The New Age Paradigm. Are we experiencing a mass change of consciousness?

[MagnetMan]

Are we leaving an Old Age of rebellious independence, colonial exploitation, religious Protestation and scientific self-determination?

Are we entering a Nuclear Age paradigm of global inter-dependence, environmental concern, ontological spirituality and scientific indeterminancy?

Is the collective graduating beyond its prodigal teens, putting an end to gambling at Russian roulette with nuclear guns, racing fast cars and chasing fast women?

Are we reaching for our majority, becoming committed parents and preparing to steward the home planet as a single family estate?

Is a New Age happening at this moment in time?

[Racoon]

Originally Posted by MagnetMan

Is a New Age happening at this moment in time?

Reality is the reality you create.

New thoughts are always happening...

[Eclogite]

MM, no to all the above. Wishful thinking is a great comfort, but has little practical application.

[HappytheStripper]

Originally Posted by MagnetMan

The New Age Paradigm. Are we experiencing a mass change of consciousness?

MM ... I was attracted to Your original question ... and Yes ... Mankind is experiencing a shift in energies ... a paradigim shift - or so to speak ... and a change in the level of consciousness ... and this change is happening in everything ... we see this change in all the scientific studies ... we hear this change in the environment ... we feel these changes in everything we do ... we touch upon our experiences with everything we say ...

To list everything in between would be to write the biggest text book for life in the world ... I will discuss this in other forums ...

More importantly ... we are aware of these changes happening ... and consciousness then becomes ... conscious awareness ... it is then the shift concludes ...

[minna]

It's so hard to determine with what is happening in the world. I think we are at a 'in-between' period where both applies. On one hand trade, communication are on their way to globalisation (besides third-word countries) we are more aware of enviornmental and humanitarian issues. On the other hand since or even pre-September 11th a lot has changed to alter what we used to see as inevitable globalisation and it is leading us to question if it is really inevitable. I think from what's happening now, religious protests will not go away. And it might take less than we think to spark a change that will result in a world different from both 'Old Age of rebellious independence' and 'Nuclear age' you mentioned.

PS.Fast cars and women...that probably will never change

[CraigD]

Are we experiencing a mass change of consciousness?

If a requirement of a change in consciousness is that the individual experiencing it at least believes it to have occurred, and “mass” in this context means “widespread”, then the answer is no. Only a small portion of the population believe themselves to have New Age consciousness. Most do not.

In my experience, there’s little to be found wanting in the consciousness of the great majority of individuals. Most people want pleasant, peaceful lives, and furthermore, see helping others to have the same as an important part of such a life. It appears to me that collections of people – families, gangs, tribes, nations, etc. – are required for (but do not inevitably cause) less sensible desires to become dominant. Even within the worst of collections – murderous gangs, aggressive, oppressive imperial nations, etc. – the majority of individuals believe they are working for good.

The change in consciousness I would like to see – I’m more comfortable calling it a change in behavor - must, I believe, be a change in the behavior of these collections, more than one in that of individuals.

I’m optimistic that collections of people of all scales are gradually improving – behaving as well collectively as most of their members do individually. The change is due for the greater part, I think, to improvements in systems of law, government, and trade, a slow process, on a time scale measured in human generations, and full of long and terrible setbacks. While New Age consciousness is very important and beneficial for a small portion of humanity, and conventional religion – The Buddha, Christ Consciousness, Islam, etc. – to many more, law, government and trade are most important to the whole.

[HydrogenBond]

The internet is helping this change. If you surf the web anywhere in the world, web sites have a certain common structure and can be translated into any language. This is allowing everyone to have one foot in their culture and one foot in a common world culture. The big lure was and is online pornography and sales pitch.

Here me out. The global porno and sales pitch increases desire. Desire is not just expressed in sex but in all walks of life. We desire to be rich, we desire food, we desire truth, we desire a new car, computer, etc., The increase concentration of desire based neurochems (eq., dopamine) will cause a global restlessness for more ways to express and satisfy the increasing desire. This will gradually create a greater need for individual independance away from the limitations of particular cultures. One will need a bigger playground leading to a world culture.

[orbsycli]

have fun with these thoughts..!

http://hypography.com/forums/biology...evolution.html

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

The internet is helping this change. If you surf the web anywhere in the world, web sites have a certain common structure and can be translated into any language.

I agree – thought the “language portability” of the www is not at present as good as it could or should be.

Any technology that reduces the barriers of language and culture that cause people to brand others as “not like us” is, I believe, a good, good technology

The big lure was and is online pornography and sales pitch.

