October 21, 2024 • 60 mins
What if collective consciousness is the key to unlocking a deeper understanding of reality? Join hosts Angelo Cole, Chris Vigil, and Matt Maes as we explore this profound concept, diving into interpretations that range from panpsychism to Jungian psychology. We dissect how collective consciousness emerges when individual minds intertwine, creating something profoundly more powerful. Our discussion takes us through familial attunement, the layers of the unconscious, and universal archetypes—those timeless symbols like the mother or the magician that bind humanity across cultures.
On this journey, we shift our focus to the power of unified collective pursuits, drawing parallels between the operation of the Mars Curiosity rover and religious practices. Consider how distributed cognition and rituals guide us toward greater truths, and reflect on the importance of focusing on ultimate goals instead of getting lost in the rituals designed to help us reach them. Through judgment and self-reflection, we ponder the connections between individual actions and collective aspirations, urging a broader understanding of our shared journey.
Finally, we navigate the tumultuous terrain of belief systems and paradigm shifts, examining the emotional and intellectual challenges they bring. Through metaphorical knowledge trees and color spectrums, we explore the evolution of collective knowledge and its influence on perception. Our conversation extends to the interconnectedness of life, communication, and perception, challenging us to foster a mindful relationship with the environment. By personifying nature and recognizing Earth as "Mother," we promote a deeper respect for the world around us. Tune in for a thought-provoking episode that challenges you to rethink your place within the tapestry of collective consciousness.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Angelo (00:01):
Hello everyone, welcome to the Telos Initiative.
I'm Angelo Cole.
Chris (00:06):
I'm Chris Vigil.
Angelo (00:08):
And I'm Matt Maes.
Today we are going to talk aboutcollective consciousness, which
is a topic really special to me, and we've all tried to prep a
little bit for this one, and soI hope you enjoy it a little bit
(00:29):
for this one, and so I hope youenjoy it.
So, first of all, I guess I'dlike to try and define what I
mean by collective consciousness.
We could really get into somebroad offshoots, because there's
an aspect of it where we couldbe talking about panpsychism,
which is the idea that, um,consciousness is present in all
(00:52):
of reality on some level, likeeverything is related to
something with consciousness.
Okay, um, we have done apodcast previously on what
consciousness is, so we at leasthave some ground covered there
where it's not just anegotistical psychological
(01:14):
phenomenon, but it is aphenomenon based on what's
happening when a group ofconscious entities get together
(01:39):
and communicate, interconnect,and we could even get into
something along the lines ofdreams, the subconscious
collective consciousness as thecollective unconscious, which is
a jungian psychology, which issort of related to archetypes
(02:02):
and some of those things.
So, yeah, this topic isdefinitely, uh, a big one.
So I guess where would you guyslike to start?
Chris (02:12):
well, uh, define it.
What?
What is collectiveconsciousness?
Angelo (02:22):
collective consciousness is the phenomenon where
multiple conscious entities cometogether and something greater
than the sum of its parts comesout as a result.
I don't know if I have a verygood, specific definition.
Matt (02:46):
Okay, I also think of the word cohesion in terms of what
lies beneath the surface that weall innately can gather around
or we can innately agree upon.
That's one level.
It's funny the more you know,we bond together to say what you
(03:10):
know.
My family will watch my, youknow, my son and my wife.
They could see me make acertain facial expression and
they could read, just from acertain twinge right like oh,
you know, that's what you know,that indicates a certain
expression, or they understandthat about me, or I can do the
same for them.
I can notice when something,when something shifts one way or
(03:34):
the other.
And so us having that awarenessand attunedness, then we can, we
can individually, collectively,have an understanding around
what's happening with ourpsyches, what's happening with
our moods, our states, what iscoming through each of us.
(03:58):
But then, even below that,there's what's happening below
the surface that none of usconsciously understand, the
unconscious that we're, you know, the onion skin that we're
trying to bring intoconsciousness.
You know, and thinking a lotabout, about this subject, the
(04:20):
collective unconsciousness, I,you know, I I kept coming back
to these, these two sides wherewe have the uh, the relative,
agreed upon consciousness thatwe can, you know, we can bond
around, we understand and andit's, it's more, it's closer to
the surface, I think would be agood way to understand it or a
(04:43):
good way to think about it.
And then what we don't know,that we don't even know the
mystery.
You know the mystery that liesunderneath, you know where is
the realm of symbols, or wheresymbols point to, I should say,
and dreams, and you know thegreat mystery that we may
(05:06):
attempt to reach our hands intoand find well to be in tune with
it.
You know, I think meaningpoints us closer to it.
You know, it's that being intune with that primal, what word
would you even give to it, theprimal phenomenon.
Angelo (05:23):
You said phenomenon, primal like, like something akin
to the the id uh,
Matt (05:30):
maybe they I think the id could be
Angelo (05:33):
because the collective unconscious is related to the id
in young in psychology I meanthat you have your personal
unconscious, which is all of the, the personal experiences and
subconscious things that make upwho you are.
You have your ego, first andforemost, right, and that's the
things that you are consciouslyaware of and you put forth as
(05:56):
your yourself.
And then you have the personalunconscious, which is like my
experiences, my mother, my uh,personal, uh, dreams and
personal archetypes.
And then the collectiveunconscious is like, even deeper
(06:16):
than that.
It's almost something thatcomes through, uh, comes through
your genetics and your lineage.
It's hard to say that it'sentirely biological, because
there is a cultural element toit.
The collective unconscious issomething that influences humans
(06:38):
universally.
So things like the archetypesof the mother, the archetype of
we, the archetype of we talkedabout archetypes before as well
I think things like the magicianand the sovereign and all of
that are related to this deeperthing ingrained in every single
(06:59):
one of us universally.
Matt (07:00):
Yeah, definitely, and I love that we're going to the
archetypes universally.
Yeah, definitely, and I lovethat we're going to the
archetypes and the, the, thelocality and the universalness.
Actually, I think would be it'dbe helpful to paint a to, to
kind of carve a road from, say,we have the local consciousness,
like the, the, you, just you,and then you in a collective and
(07:24):
you in your culture, let's say,and how that culture relates to
other cultures, which would belike the, much more universal,
and how all those, all thoseconnect together.
So there are all these, allthese different layers, right,
all these different layers of ofconsciousness, and even more
than that.
I I mean, that's really kind ofan abbreviation, to be honest,
(07:46):
of course.
Angelo (07:47):
Well, I do think this whole concept is just a
heuristic for all of us.
To kind of follow, it groups avery complex system up into one
large thing.
So when you say something likeoh, my subconscious, something
bubbled up from there, it's likewhat are you talking about?
Because you have so many layers, like you said, like an onion
(08:08):
skin to who you are.
There's who I am when I'm aroundother people, who I am to
myself, who I think I am, who Iam as a human being, who I am as
a man, who I am as, dependingon what your race is like, those
are just like on the surfaceand then, subconsciously, there
(08:30):
are things that you might evenfind hard to describe.
You know, there's weird stuffthat that might be completely
unique to you.
Like you had this oneexperience and this is how you
took it and that pushed you inthis direction, and nobody else
really has that or knows aboutthat in the same way you do.
Um, you might share somethingwith a sibling.
(08:51):
What if you're a twin and youand your twin kind of uh, have
some hidden language or you kindof know what each other is
talking about just because youcame from the same place.
There's some subconscious thinggoing there, and when we're
talking about a collective, it'salmost like as a culture.
We have cultural things that weall do that are completely
(09:15):
unique to our culture.
We have biases, we have thingsthat we take for granted.
We have, we have collectivedreams, even if you think about
it.
Um, yeah, we, that's thestories we tell in our movies.
We have cultural, iconic moviesthat we're all like, oh yeah,
(09:36):
um.
I like to think the first onethat comes to mind is something
like the terminator.
That's like a cultural icon foramerica.
I feel like the terminator islike this archetype of how
robots take over the world, andit's so ingrained into us that
(09:56):
now that we're facing uh, issueswith ai, it's like this what
about the, the Terminator?
What about Skynet?
Is that where this is allheaded?
And it's because that's likethis subconscious, dream-like
story that we've told each other.
The Matrix is another good one.
Matt (10:17):
There's something that is deeper than perhaps we are able
to express just with words orjust with our process of, of
articulation.
And you know, going back to the, the archetypes, real quick, I
was thinking about this, uh,this parable of the eye, of the
(10:40):
needle, if you might oh, yeah,yeah where you have to sacrifice
your riches, you have tosacrifice these things.
you'd be too weighed down to gothrough the eye of the needle
right, so you have to cast thesethings aside Now, within the
context of the story, that has acertain meaning, but that, as a
, let's say, like psychologicaltemplate, that's extremely
(11:02):
useful in a lot of differentcontexts.
And in this context, going backto the archetypes, let's think
about your mind.
And if you were to turn youreyes backwards to look at the
inside of your head, to thesubconscious.
That's kind of what we're tryingto do when we're trying to dive
(11:23):
into and analyze the collectiveunconscious.
But the very but it evades thevery tool that we're trying to
use in order to apprehend it,right.
So we have to sacrifice what ourminds think about the
collective unconscious.
We have to sacrifice thinkingabout what our bodies, our
(11:47):
senses are telling us.
We have to sacrifice our monkeymind, let's say, all these
things that get in the way ofbeing able to simply pass
through the needle and be intouch with that collective
unconscious, to have a physical,felt, a felt presence,
(12:08):
experience of it, right.
But once we're able to do that,then you know, it's like that
mystery has a certain viscousviscosity, like a water being
able to be fluid and passthrough.
You know, if it's, it can't betoo way, we can't be too weighed
down in order for that to comethrough.
(12:29):
So when we open ourselves to it, that's when it comes through,
that's when the insight is ableto wash over our minds and our
bodies and that's when we can bein a participatory relationship
with it and we can live outthat collective unconscious in a
deep level, because we're ableto surrender ourselves to it.
Chris (12:52):
I really like what you're saying and how you're saying it
.
I would just I'm not sure ifthe removal of my ego and the
cessation of my dreams anddesires in such a powerful way
(13:14):
is designed to let theunconscious live through me.
I think that's something that'smore reserved for um, the
boundless, omnipotent deity thatresides over our reality, like
(13:36):
I think that's what we'relooking to channel in that sense
, um, but I am okay.
so if I could try to dial thisback just a tiny bit, sure sure
Right because when Jung definesthe collective unconscious, you
know, he says that we have anego, we have our own experiences
, and these experiencessublimate our personal
(14:00):
unconscious, right?
Personal unconscious, right.
So then, um, the collectiveunconscious, then, is inherited
both from our genetics, ourbiology and our culture, and and
um, the, the closest thing thatwe can get to understand, like
seeing and understanding anddefining what the unconscious is
(14:23):
, are the archetypes, right?
The mother, the father, themagician, the warrior, um, but
is that what we mean when we saycollective consciousness?
Or or is collectingconsciousness just cohesion?
Well, like religion, what youknow, well, I do that.
