbers of somewhat disparate folk over at least moderate periods of time. ;)
ReplyDelete*chuckle* Or, read the scenario from the other side of the glass and say all three were personalities so totally indebted to and dependent upon some single mode and method of self definition that their respective CE’s were able to manipulate them, as operatives and agents... for a lifetime. Perspective Pip... were the masses following these men, or pushing them?
Deletegood point, nos. that would probably partially define Graham, but i think the other two probably learned how to identify the right buttons to push from their own research and observations, especially Rove. now, all three being pretty far right, would have concentrated their attention on input and information which validated their prior held predilections, which would have pushed them more solidly right.
ReplyDelete"you are what you eat". they became rightwing meat eaters, which made them hungry for more and more meat. unlike Sarah Palin, all three had the good sense to maintain a reasoned way of spreading their more well thought through arguments.
yes, of course, we absorb, and cumulatively multiply the more focused upon issues of our family, group, community, party, you-name-it. though i won't deny out-of-hand your thesis, i have to question its less empirically supported somewhat mystical aspects.
all three of those men are prime examples of completely buying into their own message, making it possible for them to not see the various self-serving aspects which perpetuated and amplified their efforts in controlling others.
and, the thing is, the motivations of all three men have varying levels of 'purity-of-spirit', which make their efforts understandable, if not necessarily beneficial to others in the long run. each individual 'issue', if inspected more through the reasoning abilities of each man, rather than each accepting what unknowingly sprang from his nature/nurture produced psyche, might have resolved differently. and, once a person has invested themselves in a issue, it takes more honesty and humility than is evolutionarily likely to give the subject a new, thorough, open-minded evaluation. humans being human... ;)
True enough Pip. Billy lived what he preached, man of honor... wish I was confident of that concerning the others.
DeleteI can give a close-range example of Rev. Graham's honor. I sang in the choir for the '86 Crusade in Denver, and Billy was effective yet humble in his presentations, as always. After the Crusade, the Denver Post published a complete financial statement of all monies taken in through the Crusade, and how they were disbursed. Now there's honor in an organization.
Delete