15 minutes to eternity

[RebeccaFog]

Hello,

   What would happen if, at the exact same time, every individual human upon the planet (earth) were to become entirely aware of every other individual human on the planet at the exact same time and everyone stayed in this state of awareness for 15 full minutes?


I ask because I do not know.

I need one of you with brains to get on this.

[Nero]

what now? 

[RebeccaFog]

Immediately.  Else I'll forget what I asked.

[buttercup]

MY brain would explode. 

Being aware of every single being on this planet, wow, what a concept. 

I can't get my mind around that one because I need to ask some questions, like can I see them in my mind's eye?  I mean can I see what they physically looked like and what they are experiencing at that given moment or is a spiritual feeling of other existences?  After the 15 minutes of everyone having this awareness, will we all know every kind of emotion, physical state (poverty, dying, being born) that there is in the world?

[RebeccaFog]

MY brain would explode. 

Being aware of every single being on this planet, wow, what a concept. 

I can't get my mind around that one because I need to ask some questions, like can I see them in my mind's eye?  I mean can I see what they physically looked like and what they are experiencing at that given moment or is a spiritual feeling of other existences?  After the 15 minutes of everyone having this awareness, will we all know every kind of emotion, physical state (poverty, dying, being born) that there is in the world?

yes, except for it being a spiritual feeling of other existences.
  Otherwise, it's an nearly entire awareness of people.  Their names, the region in which they live, one important detail about them and some lesser general details about them.
   It may be a matter of knowing of people rather than knowing them in the sense of being inside their heads.
   I stole this concept from Tekla's andy Warhol reference about everybody in the future having 15 minutes of fame.  Then I thought, "what if every person had their 15 minutes at the exact same time?"   If every single person was famous then it would mean knowing something at least kind of interesting or unique about the person along with what they look like, where they come from, and like that.  Then when I tried to imagine it, my head became cramped and I decided to ruin the lives of others (you, my friends) by bringing it up.

I think that's what I'm asking.  What would happen?   I hadn't even thought about knowing all those emotions and physical states, but I guess there's no way around it.

I got to the point where I imagined that either we all would meld into one being and then cease to exist, or else we would have affected some physics principle that would cause us to generate such an energy as to cause our minds to fly across the universe, or possibly explode the whole planet.

I was hoping someone else would have a better alternative.


questions are good.

[Ell]

Hello,

   What would happen if, at the exact same time, every individual human upon the planet (earth) were to become entirely aware of every other individual human on the planet at the exact same time and everyone stayed in this state of awareness for 15 full minutes?


I ask because I do not know.

I need one of you with brains to get on this.

Hi Rebecca,

this concept has actually been theorized on. i consider you a scientist now. only, they speculated that once it occurred, it wouldn't be 15 minutes. it'd be permanent.

Please refer to the anime Serial Experiments Lain, for more on this, and lots of other really cool experimental ideas.

there's also some really good info on Lain on the internet, including Wikipedia

Parental Warning: the Lain series is shockingly violent at times.

-Ellie

[RebeccaFog]

I will check it out.  Thanks for the violence warning.  Some days it too much for me.

[Chaunte]

I think we would overload our senses.  It would be too much information to absorb all at once, oiur minds would shut down and we would collapse.

That or we would become Borg....

                        "... Resistance is futile."



Chaunte

[RebeccaFog]

Hi Rebecca,

this concept has actually been theorized on. i consider you a scientist now. only, they speculated that once it occurred, it wouldn't be 15 minutes. it'd be permanent.

Please refer to the anime Serial Experiments Lain, for more on this, and lots of other really cool experimental ideas.

there's also some really good info on Lain on the internet, including Wikipedia

Parental Warning: the Lain series is shockingly violent at times.

-Ellie

You're right.  It would be permanent and it would go far beyond my initial proposal.  I was trying to use 15 minutes and knowing some aspects of people as a limit, but it doesn't really work.   It's all or nothing.

[lady amarant]

It would be seriously cool. With no secrets, we would all of a sudden know everybody else's dirty laundry - and they would know ours. Then you would either have to accept that everybody has dirty laundry, and that really, who cares, or you would have to kill yourself.

I've read a few SF and fantasy stories with societies like these, and usually they are depicted as supremely compassionate, utopian etc. Which makes sense to me. At the moment, empathy is a choice - you choose to open yourself to the circumstances of others and so develop compassion. An event like this would force the issue.

~Simone

[lady amarant]

Why collective empathy as opposed to collective madness or collective nihilism?

Granted, the overload of so much information might drive us all to madness, but in my experience, the more aware people become of the circumstances and motivations of others, the more empathic and thus compassionate they become. Take for example how people that go travelling for years often come back much more accepting, open people.

In Buddhism, for example as well, the whole idea is to build greater awareness towards achieving enlightenment, which is perfect awareness of all things along with obliteration of the ego. So to me, it would be seem a natural consequence. As they say, it's very hard to judge a thief if you've been hungry enough to steal yourself, and in this scenario, we would be aware of and experience all of those things we are normally so quick to judge.

~Simone.

[tinkerbell]

You mean like telepathy? You do realize about hundreds of people die every second, right? If everyone was linked for fifteen minutes, they'd all have to experience death over and over and over again, not to mention rape victims overwhelming emotions, the starving children's overwhelming hunger and pain, tons and tons of grief, and lots of pain from people who are in hospitals suffering from some kind of illness.