Angelo (14:43):
That's why I think collective consciousness is
tricky to define, because we'retalking about a really broad
category here and it does getconfused with the collective.
Unconscious isn't the samething as collective
consciousness.
We could be talking about thereligious impulse and cohesion
and a collective will.
(15:05):
That's something different thanour collective archetypes and,
where we come from, we could betalking about a hive mind, so to
speak, and that's not what Jungwas talking about.
Okay, which is?
Chris (15:26):
I know this topic is a little bit broad, which is kind
of why I wanted to bring it upand see what you guys really
thought on it, because so Ithink it's really tricky,
because when Jung defines acollective unconscious, we're
seeing that word consciousnessand that's what's really
(15:47):
triggering me to fall back intoJungian definitions for that.
Should we redefine it as thecollective cognition that we're
all experiencing?
Because a cognition has freewill.
My cognitions have free will,or at least I think I have free
well, yeah, that's contentiousand we can contend about that
(16:11):
later um yeah, let's.
Angelo (16:15):
Let's get into a little bit more on what you mean by
cognition and maybe this idea ofdistributed cognition.
I'd like to dive a littledeeper into that.
I love this idea of distributedcognition.
I'd like to dive a littledeeper into that.
I love this idea of like acollective will and to bring it
closer to something a littlemore scientific and stable.
(16:40):
Let's talk about something likethe, the.
I forget the robot that theypilot on mars, but there's this
machine curiosity.
Matt (16:50):
I think yeah curiosity.
Angelo (16:51):
Yeah, so curiosity on mars.
Is this really great example ofdistributed cognition?
Because it's not like one guywith a remote control piloting
uh, curiosity and seeing what'sgoing on.
There's a collective team allmaking decisions together on how
this robot is moving, not justone aspect of it, but everything
(17:19):
leading up to getting it toMars and what it's seeing and
interpreting all that data, whatdirection they get to search
and everything.
It's like.
This collective group of peopleare all operating through this
one singular body, which I findfascinating.
And this isn't some etherealpanpsychism, hive mind sort of
(17:43):
thing.
This is something that everyonecan agree.
You, collectively, are in agroup effort, uniting through a
machine.
Chris (17:55):
Okay, so if we can do that for a robot that we put on
Mars, what's our purpose for ifwe try to aim for something
doing something like thatcollectively on Earth?
Angelo (18:07):
Well, I think, what do you mean?
What's our purpose?
We can have multiple purposes.
It's almost like that's justone method.
Chris (18:17):
Wait a minute For which you could use distributed
cognition for, for would youcall us like collect?
So this group of people rightcollectively maintaining and
using this robot on mars, thecuriosity rover on mars?
Would you call that collectivecognition or distributed
(18:39):
cognition?
Uh, that's collective right,because it's aimed towards.
Well, I called it distributedcognition.
Angelo (18:45):
But I feel like it's kind of the same thing when
you're saying distributed,you're distributing from a
collective okay, alright, liketo me it's going hand in hand.
I said distributed to kind oftry and distinguish it from this
(19:06):
collective consciousness thingwe're getting okay okay.
So I also think that's thereligious impulse.
That's the point of religion.
So you'll hear a lot of peopletalk about, oh, this difference
between religion andspirituality.
I think that it's operating onsomewhat of a false premise,
(19:28):
this idea, because religion's aloaded word.
So when you say religion, a lotof people think of a power
structure.
Religion is this sort of opiateof the masses and it's got this
top-down hierarchy and there'sthese people who think they know
what's going on and they'reimposing their beliefs on other
people and they're just tellingyou what to do.
But that's not really what Ithink religion actually is.
(19:53):
When I talk about religion, Ithink it's more of something
more akin to this distributedcognition thing that we touched
on.
I think it's something morelike a group of people.
Regardless of the hierarchicalstructure.
They're all coming togethercollectively for the same
purpose and reason, and the morethey unite as one body, as one
(20:19):
thing, pursuing whatever it isultimate truth or goodness or
however you look at it, they'reall moving in the same direction
together.
And that's when you startseeing things like rituals being
played out and and narrativesand stories.
You get you get some sort ofarchetypal behavior bleeding
(20:40):
into that action, uh, thatcollective uh pursuit, I should
say so.
Chris (20:48):
I think that's another example of distributed cognition
I like how we went fromcollective consciousness to
collective pursuit.
Like it's not.
It's one thing to just thinkabout collective right, it's
another to pursue somethingcollectively right well, we are
the telos initiative and it'sall about pursuit.
Angelo (21:14):
It's all.
It's all about meaning andpurpose and what you're headed
towards and ultimately, I dothink that is really at the
bottom of just about everything,which is why it's so
fascinating.
You can talk about somethingwildly different like religion
versus this curiosity robot onMars, and you can get to the
(21:36):
same root, right.
Matt (21:40):
Well, it seems we keep going back to unification
between people at all thesedifferent levels from, say, the
people working together tooperate curiosity, distributed
cognition, and then you havethem each collectively working
together towards.
Actually, when we talk aboutreligion, I think of the body of
(22:01):
Christ and how we think of thebody of Christ, where we think
of the body of christ, where weare the body right like we as
the, you know, we as beings inthe church, all collectively
make up this unified thing ofthe body.
So when we have this different,maybe the purpose of the
different rituals in church isnot so much this sort of rigid
(22:24):
you must do this and that andthe other for its own sake.
Because when it becomesself-referential for its own
sake, that's where it starts tofall apart, and that's where
people are like why are we doingthese things?
But to have a cohesion and areason why you're doing all
(22:46):
these things, actually, alsothink of Confucius, one of the
things he said.
That was perhaps one of thewisest things they ever said.
The wise person points to themoon and the fool only looks at
the finger.
Nice.
Angelo (23:02):
You know, what I mean by that.
Yeah, because you're like lookat the moon and you're like, oh
yeah, that's pretty cool.
Matt (23:09):
Like the moon, is the actual thing, that's the telos,
that's the reason for it all,that's the source of meaning
itself, that's the source of thealiveness.
That's, I mean, really thesource right.
And then you have people justlooking at the functions,
looking at the actions that aresupposed to facilitate, pointing
(23:35):
towards what that thing is Well, there's a judgment element
there, isn't there, Like you'relooking at the finger.
Angelo (23:41):
Why are you looking at the finger To be like, oh, is
your finger even pointing in theright direction, right, right?
It's kind of a criticism of thefinger when you, instead of
looking at I just I just thoughtof.
Matt (23:55):
I just thought of this too .
I've never thought of thisbefore.
In this context is there's thiswell, and it's funny that the
finger pointing to the thing,the finger, is not the point
right also, also, but on top ofthat when someone is pointing at
somebody in blame or judgment,there's this thing like you've
(24:15):
got four more fingers pointingback towards yourself, right,
right so looking at yourself,
Chris (24:20):
there's okay well well, from now on, I'm gonna have zero
.
Angelo (24:25):
It's gonna be that guy yeah this is a very well, that's
a very.
Those watching this is a veryfierce emotion right here.
Matt (24:36):
But you know, but there's also this, this pattern of
people who are very pragmaticand say spiritual leaders, very
outwardly focused and verymission driven, very uh,
function oriented, very, youknow, directive, outward
directive, but then their innerlife or their home life can be
(25:01):
total crap because you're notpaying attention to that.
You're paying all of yourattention, all investing all
your energy on being missionoriented and outward, and there
is definitely, of course,purpose to that.
You definitely should be, youknow.
But you need to also regardwhat's close to home too.
(25:21):
You can be so you can be so busyout there conquering other
lands that you can not bedefending your own home space
right, which I do.
Angelo (25:30):
Think that is a a problem.
I've heard come up a lot forreligious leaders and such which
is why also why I think thecatholic church says priests
shouldn't be having, uh,families and such.
I think that was the purpose ofthat whole thing.
Matt (25:47):
Yeah, to not even have a home family to worry about.
Angelo (25:54):
Because you can't serve two masters.
Chris (25:57):
For the Roman Rite.
That's true For EasternCatholics, you can be an
ordained priest and be marriedand have children.
But what you said reminds me ofa time in my life when I was, I
think, I just starteddeconstructing catholicism, like
in my early 20s, and I wasright, kind of out to sea,
(26:21):
without a sail, without acompass, and I remember I was
like now have to do, if I'm notgoing to follow Jesus and the
church, now I have to devotemyself to something else.
And I thought I mean what's abetter mission to have than do
(26:41):
what I can to establish worldpeace and solve world hunger,
which I could never do anyway.
But then I shared that doanyway, um.
But then I shared that with myspiritual director and he goes.
You know you're sacrificing themission giver for the mission.
You know you're, you'refocusing way too much on on
psych to do something and notfocusing enough on the one who
(27:05):
gives you what the thing to do,your purpose and that you know
that's great.
Matt (27:13):
And to go back to a point that you're responding to as
well, like in terms ofsurrendering your what's let me
expound on that a little bitLike surrendering the body, the
senses and the mind and thosethings.
I don't mean to just simplygive them up, but that the thing
(27:37):
that you're surrendering toactually fulfills them in a
deeper way.
Right.
So because they don't alwaysknow what's best for themselves,
so because they don't alwaysknow what's best for themselves,
(28:11):
the warrior could be going outand just doing all these
different things without apurpose or without loving those
things you know so.
So it's that centeredness thatfulfills them.
And even going through thedarkness, you're able to even
find those hidden gems in thedarkness, and you have a reason
why you're going through it andyou have, you have a light that
you can carry going through it.
You can, you can have a reasonwhy you're going through it and
you have a light that you cancarry going through it.
You can have a well, I meancenteredness, I think, is the
(28:33):
best way to put it.
Angelo (28:34):
Yeah, I like that you use that word, because when you
say centeredness, it meansthere's a center somewhere.
What are you oriented around?
So I think there is somethingfruitful to the notion that you
need to be skeptical.
You need to try and pursuethings on your own, orient
(28:56):
yourself in the right direction,discipline yourself, but at
some level you have to recognizethat doing everything on your
own isn't going to put you inthe right spot all by yourself.
You're going to have tocompletely reinvent the wheel,
(29:21):
which is where I think, comingtogether as a collective, you
have to, at some level, trustothers.
You have to put trust in.
Maybe it's a tradition or maybeyou put your trust in the
scientific method and all thepeople who are oriented around
that.
Maybe you put your trust in agroup of people motivated to do
something that you feel reallypassionate about.
(29:42):
But on some level, you have totrust something bigger than
yourself you have to trustsomething bigger than yourself.
Chris (29:51):
You have to put a little faith in something.
Matt (29:52):
Put a little faith in something, and you need that
faith in order to undergo thatpath as well, because you have
all of these beliefs that arebuilt up from all these
different sources, all thesedifferent experiences that you
had, and you'd like to think ofthe of yourself as being in
(30:16):
touch with the truth of thoseexperiences.
Like, yeah, I went through thatand I, you know, I, yeah, I'm
in touch with reality.
