What is collectivistic consciousness?
Asked by
Sneki95 (
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August 20th, 2016
I am studying for an exam and I ran into a term “collectivistic consciousness” (my own translation. I admit my mistake if it’s grammatically incorrect). I tried to find it on Google (even in the original) and I got nothing. I did find something about collectivism vs individualism, but it all seems so vague. I find it hard to grasp.
Can anyone explain what exactly is it? How does it work? How does a collectivistic person think? What is important, and what is not? Can anyone describe it?
How am I supposed to describe it in a simplest way, in a few words, if asked? (I’m trying to avoid “sounding like a textbook” and trying to explain it in a simple way, so even someone completely ignorant on the subject may understand it. )
Btw, the exam is in folk literature, and “collectivistic consciousness” is listed as one of the social factors that influence birth and development of oral/folk literature…Just in case it may help someone.
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6 Answers
The correct term is collective consciousness. When I googled it, I got lots of entries. Wikipedia has a nice description. Let us know if you need further help.
Collective consciousness, as relates to folk literature, might be described in terms of why everyone knows what you’re talking about when you say, “The suspect left a trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to his hideout”, and why no one thinks he was actually breaking off bits of brioche.
It’s referring to the stories and poems we grow up with in our respective culture, and how we might refer back to them – almost without thinking – to relate to one another through those stories.
See Star Trek: The Next Generation episode: Darmok.
”The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
”May the force be with you. Or not.”
Here(Star_Trek)#Borg_Collective @Seek. From one of the links in the article @LostInParadise posted. Thought you’d like it!
I’m well familiar with the Borg Collective, and the concept of collective consciousness in Science Fiction. It’s not relevant to the concept of collective consciousness in reality, especially as regards folk literature.
However, This might be more what he’s looking for.
It’s the collective unconscious, not the “collective conscious.” And the collective unconscious refers to shared archetypal symbols which remain consistent from person to person and culture to culture all through history even when they’re separated by time and distance. Where these symbols reside and originate is a matter for debate and discussion depending on the degree of materialism to which one adheres, with hypotheses ranging from being built into the structure of the human brain’s neural net at birth to being encoded into inherited RNA through “racial memory” to residing in a universal overmind such as Sheldrake’s morphic field, the Hindu Ataman, or Eckhart’s divine godhead.
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