Online Collectivism, the fragmented self and the individual center
On my first workship day after my summer vacation I enter slowly and give my self “free floating time”.
For about a couple hours I “free surf” the Web and follow my spontaneous impulses into the various hyperlinks.
I observe that I receive information on simultaneous layers:
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The visual layer (Design, Layout, Navigation)
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The symbolic layer (text and illustrations)
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The Webpathic layer ( Empathic intuitions about the individuals and organizations behind the websites and their nooetic/memetic models)
After a couple minutes of free surfing I usually move into a very fast pace of hyperlinkjumps. If I see something grabbing me I open it as a browser tab (new browser window). After 20 minutes or so I often have about 20-30 tabs open and cross assimilate their content.
After a couple hours I perceived my self as “being lost”, fragmented, all over the place. I became unhappy, tired, exhausted, lost my center. What happened ?
I already started my free surf without being connected to my center. I dissolved into the Online collective the more I surfed it. My Self became fragmented. With all the “others” in my mind I started to loose my Self. The fragments felt like the broken parts of a mirror. They reflected, imitated the various content nodes of the web and because they are broken mirror parts they became caricatures of this content. All these nooetic “voices” and memes were flying around in my mind and I lost the sense of who I am. It felt a bit like being a Star Trek Borg connected to the Hive mind. No individuality, just a fragment in the collective reflecting/imitating all the voices of the collective without emitting individual light.
The relationship between fragments without an individual center connected to the center of center (Omega point/God) seems to be of parasitic nature. They nurture themselves through imitation and replicating the light=information of the others. There seems to be no real energetic exchange. The fragments act more as relay nodes.
I noticed that when I free surf the web in a centered state the effect looks different. I remain an individual center and go into symbiotic relationships with the nodes that I surf. I receive light=information and resorb it. Resorbation of information means to digest the content within the stomach of awareness and self awareness. I absorb the parts that add to my .organic mind and release the parts that are not in sync with my mind. These excretes become humus for new memes. The absorbed parts nurture my self. After such a centered free surf I usually come out with a “stronger” (individual) Self.
Individual centers within a systemic web of individual centers build a collective of individuals. But an individual is not just an individual by nature. It takes a lot of self-awareness and self-exploration to become a true individual – not just a single relay node of the mechanical collective.
The recent hot and critical discussions about the new online collectivism reflect what I personally reflected today about my self and my input/output surf/serve behavior.
But how to get back to ones center when being lost like me today ?
I tend to mix-up focus/center when being in such a fragmented mass.
In the focus approach I try to “center” my self through setting an outside center (a goal) and focus my energy on it. That’s an artificial center – not a true one. It’s still my fragmented self being focused on an outside center.
In the center approach I truly connect to the center within through spiritual practices that I figured as helpful in such situations (today: Dharma study, prayer and meditation).
Our Online Collective becomes more potent the more individual nodes of this collective find to their true selfs and centers or at least get close to it.
An important lecture of my ending day.