Yeah, I understand that, youknow, but it could not always be
based on what is substantial,because you're just trying to
put things together the bestthat you can, going through
these experiences, right.
But then you get to a certainpoint where, like you say, you
(30:37):
have to reinvent the wheel.
You can't just rely on what areplaceholders in those
situations.
You have to really dig in.
You have to say, like, what arethese actually built up upon?
right what are these beliefsactually actually built up from?
You know?
And being able to go down thereand and really, really, I wish
(31:04):
it were as easy as just like.
Let me just pluck out thislittle belief from here and just
toss it away.
You know, it'd be so easy.
Angelo (31:12):
Depends on the belief right.
Matt (31:14):
Yeah, and the more practice.
Angelo (31:15):
How much is anchored on that belief Exactly?
Is it a core belief, you know?
Matt (31:20):
Imagine how much of your life you may have to reorient
based on the removal of thatbelief.
You know it sends you on ajourney.
Based on the removal of thatbelief, you know it sends you on
a journey.
And then, imagine that we have awhole classroom of people who
all have these different,varying experiences, all these
different beliefs that are builtup from all these different
(31:41):
places, right, and you're tryingto center around something you
know.
You're trying to center aroundthese core things that are
substantial and you're comingfrom all these different places.
You have all this differentvariation happening at the same
time within all these people,right, so that, in terms of the
archetypes, like that could bethe sovereign.
(32:02):
That is a gravity that pullsthem all together.
You know that pulls them allfrom all these different places.
Right, where you can sort ofsense this call from amongst all
of you, right, it's a goodreason to cast aside these false
(32:23):
beliefs that you've built up,to really question those things.
It's that sense of being ableto lead you to that light.
Angelo (32:31):
Yeah, that can be a very painful process.
That's why talking aboutreligion or politics and all of
those things is always socontentious because you're
touching on something that hitsa nerve.
Really, it's something reallydeep down that hits a nerve.
Really.
It's something really deep down.
(32:52):
If you cut off a belief, waydown at at the core of what you
put your trust in, everythingabove it shatters, and then
where are you have to completelyrebuild?
Um, but it's also why peoplewho have had a complete paradigm
shift and gone through thatpainful process, uh, they, they
cling so much more tightly totheir newfound belief like to
(33:15):
have two paradigm shifts in arow.
That's gotta be rare, you know.
So let's say, you know you grewup really religious and then you
found, like all of this stuff,something about it.
It seems dishonest.
It just doesn't convince me.
On a certain level it's paintseven.
Even if you think of it asliberating, it's painful to cut
(33:38):
that out because that's all.
Your whole family is attachedto that.
Everything that you knewgrowing up, all of these
experiences Maybe you went toyouth groups and church camp.
Chris (33:48):
Yeah, you just uprooted all of that.
Angelo (33:52):
When I finally deconstructed all my stuff.
Chris (33:54):
It took years to do that Right and then I came back Right
and it was painful and it'spainful.
It was painful to do bothhonestly.
Angelo (34:03):
Yeah, yeah, but still I would say the second time around
is more painful Because youtake pride in the fact that you
uprooted that first thing andyou were like look, look at all
this that I discovered.
And then you kind of get set inyour ways.
You think you finally found theanswer, and then you get stuck
(34:26):
in a rut again, and then youeventually uproot that again.
And then you're alwaysquestioning yourself.
You're like did I do the rightthing?
Am I just slipping back?
Because, I'm afraid, was youknow what?
What is really the reason thatI go back?
Chris (34:45):
but I mean so I well, here's a problem that I think
we're running into um, which isthat you're really I would say
you're more heady than I am.
We're both pretty like heady,smart guys, but um I'm more
visceral, I think I, like I, Ideconstructed my beliefs and
then I went and I had some crazyhecking experiences and that,
(35:11):
and taking those experiences,the problem I'm trying to face
here is the intellectual versusexperiential belief systems and
what was the foundation of those?
And, matt, you know, we reallyhaven't talked much about that,
but I'm sure you've had like adeconstructing experience or
also reconstructing experiencefor yourself.
Angelo (35:32):
Oh yeah, um, and ours was in their early 20s, I think,
and I mean I'm still in a pointin my life where I'm like I am
not quite sure what's going on.
I think I'm headed in the rightdirection, but if I had to do
another big shift, um hey, I'vebeen down that road before you
(35:54):
know.
I like to think of, uh, these,uh.
I have this concept calledknowledge trees, where I like to
think of, like all of thisstuff that you build up through
the course of your life is sortof like this big tree, okay, of
knowledge, and when you,whenever you have a big paradigm
(36:14):
shift, it's like taking an axeand chopping the trunk down and
then you have to grow acompletely new tree.
Matt (36:20):
But it's it's related to what you were talking about
earlier, where they're likethese core axioms, right yeah,
well, if there's, if there wereone concept, if I were to wave a
magic wand and there were oneconcept that we all would
understand, it would be thependulum.
Right, right.
So you have this extreme overhere, and you have this extreme
(36:43):
over here and this plays out inculture a lot, where, say you
can be, you can simultaneouslybe pro women, having rights and
having you know, having agencyand having latitude in all these
different ways and still beable to hold um the purpose of
(37:04):
men, the purpose of masculinity,and all these things in in
synchronous, in in in sync rightbecause the other way, like
this extreme is like very, youknow, like not to get into a
whole can of worms with, likeall society's things, all that
type of stuff, but uh.
(37:27):
But I'll just say this side overhere, as the thinking of itself
is the necessary antithesis tothis extreme over here and this
one thinks it's the necessaryantithesis over here now.
They both have very good pointsat their core, which mean in
(37:47):
the middle, but you have to haveunderstanding in order to find
yourself in that middle right.
But much like chess, they'reboth playing what's?
You both go towards the center,People trying to claim the
center right.
Which is the battleground, whichis where all the stuff goes
(38:07):
down.
Right, but that conflict erodeswhen you have this mutual
understanding of you know,collectively understanding
truths all over the place, thatthere are truths all over the
place and you don't have tofight about them, right, but you
know, going back to, you knowwonderful statement, wonderful
(38:31):
statement by you aboutdiscarding these beliefs and
having this paradigm shift thatleads you over.
This way, you can swing so farover here and you can think I
had to go through so much.
I used to be this kind ofperson, used used to have these
kind of beliefs, and I went onthis journey and I ended up over
here and you can think thatthis is the destination, when
(38:54):
really the center is the final.
It should be the finaldestination, right?
Because you can be so convincedthat over here, this extreme is
totally the right answer.
You know, this extreme istotally the right answer, you
know, but it's a deceptionthat's what I thought you know
enough to think that you'recorrect, but not quite enough to
(39:17):
know when you were full of crap.
It's hard, it's very hard.
Angelo (39:24):
It takes humility to admit that you don't know,
especially when you make aneffort and you pursue truth and
you.
It takes humility to admit thatyou don't know, especially when
you make an effort and youpursue truth and you study and
you read all kinds of philosophyand science and literature if
you're smart, you do that.
Chris (39:42):
If you're me, you didn't do that you just went right off
the deep end laughter.
Matt (39:48):
Many of us do.
Angelo (39:53):
I do like this.
I have this theory where thosetrees that I was talking about,
these trees of knowledge thatyou kind of build for yourself,
maybe, if the roots reach deepenough, they'll find some.
They'll find that they canconnect to a bigger tree.
Matt (40:14):
Yes, okay Like there's some.
Angelo (40:15):
I have this idea that maybe there's some big, larger
collective tree.
You know collective knowledge,tree tradition and if you can
reach your roots down, you canfeed from the same source that
this tree of truth is ultimatelyfeeding through whatever hippie
it's collective man, we gottatalk about the collective.
Matt (40:37):
That's like what aspens do you know?
Yeah, aspens at you knowunderground they all connect
together.
Angelo (40:43):
So really it's like it's like one aspen tree that comes
up above the ground as manyaspen right, right, that's kind
of uh what I was was getting at,but I was even thinking um with
fungi.
There's this thing called theuh mycelium network oh yeah and
so uh describe that mushroomsmushrooms are fungal, some, some
(41:08):
forms of mushrooms.
They are interconnectedunderneath the ground through a
network that's very similar toneurons in our brains and so
they communicate with each otherand they almost operate
something like one, a singularorganism.
(41:29):
So in a weird way it is kind oflike a hive mind.
We don't exactly know howthey're talking to each other,
but we know based on evidence,like you can walk somewhere in a
forest and, um, there will befungal patterns where your
footprints were in a longdistance and it's hard to say,
(41:52):
well, this is this individualfungus and this is this
individual fungus.
When it's all connected throughthis underlying network, it's
like this really intensecollective hive mind underneath
the ground.
It's fascinating really.
Chris (42:11):
I honestly I'm not like an expert in my celium networks
or anything, I feel like thatwas the example we should have
started with to clarify what theheck we were talking about from
the beginning.
I don't think.
I don't think it clarifies much, because this topic is really
broad.
Angelo (42:24):
we've we're talking about distributed cognition.
We're talking about thereligious impulse.
We're talking about distributedcognition, we're talking about
the religious impulse and we'retalking about literal hive minds
under the ground.
Matt (42:34):
Let me go to another one too.
I think this is fascinating tothink about.
If you think about the wholecolor spectrum, right, let's say
the color wheel, and each oneof those evokes a certain sense
we have a sense about.
You know how we feel aboutthose colors, what that color
(42:54):
represents all those things andthey're not necessarily just
defined by these solid borders.
We can try and break them upthat way, like with with the
color wheel right say this isthis color, this is this color
and this is this color but theyall kind of blend together.
Really they are.
They're connected by gradientsrather than by solid borders
(43:16):
right yeah, but if we were tolook at each one of those colors
and imagine we're talking aboutabout integrating, you know,
integrating from the unconsciousinto the conscious.
It's a recognition of what thatcolor is and imagine trying to
pick out from all of thosecolors the ones that we think
(43:39):
shouldn't belong there, or onesthat we're disgusted by, or
things that we avert our eyesfrom, but it's still part of
this whole color spectrumnonetheless.
Angelo (43:52):
You know, colors are fascinating.
There was a point in time wherewe didn't see certain colors,
and it's not because wephysically couldn't see them, it
was like psychologically, wejust didn't have a word or
definition for what that colorwas, so we just grouped it with
a bigger color or a differentcolor, um, so something like I
(44:17):
think it was either like theiliad or the odyssey or
something like that.
They're talking about how greenthe sea is, because at that
point in time they didn't reallyhave this word for blue, so
they lumped it in with green,and if you showed them greens
and blues, they would all thinkof them as like the same color,
(44:38):
just like we would think oh wehave uh, like greens and dark
greens like, yeah, that's allgreen.
but we created a word thatdifferentiated green from blue
and that went into the psyche ofeveryone and now we all
collectively perceive a newcolor because we redefined it.
(45:01):
Same thing with something likebrown.
Think about brown.
Brown is just dark orange andif you would have called it dark
orange you would see it thesame way.
