When I overuse the word ‘entelechy,’ and go on and on about the Law of Nemesis or the Invisible Hand — am I stumbling upon ‘egregore’? Grasping towards noösphere? Or Herbert Spencer’s “super-organic evolution” or ‘the social organism’?

Collective mind?

It certainly feels it. But I don’t understand the concept of a collective mind. I think this is because my main view of mind is as purposive and not merely an emergent set of behaviors. But I do not see how a super-organic system like a social culture can exhibit purpose.

Which is why, when I focus on concepts like The Law of Nemesis, I keep coming back to something in Jung’s ’collective unconscious’ — which I see as an order that emerges from co-evolution of memes.

How it works and how purposive it could be seems murky in the extreme. There is something here but I don’t really understand it. I usually conceive of the Law of Nemesis, and similar processes, as forming and operating like price movements, with formed prices then hugely influencing human behavior. But how “as below, so above” might make sense to me is difficult to achieve.

Any ideas?

I note that those on the lower plain can only have trouble ascending to the higher plain. Ll we have are analogies. A few insights here and there. Perhaps a formula.

But if we have evidence for these higher-plane workings, dismissing the idea is probably hubristic.

And hubris in intellectuals is an ugly thing.

Right now the idea that my mind cannot wrap itself around the idea of a collective, emergent mind is hardly a shocking thing, and I probably shouldn’t worry about it. My usual fear is to think I understand something I do not.

Right now I should be humble, for I read a Psychology Today article a few days ago that I can make hardly any sense of. So there is that.

twv