Why should we be surprised that social media became programmed to block progressive, revolutionary efforts after Occupy? Hell, they did the same thing in the 70s to derail the activism then, too.

[this is an addendum to the previous post on this topic, 

Who’s behind the Facebook curtain? Profiling the elite, a silhouette of the real New World Order ]

Now that i think of it, why wouldn’t the powers-that-be seek to direct the influence that Facebook has on the world along a particular direction? 

After all, since not long ago, FB and twitter were central to major revolutionary and occupy movements around the world, it makes perfect sense that those affected by such outbursts of democratic activism would want to direct such a force (FB and twitter) and would by now have had time to regroup. It makes sense that they would have by now clandestinely set up algorithms, protocols, procedures, policies, and more designed to orchestrate and direct the power of this social media along lines beneficial to themselves. 

No small power, this, since Facebook has influence over more than 1/6th of the world’s population, at 1.23 billion members; it would seem to have a power larger than any nation in the world and perhaps larger than any worldwide religion. Of course by now those with money and power would have infested FB and the rest of the internet with elements meant to orchestrate and direct the powerful forces gathered together by these media along lines beneficial to them.

Indeed, this exact kind of thing happened as a reaction to activism of the Sixties, which I detail in my book, Culture War, Class War. As i make clear, America, beginning with Kent State, experienced a massive effort by the 1%, to direct all public institutions along lines beneficial to themselves and away from democracy and, in particular, the issues raised by the activism of those times — Civil Rights, war, free speech, the environment, and so on. Major institutions like education, specifically higher education, and the media were specially targeted. As they had been most influential in the awakening of the American mind, they could also be the tools for the dumbing down of the America to be created after 1971. We see the effects of these efforts today on a scale so huge that only folks like myself, who experienced a different, more free America, can even see them and note the glaring contrast to the America we knew when we were younger.

It is so obvious, I am astounded that i did not see this before now. Of course, the 1% has its fingers in everything on the internet … and all of media. The internet has an air of free speech and democracy about it because everyone has the right to post, to create blogs, and so on. What is less obvious is the control that has been going on behind the scenes, and Facebook has been a good example of that. For Facebook has shown in recent years this encroaching tendency to control the degree to which posts will be seen, even among friends. Beyond that, there are algorithms for deciding the degree of exposure posts will receive, which, it is known, are guarded secretly by Facebook, Google, and the rest. 

My mistake was assuming those decisions were all made on grounds having to do with profit and for business reasons. Of course there are going to be all kinds of considerations going into the construction of those ways of influencing the flow of information that are political and are for the benefit of the 1% and the powers-that-be. Why wouldn’t the owners of power use that power to influence the flow of information to protect and increase their power? That has been true throughout society, of course it would be true for the internet, though it is even easier to hide there.

My oversight, also, was not realizing how the internet could be influenced in invisible ways affecting small fish such as myself. But i realized all they had to do was create the net in exactly the right way, and all kinds of folks like myself would be caught up in it.

The point is that it is intentional, but it is not necessarily specifically targeted at particular individuals.

— see my book, “Culture War, Class War: The Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths'”

for any of the books by Michael Adzema, see Michael Adzema at Amazon

#facebook #twitter #totalitarianism #activism #influence #elite #ptb #powers-that-be

[this is an addendum to the previous post on this topic, 

Who’s behind the Facebook curtain? Profiling the elite, a silhouette of the real New World Order ]

Who’s at the controls over at FB? Well, the profile, from my evidence, is one of right-wing, Christian, anti-environmental, anti-activist, greedy/paranoid, capitalist types defending the 1% … Well, welcome to the “real” new world order:

Interesting what is going on with me over at FB these days. There seems a discernible pattern to the harassment i receive and have been receiving for a year and a half.

They’ve had me blocked and unable to interact for a good deal of that time — in “FB jail” is the way we put it. And while it is good to be out … at this moment anyway, lol …  and not blocked, as before, from posting in groups, from commenting and liking anything (even my own posts), there are new developments, new harassments.

