Round and round we go. What have we learned?
Happy 20th birthday "What The Bleep" and Facebook
A lot happened on February 4th, 2004
What The Bleep Do We Know?! opened in its first theater and would go on to become “The sleeper hit of the year” and radically shift the New Age/New Thought Movement.
There was one other event that day that would also change the world. Facebook launched.
I’ve often seen these two events as a combined catalyst for what was a quantum leap of sorts. The world of communication opened up in ways we are just now truly understanding, and our worldview shifted in terms of our own understanding of our “human” experience.
Since then, social media and The New Thought/New Age have risen to the highest of highs and are now experiencing some pretty dark lows.
Nowadays, when Facebook is mentioned, most people roll their eyes, and an entire generation barely knows it exists. What was once filled with pictures of kids and vacations spiraled into a cesspool of trolls and bots peddling fear-based products, agendas, and ideologies mostly designed to create division and make money.
And while “Bleep” blew open the doors to the ideas and concepts of spirituality and metaphysics, specifically as it relates to neuroscience and quantum physics, the phrase “I create my reality” is an everyday part of our nomenclature, it too has spiraled in a way, very much like Facebook. One can’t seem to get away from the droves of docuseries exposing guru after guru as a fraud or something far more sinister. Sales funnels lead us down a path to buy one more level of a product that is going to fix us, our lives, our relationships, our money, our bodies…
This appears to be a cycle often repeated when something new breaks out and causes a paradigm shift in thought and culture.
It’s great until it isn’t.
When I sat down to write something to celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Bleep”, and the advent of social media, I hadn’t expected to have this flow out. Yet, I can’t help but examine the journey these two seemingly separate events have taken us on.
Humanity is, for sure, on a precipice. Both “Bleep” and Facebook were amazing gifts and opportunities for a much-needed awakening. They brought much good to our reality. I wonder if we will follow the same path as we move into the next cycle of tools we bring forth to expand our awareness of who and what we are.
Next up we’ve got AI and Psychedelics. One can only imagine where that cycle will lead us.
Does everything good eventually become weaponized? Is this the true human nature?
Humanity itself follows a cycle on a larger scale, and perhaps “Bleep” and Facebook were simply a product of that process. If not “Bleep” and Facebook, it would have been something else that has brought us to this moment.
Are we destined to repeat the cycles? Can we truly find the “thing” that is going to, once and for all, bring us peace and the enlightenment we all seek?
For me, personally, I’ve decided it’s an inside job. I still love Facebook, and my feed is mostly cats, kids, and shoes. (It’s an algorithm, I have some control over) Also, I deeply understand that I do create my reality, and while I have no say on anyone else's, I have the power of choice in how I choose to experience all the chaos.
So, in a way, after 20 years, I have found my own peace and enlightenment. Maybe not in the way it's being pitched. I’m still here. I still have good days and bad days, and sometimes I get trolled. The metaphors of “Life is a roller coaster” and “ride the wave” ring true.
Hopefully, more and more people will begin to see the cycles and get tired of whatever ride they're on, and collectively, we can chill out and enjoy the mundane a bit. And perhaps that’s why we keep having to do it all over and over again. This, after all, is the plane of experience, a learning ground of sorts. And we are a stubborn species.
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Happy Birthday!