For tens of thousands of years, we have struggled as a species, to exist, to progress and to evolve. Yet, we seem to be tied to one single limitation, the shortness of our existence.
We may not like to think about it, but a human life is so short. It may last, at most eighty, maybe a hundred years if you’re lucky. There are so many factors against us in terms of survival; disease, condition of our body and mind, genetics, environment, etc. The list is endless.
In our singular existence, we have a single mind. One which interacts with everything around it through the use of the five senses; sound, smell, touch, sight, and taste. If you really think about it, it is an extremely limited method of input. We can vaguely perceive time, or rather the results of the passage of time (objects aging, hair greying, etc.) however, we really only have those five senses to interpret our world around us. We spend our time in this life from the time we are born, taking in everything around us and in turn teaching what we have learned to others. Our growth as a species and society is something that is incredibly slow because of this process. Only with the advent of technology that allows us to share information instantly, has it become easier to learn, absorb and reach a higher potential than ever before in our history.
That being said, there was something unique about the way that we learned for millennia. We were born, we grew up and taught others what we knew through talking and direct interaction as well as writing. Now, more and more we are allowing technology to overcome person to person interactions. Our ability to transmit information to each other still remains sight, sound, and touch (so far I don’t know of a technology that lets us transmit via smell or taste). So we are still limited to learning things through our eyeballs, ears and communicating back through our fingertips (keyboard).
I pose a few questions in this advancing time. What if we could take things a step further? What if we had the ability to communicate, teach and relay information with each other instantly with our minds, rather than the limited inputs of our eyes, ears, and nose? Would it advance society more rapidly? Would we gain the ability to interact with each other yet retain that instant need to relay information?
A show recently came out on Amazon Prime called The Feed, which I hope to watch soon. It sort of follows the premise – in the future all of our minds are connected in a sort of ‘mental internet’. How would something like this change humanity?
There are many questions that can be raised with this concept, perhaps the most important being; Would we have privacy? Would we be able to (or need to) lie?
My biggest question of all of this is: Would our singular existence no longer be, or would our consciousness continue to live on after we die through the minds of the connected world?
I wasn’t sure what to say. I had never heard of old souls before. I asked him what he meant. To which he responded, “Old souls are someone that has clearly lived on this Earth much longer than others. You are able to do things with ease that other people cannot even understand. Also, you are able to relate to others in ways that you shouldn’t be able to.”