An important part of my personal cosmology or TOE or what have you revolves around the Consensus. I don't know why I write it with a capital. I should mix that up to see what feels right.
The consensus is something I can compare with McKenna's Timewave Zero / Novelty theory and Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance theory. I think in different ways they are part of the same phenomenon.
The consensus is the common denominator of the human experience, the polynominal average of all mankinds' hopes, dreams, expectations, ideas, philosophies, religions, theosophies, ideologies, political systems, economic systems etc. ad infinitum.
So everything we think and do and believe as sentient human of earth combined together creates a moving average that causes reality to be fixated or stabilized which has one clear advantage: reality remains stable between all individuals' personal biases and subjective perception of reality.
It is quite handy to have a planet with gravity that is always the same through our lives, because floating up at random times does not equal a relaxed life. We call such things physical or natural laws. They are agreements for the purpose of anchoring reality.
I principle any law can be broken, but some laws are too helpful to break. We as individuals have a great investment in those laws as they make our lives predictable. That means you can live under the assumption that gravity will bind you the planet, that the sun will rise in the morning and that it will be impossible to find yourself in a situation like the film Groundhog Day.
As sentient beings create reality and live inside bubbles of perception, creating different perspective son life and reality, we still are able to interact and the consensus provides a framework for that interaction. But as society changes, as culture changes, the mean average shifts because people start to assume other things about reality. This can come from science, which is a powerful tool to describe reality and it has a lot of sway with people. So if science declares something, a lot of people will beleive it to be true. And then the consensus will reflect that new assumption. And so the average moves slowly.
Now it gets tricky. As humans we do not perceive the change. For example, long ago people believed the earth to be flat. They had no conception of a universe consisting of spheres and rotations around suns etc. I believe it to be possible that the earth was literally, truly flat.
If after all we create reality ourselves, surely what we assume about reality will be reality. The consensus was then that the earth was flat, so it was. The fact that we now 'know' the earth is a sphere is no more a solid fact or truism than the ideas of those people long ago. We cannot say that the earth was always a sphere because we now have the ability to discern it as being a sphere.
But at some point the consensus shifted. Scholars made new models of the universe. They started building telescopes, used new found scientific principles and were slowly but steadily able to get their point across. But in those days most people were illiterates and lived and worked in the field and had little impact on the consensus with wild ideas and notions about the nature of reality. So in those days the consensus could shift to reflect the new models more easy. The power to change reality rested with the learned people, so the church, scholars and royal families and nobility and those sort of people.
Once the novel idea was finding more and more backup, the model of the world being flat was replaced by the new one. And what happens is, it flips over, that is what happens. Reality flips into a new model and no one can detect the change! It isn't as if reality flickers off and on again and everyone in the street looks at each other saying 'wtf was that!?'
The change happens without it being noticed. And the strange thing about it is, once a new model gets accepted, history alters with it. So it works with a backward correction. So that means anyone who considers it, will agree that the earth had always been a sphere but that we lacked the facts to see how that was wrong.
But it wasn't. The earth was flat. It just seems to be the case that it was always a sphere. You cannot say peoples' memories were altered. No, reality itself was changed, and memories are a subset of reality, so when reality changes, everything changes and our memories follow in that groove. So reality changed forward and backward in time, as it is a major correction that took place.
There are those thats till maintain the earth is flat. I am not among them. But I think they somehow sense the consensus at work, are able to detect it and maybe feel fooled by reality.
The consensus has a forward momentum, just as it is in Sheldrake's theories. We expect the world tomorrow to be a sphere. So the likelihood of it being that tomorrow is very large, but not 100% certainty can be given. Any 100% mark would freeze reality in a gridlocked position. it would mean one truism becomes paramount and that doesn't happen.
Things are as they are because they were as they were. Our expectation is the engine that fixates reality in the moment and makes it easier that tomorrow will still be similar to today. I believe that is why change is so hard for our societies, e,g, our inability as a species to make real work of climate change, or famine, or war.
