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C.W. Howell's avatar

Wasn't expecting a Teilhard appearance!

My interest was especially piqued by this concluding comment: "those feelings of outrage...could not be yours at all. Rather, they might just be a glimpse of something larger and darker passing like a giant out of sight."

To push this in an altogether mystical and non-scientific direction, it reminds me of way religions understand evil influence from spirits. It's hard not to think this way when you see otherwise reasonable people (self-professed pacifists for instance) get on twitter and start frothing at the mouth for the blood of their enemies. Twitter feels like the Pandæmonium in Paradise Lost--all the devils gather for a council in their instantaneous city, built under an hour, and now crowded with voices all clamoring for violence, all taken in by powerful rhetoric and the unleashing of passions.

I feel like this article is kind of hinting at this by using "egregore." When faced with such madness we spiritual language feels like the only way we can describe it adequately, even when pursuing a scientific investigation.

Great work as always.

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Graham Cunningham's avatar

That "humans were never rational to begin with, and for most of human history social mobs ruled and individuals cowered before them."....is the reality here.

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