You see dark green to green,but when you see brown you think
it's this completely otherthing.
You don't even realize it'sactually orange.
I mean, maybe you do if youreally were curious enough and
(45:24):
looked into that.
But brown is almost like itsown thing, like trees are brown
and dirt is brown and hair isbrown and skin is brown.
Chris (45:34):
You don't think you're looking at orange people yeah,
you know, sorry, you know thecamera's not facing the right
way, but I'm looking at thiscardboard box over here and I'm
like that's definitely notorange at all.
Matt (45:48):
I don't know but again we come.
It is though well that one'sprobably.
It's probably the lighting andwe we come back to, to gradients
too.
I mean that box could be liketwo percent orange or so two
percent like light or twopercent, you know all the two
(46:09):
percent orange and like 98percent.
You know this other color thatmakes it that really kind of
light brown yeah, but I wouldsay, where does the color brown
actually live?
Angelo (46:24):
people like to think maybe it lives in the objective
world, because there's like acertain wavelength of brown.
It's like not exactly.
Well, maybe does it live inyour mind because you perceive
brown, you create brown in yourmind, right, and it's like
almost, and in some sense yeah.
But there is a sense where it'sa collective thing, because we
(46:47):
came up collectively with thisword brown and that word for
brown existed before you weretaught what brown was as you
were growing up.
That came from your culturejust as much as it came from
your sight.
Chris (47:03):
This is quite an interesting.
What do you call it tangent?
Because now I've got to knowwhat is the exact wavelength of
a brown thing is it?
Matt (47:13):
orange is it orange like?
Chris (47:16):
what's going on?
Angelo (47:17):
here I have to know well , there's hue saturation and
lightness when it comes to color.
So the hue the hue is what?
What color it is?
That has to do with your cones,right?
Okay, your cones are perceiving.
So you have a cone thatperceives red, cone that
perceives green, cone thatperceives blue.
(47:38):
So actually, whatever we havethree, they that's yeah red
green blue so the combination,yeah, okay, the combination of
what you see from your cones inyour eye is right, how, uh, what
hue you're going to see, andthen the intensity of that color
(48:00):
, which is the amplitude, notthe frequency of the wavelength,
but but the amplitude is pickedup by your rods and that's
going to be the brightness.
The more intensity there is,the more blown out and white
it's going to be.
Chris (48:19):
I already knew this, but God, you're smart, I mean yeah
art school Okay yeah.
Matt (48:26):
Take my invisible crown.
Chris (48:29):
No, I mean, it's actually really cool when you guys were
in the cones and rememberedamplitude versus frequency.
I don't remember that.
You don't remember theamplitude of a wave.
Angelo (48:43):
Well, now I do so.
Frequency is how frequent thatwave that's the frequency, the
frequency of that wave.
Chris (48:48):
Yeah, that's the frequency.
The frequency of that wave,yeah, that wave.
Matt (48:52):
There we go.
Good stuff.
I'm going to have to doresearch on that.
That's great.
Angelo (48:57):
That was adorable.
He does.
Chris (49:01):
Okay, but anyways Back to collective consciousness.
Angelo (49:04):
Yeah, collective consciousness.
Chris (49:07):
Well, I mean AKA distributed cognition.
Yeah Well, I would saycollective consciousness, yeah,
collective collectiveconsciousness.
Angelo (49:09):
Uh, well, I mean, aka distributed cognition yeah, well
, I I would say that's a subset,right, that's one, one way to
talk about the collectiveconsciousness of people.
But what I was getting at withcolor is that colors aren't just
something that live in theindividual mind.
I, I don't think, I don't thinkthe question of, oh, do I see
(49:30):
the same red that you see?
I think it's highly unlikelythat we would see different reds
just because, like randomly, Ithink we all collectively kind
of have the same neural networkin a sense, and we're not just
pulling from our individualneurons.
Matt (49:50):
there's something deeper there it's like the variation
may be just so slight.
It's like how do you evenattempt to point?
Angelo (49:58):
well, yeah, it would be useless to talk about, because
as long as the variation isthere, we're perceiving things
differently.
Who's to say what my uniqueexperience versus your unique
experience even sees?
Matt (50:14):
Well, and that could be.
I feel like this could be evenbroken into a whole other
episode as well, of the relativeexperience versus the
individual, or the relativeindividual experience versus the
collective experience, which alot of people seem to sway from
this one to this one.
(50:35):
You know, you could have peoplewho are just.
Chris (50:36):
You know, I have a and how do those two things relate
to objective reality?
Matt (50:41):
Yeah, exactly, as a whole, exactly right, and while
they're, yeah, okay, that's agreat way to frame it.
So people who, um, you know, Ihave a friend who is very
emphatic on this notion thatevery single person is just
individual unto themselves,right, which there's a lot of
(51:02):
validity to the core idea of theindividual, the sovereign
person that is you.
Also, in this same universe, weare all connected by a lot of
cohesion, a lot of relationbetween us.
Otherwise, things would just beso random and variant that they
(51:24):
would, I mean, frankly, we'd beall over the place.
You know, like how would youhave any agreed-upon definitions
of things other than having,like?
You wouldn't have a dictionary,wouldn't be a thing.
You know, we wouldn't even havethe notion of trying to define
words unless there weresomething there to point to.
Angelo (51:47):
But that's right, that's why we well, yeah, the whole,
the whole foundation ofcommunication in and of itself
is you've got an individualsubjective thing inside you and
I've got an individualsubjective thing inside me, and
how are we going to share thingsfrom inside you with things
from?
Chris (52:07):
inside me.
The mycelium network doesn'thave that problem.
They can just freely share.
Angelo (52:17):
But me, and you have to like you know the mycelium
network doesn't have thatproblem.
Matt (52:26):
They're all looking at us.
What's your problem?
What's your guys' problem?
They're all looking at us.
Which are problems?
Which guys problem?
I mean you can.
You can have your cake and eatit too.
You know, like with thecollective unconscious and the
realization, the live experienceof you know, of that mystery
and also you being the lensthrough and the prism for that
(52:48):
to come through.
You know, for that to, you know,to be able to live that out and
to be able to have the fluidityof your own individual life
experience and the you know, thereal, alive sense of yourself
you know the alive sense of yourunique self within all of that
so I have another word for you.
Angelo (53:09):
What's that?
There's a word called umwelt.
It's a german word.
Your umwelt is something likeyour unique subjective
experience and everythinginvolved with you and every
creature has their ownindividual umwelt, and your
umwelts can overlap a little bit, depending on your shared
(53:31):
experience.
So you, as a human being, sharean umwelt with me in the sense
that we see the same colorspectrum, theoretically, that we
taste the same type of foods.
The same way, we inhabitsimilar bodies.
We experience things in a very,very similar way, being the
(53:52):
same species, but your umweltcompared to the umwelt of a frog
might be radically different.
But even with a frog, you mightshare some things in common
with the frog with respect tosomething like a mollusk or
something really foreign to ananimal living on land.
Matt (54:13):
Yeah, oh, my God, now this is a whole thing.
But animism, right?
Oh, like a very primal sense ofyou embodying a certain
creature.
Think about it.
When you're doing somethinglike you're getting down on all
fours and you're crawling andacting as if you're a wolf, like
(54:38):
you can be in touch with thatwolf consciousness or leaping
like a frog you notice how manydifferent capacities we have
like these different creatures.
Like you know, like an octopus,I can use my arms like
tentacles and wiggle them aroundlike this.
Angelo (54:54):
Yeah.
Matt (54:56):
And grab onto things, right, but it's, you know, that
primal sense of the, of naturebeing able to live through you
as an individual, you know?
Angelo (55:07):
So then we're going going now we're leaning into
panpsychism right, but that'syou know.
Matt (55:13):
Like you know, like joseph campbell spoke about this a lot
as well like the like theuniverse as a thou rather than
it you know we think of thingsaround us as it.
But when you think of it as it,then it's strictly for its
(55:33):
utility most of the time, likeyou're using this computer,
you're using this microphone ora box or something like that,
but when you have a ascribe asense of presence to it or
realize a sense of presenceabout it, or realize a sense of
presence about it, that has thatit has.
It may not always be animated,but it has its own consciousness
(55:55):
nonetheless, like plant life.
You know, like we, that thatmay be.
The next step up too, to thinkabout it is that we may not
always think of plants as movingor flowers, as you know, having
their own soul or that type of.
Thing right, but what if theydid?
You think about what if thatdid?
(56:15):
Why do you care to water thatplant?
Why do you like name yourthings?
Why?
What is this thing with, likenaming your different things?
I mean, when you're naming athing, what are you doing?
But but ascribing a personhoodto it?
Right an identity yeah, exactlyso when you realize that, so
(56:36):
you might, you know, take morecare and regard for what's
around you, the things that arethat are around you, right?
Angelo (56:45):
yeah, just because it's inert doesn't mean it doesn't
deserve some sense of respect.
Matt (56:49):
Yeah, exactly.
Chris (56:51):
I like that approach.
I do like to personify all ofthe fruits and vegetables I work
with there you go.
Angelo (57:00):
It's because I grew up on veggie pans.
Matt (57:03):
I'm putting out apples.
I'm like you guys are going todo great.
That's Timmy with cucumber.
Angelo (57:19):
Well, you know what I think there is something there
to like.
If you, if you project a littlebit more of identity to even
inert things, you take more of asense of relationship and care
with them.
When we call the earth MotherEarth, we're linking it to our
mother.
We're linking it to where wecame from and it's more personal
(57:41):
.
I don't want to hurt my mother.
Matt (57:43):
Yeah.
So you're personifying naturalcreation and that is a wonderful
example.
That may be the example too,because, in terms of, if we
think of, oh god, I'm glad Ihave a microphone in front of me
, I'm gonna say this.
So when we think of the objector the, the thing, as being used
(58:05):
for its utility, right, wethink of the earth that way, the
way that we have extracted somuch from the earth, and we
think about the earth like whatcan we get out of the earth?
You know, what can we get outof the resources that will, you
know, help us in some way?
Right, and we seem to be theonly species that is able to
(58:29):
move around and shift ourenvironments in the ways that we
are able to.
We're able to buildcivilizations, we're able to
populate the earth in this way.
That is not, uh, that's notpresent in other creatures.
We're supposed to be stewardsof the earth right.
So when we think of the earth ashaving a personhood of its own,
(58:55):
suddenly we can care more aboutit.
You know, Suddenly we can careas if it's a living thing.
In fact it really is, it'snature man, it's mama.
Angelo (59:07):
It's mama living thing.
In fact it really is.
It's nature, man, it's mama.
Chris (59:11):
It's mama.
Matt (59:11):
Yeah, and that's so fascinating too.
I create mythical art and Ithink quite often about mythical
figures.
What is it about Gaia?
About Mother Earth that we allseem to collectively understand
what we're talking about?
When we say Mother Earth, weobviously mean the Earth.
(59:33):
We obviously mean our planet,right.
Angelo (59:38):
Mother's, where you come from.
