Melinda will be amending this one much further. Anyway, part of book #8.
Each and every one of us has the capacity to be an oppressor. I want to encourage each and every one of us to interrogate how we might be an oppressor and how we might be able to become liberators for ourselves and for each other.
— Laverne Cox
The labyrinth of the human mind has many aspects to it, and has been recognized for its creative abilities, both to entrap the unwary traveler, or to provide pathways to transcendence from its wayward inclinations. If we each were truly independent beings, and not involved in an infinite collaborative effort with other members of our species, our path would be a simpler one, for we would be beholden to no one, and thus distracted or diverted by no others. Alas, we are social beings, and we have major hardwired centers in our brains that encourage us to associate with each other and to work towards our common good. It is important to understand how that biological hardware, as well as our cultural software, work together to try keep our natures directed more to order than to chaos. Yet, many of our ordering social algorithms are counter-productive, incite our unaddressed minotaurs to riot, and induce further imbalances into our cultural, as well our personal realities.
The human collective consciousness is the process whereby we have internalized the verbal understandings of all others, whereby ignorant, judgmental, limiting, obfuscating, damaging, soul-destroying concepts of self and other are socially acceptable modes for assessing and understanding the self, and the other. This are internalized, and socialized, and this knowledge becomes a collectively shared experience. And, we all know that everybody else knows what we know, while we know what everybody else knows.
Through a process that has existed since verbal consciousness first formed in humanity, we develop verbal constructs to represent the outside world in our own internal universe. Yet, none of these internalized assessments are 100 percent accurate, nor could they ever be, even though the entirety of human consciousness now shares in the illusion that what they do represent what is actually out there as represented by their current misunderstanding of their fellow human being and their current relationship to the other. And what exactly, does despair, optimism, faith, and hope look like? We chase their true meaning with our words. How can our infinite spiritual heritage ever be adequately measured through words? So we use verbal constructs to oppress, repress, and deny the other, all the while unconsciously honoring the culturally inculcated process of mutual oppression and repression of feminine energy and the Divine.
The human collective consciousness has been called many other names by seers and seekers over the millennia. The word “Maya” has been given as the name from Hinduism and Buddhism for the tendency to both individually and collectively create a fragmented perceptual universe, where in truth there is only the unity of the Universe. In the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, he mentions that, “My father’s house/mansion has many rooms,” “My kingdom is not of this world,” and, “Be in the world, don’t be of the world,” which point to the fact that there are two possibilities for living, as a sleeping being in a dark, disfigured world, or as an awakening being in a multi-dimensional human relationship with infinity. The sleeping beings are those who live in the world of Maya without being aware of the many illusions of thought that dominate their minds and lives.
This adaptation and acculturation process has become so ingrained in consciousness, so accepted, so standardized, so normalized that the individual who even casually practices its dark side continues to contribute to the collective imprisonment of all of mankind through this process. The human collective consciousness informs our understanding of our own lives, how we see others, and how to use it’s often times twisted knowledge of poor self-esteem and negative judgments of others to help inform our decisions about actions we can take in our own lives. The human collective consciousness can provide to us both a blessing, and a curse, depending on the messages that we mine and successfully apply to our lives from conformance to its social principles. But, regardless of the messages that we hear and apply, we are still directly influenced by all messages, no matter how much in conflict that they may be with each other, until we have had enough insight into this process to heal ourselves of unconscious adherence to its confusing, conflicting principles. We each have an internal pendulum which swings gently, or erratically, between all of the poles, and our shared consciousness reflects those sometimes divisive inner rhythms.
Our human collective consciousness is how people make gains for themselves, at the expense of others, through socially acceptable forms of violence, which we call comedy. The hullabaloo at the 2022 Academy Awards show between Will Smith and Chris Rock is the perfect example. Badinage, persiflage, repartee, and mutual put downs are part of the tool kit that the human race employs to keep us focused on the failings of others, while also building up our own sense of worth. We laugh at the acceptable insanity that manifests itself through this disparity in self valuations. The common knowledge game is a form of consensus social understanding used in collective consciousness since humans started using language to communicate with their peers. The lemming effect has also been with us from the beginning, and its most powerful energy takes the form of peer pressure. The interplay of these different cultural phenomena create our individual realities. We are both ourselves as individuals and as parts of the society whole.
