Welcome to the Net Age!

Michael A Rizzotti

For the first time in human civilization, a communication dynamic is challenging a hierarchical world order that has dominated our cultures since the "beginning". As such, cyberspace is a new frontier and a new era is in the making.

Is it just an odd twist of fate that our planet should have been wired like a cocoon just as we happen to enter the new millennium. Odder still: That the Net should have emerged from Arpanet, a military endeavor to escape MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction). Do we owe the birth of the Net to a "selection pressure" or "bifurcation" out of the MADness of total annihilation? More so, is this random escape a cultural mutation? These are some of the questions that we at the netage will attempt to answer as we try to understand the spiritual "linking" hovering our planet.

The communication evolution has brought a major shift in our social interaction, much of which is yet to be fully understood. From the outset "man's" apperception of God has been that "He" is at the peak of a hierarchical and mysterious power. The communication technologies have shifted the grounds of such power structures and have laid the blueprint for a non-linear linking phenomenon. A shift is now occurring from an ancestral top-down power structure toward a dynamic interconnection that is more bottom-up. This novel cultural paradigm has tremendous implications for the future of our cultures. One of the implications of this paradigm is that it is ushering in some form of universal civilization. Such a civilization can only be possible with an universal language. And the only two that come to mind today are music and mathematics.

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

The "quest" is perhaps one of our most enduring mythical legacies. Journeys undertaken by the Buddha, the ones described in the "Odyssey", or the quest of the Holy Grail are by now embedded in our collective soul. A modern version of the quest has been related in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" which might hold some answers about the path toward an universal language. As the story draws to an end, all the heroes have reached their destination at the top of the mountain, the mythical place where heaven and earth meet and where the gods reveal themselves. As the celestial craft lands we witness the contact between two worlds. The sound of 5 musical notes is played by the earthlings and answered back by the aliens: A link is thereon made.

Music has been called an universal language, and indeed it is. Recent brain scanners have revealed that when professional musicians play or listen to music they use the same general area of the brain that is used for speech. This suggests that the brain treats musical notes in a similar way that it does language. Already dial tones are used to codify numbers 0 to 9 on a telephone call. How far away are we from a new software that will use musical tones as a standard to which all languages of the world will refer? Not too far I suspect. And when it happens, this will foster the "global village" mentality more than ever before as we "live locally and think globally", through human contact in our community and through global linking.

Before the anticipated advent of instant translation devices, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is considered to be a quasi universal language, in terms of a subliminal code of  a World Wide Web. It is used to build an alluring interface in order to be more accessible to an ever wider number of participants and allow us to reach beyond our screen into the other worldly sphere of interactivism.

One God and One Earth Paradox

There is only One planet Earth. It is unique, there is no other. The earth is part of One solar system, One galaxy and One universe. This reality represents the wholly other Oneness of God.

Throughout the ages, monotheism claimed the exclusive jurisdiction of one God. Most monotheistic religions have claimed their God as being the only one. Mostly in opposition to other lesser gods. To this day, no religion has succeeded in imposing its principles universally. On the contrary, history reveals that monotheistic religions have been sectarian and tribal. It has been used to justify imperialist, colonialist and nationalist agendas.

The vision of our planet is the most alluring and compelling image of One spiritual reality. Nothing can better reflect the Oneness of our planet earth: Therein lies the paradox.

Universal Spirituality and Fuzzy Triad

The following is a description of some basic themes and methodologies used at the netage. Outlined as an introduction to the reading of some essays posted here.

All spiritual experience is religious but not all that relates to religion is necessarily spiritual. Since there are several definitions of religion we will not try to define it as much as confine its scope: Religion is all the cultic and ritual apparatus inaugurated and ritualized by the sacred and mythical lore. Foremost, the idea of God, in the Judeo-Christian traditions at least, is an universal precept. It is the attempts to replicate and describe the revelations or apparitions of God (epiphanies) that makes religion what it is, historical.

Since the dawn of history the role of religion was to allow access to the holy through myth and the ritual, both being closely managed by the priestly order. But by doing so, religion becomes enclosed in its own cultural parameters and blurs the way to the universal principle of God that also lay beyond its walls. Hence, the hierarchy becomes a hurdle to the universal principle of God and true spirituality.

Instead of being confined to myths particular to any religion or culture, one must adopt a dynamic inherent in all spiritual experience. The sacred and the profane are two such universal principles. They are completed by a third principle, the wholly other. They interact to form the core of all spiritual experience. The essence of the dynamic is perhaps best illustrated as follows:

                                                         good vs evil

                                                                God

                                                          yin vs yang

                                                            harmony

                                                      sacred vs profane

                                                        the wholly other

We will illustrate not only the possibility but the definite existence of such universal spiritual dynamics. We will not, however, attempt to disclose the subtle details of this dynamic at this time. More studies that allude to the universal grounds of religion are posted on this web page.

