Collectivism

I am endlessly fascinated by the concept of collective human consciousness.

I was introduced to the concept by my AP Biology teacher. He told us about an experiment where a group of chimpanzees were split into two separate troupes and taken to opposite ends of the continent. Both groups of monkeys were put in identical cages, and taught how to use a key to open the door. In the next phase of the experiment, they placed the key a few feet away from the bars (out of the chimps' grasp) and gave them a pole with a hook. For a month, the chimps remained oblivious to the simple tool that would so easily facilitate their escape. Then, the scientists taught the first group how to use the hook to grab the key, and within a week, the second group - on the other side of the continent, mind you - figured out how to use the pole without any human assistance. Jesse mentions a similar experiment dealing with crossword puzzles in Waking Life.

To be completely honest, I love the idea. It gives credence to a lot of little things in my life; things like the euphoric sense of oneness with an author who somehow manages to define an idea I've wanted to vocalize but couldn't, and the unshakable feeling that when I'm sitting completely alone at the top of a waterfall, dangling my feet in the spray, that I'm closer to the essence of humanity than I've ever been before. I like the potential it has; I mean, when I'm happy, I have the joy of 6 billion other humans to feed my own, and at the same time, I have a reason to try and feel the most brilliant joy that I can, to give something back. It's also a cool new facet to explore in the understanding of personal relationships. Perhaps a friendship isn't just two people who can talk or appreciate the same things, but who are actually feeding off of the "mental broadcasts" of one another. It's a little more intimate.

You start to walk a really fine line, though. Ayn Rand seems to really dislike the concept of collectivism, and when it reaches a certain extent, I guess I'd have to agree with her. For example, in Atlas Shrugged, Dr. Ferris says, "There's no such thing as the intellect. A man's brain is a social product. A sum of influences that he's picked up from those around him. Nobody invents anything, he merely reflects what's floating in the social atmosphere. A genius is an intellectual scavenger and a greedy hoarder of the ideas which rightfully belong to the society, from which he stole them. All thought is theft." I don't agree with that at all. If we begin to look at life that way, thousands of new ways to break man's spirit begin emerging. In another of her books, Anthem, Rand discusses the possibility of the other extreme: not the concept that all new ideas belong to society, but the concept that unless all of society discovers it, there is no idea. I think that the second possibility is almost worse, you know? There's not really a way to give anything back; it's all consuming, no producing. What sort of bleak existence is that?

So, it's not that I want to become an emotional or an intellectual monopolist, but at the same time, I don't want to owe my musings to a society that demands it.

Boy, who is John Galt, huh?