A Global Human Consciousness?
In a time where it seems the world is fracturing, conflicts and wars raging and the threat of another world war looms, when politics are divisive and economic inequality rising, it seems odd perhaps, to think of humanity finding a global consciousness, unifying and finding a path forward. But what if it isn’t odd?
If we could arrive somehow, at this global consciousness, what might it look like and what would it mean? It could have significant implications, for example, on religions, spirituality and how we understand ourselves as Homo Sapiens, modern humans. It is unlikely to lead to a utopia or dystopia.
The idea of a global consciousness has been around for centuries, going back to Greek philosophers and other thinkers. In recent decades it has come out as a philosophical idea through the concept of the Noosphere and the Global Consciousness Project through the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) formed in the 1970s.
The idea of the Noosphere with regard to technology was set out in a 1947 essay by French philosopher and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard. Essentially, he proposed that as technology advanced it would eventually lead to a spiritual transformation of humanity. What he termed as a global “etherised universal consciousness.” Once all this came together with technology, we would reach what Teilhard called the Omega Point. Even…
