We Are On the Verge of a Shift to Biosphere Consciousness
March 20, 2010 9:41 AM   Subscribe

Towards the empathic civilisation
The human race is in a twilight zone between a dying civilisation on life support and an emerging one trying to find its legs. Old identities are fracturing while new identities are too fragile to grasp. To understand our situation, we need to step back and ask: what constitutes a fundamental change in the nature of civilisation? The great turning points occur when new, more complex energy regimes converge with communications revolutions, fundamentally altering human consciousness in the process.
posted by kliuless (13 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Notable, the Motto Of the city of Detroit : Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus
posted by The Whelk at 9:48 AM on March 20, 2010 [1 favorite]


That show is painfully difficult to watch. I wish, when Zizek was talking, they'd turn off the giant crazy-making televisions all around him for a second. As it is, the stupid part of my brain (oooh look giant flashy tv!) is drowning out the analytical part of my brain (oooh look a communist!) It's incredibly annoying.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:55 AM on March 20, 2010


In twenty years, we will all be pacifistic cyborgs.
posted by The Confessor at 10:13 AM on March 20, 2010


Between this post and the last one, it's clear that the tl;dr crowd have doomed us all.
posted by mhoye at 10:16 AM on March 20, 2010 [2 favorites]


I hate these broad strokes big picture prognostications. Especially when I am tele-commuting to work using my IBM picturephone.
posted by A189Nut at 10:41 AM on March 20, 2010 [1 favorite]


The human raceUnited States is in a twilight zone between a dyingdeclining civilisation on life support and an emerging onegroup of vibrant emerging economies trying to find its legs.

We have to try not to be too US-centric on MetaFilter
posted by KokuRyu at 11:01 AM on March 20, 2010 [2 favorites]


from "The Marriage of Heaven & Hell - The Proverbs of Hell" (Wm Blake)

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride's cloke.
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.


in "Fearful Symmetry" Northrope Frye comments on Blake's long poem:
... the apocalypse could occur at any time in history if men wanted it badly enough to stop playing their silly game of hide-and-seek with nature. Visionaries, artists, prophets and martyrs all live as though an apocalypse were around the corner, and without this sense of potentially imminent crisis imagination loses most of its driving power (195).

I appreciate the optimism (and tension) of the pieces in this post. I'm just trying to sort out that positivity from my sense of dread that we might not be using our "own wings". Blake's "Marriage" is a satire reacting to the rising sense, during his time (and ours), that we can divorce the mind/soul from the body. Some of our optimism and belief in the methods and means that the technologies can and will afford us, makes me wonder whether we've yet acknowledged the problem of that divorce.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility,
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where the lions roam.
(ll 16 - 20, "Marriage," "The Argument," - Blake (again, of course))
posted by kneecapped at 11:01 AM on March 20, 2010 [7 favorites]


...what constitutes a fundamental change in the nature of civilisation?

Civilization's existing nuclear weapon stockpiles plus changes in global water supply (map) may take us back to the fundamentals pretty quickly.
posted by cenoxo at 11:11 AM on March 20, 2010


Communism for slow learners.
posted by Abiezer at 11:27 AM on March 20, 2010


Deanna Troi, our goddess of empathy.
posted by polymodus at 11:50 AM on March 20, 2010


In Soviet Russia, the sit-com laughs for YOU.
posted by symbioid at 12:22 PM on March 20, 2010


Interesting that the only comment on the CBS news story seems to be a white supremacist.
posted by HotPants at 1:45 PM on March 20, 2010


Ow! My "contiousness" hurts from being dismantled so much!
posted by symbioid at 4:04 PM on March 23, 2010


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