Matt (59:39):
That's it, that's it, you know.
So it's having again a feltrealization of that, a felt
realization of the personhood ofthe vow.
Angelo (59:53):
That was powerful man.
I think that's a really greatnote to end on is just
collectively recognizing theearth as the mother, the earth
as the mother, and even thisidea of personifying even inert
things as a way to have a closerrelationship with your reality,
(01:00:14):
beautifully put well.
Thank you all for listening into our wonderful conversation
about the collectiveconsciousness, distributed
cognition, collectiveunconscious, whatever you want
to call it.
Conversation about thecollective consciousness,
distributed cognition,collective unconscious, whatever
you want to call it.
Um, for those of you that madeit this far, thank you so much
for sticking with us and, uh,hope to see you next time.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Telos Initiative.
I'm Angelo Cole.
Chris (00:06):
I'm Chris Vigil.
Angelo (00:08):
And I'm Matt Maes.
Today we are going to talk aboutcollective consciousness, which
is a topic really special to me, and we've all tried to prep a
little bit for this one, and soI hope you enjoy it a little bit
(00:29):
for this one, and so I hope youenjoy it.
So, first of all, I guess I'dlike to try and define what I
mean by collective consciousness.
We could really get into somebroad offshoots, because there's
an aspect of it where we couldbe talking about panpsychism,
which is the idea that, um,consciousness is present in all
(00:52):
of reality on some level, likeeverything is related to
something with consciousness.
Okay, um, we have done apodcast previously on what
consciousness is, so we at leasthave some ground covered there
where it's not just anegotistical psychological
(01:14):
phenomenon, but it is aphenomenon based on what's
happening when a group ofconscious entities get together
(01:39):
and communicate, interconnect,and we could even get into
something along the lines ofdreams, the subconscious
collective consciousness as thecollective unconscious, which is
a jungian psychology, which issort of related to archetypes
(02:02):
and some of those things.
So, yeah, this topic isdefinitely, uh, a big one.
So I guess where would you guyslike to start?
Chris (02:12):
well, uh, define it.
What?
What is collectiveconsciousness?
Angelo (02:22):
collective consciousness is the phenomenon where
multiple conscious entities cometogether and something greater
than the sum of its parts comesout as a result.
I don't know if I have a verygood, specific definition.
Matt (02:46):
Okay, I also think of the word cohesion in terms of what
lies beneath the surface that weall innately can gather around
or we can innately agree upon.
That's one level.
It's funny the more you know,we bond together to say what you
(03:10):
know.
My family will watch my, youknow, my son and my wife.
They could see me make acertain facial expression and
they could read, just from acertain twinge right like oh,
you know, that's what you know,that indicates a certain
expression, or they understandthat about me, or I can do the
same for them.
I can notice when something,when something shifts one way or
(03:34):
the other.
And so us having that awarenessand attunedness, then we can, we
can individually, collectively,have an understanding around
what's happening with ourpsyches, what's happening with
our moods, our states, what iscoming through each of us.
(03:58):
But then, even below that,there's what's happening below
the surface that none of usconsciously understand, the
unconscious that we're, you know, the onion skin that we're
trying to bring intoconsciousness.
You know, and thinking a lotabout, about this subject, the
(04:20):
collective unconsciousness, I,you know, I I kept coming back
to these, these two sides wherewe have the uh, the relative,
agreed upon consciousness thatwe can, you know, we can bond
around, we understand and andit's, it's more, it's closer to
the surface, I think would be agood way to understand it or a
(04:43):
good way to think about it.
And then what we don't know,that we don't even know the
mystery.
You know the mystery that liesunderneath, you know where is
the realm of symbols, or wheresymbols point to, I should say,
and dreams, and you know thegreat mystery that we may
(05:06):
attempt to reach our hands intoand find well to be in tune with
it.
You know, I think meaningpoints us closer to it.
You know, it's that being intune with that primal, what word
would you even give to it, theprimal phenomenon.
Angelo (05:23):
You said phenomenon, primal like, like something akin
to the the id uh,
Matt (05:30):
maybe they I think the id could be
Angelo (05:33):
because the collective unconscious is related to the id
in young in psychology I meanthat you have your personal
unconscious, which is all of the, the personal experiences and
subconscious things that make upwho you are.
You have your ego, first andforemost, right, and that's the
things that you are consciouslyaware of and you put forth as
(05:56):
your yourself.
And then you have the personalunconscious, which is like my
experiences, my mother, my uh,personal, uh, dreams and
personal archetypes.
And then the collectiveunconscious is like, even deeper
(06:16):
than that.
It's almost something thatcomes through, uh, comes through
your genetics and your lineage.
It's hard to say that it'sentirely biological, because
there is a cultural element toit.
The collective unconscious issomething that influences humans
(06:38):
universally.
So things like the archetypesof the mother, the archetype of
we, the archetype of we talkedabout archetypes before as well
I think things like the magicianand the sovereign and all of
that are related to this deeperthing ingrained in every single
(06:59):
one of us universally.
Matt (07:00):
Yeah, definitely, and I love that we're going to the
archetypes universally.
Yeah, definitely, and I lovethat we're going to the
archetypes and the, the, thelocality and the universalness.
Actually, I think would be it'dbe helpful to paint a to, to
kind of carve a road from, say,we have the local consciousness,
like the, the, you, just you,and then you in a collective and
(07:24):
you in your culture, let's say,and how that culture relates to
other cultures, which would belike the, much more universal,
and how all those, all thoseconnect together.
So there are all these, allthese different layers, right,
all these different layers of ofconsciousness, and even more
than that.
I I mean, that's really kind ofan abbreviation, to be honest,
(07:46):
of course.
Angelo (07:47):
Well, I do think this whole concept is just a
heuristic for all of us.
To kind of follow, it groups avery complex system up into one
large thing.
So when you say something likeoh, my subconscious, something
bubbled up from there, it's likewhat are you talking about?
Because you have so many layers, like you said, like an onion
(08:08):
skin to who you are.
There's who I am when I'm aroundother people, who I am to
myself, who I think I am, who Iam as a human being, who I am as
a man, who I am as, dependingon what your race is like, those
are just like on the surfaceand then, subconsciously, there
(08:30):
are things that you might evenfind hard to describe.
You know, there's weird stuffthat that might be completely
unique to you.
Like you had this oneexperience and this is how you
took it and that pushed you inthis direction, and nobody else
really has that or knows aboutthat in the same way you do.
Um, you might share somethingwith a sibling.
(08:51):
What if you're a twin and youand your twin kind of uh, have
some hidden language or you kindof know what each other is
talking about just because youcame from the same place.
There's some subconscious thinggoing there, and when we're
talking about a collective, it'salmost like as a culture.
We have cultural things that weall do that are completely
(09:15):
unique to our culture.
We have biases, we have thingsthat we take for granted.
We have, we have collectivedreams, even if you think about
it.
Um, yeah, we, that's thestories we tell in our movies.
We have cultural, iconic moviesthat we're all like, oh yeah,
(09:36):
um.
I like to think the first onethat comes to mind is something
like the terminator.
That's like a cultural icon foramerica.
I feel like the terminator islike this archetype of how
robots take over the world, andit's so ingrained into us that
(09:56):
now that we're facing uh, issueswith ai, it's like this what
about the, the Terminator?
What about Skynet?
Is that where this is allheaded?
And it's because that's likethis subconscious, dream-like
story that we've told each other.
The Matrix is another good one.
Matt (10:17):
There's something that is deeper than perhaps we are able
to express just with words orjust with our process of, of
articulation.
And you know, going back to the, the archetypes, real quick, I
was thinking about this, uh,this parable of the eye, of the
(10:40):
needle, if you might oh, yeah,yeah where you have to sacrifice
your riches, you have tosacrifice these things.
you'd be too weighed down to gothrough the eye of the needle
right, so you have to cast thesethings aside Now, within the
context of the story, that has acertain meaning, but that, as a
, let's say, like psychologicaltemplate, that's extremely
(11:02):
useful in a lot of differentcontexts.
And in this context, going backto the archetypes, let's think
about your mind.
And if you were to turn youreyes backwards to look at the
inside of your head, to thesubconscious.
That's kind of what we're tryingto do when we're trying to dive
(11:23):
into and analyze the collectiveunconscious.
But the very but it evades thevery tool that we're trying to
use in order to apprehend it,right.
So we have to sacrifice what ourminds think about the
collective unconscious.
We have to sacrifice thinkingabout what our bodies, our
(11:47):
senses are telling us.
We have to sacrifice our monkeymind, let's say, all these
things that get in the way ofbeing able to simply pass
through the needle and be intouch with that collective
unconscious, to have a physical,felt, a felt presence,
(12:08):
experience of it, right.
But once we're able to do that,then you know, it's like that
mystery has a certain viscousviscosity, like a water being
able to be fluid and passthrough.
You know, if it's, it can't betoo way, we can't be too weighed
down in order for that to comethrough.
(12:29):
So when we open ourselves to it, that's when it comes through,
that's when the insight is ableto wash over our minds and our
bodies and that's when we can bein a participatory relationship
with it and we can live outthat collective unconscious in a
deep level, because we're ableto surrender ourselves to it.
Chris (12:52):
I really like what you're saying and how you're saying it
.
I would just I'm not sure ifthe removal of my ego and the
cessation of my dreams anddesires in such a powerful way
(13:14):
is designed to let theunconscious live through me.
I think that's something that'smore reserved for um, the
boundless, omnipotent deity thatresides over our reality, like
(13:36):
I think that's what we'relooking to channel in that sense
, um, but I am okay.
so if I could try to dial thisback just a tiny bit, sure sure
Right because when Jung definesthe collective unconscious, you
know, he says that we have anego, we have our own experiences
, and these experiencessublimate our personal
(14:00):
unconscious, right?
Personal unconscious, right.
So then, um, the collectiveunconscious, then, is inherited
both from our genetics, ourbiology and our culture, and and
um, the, the closest thing thatwe can get to understand, like
seeing and understanding anddefining what the unconscious is
(14:23):
, are the archetypes, right?
The mother, the father, themagician, the warrior, um, but
is that what we mean when we saycollective consciousness?
Or or is collectingconsciousness just cohesion?
Well, like religion, what youknow, well, I do that.
Angelo (14:43):
That's why I think collective consciousness is
tricky to define, because we'retalking about a really broad
category here and it does getconfused with the collective.
Unconscious isn't the samething as collective
consciousness.
We could be talking about thereligious impulse and cohesion
and a collective will.
(15:05):
That's something different thanour collective archetypes and,
where we come from, we could betalking about a hive mind, so to
speak, and that's not what Jungwas talking about.
Okay, which is?
Chris (15:26):
I know this topic is a little bit broad, which is kind
of why I wanted to bring it upand see what you guys really
thought on it, because so Ithink it's really tricky,
because when Jung defines acollective unconscious, we're
seeing that word consciousnessand that's what's really
(15:47):
triggering me to fall back intoJungian definitions for that.
