So I was editing one of my friends papers right now, and the topic was the sociological implications of the internet, discussing how the internet provides such a great outlet for social media and non-traditional social communities to arise without the necessity of living in the same actual proximity. Kind of like this website. Pretty intuitive. But then I had a thought, and I just figured I'd throw it out there for anyone who cares ha.

So of course, the internet is an incredible tool, it's connected and created countless movements and may be directly responsible for many of the current physical uprisings taking place around the world. But what if, just maybe, the internet is actually slowing down the evolution of our species?

By evolution, I mean the opening of minds and hearts, facing fears, and stretching to a new paradigm. Outside of the great great information I have stumbled upon here on the internet, I know that I have also wasted many an hour soothing mental or emotional distress with benign videos or superficially comforting content of one sort or another. I turned away from television a long time before I started using the internet responsibly, because I figured that if I was researching or "learning" something online I was progressing myself.

However, I think that the internet is quite possibly overtaking television as the largest and most influential method of "reality tunnel" propagation there has ever been. Many, many people are waking up to the fact that the mainstream, be it newspaper, television, or radio, is full of lies and propaganda. I think there is this subconscious feeling that because the internet is, for the moment, still relatively free of regulation, that we are avoiding the negative effects of mental programming.

Of course, it's all in how you use it, and how consciously you choose to engage with this wonderful medium. I'm more thinking about the people that have turned away from their initial beliefs and are just beginning to see the extent to which their thoughts are not their own. Aka probably 10 percent or so of the overwhelmingly large conglomeration that constitutes (to borrow from Ishamael) Mother Culture. I know that when I personally embarked upon my first traces of awakening, I drowned many uncomfortable thoughts and feelings in the distraction of immediately gratifying "spiritual" websites, reading quote after quote and wanting desperately to figure it all out.

I finally hit a point where I realized I could sit and mentally masturbate over all this stuff for as long as I want and still never really change anything. For me, the internet was both a liberator and an enslaver. It seems that besides possibly rewiring all of our brains for a severe attention deficit disorder, the internet can, if that conniving ego is tricky enough, serve to hold someone relatively new to the process within their mental prison for longer than if they just turned off their tv, bit the bullet, and started the true interior work that takes place far and away from any external stimuli.

Of course, like I said, it's a choice as to how this tool is used. Obviously this website is a pretty great example of conscious use and evolved thinking. But outside of this nice little internet utopia, are we, as members of an emerging global community, really evolving as a result of this electronic telepathy, or are we merely changing the channel on the television screen in front of our perpetually spinning hamster wheel?