The Common Knowledge Game and The Lemming Effect
An item of information is common knowledge if all of the relevant citizens of a community know it to be so (it is mutual knowledge) and all of the citizens know that all other citizens know it and all other citizens know that all other citizens know that all other citizens know it, and so on. This is much more than simply saying that something is known by all, but also implies that the fact that what is known by me is also known by all, etc. Thus, common knowledge implies not only that we all know some piece of information, but can also be absolutely confident that the rest know it, and that the rest know that we know it, and so on.
Effectively, there are two sides to the Common Knowledge Game (CKG), dark and light. What sets up the darker side of the CKG in our minds and hearts is continuous internal access to our negative assessments, or judgements of others, and of our self, both of our physical form and our spiritual essence. These negative assessments also include our perceptions of what we believe others think negatively about us, as well, which is another self-defeating component of the CKG. This becomes one of the pillars, albeit a dark one, for the CKG, and the reason for the spiritual imprisonment for all of us. What might set up a liberating side of the CKG is the potential energy of a shared belief that we are all good people at heart, and/or that we are all practicing the spiritual understanding that the word “namaste” represents. These internalized collective beliefs are social processes of consciousness that may become culturally inculcated into our awareness, and thus we all might share in the benefits, and the detriments, of collective consciousness as well as collective unconsciousness.
I first consciously encountered the darker side of the CKG in my employment with the US Postal Service from 1975 to 1985. There were several boundary conditions of the Common Knowledge Game for my continuing employment with that agency. Many of my co-workers, as well as myself, worked there because we felt that we could do no other work, and that we did not have the skills, qualification, competency, or motivation to try anything else. Everybody knew that truth including members of the management team, not only about our selves, but also about all of our co-workers, which in turn, was what the co-workers understood about each other, as well. It was part of shared story that we told to ourselves and joked about with each other on many occasions.
As an apprentice electrician in 1989, I also encountered this common knowledge limitation. I was an electrician, whom due to the requirements of the Local 48 union apprenticeship, was required to rotate through various employers to diversify my experience. In one company, I was a highly regarded electrician, but then at another, I was ignored and disparaged. The foreman made sure to keep me in the most menial of jobs, and put down “humor” permeated the exchanges between many long-term workers and those not considered to be company insiders, which was me and a few other new hires. When I was laid off, a short time into my employment with this company, I was told by my foreman, as he gave me my lay off slip, “Don’t be so fucking good Bruce, you need to learn how to just blend in with everybody else as they could give a shit about what you know or what your skills are.”
In addition to the CKG, many of the people I worked with also shared a common foe, chemical dependency, which adds several critical internal self-defeating calculations to the CKG. These baseline understandings helped to define my relationship to the Post Office career, as well. I really enjoyed my time working as a machine clerk, because of the fast pace and the fact that it was a lifetime guaranteed job. These kept me from feeling too bad about my personal and employment decisions. Even though I felt trapped by my own insecurities and dysfunctions, I escaped that and delayed the inevitable crush of despair through the use of drugs and alcohol.
Consider the example of a sexually abused woman. There are many common knowledge parameters to be considered here, but the following are several items to consider, from the women’s perspective: Depending on her religious upbringing, she may believe…
- I must be subservient to the male, whatever he says, I must obey. I dare not raise my voice against any man
- I will bring shame to my family by being truthful, so I must keep silent about the abuse.
- Nobody would believe my word against a powerful man, so I must keep silent
- I should have known better than to wear that dress, or to place myself in such a defenseless position.
- I should have known better than to be in this person’s presence, and it is my fault that I was attacked
- If I speak out against this man, I will be crushed by him, and be considered a whore, or a person of poor morals by others.
And on and on it could go. This is the foundational logic embedded within the common knowledge game that would keep a woman silent in the face of sexual abuse by another.
Consider competitive work environments where there are several jealous office workers seeking to demean a common foe, be it a boss or a motivated co-worker, through practicing racism, sexism, religious persecution, etc. This can be several employees practicing typical mutually inaccurate assessments of a party not currently in their presence, such as through agism, racism, and/or sexism. These behaviors are also typical of what happens in big companies, politics, high school, or in church.