Should we redefine it as thecollective cognition that we're
all experiencing?
Because a cognition has freewill.
My cognitions have free will,or at least I think I have free
well, yeah, that's contentiousand we can contend about that
(16:11):
later um yeah, let's.
Angelo (16:15):
Let's get into a little bit more on what you mean by
cognition and maybe this idea ofdistributed cognition.
I'd like to dive a littledeeper into that.
I love this idea of distributedcognition.
I'd like to dive a littledeeper into that.
I love this idea of like acollective will and to bring it
closer to something a littlemore scientific and stable.
(16:40):
Let's talk about something likethe, the.
I forget the robot that theypilot on mars, but there's this
machine curiosity.
Matt (16:50):
I think yeah curiosity.
Angelo (16:51):
Yeah, so curiosity on mars.
Is this really great example ofdistributed cognition?
Because it's not like one guywith a remote control piloting
uh, curiosity and seeing what'sgoing on.
There's a collective team allmaking decisions together on how
this robot is moving, not justone aspect of it, but everything
(17:19):
leading up to getting it toMars and what it's seeing and
interpreting all that data, whatdirection they get to search
and everything.
It's like.
This collective group of peopleare all operating through this
one singular body, which I findfascinating.
And this isn't some etherealpanpsychism, hive mind sort of
(17:43):
thing.
This is something that everyonecan agree.
You, collectively, are in agroup effort, uniting through a
machine.
Chris (17:55):
Okay, so if we can do that for a robot that we put on
Mars, what's our purpose for ifwe try to aim for something
doing something like thatcollectively on Earth?
Angelo (18:07):
Well, I think, what do you mean?
What's our purpose?
We can have multiple purposes.
It's almost like that's justone method.
Chris (18:17):
Wait a minute For which you could use distributed
cognition for, for would youcall us like collect?
So this group of people rightcollectively maintaining and
using this robot on mars, thecuriosity rover on mars?
Would you call that collectivecognition or distributed
(18:39):
cognition?
Uh, that's collective right,because it's aimed towards.
Well, I called it distributedcognition.
Angelo (18:45):
But I feel like it's kind of the same thing when
you're saying distributed,you're distributing from a
collective okay, alright, liketo me it's going hand in hand.
I said distributed to kind oftry and distinguish it from this
(19:06):
collective consciousness thingwe're getting okay okay.
So I also think that's thereligious impulse.
That's the point of religion.
So you'll hear a lot of peopletalk about, oh, this difference
between religion andspirituality.
I think that it's operating onsomewhat of a false premise,
(19:28):
this idea, because religion's aloaded word.
So when you say religion, a lotof people think of a power
structure.
Religion is this sort of opiateof the masses and it's got this
top-down hierarchy and there'sthese people who think they know
what's going on and they'reimposing their beliefs on other
people and they're just tellingyou what to do.
But that's not really what Ithink religion actually is.
(19:53):
When I talk about religion, Ithink it's more of something
more akin to this distributedcognition thing that we touched
on.
I think it's something morelike a group of people.
Regardless of the hierarchicalstructure.
They're all coming togethercollectively for the same
purpose and reason, and the morethey unite as one body, as one
(20:19):
thing, pursuing whatever it isultimate truth or goodness or
however you look at it, they'reall moving in the same direction
together.
And that's when you startseeing things like rituals being
played out and and narrativesand stories.
You get you get some sort ofarchetypal behavior bleeding
(20:40):
into that action, uh, thatcollective uh pursuit, I should
say so.
Chris (20:48):
I think that's another example of distributed cognition
I like how we went fromcollective consciousness to
collective pursuit.
Like it's not.
It's one thing to just thinkabout collective right, it's
another to pursue somethingcollectively right well, we are
the telos initiative and it'sall about pursuit.
Angelo (21:14):
It's all.
It's all about meaning andpurpose and what you're headed
towards and ultimately, I dothink that is really at the
bottom of just about everything,which is why it's so
fascinating.
You can talk about somethingwildly different like religion
versus this curiosity robot onMars, and you can get to the
(21:36):
same root, right.
Matt (21:40):
Well, it seems we keep going back to unification
between people at all thesedifferent levels from, say, the
people working together tooperate curiosity, distributed
cognition, and then you havethem each collectively working
together towards.
Actually, when we talk aboutreligion, I think of the body of
(22:01):
Christ and how we think of thebody of Christ, where we think
of the body of christ, where weare the body right like we as
the, you know, we as beings inthe church, all collectively
make up this unified thing ofthe body.
So when we have this different,maybe the purpose of the
different rituals in church isnot so much this sort of rigid
(22:24):
you must do this and that andthe other for its own sake.
Because when it becomesself-referential for its own
sake, that's where it starts tofall apart, and that's where
people are like why are we doingthese things?
But to have a cohesion and areason why you're doing all
(22:46):
these things, actually, alsothink of Confucius, one of the
things he said.
That was perhaps one of thewisest things they ever said.
The wise person points to themoon and the fool only looks at
the finger.
Nice.
Angelo (23:02):
You know, what I mean by that.
Yeah, because you're like lookat the moon and you're like, oh
yeah, that's pretty cool.
Matt (23:09):
Like the moon, is the actual thing, that's the telos,
that's the reason for it all,that's the source of meaning
itself, that's the source of thealiveness.
That's, I mean, really thesource right.
And then you have people justlooking at the functions,
looking at the actions that aresupposed to facilitate, pointing
(23:35):
towards what that thing is Well, there's a judgment element
there, isn't there, Like you'relooking at the finger.
Angelo (23:41):
Why are you looking at the finger To be like, oh, is
your finger even pointing in theright direction, right, right?
It's kind of a criticism of thefinger when you, instead of
looking at I just I just thoughtof.
Matt (23:55):
I just thought of this too .
I've never thought of thisbefore.
In this context is there's thiswell, and it's funny that the
finger pointing to the thing,the finger, is not the point
right also, also, but on top ofthat when someone is pointing at
somebody in blame or judgment,there's this thing like you've
(24:15):
got four more fingers pointingback towards yourself, right,
right so looking at yourself,
Chris (24:20):
there's okay well well, from now on, I'm gonna have zero
.
Angelo (24:25):
It's gonna be that guy yeah this is a very well, that's
a very.
Those watching this is a veryfierce emotion right here.
Matt (24:36):
But you know, but there's also this, this pattern of
people who are very pragmaticand say spiritual leaders, very
outwardly focused and verymission driven, very uh,
function oriented, very, youknow, directive, outward
directive, but then their innerlife or their home life can be
(25:01):
total crap because you're notpaying attention to that.
You're paying all of yourattention, all investing all
your energy on being missionoriented and outward, and there
is definitely, of course,purpose to that.
You definitely should be, youknow.
But you need to also regardwhat's close to home too.
(25:21):
You can be so you can be so busyout there conquering other
lands that you can not bedefending your own home space
right, which I do.
Angelo (25:30):
Think that is a a problem.
I've heard come up a lot forreligious leaders and such which
is why also why I think thecatholic church says priests
shouldn't be having, uh,families and such.
I think that was the purpose ofthat whole thing.
Matt (25:47):
Yeah, to not even have a home family to worry about.
Angelo (25:54):
Because you can't serve two masters.
Chris (25:57):
For the Roman Rite.
That's true For EasternCatholics, you can be an
ordained priest and be marriedand have children.
But what you said reminds me ofa time in my life when I was, I
think, I just starteddeconstructing catholicism, like
in my early 20s, and I wasright, kind of out to sea,
(26:21):
without a sail, without acompass, and I remember I was
like now have to do, if I'm notgoing to follow Jesus and the
church, now I have to devotemyself to something else.
And I thought I mean what's abetter mission to have than do
(26:41):
what I can to establish worldpeace and solve world hunger,
which I could never do anyway.
But then I shared that doanyway, um.
But then I shared that with myspiritual director and he goes.
You know you're sacrificing themission giver for the mission.
You know you're, you'refocusing way too much on on
psych to do something and notfocusing enough on the one who
(27:05):
gives you what the thing to do,your purpose and that you know
that's great.
Matt (27:13):
And to go back to a point that you're responding to as
well, like in terms ofsurrendering your what's let me
expound on that a little bitLike surrendering the body, the
senses and the mind and thosethings.
I don't mean to just simplygive them up, but that the thing
(27:37):
that you're surrendering toactually fulfills them in a
deeper way.
Right.
So because they don't alwaysknow what's best for themselves,
so because they don't alwaysknow what's best for themselves,
(28:11):
the warrior could be going outand just doing all these
different things without apurpose or without loving those
things you know so.
So it's that centeredness thatfulfills them.
And even going through thedarkness, you're able to even
find those hidden gems in thedarkness, and you have a reason
why you're going through it andyou have, you have a light that
you can carry going through it.
You can, you can have a reasonwhy you're going through it and
you have a light that you cancarry going through it.
You can have a well, I meancenteredness, I think, is the
(28:33):
best way to put it.
Angelo (28:34):
Yeah, I like that you use that word, because when you
say centeredness, it meansthere's a center somewhere.
What are you oriented around?
So I think there is somethingfruitful to the notion that you
need to be skeptical.
You need to try and pursuethings on your own, orient
(28:56):
yourself in the right direction,discipline yourself, but at
some level you have to recognizethat doing everything on your
own isn't going to put you inthe right spot all by yourself.
You're going to have tocompletely reinvent the wheel,
(29:21):
which is where I think, comingtogether as a collective, you
have to, at some level, trustothers.
You have to put trust in.
Maybe it's a tradition or maybeyou put your trust in the
scientific method and all thepeople who are oriented around
that.
Maybe you put your trust in agroup of people motivated to do
something that you feel reallypassionate about.
(29:42):
But on some level, you have totrust something bigger than
yourself you have to trustsomething bigger than yourself.
Chris (29:51):
You have to put a little faith in something.
Matt (29:52):
Put a little faith in something, and you need that
faith in order to undergo thatpath as well, because you have
all of these beliefs that arebuilt up from all these
different sources, all thesedifferent experiences that you
had, and you'd like to think ofthe of yourself as being in
(30:16):
touch with the truth of thoseexperiences.
Like, yeah, I went through thatand I, you know, I, yeah, I'm
in touch with reality.
Yeah, I understand that, youknow, but it could not always be
based on what is substantial,because you're just trying to
put things together the bestthat you can, going through
these experiences, right.
But then you get to a certainpoint where, like you say, you
(30:37):
have to reinvent the wheel.
You can't just rely on what areplaceholders in those
situations.
You have to really dig in.
You have to say, like, what arethese actually built up upon?
right what are these beliefsactually actually built up from?
You know?
And being able to go down thereand and really, really, I wish
(31:04):
it were as easy as just like.
Let me just pluck out thislittle belief from here and just
toss it away.
You know, it'd be so easy.
Angelo (31:12):
Depends on the belief right.
Matt (31:14):
Yeah, and the more practice.
Angelo (31:15):
How much is anchored on that belief Exactly?
