Evidence for a communal consciousness

Abstract

Recently described social network phenomena show that emotionally connected people come to share certain traits, including obesity, happiness, and loneliness. These do not appear to be mediated by face-to-face contact. Other examples of groups with a common connection that act in unison are mass hysteria, menstrual synchrony, and the ability of a group to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar. The animal kingdom abounds with examples of groups functioning as a single whole: fish school, birds flock, hoofed animals herd, ant and bee colonies work as a single organism. Try as they might, neuroscientists have been unable to find an anatomical seat of consciousness within the brain. C.G. Jung's realization of a collective unconscious began with an observation of a patient whose thoughts matched previous writings that the patient had never seen. The "emotional telepathy" of social network phenomena suggests a collective/communal consciousness as well.