The participants will not attack unless they are sure that the other will attack at exactly the same time, as nobody wants to be the lone attacker, becoming vulnerable and thus expose their own intent for aggression. This is indicative of the “mob mind” and how it acts in the real world. The first person sends out a “feeler” (verbal exchange of internalized culturally inculcated negative assessments of others, or even self) to the other parties with the message, such as, “You know, I am really unhappy with Mr. X, he is problematic.” Yes, we warm up for the attack, by gently degrading the third-party, while awaiting the others reply within the group physically or emotionally present, which, hopefully affirms our intent. Our verbal or written means of attempting to communicate with the other conspirators may be misinterpreted, so we initially have no collective security in adopting the attack mode. If however, the message of attack is received simultaneously by others within the group, which it does in common knowledge modes of thought, then the attack is on. Note that all parties already know the message. If they are all males and sexist, white supremacists and racists, or fundamentalist religious fanatics, the judgements against others is already built into their shared social algorithms. They all knew in advance that the other attackers had the message as well, because it is common knowledge that others share at least some of their negative perceptions, and they will attack the other, because they always have before, and they have already prepared their internal fortifications, as well as their verbal and social weapons for such an experience.
This is the classic attack/defense posture or mechanism that the entirety of the human race is now participating in. Anybody who has worked in the construction trades, or in work areas dominated by men, know this process quite well. The terms repartee, badinage, bantering, persiflage, etc. are the kind names given to this culturally accepted and sometimes revered process, whereby we lightly and without intentional malice impugn the dignity and reputation of others. We call this humor, and some may feel almost hurt when others do not engage in this behavior with us. In schools, the wimps, greasers, jocks, nerds, eggheads, goths, transsexuals, homosexuals, hippies, outcasts, or whatever name that defines the “out group” outside of the popular, socially accepted standards of behavior that characterize a grouping, can be quite susceptible to aggression, antagonism, and bullying. I think that everyone who has attended school has had experience with this phenomenon. It follows standards paths of aggression, hostility, belittlement, and debasement, and somehow the aggressor becomes elevated in stature, at the expense of the victim. This has been an accepted standard of behavior, though we are finally awakening to darker aspects of this by identifying hostile work environments, and instituting regulations for reducing persecution, racial discrimination, age discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual discrimination in the workplace.
A great allegory for the social behavior of humans is that of the story of the life cycle of some populations of lemmings. Lemmings are little rodents that live near the cold northern Arctic regions. They are focused animals by nature, meeting only to mate and then going their separate ways, but like all rodents, they have a high reproductive rate when food is plentiful. When population density becomes too high, some of the lemming species migrate in large quantities and since they can swim, they choose to cross the water in search of a new habitat. Lemmings have been known to follow each other as they plunge off the edge of cliffs into the water below. Even though lemmings have been found to be swimming migrants rather than victims of collective suicidal ideation, the myth of mass suicide is still called the Lemming Effect.
Regardless of the lemmings real intentions, the lemming story has become a metaphor for people who go along unquestioningly with a group, with potentially dangerous consequences. The Lemming Effect is an innate psychological phenomenon, a survival trait, an inborn instinct in the majority of people. We see this happening in many occurrences from bad collective decisions, such as investing in the dot com boom of the late 1990s, craving the latest Apple iPhone releases, excessive alcohol consumption at a party, following theological assertions like the blood of Jesus is the sacrifice to God that saves our soul, to obsessing over modern day automobile and fashion trends. This Lemming Effect enables entire segments of a society to lose their sense of judgment and the application of personal wisdom all at the same time. It can be linked to the “mob mind” phenomenon inherent within collective consciousness itself. If you have ever been a member in good standing in the problem drinking division at the local bar, you have intimate understanding of the suspension of wisdom and good judgement with your drinking decisions.
