In Reality Sandwich, John Lamb Lash poses an interesting question about the spiritual nature of our interconnected computer networks.

Let me first say that I feel the article errs by attempting to create a univocal understanding of Gnosticism, as a movement which did not reject the material cosmos (anti-cosmism), while I have encountered Gnostics (and practiced with them for a short while) who did just that. Gnosticism is a very broad array of conceptions and movements, it cannot be reduced to the cosmos-positive interpretation that John would like.

But now for the interesting question:

Is the noosphere a medium of simulation, or it is an organic outgrowth of nous, the living, co-evolving intelligence of the biosphere? We have yet to see a definition that satisfactorily addresses this question.

Here is our attempted reply:

– The noosphere is a human creation, not a creation of the living co-evolving intelligence of the biosphere, though of course human are part of and embedded in nature. Any autonomous natural intelligence (Gaia) , if it exists, exists separately from this noosphere and can only be indirectly expressed through human presence.

– The evolving human noosphere materializes itself in computer networks, and in the simulation which they render possible, which reflect our full and contradictory human nature. Note that these networks cannot be reduced to the noosphere, there are just one manifestion of it.

– However I do agree that such networks go beyond the individual and his relations, and are therefore also constituted by the relational networks, and the ‘collective fields’ that they create. (see below for more details)

I believe our friend John Heron said it much better:

“I take a fundamentally relational view of spirituality. I don’t believe that spirituality is about individualistic states of consciousness, however subtle, refined and elevated.

By “integral spirituality” I mean, at the very least, a spirituality that is manifest in full embodiment, in relationship and interconnectedness, in mutuality and sharing, in autonomous creativity, and in full access to multidimensional meanings.
By “global commons” I mean a worldwide space to which anyone on the planet has rights of access, and which is a worldwide forum for communication between everyone who claims their rights of access. The cyberspace of the internet is such a global commons.

Cyberspace itself is fully embodied in the dynamic relation between humans and the planetary network of computers; it is a space generated by interconectedness; it is premised on the full and unfettered mutuality of sharing information; it is an unlimited space for the expression of autonomous creativity; and its provides access for all to a vast range of multidimensional meanings.

It is in this sense that I call the internet, i.e. cyberspace, a global integral-spiritual commons. It has the properties and potential of an integral-spiritual space. The fact that such a space can be used for vulgar or corrupt purposes does not, in my view, detract from its inherent integral-spiritual status, in the same way that the spiritual status of free will is not in any way undermined by the abuse of free will. It is precisely that continuity of status, whatever we do with the gift, that sooner or later calls us to a liberating and creative use of the gift.”

I have tried to distinguish the individual/relational/collective conundrum in the following words :

“”This articulation of modernity, based on a autonomous self in a society which he himself creates through the social contract, has been changing in postmodernity. Simondon, a French philosopher of technology with an important posthumous following in the French-speaking world, has argued that what was typical for modernity was to ‘extract the individual dimension’ of every aspect of reality, of things/processes that are also always-already related . And what is needed to renew thought, he argued, was not to go back to premodern wholism, but to systematically build on the proposition that ‘everything is related’, while retaining the achievements of modern thought, i.e. the equally important centrality of individuality. Thus individuality then comes to be seen as constituted by relations , from relations.

This proposition, that the individual is now seen as always-already part of various social fields, as a singular composite being, no longer in need of socialization, but rather in need of individuation, seems to be one of the main achievements of what could be called ‘postmodern thought’. Atomistic individualism is rejected in favor of the view of a relational self , a new balance between individual agency and collective communion.

In my opinion, as a necessary complement and advance to postmodern thought, it is necessary to take a third step, i.e. not to be content with both a recognition of individuality, and its foundation in relationality, but to also recognize the level of the collective, i.e. the field in which the relationships occur.

If we only see relationships, we forget about the whole, which is society itself (and its sub-fields). Society is more than just the sum of its “relationship parts?. Society sets up a ‘protocol’, in which these relationships can occur, it forms the agents in their subjectivity, and consists of norms which enable or disable certain type of relationships. Thus we have agents, relationships, and fields. Finally, if we want to integrate the subjective element of human intentionality, it is necessary to introduce a fourth element: the object of the sociality.

Indeed, human agents never just ‘relate’ in the abstract, agents always relate around an object, in a concrete fashion. Swarming insects do not seem to have such an object, they just follow instructions and signals, without a view of the whole, but mammals do. For example, bands of wolves congregate around the object of the prey. It is the object that energizes the relationships, that mobilizes the action. Humans can have more abstract objects, that are located in a temporal future, as an object of desire. We perform the object in our minds, and activate ourselves to realize them individually or collectively. P2P projects organize themselves around such common project, and my own Peer to Peer theory is an attempt to create an object that can inspire social and political change.

In summary, for a comprehensive view of the collective, it is now customary to distinguish 1) the totality of relations; 2) the field in which these relations operate, up to the macro-field of society itself, which establishes the ‘protocol’ of what is possible and not; 3) the object of the relationship (?object-oriented sociality?), i.e. the pre-formed ideal which inspires the common action. That sociality is ‘object-oriented’ is an important antidote to any ‘flatland’, i.e. ‘merely objective’ network theory, on which many failed social networking experiments are based. This idea that the field of relations is the only important dimension of reality, while forgetting human intentionality . What we need is a subjective-objective approach to networks.

In conclusion, this turn to the collective that the emergence of peer to peer represent does not in any way present a loss of individuality, even of individualism. Rather it ‘transcends and includes’ individualism and collectivism in a new unity, which I would like to call ‘cooperative individualism’. The cooperativity is not necessarily intentional (i.e. the result of conscious altruism), but constitutive of our being, and the best applications of P2P, are based on this idea.”