Exploring the Social Imagination

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Collective Consciousness is the Social Imagination!



Can there be or is there a science (study/investigation) of consciousness? Many say no because consciousness is subjective; but I say there is no consciousness without others to be engaged with on both a subjective and objective level of social involvement/interaction; and that cause consciousness in the first place, a social imagination is a collective consciousness. Therefore, there can exist the science of consciousness because it can be observed as the social imagination = a collection of persons/places and things in a place and time. 

Even so, what they miss is exactly what everyone else misses - social imagination - collective conscious which is brought about through collective agreement as that is what gives us what we think and or imagine as real - our agreement is our reality. Yes, that is where true consciousness exists just as Charles H. Cooley imagined and stated that only in the collective mind can we experience who we are and are not; and in that sense we can imagine and agree that there is a science for consciousness... Social Psychology.  

But still there must be a truly objective reality that we can and must agree exists in the first place... agree on in the collective conscious; otherwise there is nothing to agree on and there is no collective and no reality. It somehow feels like a catch 22 or chicken before the egg mind exercise. 
 
Nonetheless, there has to be...even if our collective conscious agreement reality is only of the simplest of agreement for even in there is a true embedded reality. There can be science of collective consciousness because it has the same problems that 'anyone' conscious does.. it is subjective and yet objectively it knows that it is and so is everyone else otherwise it would not be. 

In that kind of investigation, you may be able to follow a trail that shows how one and or another arrived at what they think/believe as in agree on but that is not really contained enough to say be able to come up with a scientific objective view of consciousness without first agreeing upon absolutes or the absolute in any one given moment of time and space.

Such an objective reality exists to a certain degree of agreement reality within our let's say fixed situation /condition here and now. The sun is a star and for us here and now such a fact has not been changed.  In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God ~ John 1:1. So what is truly objective? Only that we have agreed the sun is a star. Do we really understand objectively what the sun truly is? No. Nor can we in this fallen condition really understand what it is any why and that objectively there is and has to be an objective truth - the Creator... because of Him, we are: we live, move and have our being ~ Acts 17:28.

We can objectively agree that man is not the designer of himself or of his agreement reality. Why? Because, we cannot subjectively know anything in an entirety, not even the sun. So, there must be someone or something collectively bigger than our collective agreement reality. That omnipresent being why the reason why we can come to agreement; for He alone holds all things together [COL 1:17] and allows us to agree/disagree in the first place. 

And, there is disagreement but not as much as there is agreement. And, there is agreement to disagree. Try programming that into a computer Ai.

2 comments :

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  2. There are those who argue that the real world is that which we see, touch and or relate to physically which leaves or provides us only an impression of a mental and spiritual life. That cannot be true because what we have we experience 'agreement reality'. Though we experience the world first and foremost in a 'physical' way, it does not mean anything to us until we agree on what that is. So, as Cooley argued, our entire reality is a social reality, a spiritual reality too. In that social reality which is our 'spirituality' as again pointing Cooley, we discover who we are and are not. We agree on what is being in a common among us existence and that makes up who we are and are not... that is what truly matters. In that kind of agreement, we also and constantly seek to conclude and define a higher authority that approves of our 'common among us'. It provides us with justification to move forward in that experience and to sustain it.

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