Waking Times: “We’re all connected.” It’s the ubiquitous mantra of new-agey types. Chances are if you’ve ever watched Oprah, were a fan of the TV show Lost, or have read just about anything I’ve written, you are very familiar with this concept. Along with its close cousin “everything happens for a reason,” it’s pretty much become a cliché that isn’t really given much thought. Yet, how exactly are we all connected? Sure, we’re all made of the same elements, live on the same planet, and are plugged into the same Internet, but the phrase usually refers to the idea that all of our minds are somehow connected, that our lives are intertwined, that actions taken by you, now, could somehow affect a struggling shoe salesman living in Uzbekistan. I think it’s about time we explored this concept and saved it from the nether regions of trite, hackneyed banality. After all, if the idea that “we’re all connected” is a given, why doesn’t anyone (with the possible exception of Oprah herself) really believe it?
Back in September, 2010, Wired magazine published a discussion between two of its tech writers, Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson about where ideas come from. Despite the stereotype of the solitary genius toiling away in his basement, the duo argued that great discoveries typically come not from individual minds but from the hive mind, aka, the collective consciousness. History shows that the most game-changing innovations including calculus, the electric battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio, and thousands more, were all uncovered simultaneously by different inventors who had no knowledge of one another. As Malcolm Gladwell brought up in a 2008 New Yorker article titled “In The Air,” this phenomenon of simultaneous discovery, innovation, and invention is extremely common. So much so, historians even have a term for it—“multiples.” It’s almost as if all these breakthroughs come from the same, unseen information source, and anyone who’s tuned into it, can have access..
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