We don’t realize how often our decisions are based on other people’s behavior. The Lemming Effect depicts a negative side of the conscious following of the crowd, especially when following leads to falling off the cliff. In real life situations it could mean losses of money, self identity, and slower spiritual development. As it might sound easy to grasp the concept, it is difficult to notice in our own actual behavior. Moreover, social togetherness is sometimes very pleasant and valuable, for instance at a rock concert where one man starts to dance, then more and more people join in, until massive amounts of people join the dance. It is a pleasant example of a positive manifestation of the lemming effect. It is all part of the process of making our unconscious parts more conscious, which must also bring awareness that mass behavior does not always result in positive experience for the individual.
The lemming effect is not that far from pleasant, life affirming social togetherness, but the effect has some potential negative effects that we need to be aware of at all times. It is healthy and wise to participate in social movements, but we must not lose our heads in the emotions. We must be critical of the movements of the crowd that are going against our vision and values. Also, we must do the research, and even experiment with unpopular ideas, before deciding that any massive new movement is for us. It is important not to ignore the “leading edge” movements, because accidentally standing on the way of the movement could bring harm to us or others. On the other hand, we could have a very good experience with the lemming effect, if played well. This is one of the aspects where an aware individual can play the common knowledge game and “lemming effect” to maximum personal benefit, without changing the collective rules of engagement. Our politicians, marketers and advertisers, and religious leaders have harnessed the power of the “lemming effect”, and our entire world civilization continues to be manipulated, for good or for evil, by these practitioners.
As Krishnamurti suggests, it’s possible to think that we’re spiritually and mentally healthy because we share our mistaken values and understandings with those around us. Collectively, our ill minds create social circles, or society that is itself ill, and we consider ourselves healthy because we see our values reflected in our spiritually sick fellow travelers.
Living in the Human Collective Consciousness
Now that we have thoroughly investigated human collective consciousness, we have found there are many unconscious or unwritten rules for engagement between all members of society, in addition to the conscious and/or written ones. The unconscious rules have been with us from the beginning, well before the introduction of mega-cities and civilizations, when mankind first falteringly attempted to both explore and to define inner experience. The conscious rules or laws have been developed over the last two hundred or more generations with the intention of establishing and maintaining the best order and harmony for the ever enlarging populations congregating together into the structure of cities or settlements. Hammurabi’s code of conduct and the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament are two great examples from our distant past of the documentation and implementation of rules defining acceptable conduct. The human race may continue to evolve in spirit and in truth as long as it can provide a minimum foundation of safety and security for all of its members, so it is important to remember that not all requirements to conform are misguided or evil in intent.
In environments like prisons, the education system, the military, and larger groups up to, and including, American society, behavioral decisions based on private information are almost always weaker than behavioral decisions based on common knowledge. The latter has more binding power, because, in effect, the prisoners themselves end up enforcing the warden’s (or society’s) rules. Even if you privately believe that you and your fellow prisoners could escape, so long as you believe that everyone knows that you will be punished for breaking the rules, then you do not believe that you will receive any support from your fellow prisoners (fellow citizens or friends). It is irrational to even raise the subject with your fellow prisoners, as you will mark yourself as someone who is either too stupid or too dangerous not to recognize what everyone else knows that everyone else knows. And because everyone is making a similar calculation, no one ever makes an escape attempt and the common knowledge grows stronger over time, as does the no-escaping binding attitudes. This is why public punishment has been so widely used throughout history.
Because of the Common Knowledge Game and Lemming Effect, there is enormous power in making a public spectacle out of information. We can’t resist crowds. This lesson in behavioral influence – the crowd doesn’t just need to see the event, the crowd needs to see the crowd seeing the event – is why religious revival events, rock concerts, and so many of our modern social institutions, from political campaigns to American Idol – are staged in front of live audiences. When you sit in front of your TV set and watch, say, a national political convention, you are infinitely more engaged with the event when you see a crowd than when you don’t. We can’t help ourselves. It doesn’t even matter if the live audience is faked and we know that the audience is faked; have you ever listened to a sitcom without a laugh track? It’s just not as funny. The fact is that humans are social animals. We are hard-wired to look for and respond to common knowledge, and smart people—from political leaders to religious leaders to business leaders and concert organizers—have taken advantage of this for years.