Out of jail, yes, but would you believe that FB has actually deleted all of the Notes that i made since April 27th of this year…. including several powerful and much talked about ones on the environmental emergency upon us (titled “if you don’t read anything else by me, you should at least read this“) and the one giving information on my book, Culture War, Class War…. which is a book supporting the 99% in struggle against the 1%.

also, they are blocking all links to my blog, Funny God, as well as they’ve begun blocking any links or connections to or from tsu…..

it’s unbelievable the extent that they will meddle in the work of little old me …. after all, i’m hardly important…

Relatedly, i have been blocked for nearly all of the last year and a half from being able to share directly from a post to any of the groups i belong to, including my own. I cannot click the share button on the bottom of a post and direct it to a group, i have to copy url’s and text and go to the actual page of a group and paste it in there manually. Consider the hassle this provides when trying to network, to share information on issues.

So they are anti-networking for those of us who are activists…

Altogether, it looks like someone at FB, or FB itself, is fucking with me over my efforts to raise some urgency over the environmental apocalypse and human extinction we are on the verge of….

over my attempts to raise awareness on the class war going on… my attempts to highlight the economic injustice and the media manipulation that are being used to keep the sheeple in line….

wants to throw a monkey wrench into my ability to network easily, thus inhibiting my activist activities

and hates the idea of a Funny God...

as well as doesn’t want me promoting tsu, a social media platform in competition with FB…

hmmmm….

does it not seem that there is a pattern to these seemingly random “glitches”? Is it part of some anti-activist algorithm with a pro-fundamentalism subroutine? A right-wing creation being used to beat up opposition? But, if an algorithm, then how to explain why my Notes were deleted… i mean selected with seeming intention and actually deleted, with the work on them lost.

Think i’m being paranoid? Then how about this? The arrangement of my features on my wall, which i was allowed to set so that my Notes would be noticeable and at the top, was actually changed so that they would be hidden … and someone would have to dig for them; they would not find the hundreds of Notes i have written on activist and spiritually free-thinking topics unless they knew already that they were there. LOL. To top it off, when i go to set the arrangement properly, it does not get arranged properly on my wall, though my settings are indicating that the Notes *should* be on top, where i place them!

soooo…. sounds to me like forces that shape up as Christian (or otherwise fundamentalist), fascist, part of the economic elite, and greedily concerned over a rival social media…

Capitalistic, greedy Christians with no concern for free speech or rights and wishing to derail activism?

sounds like most of the right-wing we see everywhere these days… typified by Faux News, for example.

But who in hell would have the funds or motivation to pursue such clandestine activity to keep the activists and free-thinkers down? Who would have the money and staff? i think i’ve answered my own question, and it certainly wouldn’t be the forces of the 99%. Think *that’s* outlandish? How about alongside the fact that forces of the 1%, specifically the Koch brothers, are known to have entire staffs working on altering the content and flow of information on the internet and social media in order to keep them and their activities and interests in a positive light. 

summary: fuck FB…. 

based on all this shit, i’m even more determined to expand my internet exposure across larger and larger territories of different kinds of social and internet media….

so, in conclusion, fuck FB!

***

by the way, i encourage all and everyone to join me at Tsu. They are still a puppy dog compared to the FB behemoth. Still, i haven’t encountered any of the targeted monkey wrenching of activist or consciousness raising activity like at FB. At least not yet … and it’s been about 4 months i’ve been there.

to join, simply click on my link http://www.tsu.co/sillymickel

give them a username and a password of your choosing.

and you’re in.

Remember, another advantage of tsu is that they share the ad revenue we generate for them with all tsu members. It’s not much, but it is actual money, and it has the potential to amount to something in the long run, especially if one gets in early enough on, like now.

You’ll also start with at least one friend there (me), as i will send a request to friend, upon your joining.

Anyway, happy networking! We will overcome as we go over, under, around, and through any and all obstacles and harassment tactics to bring about a better world.

