POSTSCRIPT: PLUR1BUS

After publishing my last post, I started thinking "What would I do if I were Carol?" Well, since I'm not that far along the path of enlightenment, I would totally resist losing my self to the collective. Ego death is death, and I want no part of it if it's permanent. (I'd be open to a short stint if I get to meet robotic elves or visit another dimension.)

What would I do? Well, the answer seems obvious: I'd tell the collective to let everyone go or else I'll start yelling at them and keep them in a constant state of freezing and going haywire! (Okay, I haven't fully thought through how to keep that going 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but give me time.)

Will it work? I'm dying to find out!

How about a more serious prognostication? Here it is: The "virus" was developed by a civilization facing imminent self-destruction, and located countless light years from Earth. That civilization succeeded in collectivizing, but died off because, once collectivized, it basically lost its will to live, to go on, because of what can be put simply as the lack of companionship -- something no different than having a single individual live a life of total isolation and loneliness with little prospect of that ever changing. Perhaps it first went a little crazy, but then the flame of vitality flickered and eventually died. Individual reproduction ended. Maybe even a collective suicide took place.

But, before it died, in an effort to create "others," this originating civilization sent out the virus across the universe looking for other civilizations to infect and become its companions. The distances were so vast, and time needed for them to be received was so long, that civilizations who received the message were also left in utter isolation and loneliness. The civilization that sent it was a mere memory at that point.

Since then, this cycle has travelled the universe and destroyed countless technologically advanced civilizations through loneliness and isolation.

I think this is presaged by the collective’s obsession with the remaining non-absorbed humans.  It’s this dynamic (the need for others to help or relate to) that gives the collective purpose and meaning.  Eventually, those individuals will die and that meaning will die with them, although the collective may try to keep them alive as long as it can.