This is a thought that I had on my mind for a very long time, and actually wrote about it in very metaphorical terms a couple years ago. As the web keeps evolving, the sensation that this collective construction is slowly awakening is getting stronger.
Globalization is leading us to create an universal system to access all the knowledge we have acquired throughout 10,000 years of recorded history. Each website, more and more, seems to me as an isolated neuron were a central nervous system such as Google is obsessed in extracting sense from all of the chaos. Wikipedia is the universal memory resource of the world. All the digital cameras out there are the eyes of this living system that will later obtain meaning through Flickr. And the tiny messages sent to Twitter are the kind of random thoughts planet Earth likes to have when it feels bored (or inspired).
The more global consciousness invades us, the closer to the notion of a living Earth we might get. Just think about all the media obsession about global warming… has technology permitted the consciousness of the Earth to output it’s pain?
And it has happened before. Our individual consciousness is the product of millions of years in evolution that took single-cell life onto the multi-cellular systems we are made of today. And probably our current thoughts are the fiction produced by millions of cells interacting with each other right now.
So I wonder.. am I writing this or is it the earth expressing itself?
Ha! intresting indeed.
Well I think you were doing that -talking for the *earth*- long before the www exist, and at the same time your individuality allow you to made choices; every choice you’ve made has changed that universal humor… kind of
The www -more than never with the blogs-, its a direct approach to the thoughs of millions of individuals, which was impossible before. That show us -maybe- a more globalized vision of that *universal humor*.
That been said, I think my answer to your final question, would be: “both”.
my answer would be “yes”
“So I wonder.. am I writing this or is it the earth expressing itself?”
is there a difference?
It’s a fascinating thought to realize that we humans are simply output devices of the earth’s consciousness..
Well we ARE the earth. The strong dissosciation between ourselves and the environment its a cultural problem.
We -occidentals specially- culturally tend to conceptualize and categorize, and in that process we split the notion of form and matter: we dont talk about a tree, for us the tree is wood, is apples, is leafs, etc. and that way we forget that there is no part witout the other, that all of that are the tree.
Another nice post Santi, the global conscious is growing..
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