Planetary consciousness incites probably transcendent feelings and deepens the polarization of worldviews

Abstract

The authors postulate that their recently published theory explaining the essence of human self-awareness is useful to consider whether a personal planetary consciousness is emerging on our planet. Their earlier published theory posits that the feeling of self-awareness can be effectively explained when it is assumed that it arises as a result of the interaction of three processes, namely the feeling of qualia, the recurrent activity of neural circuits realizing the self-image, and the formation of the brain's electromagnetic field, important for the sense of subjectivity. This allows the authors in the next stage of inference to consider whether it is possible to find analogical elements and processes on a planetary scale. The authors specify the layers of distributed intelligence emerging on Earth. This allows them to consider the concept of a planetary global brain. The authors believe that the recent, quite unexpected, widespread use of new global-scale artificial intelligence systems such as Chat/GPT is an argument in favor of the formation of a global brain. Next, the authors mention the first known published intuitions related to planetary consciousness, especially Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the noosphere. The authors also indicate the observable manifestations of existence of alleged planetary consciousness. They believe that people's transcendent feelings should be considered as such its manifestation. They hypothesize that the recently observed polarization of worldviews is also magnified by alleged emerging planetary consciousness. The authors, drawing on the analogy between brain hemisphere specialization and the planet's two ideological blocks, conclude that it's vital to patiently moderate conflicts and accept that altering this pattern is unfeasible. Some other practical conclusions are also formulated.