What happens in the diseased family structure (alcoholism and drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse, psychological abuse of all types) in many situations of discipline and control exactly parallel the common knowledge game? Eventually, the children learn not to attempt to act out, or break free from, the oppressive qualities of an abusive parent, or parents, their church and its interpretation of religious thought, and their educational experience. Breaking the spirit of the abused child, and making sure that other members know that such punishment will also come their way keeps children under control, but also victimized and traumatized. Children entering the school system where bullies are allowed to run free get to experience this process once again, in a bigger social setting. And, children who attend a church where the dignity of the individual is constantly degraded and threatened with hell through their religious philosophy also will feel the horrific abuse of the common knowledge game. They live in fear that If anyone were to speak out against our oppressors, they would be punished severely, and they would be smacked down.
There are two great acts of insanity that members of our family, and our culture, engage in, which are integral to the Conspiracy Of Silence, and the Common Knowledge Game of human perception:
- There is the perception that if an authoritative political or religious leader or family member brings harm or damage to another, the victim must have somehow deserved it, and they should not expect an explanation, change of behavior, or apology from the aggressor. In fact, the victim of the aggression will be judged and punished even more harshly by calling a foul, or claiming harm, from the offensive behavior.
- There is a perception that we all are of questionable origin, and value, except for, maybe, our self, depending upon who we are unfairly comparing our self to. This is a classic component of the Common Knowledge Game. Depending on the needs of the tribe we belong to, and how much we are acculturated within the group, we may devalue our self and all others, until we heal, and find our own unique voice and true value.
Our Common Knowledge Game keeps all of us in some sort of order, albeit one that affirms the false truth that we are all broken human beings, with our only hope for salvation lying with chaotic, and insane, orders of unreality that continue to be inculcated into our collective consciousness. In other words, unless we march to the drummer of our religious and cultural past, we will be judged, persecuted, marginalized, and otherwise thrown to the wolves, with little hope for our own redemption. Woe to the brave individual that strikes out on his own, and attempts to find a new way of being in this world of chaos, distraction, and torment.
Implicit bias and unconscious discrimination against others is an autonomic response, and shields the practitioner from their own malfeasance of attitude and behavior. This is the unconscious knowledge component which supports and advises the common knowledge game. Those who believe that they are the chosen of God, to the diminishment and detriment of others of differing racial, ethnic, or national origin, are promoters and perpetrators of the biggest, most heinous lie ever told. We all are either the chosen of God, or none of us are. White supremacist pseudo-Christians use their filiality to Judaism through the Jewish prophet Jesus to justify their illusions of importance and placement in the eyes of their own mistaken understanding of the divine energy of our universe.
If you watch the news or get on social media, it’s easy to see our country is in a downward spiral, where telling the truth is no longer a virtue, but instead it is bastardized, and spun into alternate reality fantasies, to be just another tool to be abused by propagandists. Propagandists are masters at manipulating fear, distrust, lies, half-truths, and specious reasoning, which also help to create new channels of control in the Common Knowledge Game.
How to Step Outside the Game
We are all alive today due to the self-organizing principles of life itself. In manufacturing and industrial processes, in our planet Earth and its journey through the solar system, and even in the human mind, we bear witness to the wonders and mysteries of self-organizing systems. The human brain has evolved into a capable predictive mechanism since the introduction of language as a tool for communication. Words are used for the measure of our experience, and are now our primary avenue for communication with each other. Words are forever containers for energy, and are not the actual energy itself, being only pointers towards that energy. Yet the introduction of words into the conscious void of the ancient human being must have been the most transformational, apocalyptic event in human history, probably being more important than the harnessing of the power of fire and water for the creation of the conditions for safety, security, and even society itself. The development and the evolution of human language itself has had the effect of bringing the hope for new or enhanced order to the chaos inherent within the unconscious human experience, at least through the structure of words used to represent the world that one is experiencing.
If establishing or maintaining order is our concern, we can effectively channel all relevant knowledge into intelligent systems of control that will maintain maximum stability wherever necessary, but only under those conditions where we understand most or all of the variables. The basic process control theory underlying all modern industrial and manufacturing systems has an equivalent in the human mind, where we use feedback and feedforward information loops for refining and maintaining order (mindfulness, personal inventory, and meditation). For humans, though our primary system of control is through the laws of our society and of our religions, we have not yet developed the understanding of all of the boundary conditions for our human experience.
