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Collective consciousness

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The French social theorist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) used the term collective consciousness in his The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897), and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).

According to Durkheim, individual desires are limitless and constrained only by external social forces. These and bounds constitute the collective consciousness, which is embodied in a culture's formal and informal norms and values. These are expressed in a variety of ways, ranging from codified rules and laws (eg, speed limits on the highway), to more informal rules that exist only in the heads of the culture that shares the collective (eg, it's polite to cover your mouth when you sneeze). These shared norms provide common ideological ground for members of a society, and ensure that members act in agreed-upon ways.

Various forms have been identified by other sociologists, going from solidarity attitudes and memes to extreme behaviors like groupthink or herd behavior. It is a way of describing how an entire community comes together to share similar values.

The term 'Collective Consciousness' is also referred to in Sahaja Yoga as an outcome of meditation and self-realization.

Consciousness especially implied as self-awareness occurs on the basis of complex nervous systems. This neuro - physiological phenomenon is realized in compound structures of the brain through complex cognitive and psychological processes. So it is relatively easier to present the concept of collective consciousness by analogy to the phenomenon of self- awareness of a person.

So, the simplified scheme of human psyche presented bellow will be useful. It tries to summarize the features of three known psychological theories.

Contents

[edit] Simple, educational scheme of human psyche

Fig. 1 [1] The scheme takes into account main Carl Gustav Jung's notions and basic concepts of Carl Rogers and Eric Berne's theories. The outline emphasizes main components of unconscious area of the memory. When the ability of a person to intimate contact with the partner is impaired, according to Eric Berne's theory, he is impelled to social contacts realized through so called games (manipulations). Scenarios of these games are established by the particular content of his Jungian "Shadow". The war is one of possible games of so called Berne's "third degree" of intensity.

Collective consciousness arises on the basis of specific social structures analogous, in same sense, to the mentioned psychological notions. Taking into account those structures, the scheme of the society was proposed, which is useful to understand the basis of the collective consciousness.

[edit] Scheme of the society including components important for occurrence of the collective consciousness

Fig. 2. [2] The scheme of the society is formulated as analogy to the presented scheme of human psyche. The democratic kind of administration can occur only in specific historical and cultural circumstances. These necessary conditions consists on the possibility to integrate and equilibrate archetypes of : headman ( commander ), feminine influences and ethical rules of local religion. The autocratic, even dictatorship administration, which emulates the feudal patterns is analogous to persons, who utilize games ( manipulations) and are under predominant influences of their Shadows. Similar, however much more conscious are activities undertaken by capital owners. The existing mass-media promote preponderant pattern of the power ( administration) and are analogous to the Rogerian self concept, here in this case .. self - concept of the society.

[edit] Collective consciousness as phenomenon emerging by universal feature of increasing complexity

Revolving the development of the Universe, from philosophical ( systemic ) point of view, we should remark that the nature is characterized by growing level of complexity. The chain of more and more sophisticated systems is discerned { biochemical molecules, RNA, DNA, microbes, plants, animals, human beings with their self - awareness, societies }. There are no reason to assume that this chain is closed. It seems that complex systems continue to be more sophisticated and that become more complex on the basis of former levels of development. Collective consciousness is an entity, which needs the existence of people, organized in societal structures.

[edit] Are some mechanisms of collective consciousness based on quantum entanglements?

Some sociologists believe that some manifestations of collective consciousness are similar to behaviors of flush of birds or pack of wolfs. Biologists, competent also in physics, maintain that these observations can be explained by existence of so called quantum entanglements.

It seems probable that people acting synchronously and together during mass meetings, like religious invocations or ideologically rationalized manifestations and war battles become entangled by this kind of physical mechanisms.

Social observations on populations, which abruptly increase birth rate in time of threat for such ethnic group should be explained also by this kind of unconscious collective mechanisms.

[edit] See also

[edit] External resources

pt:Consciência coletiva

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