— for more on the elite and the culture war, class war being discussed here, see my book, “Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of ‘Obvious Truths'”

http://www.amazon.com/Culture-War-Class-Generations-Obvious/dp/1492864021/ref=sr_1_4_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443975079&sr=1-4&keywords=michael+adzema

for more on the environmental crises referred to here, see my books, Apocalypse Emergency, Apocalypse NO, and Planetmates: The Great Reveal

for any of Michael Adzema’s books, go to Michael Adzema at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=dp_byline_cont..

#facebook #tsu #Christian #harassments #capitalist #profile #anti-environmental #anti-activist

The Journey to Light Leads Through Perinatal Darkness: Correcting the Arrogant Modern Ego … Religions Are About Control … Spirituality, Surrender

Will We Survive? Putting Our Society “On the Couch”: Control vs. Surrender, Death vs. Life … The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

Apocalypse – No! Chapter Eleven: Control Versus Surrender … Heaven Leads Through Hell

Does It Look Like We’ll Duck Armageddon? The Information Tsunami, Ego Erosion, and Movies Are Collective Dreaming

Are the Changes Needed to Avoid Apocalypse Occurring? The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind, Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

Is there any evidence that the changes that need to happen for us to stave off apocalypse and save our world are actually occurring?

The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind

I have mentioned there are studies of the psychology of generations, beginning with the Baby-Boomers or Sixties Generation, that show both an increased access to the perinatal as well as a tendency to act out perinatal influences in less harmful…though more blatant…ways than generations prior. We have seen that this tendency goes hand in hand with actual engagement in activities to counter the negative perinatal act-outs that exist in our environment, for example, campaigning against war, pollution, racism, violence, and so on.

But in “Chapter Three: The Perinatal Media,” I introduced the common anthropological tenet that the projective systems of a culture—that is, its art and artifacts—can be analyzed to get a glimpse into the worldview of a particular society. For our purposes, I pointed out how our movies are especially potent glimpses into our collective consciousness as well as our collective unconscious. You might say that our cinema is the “royal road” to our collective unconscious.

Movies As Collective Dreaming

Our flicks perform admirably well as collective dreams in that, unlike the other products of our collective consciousness such as other art and artifacts, they are multimedia stories, much like dreams are. But more than that, they are shared by more of the populace than any other art form. I am not including TV separately as an art form, since I put it in the same category as films, especially when many films are broadcast on TV and much else on TV also has the same character of being multimedia stories.

Finally, the strength of a particular element of the collective consciousness can be easily determined by the popularity of a particular movie that represents it or by that element’s increasing inclusion in a number of films. For example, in “The Perinatal Media,” I discussed the emerging new elements of faces coming out of walls and forceful oral insertion.

Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

All together, these mean that, just as a psychotherapist might analyze a client’s dreams to get an idea of his or her unconscious workings and contents, one can interpret mainstream movies to get an idea of the workings and contents of our society’s “collective mind”—both conscious and unconscious.

This is no more complex than saying that when we see things in movies that people rush to see, they are drawn to it because those things are also in their own minds. And the more they flock—the greater the success of a movie—the more pervasive in a society are those themes, elements, and contents. Certain aspects—themes or elements in films—are said to really “resonate” with people and therefore people make the movies that contain them popular and successful.

When this is said, it only means that people are consciously or unconsciously drawn to things that exist within themselves. Conversely, no existence inside? No interest.

So in this and upcoming chapters I will use films as the dreaming out loud of our collective mind. Put less esoterically, I will be analyzing a few examples of mainstream movies for their content, and I will be assuming the content I find there exists as well in the society that has watched it…has dreamt it.

I will also be assuming that movies that are mainstream, by which I mean can be found readily for sale as DVDs on-line or in retail stores and have become part of the popular conversation are indicative of pervasive elements in our collective consciousness and unconscious. They can be looked at for the unacknowledged workings of our society as a whole.

I will not deal with the actual numbers of people who have attended particular movies. For I will assume out of the tens of thousands of movies that are produced each year—by small and large producers—those that have made it into the theaters of virtually all the communities of our society, and from there onto the DVD lists and the shelves of stores of all those communities, have by those facts alone demonstrated their resonance with the collective social mind. Otherwise, we would get into the maelstrom of analyzing critic’s opinions of these movies; and with that, to modify a saying, opinions are like asses: everyone has a different one.

