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The French social theorist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) used the term collective consciousness in his The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897), and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). In The Rules of Sociological Method this is explored in relation to his idea of social facts; social facts exist outside of any particular individual's consciousness but nonetheless impose themselves on individuals. Image File history File links Information_icon. ... This Manual of Style has the simple purpose of making things easy to read by following a consistent format — it is a style guide. ... Emile Durkheim. ... Suicide (from Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of willfully ending ones own life. ... In positivist sociology, social facts are the social structures and cultural norms and values that are external to, and coercive of, actors (Ritzer 2000:73). ...

According to Durkheim and Marx, individual desires are limitless and constrained only by external social forces. These and bounds constitute the collective consciousness, which is embodied in a culture's formal and informal norms and values. These are expressed in a variety of ways, ranging from codified rules and laws (eg, speed limits on the highway), to more informal rules that exist only in the heads of the culture that shares the collective (eg, it's polite to cover your mouth when you sneeze). These shared norms provide common ideological ground for members of a society, and ensure that members act in agreed-upon ways.

Various forms have been identified by other sociologists, going from solidarity attitudes and memes to extreme behaviors like groupthink or herd behavior. It is a way of describing how an entire community comes together to share similar values. Solidarity in sociology refers to the feeling or condition of unity based on common goals, interests, and sympathies among a groups members. ... It has been suggested that Memetic engineering be merged into this article or section. ... Groupthink describes a decision making process, where the group members go along with what they believe is the consensus. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Group behaviour. ...

The term 'Collective Consciousness' is also referred to in Sahaja Yoga as an outcome of meditation and self-realization. Sahaja Yoga (Sahaja meaning born with and Yoga meaning union) is a type of meditation, created by Nirmala Srivastava, also known as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, in 1970. ...

Consciousness especially implied as self-awareness occurs on the basis of complex nervous systems. This neuro - physiological phenomenon is realized in compound structures of the brain through complex cognitive and psychological processes. So it is relatively easier to present the concept of collective consciousness by analogy to the phenomenon of self- awareness of a person. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Self-consciousness. ... In animals, the brain, or encephalon (Greek for in the head), is the control center of the central nervous system. ... Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. ...

So, the simplified scheme of human psyche presented bellow will be useful. It tries to summarize the features of three known psychological theories.

Simple, educational scheme of human psyche

Fig. 1 [1] The scheme takes into account main Carl Gustav Jung's notions and basic concepts of Carl Rogers and Eric Berne's theories. The outline emphasizes main components of unconscious area of the memory. When the ability of a person to intimate contact with the partner is impaired, according to Eric Berne's theory, he is impelled to social contacts realized through so called games (manipulations). Scenarios of these games are established by the particular content of his Jungian "Shadow". The war is one of possible games of so called Berne's "third degree" of intensity. Jung a term used to explain how much fun one is having, or as a salutation or valediction. ... Carl Ransom Rogers (January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an influential American psychologist, who, along with Abraham Maslow, was the founder of the humanist approach to psychology. ... Eric Berne (May 10, 1910-July 15, 1970) was an American psychiatrist best known as the creator of Transactional analysis. ...

Collective consciousness arises on the basis of specific social structures analogous, in same sense, to the mentioned psychological notions. Taking into account those structures, the scheme of the society was proposed, which is useful to understand the basis of the collective consciousness.

Scheme of the society including components important for occurrence of the collective consciousness

Fig. 2. [2] The scheme of the society is formulated as analogy to the presented scheme of human psyche. The democratic kind of administration can occur only in specific historical and cultural circumstances. These necessary conditions consists on the possibility to integrate and equilibrate archetypes of : headman ( commander ), feminine influences and ethical rules of local religion. The autocratic, even dictatorship administration, which emulates the feudal patterns is analogous to persons, who utilize games ( manipulations) and are under predominant influences of their Shadows. Similar, however much more conscious are activities undertaken by capital owners. The existing mass-media promote preponderant pattern of the power ( administration) and are analogous to the Rogerian self concept, here in this case .. self - concept of the society. Young people interacting within an ethnically diverse society. ... For other uses, see Democracy (disambiguation). ... An archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned or emulated. ... The word feminine can refer to: The property of being biologically female Femininity, a traditionally female gender role The feminine grammatical gender The antonym of feminine is masculine. ...

Collective consciousness as phenomenon emerging by universal feature of increasing complexity

Revolving the development of the Universe, from philosophical ( systemic ) point of view, we should remark that the nature is characterized by growing level of complexity. The chain of more and more sophisticated systems is discerned { biochemical molecules, RNA, DNA, microbes, plants, animals, human beings with their self - awareness, societies }. There are no reason to assume that this chain is closed. It seems that complex systems continue to be more sophisticated and that become more complex on the basis of former levels of development. Collective consciousness is an entity, which needs the existence of people, organized in societal structures.

Are some mechanisms of collective consciousness based on quantum entanglements?

Some sociologists believe that some manifestations of collective consciousness are similar to behaviors of flush of birds or pack of wolfs. Biologists, competent also in physics, maintain that these observations can be explained by existence of so called quantum entanglements.

