Inactivity made Ethan sleepy and he began to doze as he held the newspaper and waited for Erwin to work things out. He wasn’t asleep. He still held the newspaper, but he’d look at the words, zone out, and come back and look at the same words again. Finally, he fell asleep all together. His head fell back and woke him. Erwin was standing silently beside him.
Ethan looked at Erwin. He wasn’t a big man. Maybe 5’6” and 140 pounds. In spite of not having much excess weight, he still had rounded features. There was nothing very sharp about him. A rounded nose held up his plastic framed glasses , and a rubber strap attached to the two ear pieces ensured they would never leave his head.
He was kind of hairy. The kind of hairy where if he didn’t fasten the top button of his shirt, tufts of his reddish brown chest hair would be sticking out. He also had a thick beard, but the same could not be said about his head of hair. His hairline was receding, and a little bald spot at the back was starting to show. All in all, Erwin managed the look of a person who had no idea what was going on at the best of times, and the fact that he was wearing a pair of flannel pajamas with prints of cowboys on horses doing all kinds of cowboy things, wouldn’t go far to convince you otherwise.
“Erwin,” Ethan said. “You haven’t told me about your father. Is he still in your life”?
“He left Mother and I when I was 9”.
“Gotcha,” Ethan replied. “Are you ready to get to work? Time’s a wastin”.
He sounded just like Mother. Erwin liked that about Ethan. He nodded but waited for direction from Ethan.
“Maybe we should start with your Passive Resistance file,” Ethan said. “You know the potential of the Collective Consciousness first showed itself during your times. The CounterCulture actually produced an alternative to the way the World was playing out, and eventually became part of the new reality. It’s an interesting time period for our historians in the New World. It represents a baseline Freedom. The degree of Freedom exercised during the CounterCulture showed the difference between having it and not having it. We learned from the CounterCulture, that degree of Freedom can never be surrendered.
The lesson proved worthy in the chaos leading up to 2030; the year of Enlightenment. We were starting to be controlled by technology that could shine a light on every single person on earth, and our beliefs were being threatened. We remembered how the public took to the streets during this time period and effected positive change regarding the war and civil rights. We used your example and adapted the way we used our technology to shine the light on those who would suppress us. We employed Direct Action, where we’d all agree on something, like boycotting a business run by an unscrupulous owner. We’d shut them down and the decisiveness and fallout of the outcome, sent fear through others we would be coming for next. This was when understanding our Collective Consciousness first started taking shape”.
“I’ll go get my file,” Erwin said, going into the third bedroom of his house, which stored his files and a few toys from childhood. In no time he was back with a box full of paper clippings.
They cleared the kitchen table and set up there. Erwin sat at the table, making order out of the clippings, while Ethan stood over him watching it come together.
“There,” Ethan said, pointing to a clipping on Satyagraha. This was what Gandhi called his Active Form of Civil Disobedience. It wasn’t passive at all. It was non-violent , but the intention was to expel Britain from India, which it did resoundingly, and brought two violent factions to do it.
Satyagraha comes out of the beliefs of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy. Thoreau’s message was non-violent civil disobedience by not participating in unjust rules. Tolstoy drew from Christ’s teachings of Non-Violence. Gandhi may have leaned more on Thoreau and developed a fairly intricate system of Direct Action. He called it Truth Force. Martin Luther King Jr adopted Truth Force, but leaned more heavily on the Christian values of Non-Violence and called it Soul Force. King believed Soul Force was more powerful than the physical force of oppression and this has proved to be so.
“There is such a Force,” Ethan continued. “In the New World we have defined it. It’s the Collective Consciousness. Just before the Enlightenment it became a global phenomena. Previously it was a reflection of the norms within a particular society, but technology provided us with a Global Voice; Global Brain actually. Once the memes or neurons started sparking and networks were formed we all easily travelled through it, and a functional and intentional Collective Consciousness came into being. We used it to put our attention on and destroy evil that threatened our survival. Collective Direct Action started with something called ‘Me Too’. That was when the World learned when Soul Force comes, it comes crashing down like a wave that can swallow the earth. Offenders don’t stand a chance”.
Erwin stopped, holding a news clipping in midair. “What”?
“Yes. This is a very important time in the history of humanity. It provided a glimpse of Soul Force in action. We referenced this time period considerably when evil became recognizable and we knew we had to put an end to it.
“I think we have to tell this story,’ Ethan continued, having decided on the purpose of his quest.