Something’s Happening Here … Again

One final point about the heuristic value of the analysis of films for the workings of the collective mind: Elements and themes in movies change over time. I have shown how new elements may be evidence of new elements of our collective unconscious minds coming into consciousness in detailing how the faces-in-the-wall element has developed. (See “All in All It’s Just Another Face in the Wall.”)

But when old, familiar plots have different outcomes, this is important as well. When elements change or evolve over time, this speaks of something going on. This points to changes or evolutions in our collective consciousness. And when elements and themes and plots change or evolve rapidly, we can accurately say that the changes in consciousness are equally swift.

These are some of the tools we will be using in this and upcoming chapters as we take a look at a few examples of mainstream films and what they might be reflecting back to us about our own society’s changes in consciousness. But first let me say something about what may turn out to be the most important of the thematic evolutions or changes in film elements that we have been seeing.

.

Information Avalanche and Pre- and Perinatal Themes

In the last half century we have been hearing a great deal about the need to expand consciousness to balance the negative effects of the extremes of technological advance. Fortunately this change of consciousness is to some extent inevitable—or at least greatly aided—by certain side effects of the technological explosion…specifically in the area of telecommunications.

Ego-Eroding Information Deluge

As cultural boundaries are eroded by a multicultural information avalanche, people are forced to lower their inner defenses and ego boundaries. Confronted by such incoming information people will either take some of it in, learn, and thereby grow beyond their former selves or they will need to expend themselves in an all-out effort to shore them up.

A potent example of the first, currently, is the way people worldwide are opening to and learning from each other using social media via the internet; the revolutionary potential of this creation of an open global consciousness is already showing itself in uprising for democracies and economic justice virtually everywhere on Earth. A clear example of the second—where folks are putting everything into blocking out information and beating back the personal growth that would result—is in the backlashes to these liberal forces, which are also occurring throughout the world—as a Tea Party in the United States and as the fortification of authoritarian regimes from China to Syria and Turkey, from Iran to Israel.

We have seen that the first response—where folks allow the discomfort inherent in personal growth—is typical of a more advanced form of child-caring that is centered on the needs of the child. We know also that the latter reaction goes with child-caring centered on the needs of the care-givers, or parents…and not the child. In this latter instance of parenting, it is understandably called child-rearing or raising a child as opposed to child-caring. We have noticed that the first response goes along with increased self-analysis and introspection and the latter one with acting out, aggression, and culture war.

Information Tsunami Pushes Consciousness Revolution

So, this tsunami of information in all areas, where previously we could smugly hold forth ego-satisfying views, pushes both toward an overthrow of those narrower perspectives and the establishment of broader, more encompassing ones as well as toward an ever increasing irrationality in fending off this information, at any and all costs.

I discussed at length in a previous section how this informational upswelling has led to a need to process it all in new social formats and the rituals of the talk and reality shows.

“Consciousness Raising” As “Shoveling It”

For the most part, this growth or expansion of consciousness, when it happens, is seen as a linear increase and correspondingly is labeled a “raising” of consciousness. This is true whether we are talking about societal or individual progress.

Ken Wilber’s transpersonal theory is the most popular version of such a ladder-style path. In it the process of growth is analogous to that of climbing a mountain or shoveling compost into a pickup truck—one simply moves upward or piles it on. [Footnote 1]

But there are those who think otherwise.

Yes, Tina Turner, We Do Need Another Hero … a Different Kind: The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

Religions Are About Control; Spirituality, Surrender. Let Go, Let God to Correct an Arrogant Modern Ego

The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

Those in the know about the pervasive pre- and perinatal influence on personality and behavior, and especially those of us actively engaged in working through the effects of such early traumas, are fully aware, like Dante, that the path to heaven leads through hell. We have found that the path to the transpersonal light leads through the psychodynamic and perinatal darkness, that the path up and the path down are parts of the same path outward. [Footnote 2]

A Dark and Hideous Shadow World

Our experience has been that the information avalanche and multicultural onslaught have eroded our personal boundaries to an influx, not only of transpersonal bliss-love-compassion, but equally—and very often, initially—to a dark and hideous shadow world, a backwards bizarro world, of pernicious and insidious disorganized feelings comprised of elements ancient, infantile, pathological, biological, scatological, and perinatal. These are some of the forms spiritual emergence can take, especially initially. And they are the ones most likely to be seen as spiritual emergencies.

