Chapter 82: Collective Unconsciousness and the Hundred Monkeys Effect

Collective Unconscious is a term in psychology.

Ordinary people do not encounter these terms in their daily lives.

The backstage director quickly contacted Jiang Zhe, asking him to explain it in more depth.

Facing the camera, Jiang Zhe nodded slightly and began to explain:

"Let's start with the Collective Unconscious."

"It was proposed by the psychologist Carl Jung in 1922."

"Carl Jung believed that the structure of personality consists of three levels: consciousness, personal unconscious, and the Collective Unconscious."

"Regarding Zhuang Zhou Dreams of a Butterfly, I have divided it into three difficult points."

"1: The 'I'."

"2: Reality."

"3: Illusion."

"To solve Zhuang Zhou Dreams of a Butterfly, we must first understand the composition of the 'I' that we speak of."

"Only after understanding the Collective Unconscious will we know what the 'I' we speak of actually refers to!"

"Consciousness, to put it simply, is the 'I' we all mention in our daily lives. When someone asks, 'What are you doing?', you reply, 'I am daydreaming'."

"The 'I' here is the 'I' you use in everyday speech; it is a description of oneself, but one cannot delve too deeply into it, because the personal unconscious and the Collective Unconscious also exist."

"Creatures like pigs, dogs, cows, and horses do not have a deep, clear cognition of 'I'; they only have instinctive reactions to danger and safety."

"When pet dogs live with humans for a long time and are given a 'name' by their owners, they also develop a cognition of 'I', but this 'I' is very superficial."

"For example, if you have a dog named 'Wangcai', after you call the dog's name many times, the dog knows that 'Wangcai' is its code name in this household, and it understands that when the owner calls out this name, they are calling it."

As he finished speaking.

The audience in front of their televisions and in the online livestream, especially the pet owners, highly agreed with this point.

Some of these pet owners even had pets that were so intuitive, it was as if the pets could magically understand human speech.

"Personal unconscious: It is the forgotten memories, perceptions, repressed experiences, as well as dreams and fantasies in your minds."

"From childhood to adulthood, you will forget many memories!"

"Many memories are deleted by the brain and ultimately sealed away in the 'unconscious'."

"When you grow into an adult, you naturally cannot clearly remember many things that happened in your childhood, but those memories can be retrieved through hypnosis; we won't go into detail about this, as it is irrelevant to the topic."

"If consciousness is the tip of the iceberg, then the unconscious is the mountain hidden beneath the massive iceberg!"

"Our human consciousness is used very superficially within the entire scope of consciousness—only the tip of the iceberg!"

This part of Jiang Zhe's explanation was deeply recognized by psychologists.

They often received patients and used hypnotic techniques to allow them to re-experience their carefree childhood days.

It was indeed as Jiang Zhe said: if consciousness is the surface web of the internet, then the unconscious is the dark web hidden beneath the surface web!!!

"Collective Unconscious: It's a bit complicated."

As he reached this point, he frowned slightly.

Explaining this would require a long-winded discussion.

But after some deep thought, Jiang Zhe decided to simplify it for the audience:

"Audience in front of the television, you can understand 'Collective Unconscious' as—"

"Among our human race, as long as one is human, regardless of whether they are a living person or someone who has recently passed away; as long as they are still human!"

"Then above our human race—you can think of it as above our heads, or within our minds, either works."

"There is an 'conscious network' linking everyone on our planet, regardless of whether they live in the desert, on the grasslands, or are sailors at sea."

"We are all constantly connected by this invisible 'Human Network'!"

At this moment.

In the lecture hall of the Kyoto University of Science.

Jiang Zhe's words left the psychologists in the audience deep in thought.

"Carl Jung's 'Collective Unconscious' indeed contains this explanation—an conscious network; a common conscious network for our human race. When I first encountered it, it felt a bit metaphysical, and I found it hard to accept."

"Indeed, why would we humans be interconnected like the internet? However, through this point, I can also understand the 'Xia Country Brain' experiment that Jiang Zhe hasn't explained in detail."

"This conscious network seems to be a kind of 'Human Network' that links the past, present, and future. It sounds so metaphysical!"

"It's not metaphysical; on the contrary, Jiang Zhe's analysis is already very easy to understand. If I were to explain what the 'Collective Unconscious' is, I could give a one-hundred-thousand-word explanation."

"..."

The experts were not unfamiliar with it, but for the general public—

Hearing this term for the first time, confused expressions appeared on the faces of the public.

In every household.

As the program played, the number of people watching gradually increased.

Everyone sitting in front of their televisions felt it was hard to understand.

"Collective Unconscious, this is my first time hearing it. The most I've heard is 'unconscious'."

"I also didn't expect consciousness to be divided into three levels: consciousness, personal unconscious, and Collective Unconscious... tell me, does this 'Human Network' really exist?"

"..."

The audience in the online livestream had the same reaction.

Jiang Zhe's in-depth explanation caused the number of online viewers in the livestream to rise exponentially, breaking through 1 million in less than 10 minutes, and it was still continuing to increase.

