Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Hive mind?
TinPenguin:
--- Quote from: LTK on 18 Feb 2012, 03:50 ---
--- Quote from: TinPenguin on 17 Feb 2012, 17:27 ---Art.
--- End quote ---
Why would humans connected to a hive mind suddenly stop producing art? Being connected to other people's thoughts doesn't immediately make you an unfeeling automaton. People's desires and impulses remain the same, they can just be shared much more easily.
--- End quote ---
And who is your audience? Who is there to appreciate your artwork, when they were all there along the making process with you?
Art is expression, a manifestation of what cannot be explained otherwise. With connected minds, you could just convey your exact feelings without the middle man. Art would simply become a transmission of impulses, no more elegant than a radio wave. Perhaps people would still make art for old time's sake. But you asked what would be worse. And art is something that would suffer for the lack of individuality. How many of our species' greatest artworks have been made in solitude? Or because of solitude?
Carl-E:
Van Gogh springs to mind. If others understood how he felt, there would be no need to express it.
duskirises:
Here's a thought that came to me: imagine being an attractive celebrity, it's one thing to know that fangirls/boys think of you as very attractive and fantasize over you, it's another altogether to experience their fantasies. Ugh.
Here's another thought, what happens if you bring mentally unstable people into the hive mind? I'd assume people who are already crazy wouldn't be allowed into the hive but what if someone who is already in goes insane. How would that effect other people in the hive?
LTK:
--- Quote from: TinPenguin on 19 Feb 2012, 03:04 ---And who is your audience? Who is there to appreciate your artwork, when they were all there along the making process with you?
Art is expression, a manifestation of what cannot be explained otherwise. With connected minds, you could just convey your exact feelings without the middle man. Art would simply become a transmission of impulses, no more elegant than a radio wave. Perhaps people would still make art for old time's sake. But you asked what would be worse. And art is something that would suffer for the lack of individuality. How many of our species' greatest artworks have been made in solitude? Or because of solitude?
--- End quote ---
I see. I agree with you that a collective consciousness makes some forms of art (but not all of them! think literature) redundant. I disagree that this somehow constitutes a fundamental loss of culture. Consider how a poet tries to communicate his feelings through a medium that attempts to use words in a way that's beyond their dictionary definition. Then a layman takes a look at their poetry and says "That's just a bunch of nonsense." While sharing your thoughts in a collective consciousness can be accessible to anyone. How much is the physical manifestation of art worth to you if it excludes the vast majority of the population?
--- Quote from: duskirises on 19 Feb 2012, 07:27 ---Here's another thought, what happens if you bring mentally unstable people into the hive mind? I'd assume people who are already crazy wouldn't be allowed into the hive but what if someone who is already in goes insane. How would that effect other people in the hive?
--- End quote ---
Interesting point. There's a psychopathological phenomenon called folie à deux (folly of two), where a delusional person is able to involve another, normally healthy person in believing in their delusions, or possibly even two delusional people strengthening each other's delusions. This seems like a very real risk in a collective consciousness. Of course, we may already be dealing with the problem, in the form of religion...
Carl-E:
Oddly enough, the hive may work to correct mental instability ("your hallucinations aren't really there, here, see it through our eyes"). Delusions are normally self-feeding, they come from being separated from "normal" reactions in some way. If there's a loss of self, would there be anything to feed a delusion?
On the other hand, would common delusions (grandeur, for example) encompass the hive? "Hey, we really are great!"
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