Pre- and Perinatal Themes in Cinema

Therefore, it is interesting to see these views confirmed by the bubbling up of psychodynamic and perinatal themes in our collective consciousness as evidenced by current films, books, and music. I have mentioned the pre- and perinatal themes and symbolism in films and explained why, along with other elements of postmodern times, they are evidence of something significant occurring in the consciousness of our age—an emerging perinatal unconscious.

But there is another element evolving in current films which has to do with a changing or evolving collective attitude toward these perinatal elements. And along with a changing attitude, there is evidence pointing to an evolving collective response to it.

Control vs. Surrender, Death vs. Life

“Control Spiritualities” and Patriarchal Cultures

Specifically, a different kind of heroic response, which characterizes the perinatal arena, can be said to characterize the postmodern movies replete with perinatal symbolism. Most striking of all, this different kind of heroic response corresponds to a different kind of spirituality than what is commonly portrayed in this society, or at least has been the norm up until now.

For basically there are “control” spiritualities and “surrender” spiritualities, with rarely the twain meeting. “Control spiritualities” are adapted to patriarchal cultures and involve the use of the ego to “control” and be in charge of even the realms of the supernatural. This is so because an ultimate evil—a devil or Satan—is postulated, which is given equal weight along with God in determining one’s ultimate fate. This type of spirituality is normally what is called religion.

“Surrender Spiritualities” and God As Being Good

But there is another brand of spirituality that is based on a belief in the ultimate goodness and rightness of All That Is. God’s goodness being essentially the dominant force in the Universe, herein it is considered safe to “surrender” in one’s relation to Reality, to expect that one will be guided correctly, in fact perfectly, in the act of letting go. Thus letting go is not to be feared—as in the control spirituality—but is to be practiced and fostered. In this perspective, which we might call surrender spirituality, control is seen as the problem, not the solution.

“Control” and “Surrender” Psychotherapies

Of course these two approaches to spirituality represent two approaches to psychotherapy as well. The control attitude is the dominant mode of psychoanalytically-based approaches—those in which the “demon” of the id is postulated.

The attitude of “letting go” and “surrender,” on the other hand, is the dominant mode of the experiential psychotherapies, which are themselves rooted in the tradition of humanistic psychology with its belief in the ultimate goodness of the human organism and which thus allows a faith in the ultimate rightness of human processes.

“Hero’s Journey” As “Control” Psychotherapy

Since the control attitude, in any of its manifestations, requires the postulation of an ultimate evil against which one must remain vigilant and must fight, the common “hero’s journey” myth—with its typical fighting and slaying of supposedly evil parts of the personality and reality symbolized as dragons and other monsters—is a prevalent focal myth to this attitude. Corresponding to this myth are the emphasis on disciplines and practices seeking to develop the ego and the will…over against the dangers that are postulated to exist in the Universe requiring these disciplines and, so-called, ego developments.

A Different Heroic Response in “Surrender” Paths

Since the “feeling” therapies and the other spiritual and experiential psychotherapeutic modalities with which they are allied are so different in attitude to the traditional “control” attitude, should there not be corresponding differences in myths to exemplify them? Indeed, there are.

In history, the surrender spiritualities have had correspondences in myth in which the dragon is not fought, conquered, and slain, but rather is either tamed and becomes one’s ally or pet—Saint Margaret is the prime example in the West, but this is a depiction prevalent in the East—or else one is swallowed by the “dragon” or monster and, after a while, is reborn.

Jonah is the prime example in the West for this latter depiction. But again this reaction to the fearful dissociated aspects of the personality, or the Shadow, is not a common one in the Western patriarchy, and it is much more common in traditional cultures and in the East.

