hmichellerose on Nostr: Things grow and change slowly, bit by bit, and often at the edges. This applies to ...

Things grow and change slowly, bit by bit, and often at the edges. This applies to all sorts of things, to neighborhoods, to fungus, and to cultural shifts.

I’m obsessed with the egregore or the Jungian collective unconscious. Are you familiar with these concepts? This is essentially the concept of a shared culture, a shared set of values that are so ingrained that they are unconscious and that combines together to nearly have a life of it’s own. It’s an incredibly powerful force.

But these powerful forces do change and evolve. And it changes bit by bit every day it the tiny things that you and I do. The jokes we laugh at, and the ones we scoff at. The subtle assumptions in the phrases we use. The graphic tee that we did or didn’t wear.

As a collective unconscious is just a shared set of beliefs and assumptions about the world, it changes when the people in that community change. When you or I change our minds and behavior the egregore is slightly altered, and a change can build and build and then tip dramatically.

We like to think that we are going to change the world dramatically by creating some new invention, or starting some new business, or electing some new politician, but we really don’t have much control at all on a large scale. And nearly always, the most effective thing we can do to improve the world is just to make sure our little corner of it has a healthy and moral culture.