The happiness, which is a fragile emotion for all of us, would be completely shattered by the overwhelming influx of pain, fear, stress, death, and other horrors filling the earth. Heck, sharing the thoughts of someone who has taken pleasure from raping a child, or enjoyed murdering someone, maybe even eating them afterwards (cannibalism isn't completely unheard of, even in this day and age). Would you like to have those memories, knowing what it feels like to be in that position?

I think that if the experience of being telepathically linked to everyone in the world didn't kill all of the human race, we'd all commit suicide afterwards, from the sheer pain of what we knew. Not too many humans can function while knowing the true horrors of the world. So, they ignore them, and go on with their lives. Forcing them to acknowledge those horrors would be catastrophic for their mental health.

Interesting question, anyway.

tink

[lady amarant]

Forcing them to acknowledge those horrors would be catastrophic for their mental health.

Good point Tink. Though I would counter to an extent, that not everybody would react in that way. We might end up with a much smaller population, but I think the resulting society would be much better.

~Simone.

[Ell]

You mean like telepathy? You do realize about hundreds of people die every second, right? If everyone was linked for fifteen minutes, they'd all have to experience death over and over and over again, not to mention rape victims overwhelming emotions, the starving children's overwhelming hunger and pain, tons and tons of grief, and lots of pain from people who are in hospitals suffering from some kind of illness.

The happiness, which is a fragile emotion for all of us, would be completely shattered by the overwhelming influx of pain, fear, stress, death, and other horrors filling the earth. Heck, sharing the thoughts of someone who has taken pleasure from raping a child, or enjoyed murdering someone, maybe even eating them afterwards (cannibalism isn't completely unheard of, even in this day and age). Would you like to have those memories, knowing what it feels like to be in that position?

I think that if the experience of being telepathically linked to everyone in the world didn't kill all of the human race, we'd all commit suicide afterwards, from the sheer pain of what we knew. Not too many humans can function while knowing the true horrors of the world. So, they ignore them, and go on with their lives. Forcing them to acknowledge those horrors would be catastrophic for their mental health.

Interesting question, anyway.

tink

i think the actual model they were looking at was actually more like an internet without external, machine interfaces.

-Ellie

[RebeccaFog]

I feel that Tink's answer may be the most insightful at this point.


I don't know that I could handle feeling people die.   I guess an advantage to knowing who likes to rape is that we could weed them out of the population, but that's against my principles (I'm talking putting them to death).

Maybe my principles would change after the big link, though.

[Ell]

I feel that Tink's answer may be the most insightful at this point.


I don't know that I could handle feeling people die.   I guess an advantage to knowing who likes to rape is that we could weed them out of the population, but that's against my principles (I'm talking putting them to death).

Maybe my principles would change after the big link, though.

no, theoretically it wouldn't be any more awful than the internet.

[Lisbeth]

You mean like telepathy? You do realize about hundreds of people die every second, right? If everyone was linked for fifteen minutes, they'd all have to experience death over and over and over again, not to mention rape victims overwhelming emotions, the starving children's overwhelming hunger and pain, tons and tons of grief, and lots of pain from people who are in hospitals suffering from some kind of illness.

The happiness, which is a fragile emotion for all of us, would be completely shattered by the overwhelming influx of pain, fear, stress, death, and other horrors filling the earth. Heck, sharing the thoughts of someone who has taken pleasure from raping a child, or enjoyed murdering someone, maybe even eating them afterwards (cannibalism isn't completely unheard of, even in this day and age). Would you like to have those memories, knowing what it feels like to be in that position?

I think that if the experience of being telepathically linked to everyone in the world didn't kill all of the human race, we'd all commit suicide afterwards, from the sheer pain of what we knew. Not too many humans can function while knowing the true horrors of the world. So, they ignore them, and go on with their lives. Forcing them to acknowledge those horrors would be catastrophic for their mental health.

Interesting question, anyway.

tink

I think it is more likely that the collective human consciousness would submerge those memories.  I think it also likely that in those few minutes the collective would also learn how to cut off the connection to the most hateful thinkers.  It's more likely that those who were cut off would commit suicide.

[RebeccaFog]

I like the suicide idea (for evil people).  I'd still feel bad for them, though.  Being born without the inner beauty to sustain within the collective.

[lady amarant]

I like the suicide idea (for evil people).  I'd still feel bad for them, though.  Being born without the inner beauty to sustain within the collective.

Kinda like us: Born without the mindless herd-mentality necessary to integrate into a somnambulist world culture, betraying ourselves in the process...

~Simone,
       Mindless...

[Lisbeth]

I like the suicide idea (for evil people).  I'd still feel bad for them, though.  Being born without the inner beauty to sustain within the collective.

I think it would be horrid to die that way, knowing that you really and truly don't fit in.

Or could the concept of good and evil be eliminated in the process, given the variety of views on the subject?

I don't think good and evil as we know it would exist anymore.

Somewhere along the way I read a science fiction novel (can't remember either the title or the author) about an accident where a mini black hole escaped confinement and sank to the center of the earth.  The gravimetric field combined with a critical mass in the human brains connected via the internet caused the planet to become scencient.  The interesting part of the story is that this did not eliminate individuality or discent based on extending the idea that not even individuals are all of one mind.  Each of us has conflicting thoughts and feelings, and a planet-wide consciousness would also.  In this story, only the most anti-social people were quietly and efficiently eliminated from the population.