Since the early 90s the push has been to create a web of information that allows for the free flow of information and the potential to access it from all places of our society. The home computer started the process and has generated an avalanche of access, technologies and ways to keep humanity involved and invested in a world created out of light and the ability to store and send information. Games. Email. Texts. Digital photography. Blogs. Vlogs. Social media. The list goes on and on. We created a virtual world… a dream time of sorts where the real, solid, viseral are blurred with the elusive identities of self, belonging, architectural archetypes of self and society’s ability to navigate and regulate a landscape that doesn’t really exhist without a power cord.
The self became an avatar into this world. In techniques of a shamanic sort: entrainment, curiosity, bridging worlds, and creating control and magic in mysterious worlds. We became the dream. Wizards. Warriors. Empowered Goddesses. We could be the perfect size. The perfect person to master this world. We were no longer just the dreamers. We became trapped in the nightmare of a technical cosmology that morphed and changed with out warnings. Upgraded and tweaked to improve. Abandoned plots. Cryptically mysterious and maddening… Autocorrect and all the disorienting stuff that disturbs the sleeping mind and soul.
The anchoring points of friendships and families slowly devolved to images on screens and texts. Dispersing the physical world far and wide. Held together by these threads of a web that grows strangely long and meandering. The delusion of connections and the reality of distance and loneliness.
We trade true intimacy for a public forum of opinions and seeks a tribe of like minded in a world where nothing can seem sure or real.
This dream world tells us to trust it. Their are people working to improve the experience. Make it easier to connect. These are hollow words for those who are hanging on the edge of how to navigate being in both worlds.
To brand or not to brand?… That is the question….
I started my training as a shaman in at the beginning of the technological revolution. I have been fascinated and critical of it. I find it is useful, useless, efficient and maddeningly time consuming. I also see how these webs of information poison the very fabric of our humanity… and in the same breath I see how it has connected and changed in some very good ways the understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
The current situation of the world is exploiting the breaks and fragility of this web. We are at a pivotal point in how we want to live together on this planet. We hopefully can see the flaws of where we have been and how we have weaken our lives, this society and perhaps fashion a new kind of web that is more about the real vitality and virtues of our humanity.
Shaman @ Large 