Connecting Consciousness
Although I have yet to see “The Social Network” I’ve gotten the impression that it takes a somewhat critical stance on Facebook’s current role in society; that it is contributing to a breakdown in humans’ ability to relate and communicate, and is consuming massive amounts of people’s time and energy. I’m not sure how accurately that describes the movie, and frankly I don’t really care as it doesn’t really have much to do with what I have to say (and I’m still looking forward to seeing and enjoying the movie). My point here is that Facebook is a tool, and a brilliant one at that. To me Facebook serves as a physical manifestation and reminder of how connected we all are. Some people believe that many of the connections or relationships established through Facebook are cheap and flimsy; for example they may question the 1,280 “friends” that I have on my profile, but I love it. It has nothing to do with believing that I have 1,280 strong and established relationships with all these people, it’s more that I simply love connecting with other human beings in any way I can. I recently had my birth chart read by my amazing friend, Healer and Vedic Astrologer Marga Laube (http://transformative-astrology.com/) and one of the things that she got from my chart is that I am a “friend of the world.” I inherently feel connected with people whether I’ve known them for years, met them once on the playa at Burning Man or maybe never even met them at all. I believe that by our nature we’re all connected in some magical way, and Facebook does an amazing job at bringing that connection to light in its own way. Recently I found out through a Facebook status that my friend Claire was in Barcelona for a few nights (currently my favorite city in the world after studying abroad there for 4 months :). Once I saw her status, I wanted to see if I could positively affect her experience from my laptop halfway across the world. I went to the page of my amazing friend Andrea, a Barcelona native, who I became extremely close with while living there and saw that she was going out to a flower power party at one of my favorite clubs in the city the next night. I sent them both a message suggesting they connect and then two days later I see pictures of them on Facebook partying together in hippy attire at Sutton! It was truly amazing for me to be able to facilitate a meeting between two of my great friends from different areas of my life from halfway across the globe.
This is just one example of how powerful a tool Facebook can be… but as with any tool, it really depends on how the user puts it to use. A knife can be an excellent tool for preparing food and many other great functions, but it can also be used as a murder weapon. The fault does not lie in the tool, but rather in its use. A lot of the criticisms I hear about Facebook should really be directed at the way some people use or abuse it, rather than at the tool and its creator. My point with all of this is to look ahead and see the true beauty of how Facebook and other new age communication technologies can act as huge facilitators of some sort of paradigm shift when they begin to be put to even better use. We’ve all seen how quickly a video can overnight become a viral sensation with millions of views all over the world…imagine how a revolutionary idea or discovery could overnight reach a fifth of the world’s population through Facebook alone, not to mention Youtube, Twitter, cell phones, etc.
The inspiration for this whole post got started today when I wrote a response in an ongoing dialogue between Dacks, my good friend from UCLA who now lives in New York, and myself. We had this vision a year or two ago to keep correspondence about ideas, philosophies, art, etc in the way that many of the great thinkers throughout history have done with letters. We initially wanted to do this through physical writing, but it seems that the ability to instantly share and connect allows for the dialogue to unfold much quicker and more efficiently (story of the century right?). The great thing is that Dacks and I are very similar on many levels, but also different enough that it forces us to keep each other honest by really digging deeply into our ideas and reflections, ultimately providing the kind of friction and resistance that is imperative for any growth, change or transformation to occur. Anyway, here is the dialogue that sparked this week’s post (and I assume this is only the beginning of the discussion, so bear that in mind). I have intentionally left it unedited and shorthand for the sake of showing how beautiful pure, raw, 21st century Facebook communication can be. After all it’s the ideas, feelings and energy transferred that really matter in communication, not necessarily the formality, punctuation, diction or grammar.
Scott to Dacks December 4 at 12:22am:
i came across this excerpt of Emerson’s referenced in that book I’ve been reading Autobiogrpahy of a Yogi cuz I guess old Waldo got down with the Eastern/Indian philosophy and I was planning to pass it along even before the recent comments convo with Nikhil. i’m sure you’ve already read it buuuut….
“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.”
Dacks to Scott December 7 at 7:09pm:
i frequently find myself challenging this notion of unity with that of categorization/fragmentation (its opposite). our evolution as a species undoubtedly depend(ed) on this ability to distinguish for a long, long time in the name of survival. is it our goal, then, as humans, to be the inflection point from which we turn from categorization towards unity? how many generations will it take to shake this primal residue?
Scott to Dacks December 10 at 11:00am:
the fragmentation is only a flawed perception, the unity has always existed and always will. the issue is freeing ourselves from the illusion that we are separate so we can truly experience and enjoy the harmony. the trance track has different elements, but they are all unified together as one forming the song. how long it takes for us as individuals to tune up our individual frequencies so that they harmonize with everything else we’re already connected to is up to us, that’s where free will comes in to play. who knows how many generations it will take for everyone to make the choice for him and her self to become attuned, but I know the sooner that I do the sooner everyone else does…eventually it will hit the tipping point and go viral. it will never seem likely until the day it passes the point of no return and instantly becomes the new paradigm. we’re coming to one of those times in history where everything changes but really nothing changes. think Copernicus realizing the earth revolves around the sun, no one believes it, everyone thinks he’s crazy, but then eventually it shifts and instantly becomes the new paradigm and the funny thing is nothing really changed except for the perception. the earth has always been revolving around the sun, humans were just living under the delusion that it was the other way around. think about when the first dude came out saying that there were invisible waves floating through the air that could transmit a human voice across thousands of miles… fucking whack job! wait a few more years and we have radios in every household across america. we would be foolish to assume that there isn’t a boatload of crazy truths floating around that have yet to be discovered (by popular opinion) but that have already been true since the inception of the universe. my philosophy now is to be the Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein etc… “be the change i wish to see in the world” rather than waiting to see the change in the world that seems utterly unrealistic. i think that our survival as a species undoubtedly depends on the continuing evolution of our consciousness. we are fortunate to no longer really have to worry about food, water, shelter to survive (at least in our part of the world) so our evolution now concerns different issues, i believe primarily our awareness. to survive as a species we’re going to need to figure out how to live in perfect harmony with each other, our planet and our universe, and I don’t think that can happen until we develop the awareness of how we are by nature inherently interrelated, interconnected and interdependent.
“You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one”
