<span>Global Consciousness, Global Mind, Global Brain</span>

Abstract

Two parallel streams of enquiry pertaining to Global Consciousness/Mind/Brain are converging. One stream of enquiry is establishing the emergence of this phenomenon as a logical outcome of cultural evolution, the penultimate stage in evolution that started with the big bang and along the arrow of time passed through the particulate, galactic, stellar, planetary, chemical and biological stages. The final upcoming stage being “ethical evolution”. All along adhering to and complying with the basic rules of selection for fitness and survival, in the narrow conventional sense. The stage of cultural evolution is of competition among memes, and selection for fitness of a set of them and the concurrent emergence of a metaphoric or figurative concept of Global Consciousness/Mind/Brain that is synthetic in nature, enabled by technological connectivity of the billions of humans in cyberspace, causing increasing collaboration and coordination on a variety of issues that have a bearing on the future of the species. The second stream of enquiry, not scientifically proven, and may never be, is premised on an integration of ancient philosophical speculations. This second stream seeks to establish an implicit and Apriori universal consciousness/mind/brain, the presence of a field that is strictly “information” with non-local communication between minds, and an evolutionary process that has always manifested the phenomena of sociality, connection and group altruism, but now more evident than ever because of the exponential increases in human connectivity on the planet. This paper will explore and assess these two propositions as fact or fiction and doing so put it in the context of the survival of the human species going forward.