Mr. David McCabe makes an interesting point that I would like to expicate here that heads in a completely different yet not unrelated direction. A broad and expansive view of the process he suggests is necessary and inevitable to making progress. Does it relate to consciousness?
I believe so. Let me quote David first:
"Whether the situation is someone with epilepsy de-sheltering him/herself or a gay person coming out, "going public" could have an effect not only on how you deal with things but also on how others deal. I think the analogy holds to the extent that there's strength in numbers and that effects can be cumulative - i.e., positive social outcomes can result from desensitization/education of the public via exposure to the stigmatized group."
It's this cumulative effect that I want to concern myself and this blog with. The cumulative consciousness. The beauty of our present world is that we have a place to access that opens other worlds to us. It is not just an exposure or desensitization to a "sitgmatized group", but more importantly the ease of education towards a such a group, and likewise many other groups, though all groups are in some way stigmatized by the existence of others. It provides an equal and inequal definition of the said group. The internet age has allowed us to immerse ourselves safely in the waters that comprise any given pool of people thanks to its inherent anonymity (on a surface level that is), and in essence lift or fully define any associated stigmas so as to deconstruct, or perhaps simplify them. This level of exposure and the sheer numbers of attainable detail in the self-education of any given stigmatized group is akin to a metaphoric mass consciousness engaging itself with the concerns of its world.
This is big. This is huge. Humongous. Gargantuan.
It is the speed and height of articualtion with which an "I" in the process of a collective mind, an analysis of any given who, or Other that is also I, which compels me to restate the immense significance the internet has on our age and equally creates and defines our age. It assists the potential of emergence in approching exponentionality. It is not a singular aperture, but a conglommeration of apertures that constructs the opening, much like an eye, literally AND figuratively, to the collection of the mass en masse.
So what does this do? It reappropriates the conception of any given group, as well as the way we construct and place groups into systems of difference. It recognizes a system of difference is necessary to the definition of the group, however is short sighted without regard to the similarties it shares not only to other groups but with being a group. When the collective consciousness recognizes this, interprets it, and reapproriates this, the potentiality of positivity increases, along with anarchy in its true sense. It begins to dispel the constructs that self important and appointed "I"s have on other "I"s and thus onto the "Others" they do not recognize as the self same and all inclusive I, the collective consciousness. And it works equally for the subordained, subordinated and subalterned. The process is approching a unified accessibility.
It is as a good friend of mine once postulated: "If you want a world changed for the better, you simply have but to write a letter to all as to why it must. Where this hopeful idea fails is in the dissemination of your particular letter, which must be a process different from the reiteration of universal concepts, themes, or familiarities: a process of universal contact."
I can reply now, now that the work has become easier, important and reliant (rather than those same 2 words with the prefix of self), my friend, "the times, they are a-changin'."