positive thinking

I use the term zeitgeist a lot. It has a particular resonance to me.

It is attributed to Georg Hegel but he did not actually use is. He talked of ‘the spirit of the time.’ Georg Hegel said that “no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit.”

I like that. For I am a child of the sixties. I grew in its energising atmosphere, ‘can do’ spirit and sense of adventure and change. The sixties for me was a time that was incredibly positive, creative and transforming. We chucked out the old values, discarded the establishment and tried to make our own culture and rules. It was liberal and liberating.

It is probably true that we are all stuck in the era we grew up in.

However, that is not quite what I mean when I use the term zeitgeist. I see it as something more. I am an antitheist. I believe all religion is created out of the minds of men and is used for power by the State and individuals. I have no belief in god or afterlives. Yet I do believe there are mysteries and unknown phenomena. The zeitgeist is one of those.

Somehow I think our minds are interconnected. We pool our mental resources into one common ‘mind’.

I am not talking about some crackpot telepathy here. I am not talking Science Fiction. I do not think it is either substantial or even spiritual. It is ethereal and yet it works.

The pooled collective of our consciousness creates the ‘vibe’ of the era. It also operates subtly to synchronise our thoughts.

I do not think it is merely chance that such synchronicity occurs. Simultaneously farming developed in China, India and the Middle East, likewise writing. When Darwin was working on his theory of evolution, at precisely the same time Alfred Wallace was doing the same thing. When Fleming was discovering penicillin there were simultaneous work going on elsewhere, likewise with DNA. Science is littered with people in different parts of the world coming up with the same idea at the same time.

When I was at college, rooming with a close friend, we rang each other up to tell each other about a great book we were reading only to find we were both reading the same book.

For me the zeitgeist is probably a scientifically provable mental emanation, weak but profound. I predict it will be discovered in the future. It connects us all. We contribute to it. Our positive thoughts can create the ‘vibe’ of the present. It is powerful stuff.

Even if it is not true I believe the zeitgeist exists. We can influence the people around us, create a positive atmosphere and improve the world; we can create the spirit of our time. We all count. We all contribute.