Is it a core belief, you know?
Matt (31:20):
Imagine how much of your life you may have to reorient
based on the removal of thatbelief.
You know it sends you on ajourney.
Based on the removal of thatbelief, you know it sends you on
a journey.
And then, imagine that we have awhole classroom of people who
all have these different,varying experiences, all these
different beliefs that are builtup from all these different
(31:41):
places, right, and you're tryingto center around something you
know.
You're trying to center aroundthese core things that are
substantial and you're comingfrom all these different places.
You have all this differentvariation happening at the same
time within all these people,right, so that, in terms of the
archetypes, like that could bethe sovereign.
(32:02):
That is a gravity that pullsthem all together.
You know that pulls them allfrom all these different places.
Right, where you can sort ofsense this call from amongst all
of you, right, it's a goodreason to cast aside these false
(32:23):
beliefs that you've built up,to really question those things.
It's that sense of being ableto lead you to that light.
Angelo (32:31):
Yeah, that can be a very painful process.
That's why talking aboutreligion or politics and all of
those things is always socontentious because you're
touching on something that hitsa nerve.
Really, it's something reallydeep down that hits a nerve.
Really.
It's something really deep down.
(32:52):
If you cut off a belief, waydown at at the core of what you
put your trust in, everythingabove it shatters, and then
where are you have to completelyrebuild?
Um, but it's also why peoplewho have had a complete paradigm
shift and gone through thatpainful process, uh, they, they
cling so much more tightly totheir newfound belief like to
(33:15):
have two paradigm shifts in arow.
That's gotta be rare, you know.
So let's say, you know you grewup really religious and then you
found, like all of this stuff,something about it.
It seems dishonest.
It just doesn't convince me.
On a certain level it's paintseven.
Even if you think of it asliberating, it's painful to cut
(33:38):
that out because that's all.
Your whole family is attachedto that.
Everything that you knewgrowing up, all of these
experiences Maybe you went toyouth groups and church camp.
Chris (33:48):
Yeah, you just uprooted all of that.
Angelo (33:52):
When I finally deconstructed all my stuff.
Chris (33:54):
It took years to do that Right and then I came back Right
and it was painful and it'spainful.
It was painful to do bothhonestly.
Angelo (34:03):
Yeah, yeah, but still I would say the second time around
is more painful Because youtake pride in the fact that you
uprooted that first thing andyou were like look, look at all
this that I discovered.
And then you kind of get set inyour ways.
You think you finally found theanswer, and then you get stuck
(34:26):
in a rut again, and then youeventually uproot that again.
And then you're alwaysquestioning yourself.
You're like did I do the rightthing?
Am I just slipping back?
Because, I'm afraid, was youknow what?
What is really the reason thatI go back?
Chris (34:45):
but I mean so I well, here's a problem that I think
we're running into um, which isthat you're really I would say
you're more heady than I am.
We're both pretty like heady,smart guys, but um I'm more
visceral, I think I, like I, Ideconstructed my beliefs and
then I went and I had some crazyhecking experiences and that,
(35:11):
and taking those experiences,the problem I'm trying to face
here is the intellectual versusexperiential belief systems and
what was the foundation of those?
And, matt, you know, we reallyhaven't talked much about that,
but I'm sure you've had like adeconstructing experience or
also reconstructing experiencefor yourself.
Angelo (35:32):
Oh yeah, um, and ours was in their early 20s, I think,
and I mean I'm still in a pointin my life where I'm like I am
not quite sure what's going on.
I think I'm headed in the rightdirection, but if I had to do
another big shift, um hey, I'vebeen down that road before you
(35:54):
know.
I like to think of, uh, these,uh.
I have this concept calledknowledge trees, where I like to
think of, like all of thisstuff that you build up through
the course of your life is sortof like this big tree, okay, of
knowledge, and when you,whenever you have a big paradigm
(36:14):
shift, it's like taking an axeand chopping the trunk down and
then you have to grow acompletely new tree.
Matt (36:20):
But it's it's related to what you were talking about
earlier, where they're likethese core axioms, right yeah,
well, if there's, if there wereone concept, if I were to wave a
magic wand and there were oneconcept that we all would
understand, it would be thependulum.
Right, right.
So you have this extreme overhere, and you have this extreme
(36:43):
over here and this plays out inculture a lot, where, say you
can be, you can simultaneouslybe pro women, having rights and
having you know, having agencyand having latitude in all these
different ways and still beable to hold um the purpose of
(37:04):
men, the purpose of masculinity,and all these things in in
synchronous, in in in sync rightbecause the other way, like
this extreme is like very, youknow, like not to get into a
whole can of worms with, likeall society's things, all that
type of stuff, but uh.
(37:27):
But I'll just say this side overhere, as the thinking of itself
is the necessary antithesis tothis extreme over here and this
one thinks it's the necessaryantithesis over here now.
They both have very good pointsat their core, which mean in
(37:47):
the middle, but you have to haveunderstanding in order to find
yourself in that middle right.
But much like chess, they'reboth playing what's?
You both go towards the center,People trying to claim the
center right.
Which is the battleground, whichis where all the stuff goes
(38:07):
down.
Right, but that conflict erodeswhen you have this mutual
understanding of you know,collectively understanding
truths all over the place, thatthere are truths all over the
place and you don't have tofight about them, right, but you
know, going back to, you knowwonderful statement, wonderful
(38:31):
statement by you aboutdiscarding these beliefs and
having this paradigm shift thatleads you over.
This way, you can swing so farover here and you can think I
had to go through so much.
I used to be this kind ofperson, used used to have these
kind of beliefs, and I went onthis journey and I ended up over
here and you can think thatthis is the destination, when
(38:54):
really the center is the final.
It should be the finaldestination, right?
Because you can be so convincedthat over here, this extreme is
totally the right answer.
You know, this extreme istotally the right answer, you
know, but it's a deceptionthat's what I thought you know
enough to think that you'recorrect, but not quite enough to
(39:17):
know when you were full of crap.
It's hard, it's very hard.
Angelo (39:24):
It takes humility to admit that you don't know,
especially when you make aneffort and you pursue truth and
you.
It takes humility to admit thatyou don't know, especially when
you make an effort and youpursue truth and you study and
you read all kinds of philosophyand science and literature if
you're smart, you do that.
Chris (39:42):
If you're me, you didn't do that you just went right off
the deep end laughter.
Matt (39:48):
Many of us do.
Angelo (39:53):
I do like this.
I have this theory where thosetrees that I was talking about,
these trees of knowledge thatyou kind of build for yourself,
maybe, if the roots reach deepenough, they'll find some.
They'll find that they canconnect to a bigger tree.
Matt (40:14):
Yes, okay Like there's some.
Angelo (40:15):
I have this idea that maybe there's some big, larger
collective tree.
You know collective knowledge,tree tradition and if you can
reach your roots down, you canfeed from the same source that
this tree of truth is ultimatelyfeeding through whatever hippie
it's collective man, we gottatalk about the collective.
Matt (40:37):
That's like what aspens do you know?
Yeah, aspens at you knowunderground they all connect
together.
Angelo (40:43):
So really it's like it's like one aspen tree that comes
up above the ground as manyaspen right, right, that's kind
of uh what I was was getting at,but I was even thinking um with
fungi.
There's this thing called theuh mycelium network oh yeah and
so uh describe that mushroomsmushrooms are fungal, some, some
(41:08):
forms of mushrooms.
They are interconnectedunderneath the ground through a
network that's very similar toneurons in our brains and so
they communicate with each otherand they almost operate
something like one, a singularorganism.
(41:29):
So in a weird way it is kind oflike a hive mind.
We don't exactly know howthey're talking to each other,
but we know based on evidence,like you can walk somewhere in a
forest and, um, there will befungal patterns where your
footprints were in a longdistance and it's hard to say,
(41:52):
well, this is this individualfungus and this is this
individual fungus.
When it's all connected throughthis underlying network, it's
like this really intensecollective hive mind underneath
the ground.
It's fascinating really.
Chris (42:11):
I honestly I'm not like an expert in my celium networks
or anything, I feel like thatwas the example we should have
started with to clarify what theheck we were talking about from
the beginning.
I don't think.
I don't think it clarifies much, because this topic is really
broad.
Angelo (42:24):
we've we're talking about distributed cognition.
We're talking about thereligious impulse.
We're talking about distributedcognition, we're talking about
the religious impulse and we'retalking about literal hive minds
under the ground.
Matt (42:34):
Let me go to another one too.
I think this is fascinating tothink about.
If you think about the wholecolor spectrum, right, let's say
the color wheel, and each oneof those evokes a certain sense
we have a sense about.
You know how we feel aboutthose colors, what that color
(42:54):
represents all those things andthey're not necessarily just
defined by these solid borders.
We can try and break them upthat way, like with with the
color wheel right say this isthis color, this is this color
and this is this color but theyall kind of blend together.
Really they are.
They're connected by gradientsrather than by solid borders
(43:16):
right yeah, but if we were tolook at each one of those colors
and imagine we're talking aboutabout integrating, you know,
integrating from the unconsciousinto the conscious.
It's a recognition of what thatcolor is and imagine trying to
pick out from all of thosecolors the ones that we think
(43:39):
shouldn't belong there, or onesthat we're disgusted by, or
things that we avert our eyesfrom, but it's still part of
this whole color spectrumnonetheless.
Angelo (43:52):
You know, colors are fascinating.
There was a point in time wherewe didn't see certain colors,
and it's not because wephysically couldn't see them, it
was like psychologically, wejust didn't have a word or
definition for what that colorwas, so we just grouped it with
a bigger color or a differentcolor, um, so something like I
(44:17):
think it was either like theiliad or the odyssey or
something like that.
They're talking about how greenthe sea is, because at that
point in time they didn't reallyhave this word for blue, so
they lumped it in with green,and if you showed them greens
and blues, they would all thinkof them as like the same color,
(44:38):
just like we would think oh wehave uh, like greens and dark
greens like, yeah, that's allgreen.
but we created a word thatdifferentiated green from blue
and that went into the psyche ofeveryone and now we all
collectively perceive a newcolor because we redefined it.
(45:01):
Same thing with something likebrown.
Think about brown.
Brown is just dark orange andif you would have called it dark
orange you would see it thesame way.
You see dark green to green,but when you see brown you think
it's this completely otherthing.
You don't even realize it'sactually orange.
I mean, maybe you do if youreally were curious enough and
(45:24):
looked into that.
But brown is almost like itsown thing, like trees are brown
and dirt is brown and hair isbrown and skin is brown.
Chris (45:34):
You don't think you're looking at orange people yeah,
you know, sorry, you know thecamera's not facing the right
way, but I'm looking at thiscardboard box over here and I'm
like that's definitely notorange at all.
Matt (45:48):
I don't know but again we come.
It is though well that one'sprobably.
It's probably the lighting andwe we come back to, to gradients
too.
I mean that box could be liketwo percent orange or so two
percent like light or twopercent, you know all the two
(46:09):
percent orange and like 98percent.