Quantum physics finds its way into this too. At those levels of reality, weird things start to happen. Causality goes out the window, we have cats in boxes, entangled in super strings and what not
This cold be the dimension where thought becomes manifest. Maybe we ought to talk about Elves, not cats in this matter, hehe.
But those science frontiers hint at a possibility.
Someone asked me about McKenna's Timewaxe Zero and Novelty Theory. Well, on 21 December 2012 the Maya calender comes to a full stop. Scientists and Mayan experts cannot truly believe the world will end. Our culture holds a pervasive scientific paradigm in its heart, this results in the consensus reflecting that firm believe, that affirmation by science that things will continue after that date. And so it will.
We want it to and we expect it, we believe it, so it will, canceling out McKenna's ideas about the transcendental object at the end of time or the eschaton. The people who believe that something will happen on that date are a minority. They are, when you think about a graph showing peaks and valleys, at the extreme ends of those. They add to the average line but since they are few and far in between, their impact is marginalized.
That is why to me McKenna's theory won't be thrown away with the trash because nothing happened. It is merely this, that the consensus could not be altered by a critical mass of people believing in a change.
I said that the consensus has a momentum. Think of it as an oil tanker at sea, to make a turn it needs 5 miles to be able to do it. For the Consensus to change, it requires a critical oppositional force to overcome that momentum. It could be that something happens that date. It is possible to alter the course of history in a cultural way. We see that happen in North Africa. But those people may want freedom, but still like gravity. So no fundamental change there. 2012 is presented as a major shift, the end of history, the end of the world. Such a fundamental expectation is not holding ground because most people wanna live forever and certainly see 2013.
So in principle 2012 could be the end of the world of some sort. If enough people create with their beliefs and assumptions about what will happen a critical mass to overcome the rest, the masses with no opinion about it, the people who think the end of the world is nonsense, etc., something will happen.
Intersting to add here:
"In politics, an organized minority is a political majority."
-- Jesse Jackson
So who knows what a concentrated effort could accomplish? There are those who claim that if just 10.000 people or whatever number they conclude would do it, would mediate on world peace or invite the aliens to land, it will happen. Do these people subconsciously understand the principle of the consensus? Sheldrake also did experiments in line with his theories that connect to these ideas.
Another quote I wish to insert here:
"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
A scary thought for certain, isn't it my lovelies?
Reality is ruled by a fickle assumption about the nature of reality, thin as hammered gold on some antique clock. With the right levers the consensus can be shifted. 11-9-01 comes to mind here. And perhaps the powers that be know well how to handle the consensus. Social engineering, right?
"Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion--and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion . . . while Truth again reverts to a new minority."
-- Sören Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)
Kierkegaard knew about the Consensus. Like I describe above, he says "in an instant". Reality just flips over.
In personal matters this happens too, this will affect the consensus, but since it is mostly a personal issue, it finds only partly connection with the ideas of others. Like e.g. one day you utterly dislike a politician and the next day you wake up after an enlightening dream perhaps..or a good dose of DMT or what have you...and you cannot find it in you to busy yourself any longer with that dislike. It has flipped over, inside your own perceptional bubble.
In that sense, reality isn't all that fixated.
Anyway, I am rooting for a major shift at the end of this year. I care not for what it is. I am setting my mind to change. I want the end of the world. I want mankind to ascend. My part in the consensus is small. But I call upon everyone to fous their intent on change,a s long as something happens. This world is sick. We are destroying our climate, the forests, killing of other species with out way of life, our materialism, we all do it by using up finite resources that our next of kin have a right to as well. Something has got to give.
I don't mind us moving into hyperspace, or that the aliens land, or that some group mediates us into world peace. Or peak oil starts to collapse us into a global economic and financial crisis we can never recover from.
It is all good. But our way of life cannot continue. Let's change the consensus, let's be the minority who, with their act of defiance pushes the Consensus in a new direction! :idea: