Big Brother Isn't Just Watching Anymore (He’s Inside of Your Head!)

Happy New Year everyone, 2008 is over and that means it’s time for the 2009 Weird Science awards as voted by we the people on the msn.com science and technology page. The top vote getter was the discovery of a 2,700 year old marijuana stash in the grave of an ancient Chinese shaman, a result which says more about the weirdness of the voters than the science. Other top vote getters in the silly category were a beer drinking tree shrew (notice a theme here?), a four eared cat and a see through fish created by selective breeding.

Then there was the discovery that sounded more scary than weird; “Japanese researchers have reproduced images of things people were looking at by analyzing brain scans, opening the way for people to communicate directly from their mind.” Volunteers were hooked up to a medical brain scanner and then shown black and white images. The results of the scans were analyzed by software that was able to produce replicas of the images the volunteers were seeing. Check out the story here: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28286263/

Although the Big Brother mind reading scenario created by this technology might seem scary, the philosophical implications are intriguing. Is it possible that mind, thought and consciousness might actually be reducible to brain chemistry? If a machine can accurately capture and reproduce something that is being processed by human consciousness, what might that do to our whole concept of consciousness? Maybe it’s not so mysterious and special after all.

Research such as this is subject to peer review and it will be most interesting to see if the results hold up under scrutiny. Assuming they do and brain scanning becomes better able to detect what is going on within an individual mind, it will raise some major legal, theological and ethical questions. Is the Unity Movement prepared to address and weigh in on these questions? Better yet, why not lead the way?

It will require us to refine and perhaps redefine concepts like soul, consciousness itself and the whole notion of what it really means to be human. Little things like that. The world is changing rapidly and the major cause is our technology. It isn’t going away so we need to get going and find ways to make sure our teachings remain relevant in the midst of this kind of change. Reality marches on and we can either run away from it or embrace it. On this issue, I’m with Byron Katie, author of “Loving What Is” who said that when you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.