The Web – Noosphere or Filthy Film?
After many years I yesterday wrote again a letter to the editor, to the Swiss NZZ. There was an article by U.J. Wenzel about “The more or less thinking hull – Is the internet the medium of unification?” The author wrote about Teilhard de Chardin’s “quixotic vision” of the noosphere – the total of a global sphere of human thought, with an evolution towards an ever greater integration, some kind of a supra-mental plane. (I was fascinated by Teilhard de Chardin’s thoughts during my study of philosophy some 30 years ago.)
Wenzel said that some “enthusiasts” see in their phantasies the internet with its covering of the earth as an expression of such a “collective consciousness” – while for him it is more like a filthy film of pornographic and violence glorifying pictures. Chats are full of gossip, blogs repeat thoughts of others, and the web spills over with copy-paste replicas… For him the trend goes towards plagiarizing the plagiarisms.
Isn’t the filth in the web just a reflection of the state of the mind, mainly of the masses? Like in society, there are many spheres, many different forms of expression.
From a spiritual point of view the evolution of consciousness is a very slow process, going on over eons. However, in the present time the speed of life has lead to an ever-increasing inter-linking in the world. The dangers of this development are countered by a tremendous upsurge of new initiatives and efforts. Especially the web, for example with its growing open-source communities, is part of this trend.
We are living in a dualistic, or more precise: multi-faceted world. Seeing meta-trends beyond the range of an intellectual mind however needs a broadenend awareness.
A long way up to higher evolution: Cloud over a mountain near Mykene, Greece