You know this other color thatmakes it that really kind of
light brown yeah, but I wouldsay, where does the color brown
actually live?
Angelo (46:24):
people like to think maybe it lives in the objective
world, because there's like acertain wavelength of brown.
It's like not exactly.
Well, maybe does it live inyour mind because you perceive
brown, you create brown in yourmind, right, and it's like
almost, and in some sense yeah.
But there is a sense where it'sa collective thing, because we
(46:47):
came up collectively with thisword brown and that word for
brown existed before you weretaught what brown was as you
were growing up.
That came from your culturejust as much as it came from
your sight.
Chris (47:03):
This is quite an interesting.
What do you call it tangent?
Because now I've got to knowwhat is the exact wavelength of
a brown thing is it?
Matt (47:13):
orange is it orange like?
Chris (47:16):
what's going on?
Angelo (47:17):
here I have to know well , there's hue saturation and
lightness when it comes to color.
So the hue the hue is what?
What color it is?
That has to do with your cones,right?
Okay, your cones are perceiving.
So you have a cone thatperceives red, cone that
perceives green, cone thatperceives blue.
(47:38):
So actually, whatever we havethree, they that's yeah red
green blue so the combination,yeah, okay, the combination of
what you see from your cones inyour eye is right, how, uh, what
hue you're going to see, andthen the intensity of that color
(48:00):
, which is the amplitude, notthe frequency of the wavelength,
but but the amplitude is pickedup by your rods and that's
going to be the brightness.
The more intensity there is,the more blown out and white
it's going to be.
Chris (48:19):
I already knew this, but God, you're smart, I mean yeah
art school Okay yeah.
Matt (48:26):
Take my invisible crown.
Chris (48:29):
No, I mean, it's actually really cool when you guys were
in the cones and rememberedamplitude versus frequency.
I don't remember that.
You don't remember theamplitude of a wave.
Angelo (48:43):
Well, now I do so.
Frequency is how frequent thatwave that's the frequency, the
frequency of that wave.
Chris (48:48):
Yeah, that's the frequency.
The frequency of that wave,yeah, that wave.
Matt (48:52):
There we go.
Good stuff.
I'm going to have to doresearch on that.
That's great.
Angelo (48:57):
That was adorable.
He does.
Chris (49:01):
Okay, but anyways Back to collective consciousness.
Angelo (49:04):
Yeah, collective consciousness.
Chris (49:07):
Well, I mean AKA distributed cognition.
Yeah Well, I would saycollective consciousness, yeah,
collective collectiveconsciousness.
Angelo (49:09):
Uh, well, I mean, aka distributed cognition yeah, well
, I I would say that's a subset,right, that's one, one way to
talk about the collectiveconsciousness of people.
But what I was getting at withcolor is that colors aren't just
something that live in theindividual mind.
I, I don't think, I don't thinkthe question of, oh, do I see
(49:30):
the same red that you see?
I think it's highly unlikelythat we would see different reds
just because, like randomly, Ithink we all collectively kind
of have the same neural networkin a sense, and we're not just
pulling from our individualneurons.
Matt (49:50):
there's something deeper there it's like the variation
may be just so slight.
It's like how do you evenattempt to point?
Angelo (49:58):
well, yeah, it would be useless to talk about, because
as long as the variation isthere, we're perceiving things
differently.
Who's to say what my uniqueexperience versus your unique
experience even sees?
Matt (50:14):
Well, and that could be.
I feel like this could be evenbroken into a whole other
episode as well, of the relativeexperience versus the
individual, or the relativeindividual experience versus the
collective experience, which alot of people seem to sway from
this one to this one.
(50:35):
You know, you could have peoplewho are just.
Chris (50:36):
You know, I have a and how do those two things relate
to objective reality?
Matt (50:41):
Yeah, exactly, as a whole, exactly right, and while
they're, yeah, okay, that's agreat way to frame it.
So people who, um, you know, Ihave a friend who is very
emphatic on this notion thatevery single person is just
individual unto themselves,right, which there's a lot of
(51:02):
validity to the core idea of theindividual, the sovereign
person that is you.
Also, in this same universe, weare all connected by a lot of
cohesion, a lot of relationbetween us.
Otherwise, things would just beso random and variant that they
(51:24):
would, I mean, frankly, we'd beall over the place.
You know, like how would youhave any agreed-upon definitions
of things other than having,like?
You wouldn't have a dictionary,wouldn't be a thing.
You know, we wouldn't even havethe notion of trying to define
words unless there weresomething there to point to.
Angelo (51:47):
But that's right, that's why we well, yeah, the whole,
the whole foundation ofcommunication in and of itself
is you've got an individualsubjective thing inside you and
I've got an individualsubjective thing inside me, and
how are we going to share thingsfrom inside you with things
from?
Chris (52:07):
inside me.
The mycelium network doesn'thave that problem.
They can just freely share.
Angelo (52:17):
But me, and you have to like you know the mycelium
network doesn't have thatproblem.
Matt (52:26):
They're all looking at us.
What's your problem?
What's your guys' problem?
They're all looking at us.
Which are problems?
Which guys problem?
I mean you can.
You can have your cake and eatit too.
You know, like with thecollective unconscious and the
realization, the live experienceof you know, of that mystery
and also you being the lensthrough and the prism for that
(52:48):
to come through.
You know, for that to, you know,to be able to live that out and
to be able to have the fluidityof your own individual life
experience and the you know, thereal, alive sense of yourself
you know the alive sense of yourunique self within all of that
so I have another word for you.
Angelo (53:09):
What's that?
There's a word called umwelt.
It's a german word.
Your umwelt is something likeyour unique subjective
experience and everythinginvolved with you and every
creature has their ownindividual umwelt, and your
umwelts can overlap a little bit, depending on your shared
(53:31):
experience.
So you, as a human being, sharean umwelt with me in the sense
that we see the same colorspectrum, theoretically, that we
taste the same type of foods.
The same way, we inhabitsimilar bodies.
We experience things in a very,very similar way, being the
(53:52):
same species, but your umweltcompared to the umwelt of a frog
might be radically different.
But even with a frog, you mightshare some things in common
with the frog with respect tosomething like a mollusk or
something really foreign to ananimal living on land.
Matt (54:13):
Yeah, oh, my God, now this is a whole thing.
But animism, right?
Oh, like a very primal sense ofyou embodying a certain
creature.
Think about it.
When you're doing somethinglike you're getting down on all
fours and you're crawling andacting as if you're a wolf, like
(54:38):
you can be in touch with thatwolf consciousness or leaping
like a frog you notice how manydifferent capacities we have
like these different creatures.
Like you know, like an octopus,I can use my arms like
tentacles and wiggle them aroundlike this.
Angelo (54:54):
Yeah.
Matt (54:56):
And grab onto things, right, but it's, you know, that
primal sense of the, of naturebeing able to live through you
as an individual, you know?
Angelo (55:07):
So then we're going going now we're leaning into
panpsychism right, but that'syou know.
Matt (55:13):
Like you know, like joseph campbell spoke about this a lot
as well like the like theuniverse as a thou rather than
it you know we think of thingsaround us as it.
But when you think of it as it,then it's strictly for its
(55:33):
utility most of the time, likeyou're using this computer,
you're using this microphone ora box or something like that,
but when you have a ascribe asense of presence to it or
realize a sense of presenceabout it, or realize a sense of
presence about it, that has thatit has.
It may not always be animated,but it has its own consciousness
(55:55):
nonetheless, like plant life.
You know, like we, that thatmay be.
The next step up too, to thinkabout it is that we may not
always think of plants as movingor flowers, as you know, having
their own soul or that type of.
Thing right, but what if theydid?
You think about what if thatdid?
(56:15):
Why do you care to water thatplant?
Why do you like name yourthings?
Why?
What is this thing with, likenaming your different things?
I mean, when you're naming athing, what are you doing?
But but ascribing a personhoodto it?
Right an identity yeah, exactlyso when you realize that, so
(56:36):
you might, you know, take morecare and regard for what's
around you, the things that arethat are around you, right?
Angelo (56:45):
yeah, just because it's inert doesn't mean it doesn't
deserve some sense of respect.
Matt (56:49):
Yeah, exactly.
Chris (56:51):
I like that approach.
I do like to personify all ofthe fruits and vegetables I work
with there you go.
Angelo (57:00):
It's because I grew up on veggie pans.
Matt (57:03):
I'm putting out apples.
I'm like you guys are going todo great.
That's Timmy with cucumber.
Angelo (57:19):
Well, you know what I think there is something there
to like.
If you, if you project a littlebit more of identity to even
inert things, you take more of asense of relationship and care
with them.
When we call the earth MotherEarth, we're linking it to our
mother.
We're linking it to where wecame from and it's more personal
(57:41):
.
I don't want to hurt my mother.
Matt (57:43):
Yeah.
So you're personifying naturalcreation and that is a wonderful
example.
That may be the example too,because, in terms of, if we
think of, oh god, I'm glad Ihave a microphone in front of me
, I'm gonna say this.
So when we think of the objector the, the thing, as being used
(58:05):
for its utility, right, wethink of the earth that way, the
way that we have extracted somuch from the earth, and we
think about the earth like whatcan we get out of the earth?
You know, what can we get outof the resources that will, you
know, help us in some way?
Right, and we seem to be theonly species that is able to
(58:29):
move around and shift ourenvironments in the ways that we
are able to.
We're able to buildcivilizations, we're able to
populate the earth in this way.
That is not, uh, that's notpresent in other creatures.
We're supposed to be stewardsof the earth right.
So when we think of the earth ashaving a personhood of its own,
(58:55):
suddenly we can care more aboutit.
You know, Suddenly we can careas if it's a living thing.
In fact it really is, it'snature man, it's mama.
Angelo (59:07):
It's mama living thing.
In fact it really is.
It's nature, man, it's mama.
Chris (59:11):
It's mama.
Matt (59:11):
Yeah, and that's so fascinating too.
I create mythical art and Ithink quite often about mythical
figures.
What is it about Gaia?
About Mother Earth that we allseem to collectively understand
what we're talking about?
When we say Mother Earth, weobviously mean the Earth.
(59:33):
We obviously mean our planet,right.
Angelo (59:38):
Mother's, where you come from.
Matt (59:39):
That's it, that's it, you know.
So it's having again a feltrealization of that, a felt
realization of the personhood ofthe vow.
Angelo (59:53):
That was powerful man.
I think that's a really greatnote to end on is just
collectively recognizing theearth as the mother, the earth
as the mother, and even thisidea of personifying even inert
things as a way to have a closerrelationship with your reality,
(01:00:14):
beautifully put well.
Thank you all for listening into our wonderful conversation
about the collectiveconsciousness, distributed
cognition, collectiveunconscious, whatever you want
to call it.
Conversation about thecollective consciousness,
distributed cognition,collective unconscious, whatever
you want to call it.
Um, for those of you that madeit this far, thank you so much
for sticking with us and, uh,hope to see you next time.
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