As i see it, what is happening in the world today is that on the one hand there is an emphasis on superficiality, youth culture (the MTV generation) hedonism and consumerism etc, along with a return to traditional/conservative values (Feminism no longer appeals to young women), and also – perhaps as a reaction against a sense of insecurity) – the rise of neoconservativism in the west. Neoconservatism is also tied in with religious fundamentalism (all these things go together). And the current meme of a “clash of civilizations” (west vs islamic world) is actually a misconception; it is actually extremism/conservatism verses progressives in both the west and the moslem world (in this context, Wilber and Beck’s take on spiral dynamics seems to contain insights of value).

So we are living in a superficial, fearful society in which – at least in both America and here in Australia (where conservative political parties and agendas have likewise been very successful; maybe this will change in the future…) in the West, religion and traditional values are becoming increasingly prominent. The same is also happening in the Islamic World in the Middle East and 3rd World but much more so, with Islamic extremism (which oppresses progressive moslems – see the excellent Ray Harris essay on the Integral World website) and attacks on the west (as a result of clumsy neocon policies against them) fueling paranoia and xenophobia in the west Jung said somewhere that the division in the human psyche resulted in the Cold War as an external manifestation of that. In years past I used to wonder what would happen after the Soviet Block fell, if man’s psyche is still divided. Well, here’s the answer. It’s world affairs, but its synchronicity too.

I’ve rambled on a bit here, and drifted from the topic at hand, but my essential point is that talk of postmodernity and so on is pretty irrelevant, because this particular movement in philosophy, literature and art is not one of the driving forces in the world today.

So what we have the divided psyche (shadow and ego) and (once again!) a divided world Add to all this the information age (which has also made possible the P2P revolution; indeed given human informational interconnectivity, P2P is inevitable!), more on which in a moment, and the increasing environmental breakdown – with growth of environmental awareness, but probably still much too slow – and you have the state of the world today.

This brings us back to your vision of the present and future as the postmodern fragments coming together to create “the cosmic mash-up”, the P2P society

While agreeing with you re the growing power and empowerment of P2P, and that this is a very good thing, I actually see the result a bit differently. I see it not as a big mash-up (not sure if this is what you really mean), but as a very real emergence of a further level of organisation or complexity – rather like the “global brain” idea (i haven’t yet read Peter Russell’s book , but i have the impression this is what he is saying), the noosphere so to speak. This new level of organisation is emerging solely as a result of the information age. Or rather, that is able to be made much more possible through the information revolution. It is a whole new layer of evolution; like the transition from unicelluar to multicelluar organism, or from solitary bands of hominids to settled agricultural communities and then civilization. P2P provides the creativity that will make this emergence, or “singularity”, possible, it constitutes the building blocks or basic units of it.

Of course, we don’t see the whole – or we don’t see it very well – because we are still at the level of the individual “units”. Note that i am talking about the loss of individuality; this is why metaphors like multicellular organisms, global brains etc are misleading. As we know, P2P provides greater individuality and creativity, not less.

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