A Global Human Consciousness?
With the evolution of communications technologies, could this old idea become a reality? What would it look like?
In a time where it seems the world is fracturing, conflicts and wars raging and the threat of another world war looms, when politics are divisive and economic inequality rising, it seems odd perhaps, to think of humanity finding a global consciousness, unifying and finding a path forward. But what if it isn’t odd?
If we could arrive somehow, at this global consciousness, what might it look like and what would it mean? It could have significant implications, for example, on religions, spirituality and how we understand ourselves as Homo Sapiens, modern humans. It is unlikely to lead to a utopia or dystopia.
The idea of a global consciousness has been around for centuries, going back to Greek philosophers and other thinkers. In recent decades. It has come out as a philosophical idea through the concept of the Noosphere and the Global Consciousness Project through the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) formed in the 1970s.
The idea of the Noosphere with regard to technology was set out in a 1947 essay by French philosopher and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard. Essentially, he proposed that as technology advanced it would eventually lead to a spiritual transformation of humanity. What he termed as a global “etherised universal consciousness.” Once all this came together with technology, we would reach what Teilhard called the Omega Point. Even Dante suggests this sort of mass human awareness.
If you’ve ever read any of Ray Kurzweil’s books or essays, you may be thinking of what he terms the Singularity. Which is when machine intelligence reaches and goes beyond, human intelligence. An idea that has in part fuelled societal angst around the rise of Artificial Intelligence and speculation of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which would be that singularity point. It is a hot topic of debate.
Artificial Intelligence is an umbrella term for a whole range of tools that includes the current overhyped and much misunderstood Generative AI or Large Language Models (LLMs.) Other AI tools like Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) have been around for decades and are quite good and useful. But the are all called Narrow AI because they’re only good at doing one particular thing.
So what does AI have to do with a human global consciousness? A combination of AI tools could be valuable in augmenting human thoughts, ideas and philosophies, of showing us interconnectedness of common values and beliefs. Yes, there are dangers as is the case with any technology. But AI could be a sort of warp and woof, tying the threads together. A sort of diplomat for a global consciousness.
While we are all interconnected unlike ever before, it’s also a sort of disconnect. When we create content and engage in dialogue through social media, we are, in a way, putting our consciousness out there, but it’s a simulation of our “self” and not really us.
“Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man — the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media.” — Marshall McLuhan
McLuhan was quite prescient and we have, since his comments in the 1970’s, become even more deeply connected. And disconnected. But this is the norm for disruptive, revolutionary communications technologies throughout human history. Eventually, culture decides, at scale, how to adapt these technologies. After periods of turmoil and disruption, we move into calmer waters. Until the next one comes along.
In reality, because we are a complex species with billions of realities and many ideas around cultures and societies, we may not achieve a global consciousness in the way Teilhard or other philosophers have suggested; just as we are unlikely to achieve a utopia. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about it.
There are common values across cultures and societies. Our desire to reproduce for the survival of our species, how we value children, that the majority of humans want to live peacefully and live interesting lives. Hobbes might disagree.
So what would a global consciousness look like? That’s hard to say. Perhaps it’s a recognition of a truly common set of values and customs accepted by all societies and enshrined in some new form of United Nations 2.0, but with a different name. Perhaps in a way, we already have a greater global awareness approaching that consciousness?
We are in a time when we are asking questions about who we are as a species, the role of digital technologies from AI to genetic engineering and biotechnology and where we are going. We may be entering a sort of Renaissance 2.0 and ultimately, we have already changed as a species.
A European visiting us today from the 1400’s would recognize a lot of things such as houses, cars (thought they would seem bizarre), an oven and sink. The language would be awkward. A First People’s person visiting would be quite shocked at how we perceive private property and run our societies. A European would not understand how we think in many ways.
We’ve been changing as a species for millions of years, both biologically and socioculturally. We are more globally aware of one another than ever before. While we lost much of our understanding of nature as we become more technological, we are once again understanding nature through sciences. We are shifting back to working more in harmony with nature through technology. In part, the damaging era of fossil fuels is at the beginning of its end because we are more aware.
So in a way, we have developed a global consciousness. Will it evolve further? Perhaps and it is likely we will. But probably not as Teilhard imagined with a spiritual awareness framed as Christian or theologically. Nor where we become as, Transhumanists propose, essentially cyborgs, our brains uploaded to a massive server farm.
But we will evolve and end up with some greater awareness of not just us as a species, but of our fellow animals and nature. Increasingly, we understand that we are not the centre of the universe as we long thought, that we are in reality, part of something greater. Whatever that is.