Here me out. The global porno and sales pitch increases desire. Desire is not just expressed in sex but in all walks of life. We desire to be rich, we desire food, we desire truth, we desire a new car, computer, etc., The increase concentration of desire based neurochems (eq., dopamine) will cause a global restlessness for more ways to express and satisfy the increasing desire.

You’re correct, I think, about the significance of porn in promoting (and funding!) the internet. The neurochemicals to which I believe you’re referring (dopamine, serotonin, etc.) are not precisely desire based, but satiation based, produced not by the desire for a thing, but by the having of it. Desire, per say, is a stressor, correlating with reduced levels of these neurochemicals, and increased levels of neurochemicals correlating with aggression (adrenaline, testosterone, etc.)

Desire plays an important roll in satiation – without the former, it’s difficult to have the latter – but things that increase desire without delivering satisfaction (ads for products we don’t truly want, or can’t afford, or those that promote unrealistic standards or beauty or wealth) are, I strongly suspect, unhealthy. By this standard, most porn as (ahem (sound of clearing throat)) “consumed” by most people, is healthy, as it usually leads to (ahem) satiation. (no, wait – I didn’t mean to wink! Now everyone thinks I’m a pervert – argh!)

[arkain101]

In reply to this topic and to the thoughts of "orbsycli" I have a short story to share that I think will draw the stage, picture, and thought logic that is being roughly drawn out here.

Section from link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/dimensions.html

-An early attempt to explain the concept of extra dimensions came in 1884 with the publication of Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. This novel is a "first-person" account of a two-dimensional square who comes to appreciate a three-dimensional world.

The square describes his world as a plane populated by lines, circles, squares, triangles, and pentagons. Being two-dimensional, the inhabitants of Flatland appear as lines to one another. They discern one another's shape both by touching and by seeing how the lines appear to change in length as the inhabitants move around one another.

One day, a sphere appears before the square. To the square, which can see only a slice of the sphere, the shape before him is that of a two-dimensional circle. The sphere has visited the square intent on making the square understand the three-dimensional world that he, the sphere, belongs to. He explains the notions of "above" and "below," which the square confuses with "forward" and "back." When the sphere passes through the plane of Flatland to show how he can move in three dimensions, the square sees only that the line he'd been observing gets shorter and shorter and then disappears. No matter what the sphere says or does, the square cannot comprehend a space other than the two-dimensional world that he knows.

Only after the sphere pulls the square out of his two-dimensional world and into the world of Spaceland does he finally understand the concept of three dimensions. From this new perspective, the square has a bird's-eye view of Flatland and is able to see the shapes of his fellow inhabitants (including, for the first time, their insides).

Armed with his new understanding, the square conceives the possibility of a fourth dimension. He even goes so far as to suggest that there may be no limit to the number of spatial dimensions. In trying to convince the sphere of this possibility, the square uses the same logic that the sphere used to argue the existence of three dimensions. The sphere, now the shortsighted one of the two, cannot comprehend this and does not accept the square's arguments—just as most of us "spheres" today do not accept the idea of extra dimensions.-

There is a new consciousness and scratch on the package of the 'Neo' being. However strange or self centered it sounds I have experienced this transition of consciousness after quite a long period of 'work' to the very memorable moment it occured. With my own free will I can verge into this different consciousness as I think and hope just about anyone can do if they so choose to take the daunting steps to reaching it. Just as in the story of the acension of the 2D shape into the 3D world, a wondering consciousness can learn to enter the, how to explain, eternal truth of consciousness, much higher state of awareness.. Now I dont suppose anything new and amazing is to be seen from this state of being except for the wonders in the individuals consciousness. Like I said I think we have at this time found the 'package' of this changed consciousness, and in these moments the package is being scratched at bit by bit to reviel its inside.

I read theory on the universe and lifes role in it, but no matter how it came about the substance, the existence, the expansion of the consciousness seems to be the power behind any one thing that is. In this form of thinking it was not matter that allowed for the evolution and existence of consciousness but the consciousness itself that caused the evolution. In the same way a radio can take in a data, and turn it into reality into the matter, the radio signal can weaken and strengthen, it does not choose the music that evolves as the years pass by to new types of sound, but only acts as the doorway to allow the reality to pass through - is to our body and our consciousness, the body as the radio which can loose signals and wear out and change but the consciousness as the data will be the evolution that the body can allow to pass through. Sort of difficult to explain, but, what I am describing is a think as if to reverse the source of interpration of how and why anything is.

And so, many versions of consciousness reside on this earth from many diverse types of humans, but in an evolutionary sense, survival requires a new adaption of consciousness and some are to verge into it and in the natural way I think the older versions will die out and be lost.