In mystical Christianity, the Word was meant to represent the spiritually realized person, whose very being and words, come from the Truth as it exists in this eternal moment. Historically, some religious interpreters mistakenly believed that the Word becomes flesh in only one human form (Jesus), and dwelt among us some 2,000 years ago. The Word actually points to a loving, non-verbal reality, far above and beyond the limiting verbal beliefs and insane actions of man in the world, and it also points to the human beings who through all time have been able to access that energy and express it in new, unique, loving ways, while practicing its universal principles in all of their affairs.
The Buddha had his own ideas about what constitutes mental health, and by his definition anyone who isn’t well on the way to Enlightenment is insane. Quite how literally he meant it when he said, “All humans are mad,” is hard to say, but when he looked at ordinary people like us going about their daily busines s he saw a world out of balance because it is composed of those same off-kilter individuals. He viewed this imbalance as a form of perversion, inversion, and/or derangement. He understood that we, collectively, misunderstand the world that we live in, misunderstand ourselves, thus we all end up living in a virtual reality of delusion, confusion, and distortion.
Changes must happen within consciousness itself, and the “common knowledge game” that we all unconsciously play must be examined, and re-examined again and again, until we are no longer subjugated to its darker sides of oppression and repression of human spirit.
The healthy, sane, spiritually inspired individual steps outside of the Common Knowledge Game, and practices seeing him or herself through a new lens with few or no verbal constructs from our personal pasts, and our culturally damaged memories. This is the only place where a heart-centered experience of the other becomes possible. Ultimately, if there are any words to be shared about what is experienced, it serves only as a temporary bridge to understanding, to be discarded at the earliest possible moment, as truth reveals itself moment to moment, and not just through the shared verbal constructs of a dead past that may have arisen. When two people are observing the same beautiful sunset, there is little need for words, other than to affirm one’s joy in witnessing it.
To ultimately transform the Common Knowledge Game of mutual imprisonment, we need to become aware of how we are seeing others seeing ourselves. Changing the way we allow our own perceptions of how others expect us to behave opens the door out of our own uniquely created prison cells. This is not to say that others’ intentions are always bad or nefarious towards us, as most of us want what is best for us as individuals, and hope that our best expectations for ourselves are also good for others, as well. To see how we have ignorantly been controlled by others, or, more insidiously, how we have used our perceptions of how others expect us to behave and believe, grants insight into the whole process, and opens the door to a new way of seeing life, and being in life with others in more supportive, holistic, healthy manners. Our words can then carry all of the potential of the love behind the collective good heart of mankind.
It is also of greatest importance to realize that no man, or woman, is an island in this vast universe, and that our perception of harmony and balance is inextricably intertwined with the rest of humanity. No matter how healed, balanced, or empowered we believe that we are becoming, we are eternally linked with the rest of humanity, and the universe, in our attempts to create order or balance out of our own unique versions of the collective chaos known as human knowledge. The temptation to follow the herd, or to swim with the lemming, is built right into the foundational nature of our socialized existence.
If we really are ready to embark on the new paths of consciousness, we must be prepared to leave our old minds, and ideas, behind. The Common Knowledge Game must be seen for what it is, and its capacity to diminish our sense of self and other must be dealt with consciously. The CKG has become so inculcated into societal norms that we must break free from the herd effect, the mob mind, that would have us make self destructive choices while being carried by their rivers of ignorance and darkness.
When we finally see the complete matrix of the CKG within our own consciousness and awareness, we will no longer be unconsciously controlled by its often times imprisoning parameters. In the seeing of the matrix, is the liberation of the mind from its bondage to other people’s opinions, and freedom from our own wayward ideas, as well. To finally break free of the Common Knowledge Game and the Lemming Effect, is find our uncommon knowledge, where wonder, awe, love of each other, love of self, love of earth and all of its animals, and the desire to help alleviate all suffering in the world, spontaneously arises within consciousness itself, and finally guides us to our own unique promised land. We finally can leave the world of our pseudo knowns, to explore the real world where newness, love, and truth’s unfolding goodness predominates.
Repetitive?
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