"Does our human race really have this Human Network?"

"He mentioned the 'Xia Country Brain/Consciousness' experiment before; it sounds similar to the Collective Unconscious."

"How can we prove that we humans really have a Collective Unconscious?"

"..."

On the big screen.

Jiang Zhe held his earpiece to listen to the director's broadcast of the bullet comments.

"Hmm, I see many viewers are curious about what the 'Collective Unconscious' is, and even doubt its authenticity."

"Let's first try to understand it from a different angle."

"You have consciousness, I have consciousness, and he has consciousness."

"As we all know—consciousness is a comprehensive external manifestation of information transmission by bioelectricity within the brain's neurons."

"Your brain transmits information within your own head, my brain transmits information, and his brain also transmits information."

"Collective Unconscious, or what some people like to call 'social unconscious', can be understood on a certain level as—"

"[Our brains all release information at a certain moment, and then share this information with all humans on Earth through some channel]"

"This state and appearance after transmitting information together is called the 'Collective Unconscious'!"

"In our reality, you can think of it as a local area network for our own human race; this local area network covers the entire Earth!"

After this explanation, more and more viewers frowned.

They weren't confused, but increasingly curious.

If humans really had this manifestation of the Collective Unconscious...

"Then why am I still laying bricks?"

"Can't I use this Human Network to download information and then become a genius?"

"..."

Many, many viewers had this whimsical thought in their hearts.

Clearly, the audience did not believe Jiang Zhe's statement from the bottom of their hearts, and even though it was proposed by the predecessor scholar Carl Jung, they felt it was somewhat exaggerated.

It wasn't just them; even Old Zhao, Wang Guosheng, and others in the leadership meeting room felt that Jiang Zhe's topic this time was exaggerated.

In the past, he demystified paradoxes, which were logical and could gain the recognition of most people.

But this time...

There was no prepared script in advance; the demystification was entirely following Jiang Zhe's own intentions.

This was not demystifying a paradox, but demystifying a new thought experiment, more like popular science.

Old Zhao frowned deeply, "I always feel that this program goes against the original intention I had when I created the demystification track."

Wang Guosheng said: "We just need to wait and see the audience's reaction via the ratings; as long as the ratings go up, we can give Xiao Jiang the authority to freely play with both paradoxes and thought experiments."

Wang Lin raised his hand in agreement: "Exactly!"

On the big screen.

The audience's bullet comments were broadcast to Jiang Zhe by the director.

After Jiang Zhe saw these opinions, he couldn't help but smile.

"Let me start by explaining the Collective Unconscious in animals."

"Let's take an example!"

"This example is called: 'Hundredth Monkey Effect'."

"It comes from a true story in Japan in the last century."

"In 1952, a group of scientists from the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University in Japan were studying the monkeys on Koshima Island in Miyazaki Prefecture. The scientists threw sweet potatoes onto the sandy ground to feed the monkeys."

"The monkeys liked to eat sweet potatoes, but hated the mud and sand on them."

"A little monkey accidentally discovered that it could use stream water to wash the mud and sand off the sweet potatoes."

"Before long, all the monkeys learned to wash the mud and sand off the sweet potatoes!"

"Since then, the scientists closely monitored these monkeys and found that between 1952 and 1958, all the young monkeys had learned to wash the mud and sand off the sweet potatoes, making the sweet potatoes taste much better!"

"Among the adult monkeys, only those that imitated their own children learned this method; other adult monkeys were still used to eating dirty sweet potatoes."

"Hmm, there is nothing strange here!"

"However, then something incredible happened."

"On an autumn day in 1958, overnight, almost all the monkeys on Koshima Island learned to wash sweet potatoes."

"This new behavior of washing sweet potatoes, learned without a teacher, was mysteriously transmitted to the monkeys at Mount Takasaki in Oita Prefecture, 200 kilometers away!"

"You must know, there was absolutely no connection or contact between these two groups of monkeys!"

"Why would the 'individual behavior' of one little monkey using water to wash sweet potatoes eventually travel across space to an island 200 kilometers away, and then become a 'collective behavior'?"

"Later, a Japanese consultant, Yukio Funai, said—"

"'As long as it is a correct belief, this invisible force can gather into a great positive energy!'"

"'As long as anyone in a certain group or community is willing to take the lead, they can create a demonstration effect among the crowd, invisibly crossing the barriers of time and space, and then influence the vast majority of people, just like that group of monkeys on Koshima Island!'"

"This is the famous 'Hundredth Monkey Effect' of the last century!"

"We will analyze the specific reasons later!"

Having reached this point, Jiang Zhe shook his head helplessly.

"It's just a pity that the Japanese scientists who discovered this Hundredth Monkey Effect back then did not associate this phenomenon with the 'Collective Unconscious' and 'Seabed Theory' proposed by the scholar Carl Jung in 1922!"

Looking at the camera, Jiang Zhe nodded seriously: "Yes, the Hundredth Monkey Effect is precisely a manifestation of an extended experiment of the 'Collective Unconscious'!"