The Language of Myth

Myth, as a form of language, is the medium thru which the sacred is revealed. The language of myth separates the words and actions of the gods from the ordinary world. Myth creates a different setting and separates the boundaries between:

                           the divine  vs  the human

                the extraordinary  vs  the ordinary

                       the celestial  vs  the terrestrial

                 the supernatural  vs  the natural

Mythical stories describe the coming into being of a new reality through the actions of the gods and super-heroes. They relate the origin of an effective reality as a prototype for human thought or action.

Myth discloses the primordial. It introduces how a new mythical reality came into being for the first time. The time of myth is a time before time. Mircea Eliade calls it in illo tempore. The space of myth is the space beyond the ordinary world. The protagonists in myth belong to an exclusive and other-worldly sphere restricted to the gods and super-heroes. In their supernatural world they are separated from the ordinariness of the human condition.

In other words, myth describes and legitimizes the powers that generate and rule the "world" and the beings that live in it.

Originally, the Greek word for "mythos" meant word, language, or message. It was differentiated from "logos" which also meant word or speech but implied discussion or argument. As the Greek definition suggests, the language of myth is authoritative, it is not open to argument. As such, myth inaugurates and imprints a new reality.

But more specifically, myth expounds a mentality; i.e., the mode of thought, the mores, and the ethics peculiar to an individual or a collectivity. The Bible, for instance, is the unique compendium of the people of Israel. In the creation myth of Genesis a new "world" is conceived literally. The style and language of the narrative reflect the peculiar customs, the culture, and the religion of its people.

Unfortunately today too much emphasis is put on the myth's significance as an invented story, as being false and untrue. It's a deplorable misuse since behind its exotic and sometimes obscure language, myth, particularly from other cultures and ancient times, reveals the synopsis of a whole cultural reality, namely, a mentality. And though it is easy to translate the words of myth from a foreign language, it is quite difficult to convey the whole original significance as it was understood by the people who literally lived by its meaningful message. The Italian saying traduttore traditore; i.e., translator betrayer, is appropriate here.

Similarly, mythical super-heroes like Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, or Mickey Mouse, reveal an important aspect of the American culture. These supernatural heroes represent a singular aspect of American cultural identity. They also reveal a unique facet of the collective psyche.

Consequently, myth as a medium plays a greater role in the development of a culture than it is given credit for. Think of how the myth of Oedipus inspired Sigmund Freud's psychological theory. Or, how myth played a vital role in the creation and propagation of world religions. And, how the creation myths of Genesis are at the origin of the Judeo-Christian "world" as we know it.

We have already stated that myth is a unique form of language. Consequently, linguistics, but more specifically, semantics, are helpful to elaborate on a mythical process that enables us to disclose myth whenever present in the story, but more particularly in the narrative. In the arrangement outlined below myth is expressed in terms of a "thematic" sequence: (1)

      the setting

      the hero

      the quest

      the obstacle

      the mentor

      the outcome

When the sequence is applied to a myth like the creation narrative of Genesis the model looks like this:

      the setting..........the beginning of the "world"

      the hero.............God

      the quest...........order and meaning

      the obstacle.......void, darkness and chaos

      the mentor.........speech and language

      the outcome......Genesis (the textual beginning of the Bible)

The fundamental object, or purpose, of the sequence is entirely centered on a primal role of communication, which is at the core of all mythical function.

Gutenberg Revisited

The name Gutenberg is associated with the invention of printing (circa 1450). The first book that came out of the press was the Bible. This was an important event in many respects since at that time the liturgy was strictly controlled by the Catholic Church in Rome through the preaching of the chair. The portable Bible shifted the authority of the Word of God from the hierarchy to its readers. It became available to a widespread number of intellectuals throughout Christendom, not all of whom looked kindly on the oppressive papacy. Among them, the "Protestant" Martin Luther. He was outraged by the sale of indulgences distributed in Germany by Tetzel. Rome was freely auctioning to the highest bidder an assured salvation and a choice place in heaven.

Printing put the authority of the Word of God in the hands of its reader: It shifted the power of the holy from the magisterium to the many. That period led to the Reformation and later to the Humanism of the Renaissance.

The Renaissance led to the continuing development of "The Religion of Technology"(2). Technological leapfrogging, in terms of advancement in the means of transportation and communication, have broken down old boundaries of space and time. In this century the telephone became the most popular technological device for communication. Later, the computer became a prominent tool for enhancing personal and entrepreneurial skills.

When the telephone was connected to the computer, the Internet became a new breed of communication tool accessible to a greater number of people.

One of the underlying meanings of Marshall McLuhan’s "the medium is the message" is, who owns the medium owns the message. The Internet put the power of the message in the hands of the individual ushering a new era of interactivism.

the netage

(1) The original idea and sequence is taken from A. J. Greimas, Structural Semantics: an Attempt at a Method, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1983, 180-183. I have introduced my own sequence which may neither be endorsed nor approved by the author.

2) David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1998.