Well, now, here is a topic worth debating. The individual vs. the collective. Where do we draw the line.
My internet friend Grace posted this quote from Virginia Woolf as her status: “I think I see for a moment how our minds are threaded together — how any live mind is of the very same stuff as Plato’s & Euripides. It is only a continuation & development of the same thing. It is this common mind that binds the whole world together; & all the world is mind.”
A friend of hers, Ralph, although I suspect that is not his real name, said “Whoa, hang on there a second, that is Borg talk. We should hang onto our individuality.”
The thing is, I like the original quote and think the emerging world consciousness is a beautiful thing, but I see Ralph’s point, too. We certainly shouldn’t surrender our individuality lightly.
It’s all about the definition of the oneness, the cohesiveness of the cohesion. Our sun and its planets and all the asteroids and comets and other space debris are one, and our solar system is one with the universe, although there are big, empty spaces in between them. The ants in a colony function as one animal, even though they are visibly millions. Certainly, you and I are different, and when you get hit in the head by a random golf ball, I do not, thank goodness, feel the pain, because if that was the case you couldn’t walk down the street without seeing people doubled over in pain the whole time. However, the thoughts that were in Plato’s head, at least the best ones, were written down, and I’ve read some, so a bit of Plato’s mind is now in mine. We are, through the miracle of social media, creating a space where all of our thoughts swim around together, bump into each other, fornicate and bring about new, baby thoughts. We all have to balance our individualism, our humanity, against this emerging, brilliant, beautiful, group mind. We are one, we are many, we are both at the same time, like the particles and waves that make up a beam of light.
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