A Shift to “Surrender” As a Corrective to a Western Overweening Ego?

All of this may be changing in recent times in the West, as once again the humanistic attitude and the new spiritual perspectives, as well as the experiential psychotherapies such as primal therapy, make us increasingly aware of the ultimate beneficence of the body, and of the Universe beyond even that, and of the importance of surrender and letting go as a corrective to the overweening control and defensiveness of the diminutive Western ego.

.

.

.

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Twelve: Atman Projects vs. Surrender Solutions

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Ten: Where There Is Hope, Cultural Rebirthing

Footnote

1. See especially Ken Wilber, The Atman Project. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1980.

2. See, for example, Michael Adzema, “A Primal Perspective on Spirituality,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 25(3), 83-116. Reprinted online at the Primal Spirit site at “A Primal Perspective on Spirituality.”

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Twelve: Atman Projects vs. Surrender Solutions

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Ten: Where There Is Hope, Cultural Rebirthing

Invite you to join me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel

friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

Does It Look Like We’ll Duck Armageddon? The Information Tsunami, Ego Erosion, and Movies Are Collective Dreaming: Dreaming Out Loud, Part One

Dreaming Out Loud, Part 1: Are the Changes Needed to Avoid Apocalypse Occurring? The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind, Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

Is there any evidence that the changes that need to happen for us to stave off apocalypse and save our world are actually occurring?

The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind

I have mentioned there are studies of the psychology of generations, beginning with the Baby-Boomers or Sixties Generation, that show both an increased access to the perinatal as well as a tendency to act out perinatal influences in less harmful…though more blatant…ways than generations prior. We have seen that this tendency goes hand in hand with actual engagement in activities to counter the negative perinatal act-outs that exist in our environment, for example, campaigning against war, pollution, racism, violence, and so on.

But in “Chapter Eight: The Perinatal Media,” I introduced the common anthropological tenet that the projective systems of a culture—that is, its art and artifacts—can be analyzed to get a glimpse into the worldview of a particular society. For our purposes, I pointed out how our movies are especially potent glimpses into our collective consciousness as well as our collective unconscious. You might say that our cinema is the “royal road” to our collective unconscious.

Movies As Collective Dreaming

Our flicks perform admirably well as collective dreams in that, unlike the other products of our collective consciousness such as other art and artifacts, they are multimedia stories, much like dreams are. But more than that, they are shared by more of the populace than any other art form. I am not including TV separately as an art form, since I put it in the same category as films, especially when many films are broadcast on TV and much else on TV also has the same character of being multimedia stories.

Finally, the strength of a particular element of the collective consciousness can be easily determined by the popularity of a particular movie that represents it or by that element’s increasing inclusion in a number of films. For example, in “The Perinatal Media,” I discussed the emerging new elements of faces coming out of walls and forceful oral insertion.

Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

All together, these mean that, just as a psychotherapist might analyze a client’s dreams to get an idea of his or her unconscious workings and contents, one can interpret mainstream movies to get an idea of the workings and contents of our society’s “collective mind”—both conscious and unconscious.

This is no more complex than saying that when we see things in movies that people rush to see, they are drawn to it because those things are also in their own minds. And the more they flock—the greater the success of a movie—the more pervasive in a society are those themes, elements, and contents. Certain aspects—themes or elements in films—are said to really “resonate” with people and therefore people make the movies that contain them popular and successful.

When this is said, it only means that people are consciously or unconsciously drawn to things that exist within themselves. Conversely, no existence inside? No interest.

So in this and upcoming chapters I will use films as the dreaming out loud of our collective mind. Put less esoterically, I will be analyzing a few examples of mainstream movies for their content, and I will be assuming the content I find there exists as well in the society that has watched it…has dreamt it.

I will also be assuming that movies that are mainstream, by which I mean can be found readily for sale as DVDs on-line or in retail stores and have become part of the popular conversation are indicative of pervasive elements in our collective consciousness and unconscious. They can be looked at for the unacknowledged workings of our society as a whole.

