How The Collective Unconscious Works
There was once a groups of macaques monkeys being studied by scientists on the island of Koshima. One day, one of the monkeys decided to wash its food before eating it. The habit spread, one by one, to the rest of the population. When the hundredth monkey began to wash it’s food, the new behaviour was adopted instantaneously by all the other colonies of macaques monkeys in all the surrounding islands, some as far away as five hundred kilometres. This is called the hundredth monkey effect, and is used as a way to illustrate how, when a certain number of people begin to do something new, the habit spreads through the collective unconscious to all of us.
Could it really be that we are all connected by an invisible and uniting force? The answer, it seems, is yes. While Carl Jung’s idea was that there is a shared set of experiences, often inherited, that connect us all, which he called the collective unconscious, this has been expanded to include an almost mystical thread that links all human beings.
The collective unconscious works on the principle of the tipping point. When enough people behave in a certain way, there is a point when the line on the graph begins to shoot straight up – it is now part of ‘normal’ behaviour. Recycling, Twitter, fashion – all reach a tipping point that create an avalanche of awareness. We call it going viral, but there is more to it than just seeing it happen and mimicking the behaviour.
Psychological experiments show that it is easier for human beings to learn something that has already been learned by someone else – even if they have never met. It is far, far easier for human beings to do something that they already know has been achieved, even if they have never seen it. It took human beings thousands of years for someone to run the first Four Minute Mile. After that, it was achieved almost on a daily basis.
The steam engine was invented by four separate people, in four separate parts of the world, at the same time. None of these people knew any of the other three. This pattern has repeated itself with almost all of the major inventions of the last four hundred years. Anecdotally, it seems that there comes a time in the evolution of the species when a great leap forward must be made, and it does not happen in isolation. Around ninety percent of us have either been able to make someone turn around just be staring at the back of their head, or had this happen to us. It is so common, and so well documented in scientific studies, that we take it for granted as part of the human experience.
Yet the huge implications of this are often ignored. What this ordinary experience tells us is that there is a telepathic bond between human beings, even when they have never met before. No, it’s not anything else – remember, this has been studied so many times that all other variables have been eliminated. If you can let someone know you are looking at them with the power of your mind, what else can you tell them? What else can they tell you? Are we able to share our knowledge, and our understanding of the world? Imagine if you were able to absorb all of the skills and experiences of the other six billion people you share your world with right now?
What changes could you make? Could you be the hundredth monkey? Renting apartments in Lisbon doesn’t call for you to change the world – just a few clicks will get you there.
