Sermon Three

This sermon is all about transcendance, and how the Web can help us attain it. Just seeing the word 'transcendence' will usually get people thinking about some kind of esoteric mysticism, whereby the physical state is abandoned in favor of some spiritual ideal. That's not exactly what we're talking about here, though we won't rule anything out. What we're more interested in the here-and-NOW is transcendance over physical barriers and boundaries to accomplish a realistic ideal in the physical world.

Until very, very recently, human history has been determined primarily by global geography. Cultures could only impact one another through direct physical contact, whether via individuals or whole groups, peacefully or through force. Changes were limited by the ability of one idea to travel somewhere else, the time it takes to get there, and how well it manages to break through the resistance that prevents change. For cultures that haven't experienced a major upheaval in some time, this buildup of resistance could be very, very strong.

Even in cultures where things change at a more rapid pace, the resistance against these changes can be pretty strong at the social level, and within each individual. Change can be scary to people, especially for those who perceive most of the changes they've seen as leading somewhere worse than where things were before. Insecurity breeds fear, and at the worst extreme, the threat of the unknown can throw the fearful into a panic or rage. We've probably all seen it happen, whether in our own lives or through observing others.

Start looking through the history of human cultures, and you'll be able to see the grand cycle of a society encountering change, resisting change according to how strange or foreign it seems, and eventually either accepting the change or forcefully crusing it... or being crushed by it. Though there have been some monumental periods of upheaval, in the grand scheme of things, things plodded along at pretty much a manageable pace... until now.

Into the great, turning wheels of history, the Web has thrown a monkeywrench. Experiencing foreign cultures and ideas is no longer the sole province of the noble or scholarly set. Everyone can log on and poke around what other cultures have to offer, so long as they can find information in a language they can read. There are even some websites that will translate many languages for you, giving you just enough to figure out at least some of what they're trying to say. Distance is no barrier anymore, and even language doesn't have to be an iron door.

The Web also provides a new forum through which you can connect with others in your own country or community. Most of the so-called industrialized world have moved away from the tradition of people regularly meeting with their neighbors in marketplaces and city centers, which has created artificial barriers even between neighbors. On the internet, however, info can be freely available regardless of our schedules or locations, allowing us to connect with one another in ways that can still be worked into our lives.

Thanks to the Web, people are now free to share ideas and experiences in ways they may never have been open to. We can organize ourselves in ways that aren't limited by where we were born or how we were rased; all we have to do is open our minds and connect. If you'll pardon the purple imagery, the whole world is now our oyster, and it opens up to freely give the pearl of knowledge and wisdom to whoever is ready and willing to take it. That's transcendance if ever I saw it, and I want the whole world to experience that opportunity.

In a nutshell, I want each and every human being to have the chance to connect with and learn from each and every other human being, if that's what they want. I want to bring the extraordinary and vast possibilities of the internet into the everyday experience of each individual who is even remotely open to the prospect of self-expansion through the mediation of technology. I want true freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom to grow for everyone, limited only by the few self-restraints needed to make sure we don't create more harm than good.

Okay, now that I've painted that idealistic picture, I want to bring it back, down from the realm of ideals and here to the ground where we can actually do something meaningful with it. I obviously adore philosophy and speculation, but I also recognize that, as fun and enlightening it all can be, it can't make a lasting difference if nobody can actually use it in their real lives. As much as I'd love for everyone to connect and transcend, there are several reasons why this may take some time.

First of all, thanks to the resistance to change mentioned above, I recognize that not everyone is ready and/or willing to get out into the Web to potentially shake apart and rebuild the very foundations of their own world. I know I'm not always ready, and I love that sort of thing. However, just being on the Web makes so many new and different ideas seem nearby, and eventually familiar, giving us that much more of an opening for change. The more we share our ideas online, the more new ideas are given the chance to evolve within us.

Secondly, there's still a huge chunk of the human population who can't connect to the Web. For some it's a simple matter of never having been introduced to it, and therefore they just don't know how. For too many others, it's a matter of time or finances; they couldn't afford to get the tools and use them even if they wanted to. This is one reason it's so important to us that the Web be made accessible, and kept that way.

Finally, there's some serious forces entrenched that oppose the very idea of so many changes the Web can help us make within ourselves and our communities. This isn't always due to greed or malice, sometimes it's just the natural resistance of a long-standing pattern against a pattern that's newly emerging. As you can see with the idea of a perfect vibratto note shattering a glass, the stronger pattern will always win out, regardless of age or merit.

Despite these obstacles, the transcendant possibilities of the Web can still win out, but it may take some serious efforts by those of us who are interested in its victory. We're going to have to find a way to both make the Web more accessible to a wider range of people, and we're going to have to do it in a way that makes these people want to access it. We can't just transcend our own barriers, we're going to have to figure out how to help others break through those barriers, too.

In many ancient cultures they had a separate class of people who would use physical rituals or substances to dissolve the physical boundaries that held the rest of them back. The shaman would then go out into this 'other world' that existed outside 'real life', and learn whatever they could in this realm beyond traditional barriers. They would then have to come back to the realm of the everyday and communicate what they learned in a way that made a tangible difference for the rest of their society. They were looked to as healers and leaders, and they had to actually produce meaningful changes for people to be recognized as shaman.

The digital age doesn't really have a formal class of people who are separated out and looked to as a sacredly superhuman, but isolated group whose purpose it is to travel the otherworld and bring back miracles to be used by the rest of us. We have programmers and hackers and the like, but this really isn't the same thing, and I think that's good. The modern technoshaman really is just a human being who's stepped through into another world and learned how to communicate concrete insights in a tangible way that benefits others. It's important to recognize that, so people realize that they can learn to do the same thing for themselves, in their own way, without any special powers.

Given that it's hard work to explore and build the Web in such a way as to convert broad concepts and ideas into pieces that are bite-sized enough for the majority, people may question why anyone would want to go to all that effort. The answer is, quite simply, Love.

What's love got to do with it? Everything, and I'll tell you why. Love has been succinctly described as when another's happiness is integral to your own. My definition is even shorter: shared resonance. There's an extensive discussion of the idea of shared resonance as it relates to the natural world that I highly recommend you search out and explore, but how I'm using it here is pretty simple. The more we share important ideas with other people, and the more those ideas resonate within each of us, the stronger the resonance gets. Add more resonating people, and this resonance gets stronger.

If you're wondering where I'm going with this, just think back to what I said about the singer and the shattered glass. We have a great thing here with the Web, but if we're going to break through the obstacles, we're going to have to make our pattern stronger than those that oppose it. It'll take a harmonic convergence of sorts, and it may not happen overnight, but it can happen. We just have to take it step by step, each of us in our own way.

It really will help if you have love, or even just compassion, for your fellow human being, but all it really takes to get started is the recognition that we all share this planet. Patterns that are harmful will eventually harm you too, if they're allowed to persist, so it's in your own best interest to find the better pattern and help that spread for everyone. Maybe, as time goes on, you'll find enough in other people with which to resonate that you'll find that, on the whole, they're not so bad.

Enjoy!