I will not deal with the actual numbers of people who have attended particular movies. For I will assume out of the tens of thousands of movies that are produced each year—by small and large producers—those that have made it into the theaters of virtually all the communities of our society, and from there onto the DVD lists and the shelves of stores of all those communities, have by those facts alone demonstrated their resonance with the collective social mind. Otherwise, we would get into the maelstrom of analyzing critic’s opinions of these movies; and with that, to modify a saying, opinions are like asses: everyone has a different one.

Something’s Happening Here … Again

One final point about the heuristic value of the analysis of films for the workings of the collective mind: Elements and themes in movies change over time. I have shown how new elements may be evidence of new elements of our collective unconscious minds coming into consciousness in detailing how the faces-in-the-wall element has developed. (See “All in All It’s Just Another Face in the Wall.”)

But when old, familiar plots have different outcomes, this is important as well. When elements change or evolve over time, this speaks of something going on. This points to changes or evolutions in our collective consciousness. And when elements and themes and plots change or evolve rapidly, we can accurately say that the changes in consciousness are equally swift.

These are some of the tools we will be using in this and upcoming chapters as we take a look at a few examples of mainstream films and what they might be reflecting back to us about our own society’s changes in consciousness. But first let me say something about what may turn out to be the most important of the thematic evolutions or changes in film elements that we have been seeing.

Information Avalanche and Pre- and Perinatal Themes

In the last half century we have been hearing a great deal about the need to expand consciousness to balance the negative effects of the extremes of technological advance. Fortunately this change of consciousness is to some extent inevitable—or at least greatly aided—by certain side effects of the technological explosion…specifically in the area of telecommunications.

Ego-Eroding Information Deluge

As cultural boundaries are eroded by a multicultural information avalanche, people are forced to lower their inner defenses and ego boundaries. Confronted by such incoming information people will either take some of it in, learn, and thereby grow beyond their former selves or they will need to expend themselves in an all-out effort to shore them up.

A potent example of the first, currently, is the way people worldwide are opening to and learning from each other using social media via the internet; the revolutionary potential of this creation of an open global consciousness is already showing itself in uprising for democracies and economic justice virtually everywhere on Earth. A clear example of the second—where folks are putting everything into blocking out information and beating back the personal growth that would result—is in the backlashes to these liberal forces, which are also occurring throughout the world—as a Tea Party in the United States and as the fortification of authoritarian regimes from China to Syria, from Iran to Israel.

We have seen that the first response—where folks allow the discomfort inherent in personal growth—is typical of a more advanced form of child-caring that is centered on the needs of the child. We know also that the latter reaction goes with child-caring centered on the needs of the care-givers, or parents…and not the child. In this latter instance of parenting, it is understandably called child-rearing or raising a child as opposed to child-caring. We have noticed that the first response goes along with increased self-analysis and introspection and the latter one with acting out, aggression, and culture war.

Information Tsunami Pushes Consciousness Revolution

So, this tsunami of information in all areas, where previously we could smugly hold forth ego-satisfying views, pushes both toward an overthrow of those narrower perspectives and the establishment of broader, more encompassing ones as well as toward an ever increasing irrationality in fending off this information, at any and all costs.

I discussed at length in a previous section how this informational upswelling has led to a need to process it all in new social formats and the rituals of the talk and reality shows.

“Consciousness Raising” As “Shoveling It”

For the most part, this growth or expansion of consciousness, when it happens, is seen as a linear increase and correspondingly is labeled a “raising” of consciousness. This is true whether we are talking about societal or individual progress.

Ken Wilber’s transpersonal theory is the most popular version of such a ladder-style path. In it the process of growth is analogous to that of climbing a mountain or shoveling compost into a pickup truck—one simply moves upward or piles it on. [Footnote 1]

But there are those who think otherwise.

Footnote

1. See especially Ken Wilber, The Atman Project. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1980.

Continue with Yes, Tina Turner, We Do Need Another Hero … a Different Kind. Dreaming Out Loud, Part 2: The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

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