It seems probable that people acting synchronously and together during mass meetings, like religious invocations or ideologically rationalized manifestations and war battles become entangled by this kind of physical mechanisms.

Social observations on populations, which abruptly increase birth rate in time of threat for such ethnic group should be explained also by this kind of unconscious collective mechanisms.

See also

• Collective unconsciousness
• Georg Lukács' critique of Gustave Le Bon's crowd psychology and use of a "collective soul", notably through the concept of class consciousness)
• Abilene paradox
• Communal reinforcement
• Crowd psychology
• Group-serving bias
• Group polarization
• Hive mind
• Informational cascade
• Mob mentality
• Pack Journalism
• Peer pressure
• Social comparison theory
• Spiral of silence
• Haragei
• Herd instinct
• Herd behaviour
• Bandwagon effect
• Collective behavior
• Collective Effervescence
• Collective intelligence
• Crowd psychology
• Group behaviour
• Herd morality
• Mob rule
• Sheeple
• Simulated reality
• Keeping up with the Joneses

Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, and was originally coined by Carl Jung. ... Georg Lukács (April 13, 1885 – June 4, 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic in the tradition of Western Marxism. ... Gustave Le Bon (May 7, 1841 – December 13, 1931) was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist. ... Ordinary people typically can gain direct power by acting collectively. ... Class consciousness is a category of Marxist theory, referring to the self-awareness of a social class, its capacity to act in its own rational interests, or measuring the extent to which an individual is conscious of the historical tasks their class (or class allegiance) sets for them. ... The Abilene paradox is a paradox in which the limits of a particular situation force a group of people to act in a way that is directly the opposite of their actual preferences. ... Communal reinforcement is a social phenomenon in which a concept or idea is repeatedly asserted in a community, regardless of whether sufficient empirical evidence has been presented to support it. ... Ordinary people typically can gain direct power by acting collectively. ... Group-serving bias is identical to self-serving bias except that it takes place between groups rather than individuals, under which group members make dispositional attributions for their groups successes and situational attributions for group failures, and vice versa for outsider groups. ... Group polarization effects have been demonstrated to exaggerate the inclinations of group members after a discussion. ... A hive mind (sometimes spelled hivemind) is a form of collective consciousness strongly exhibiting traits of conformity and groupthink. ... Informational cascade is an economic theory of rational herding based on limited information by agents. ... A hive mind (sometimes spelled hivemind) is a form of collective consciousness strongly exhibiting traits of conformity and groupthink. ... Pack Journalism is an often derogatory term used to describe the tendency of news reporting to become homogeneous when a group of reporters covering the same topic are required to spend large amounts of time together. ... Peer pressure comprises a set of group dynamics whereby a group in which one feels comfortable may override personal habits, individual moral inhibitions or idiosyncratic desires to impose a group norm of attitudes and/or behaviors. ... Social comparison theory (Festinger 1954) is the idea that individuals learn about and assess themselves by comparison with other people. ... The spiral of silence is a political science and mass communication theory propounded by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. ... Haragei (Japanese: 腹芸, literally: belly art, or belly performance) is a Japanese word referring to the art of exuding ones personal energy, ki (Chinese qi) primarily from the hara, at base of the abdomen, three finger widths below and two finger widths behind the navel. ... The herding instinct in humans may have some connection with group behaviours in other animals The so-called herding instinct is a social tendency in humans to identify with and model many behaviors and beliefs after a larger group of individuals with whom they identify. ... Herd behaviour is the term used to describe situations in which the individuals of any particular group react coherently. ... The bandwagon effect is the observation that people often do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. ... Collective behavior is a specialized term in sociology. ... Collective Effervescence refers to the energy formed by a gathering of people as might be experienced at a sporting event, a carnival, or a riot. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Ordinary people typically can gain direct power by acting collectively. ... Group behaviour in sociology refers to the situations where large number of people in a given area behave simoultanesly in similar way and have a similar goal, but they individaully and without coordiantion. ... Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) (IPA: ) was a German philologist and philosopher. ... Ochlocracy (Greek: οχλοκρατια; Latin: ochlocratia) is government by mob or a disorganized mass of people. ... Sheeple is a term of disparagement, a portmanteau created by combining the words sheep and people; a reference to herd mentality. ... Simulated reality is the idea that reality could be simulated inside a computer to a degree indistinguishable from real reality. ... Look up keep up with the Joneses in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

External resources

• John Mann's Theory Of Collective Consciousness
• Concepts of Self in Social Construction Theory [3]
• Social Consciousness [4]
• Matti Pitkanen.: TGD inspired theory of consciousness. [5]
• The Internet Journal of World Health and Societal Politics (ISSN 1540- 269X )Mental Procedures Helping Search For Solution Of Societal Problems [6]
• Medical Science Monitor, Neurophysiology of the mental image 56k http://www.medscimonit.com/pub/vol_7/no_3/1786.pdf
• Nova Spivack: Minding The Planet [7]

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