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What is the power behind a shared experience?
In my Bioelectricity class this week, We learned that it is the low resistance pathways between the billions of myocardial cells in the heart that allow this amazing organ to beat in synchrony. We also learned that in a particular study, one subject's EKG could be measured on another person's EEG simply through touch (http://www.reiki.org/Download/electricity_of_touch1.pdf). It's incredible to think that a signal we are not consciously aware of can have a measurable impact on another person's mind and even heart.
Thinking more broadly: Who hasn't felt an urge to yawn within a few minutes of being in the presence of other yawning people? Or burst out laughing over an absurd happening that might not really have been funny? We encounter these types of shared experiences throughout our everyday lives.
Low resistance enables heart cells work together in synchrony. How can we
as species, work together taking advantage of our connected world?
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George Kong 30+
In lifelong relationships, we share so many experiences over a span of such a period of time, that the makeup of our brains... begin to mirror each other in some profound ways. As though our essence flows into each other - beyond the vessel of the cells that make up the body and mind of an individual.
Even without direct contact, I share many experiences with my fellow humans. There is a regularity and rhythm to our universe, our specific temporal location that is embedded within the fabric of all our lives. This is simultaneously mundane and profound - language, culture, human emotions, the repeating structures of families, friends, societies.
At many levels we are truly connected to each other - each sharing much more similarity than dissimilarity. The world would be a better place if we could recognize and embrace that simple fact.
Andrew Leader 50+
Now suppose there were some way to take those projections and read them from someone's mind. Each person's view of me is like a picture from another angle. What makes any one person's angle more valid than another? What makes my own conception of me more important than anyone else's? Is the me in my mind somehow innately more me than the me in their mind? After all, the nature of these different "me's" is ultimately the same: it is the projection of this entity onto a conscious and subconscious. How many times have you been confronted with an experience in which you see that someone else knows you better than you do yourself?
I am at once an entity and a perception of that entity. As a somewhat sentient creature, I invoke Descartes here: cogito ergo sum. By this tenet, I argue that the perception of myself outweighs the reality of being myself. I could depart with these hands, these legs, this torso, this face, and my identity would remain so long as I can perceive and be capable of self-awareness. But then again, what makes my perception of myself superior to the perception of me by others?
I'm not religious, so I'm always surprised when I find myself quoting the Bible. I heard "Esto Les Digo" by Kinley Lange in Spanish before I did in English, and I didn't have any idea it was biblical. Some text from the song:
"Donde dos o tres, se reunen en mi nombre, alli estoy yo en medio de ellos."
English:
"Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I, in the midst of them."
barbara ann spencer
Leonardo Guedes 500+