Page - 180 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

180 • Cyborg Mind increasingly be limited in favour of the communion. An emergence of a collective mind of humanity would subsequently take place, which would increasingly integrate the thoughts of all individuals around the globe.367 This means that the Noosphere would not only be formed by each individual’s connected mind, but would represent a greater union as an entity in its own right, a kind of planetarymind.368 Eventually, this would culminate in an ‘Omega Point’, which Teilhard de Chardin believed is the goal of history. This is the stage in which a universal mind has been reached,369 representing the proposed maximum level of complexity and universal consciousness of the Noosphere.370 In an essay on the ‘Planetization of Mankind’, Teilhard de Chardin writes: Whether we like it or not, from the beginning of our history and through all the interconnected forces of Matter and Spirit, the process of our collec- tivization has ceaselessly continued, slowly or in jerks, gaining ground each day . . . It is as impossible for Mankind not to unite upon itself as it is for the human intelligence not to go on indefinitely deepening its thought! . . . Instead of seeking, against all the evidence, to deny or disparage the reality of this grand phenomenon, we do better to accept it frankly. Let us look it in the face and see whether . . . we cannot erect upon it a hopeful edifice of joy and liberation.371 According to Teilhard de Chardin, everything within the cosmos is actually converging its purposes through the ‘push’ of evolutionary forces and the ‘pull’ resulting from the Omega Point expressed by the affinity that persons have for one another in mutual love.372 Moreover, for him, this Omega Point at the end of history can be referred to as a person, whom he represents as the Ultra-Human or the Trans-Human 373 and in whom there are global and complex systems of collective self-consciousness374 that he likens to a ‘stupen- dous thinking machine’375  – a kind of union with God. This Noosphere was one of Teilhard de Chardin’s most controversial claims and his views were eventually censured by the Catholic Church. Indeed, in a system where each person is completely subsumed by the greater collective consciousness, the notion of independent individuals, with their private lives and their own thoughts, knowledge and opinions, could no longer exist. However, though there are certain passages in Teilhard de Chardin’s writ- ings that seem to suggest that human beings are merely a means to the eventual existence of the Ultra-Human, or a super-organism made up of all human individuals, some vagueness in relation to his thoughts seems to exist at this stage. Teilhard de Chardin’s fellow Jesuit, the Frenchman Henry de Lubac (1896–1991), who eventually became a cardinal and defended some of his ideas, admits that this seems like the destruction of personality. But he believed that Teilhard de Chardin was not actually suggesting that individual This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.