Connected

  Hello, cyborgs. I, like you, interact with my phone first thing in the morning. Maybe it's shutting off an alarm, checking emails, or scrolling down your timeline on Twitter. Whatever the case may be, we are connected to both our devices and virtual constructions of ourselves. I am not tech savvy whatsoever so let's focus on the wonder which is social networking. 
  This is the first time in human history that we have all come to be so close, right? Well, Terence McKenna and Carlos Castaneda, amongst others I'm sure, would respectfully disagree.
  Here is a quote from the Illuminatus! Trilogy that I will share with you (and which is not written by McKenna or Castaneda; it just fits): "The female, the colored, the tribe, the earth- all that has no place in this world of white male technology."
  If you are familiar with McKenna's "Food of the Gods" and Castaneda's Don Juan trilogy you are aware of their first hand experiences with communication and connectivity via the shamanic use of hallucinogens. McKenna's collective consciousness theory, as explained in Food of the Gods, is similar to this thing we call the internet; it's just the "white male technology" version of its organic shamanic predecessor.
  We can delve deeply into talk of language and how it dictates the way we understand our world, thus the organic (tribal/shamanic) and man made ("white male") difference, but there are entire books dedicated to that, and, as a professor of mine once wrote on a paper proposal of mine: "This would be fine if you were writing a dissertation, not a 10 page research paper."
  What seems to be most important is that humans have found ways to share their conscious and unconscious experiences throughout history. We just have a thing for sharing information and experiences, whether that be on people's "walls" or via our third eye while tripping on mushrooms.
  Yes, it is true that we have increased our connectivity in a quantitative sense, with hundreds of online friends, but, and I hope you agree, the quality of our connections is nothing like what McKenna and Castaneda experienced. It isn't even close to what your parents had with face to face encounters and landlines. Remember those? 
  For further reading I suggest: Terence McKenna's "Food of the Gods", Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan trilogy, and Jeremy Narby's "The Cosmic Serpent."

Alex