Why Musk Turned the ‘Global Mind’ into a Nest of Psychosocial Disease
The terms visionary and genius are overused but they are both applicable to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The extraordinary Jesuit priest, palaeontologist, geologist and philosopher anticipated the evolution of a global collective mind. He also suggested that this would ultimately enable humanity to merge with a supreme consciousness. He called that moment ‘the Omega Point’.
Teilhard wrote about the evolution of a global mind, composed of collective thought (which he called the noosphere) around 1937. However, the Catholic Church prevented the publication of The Phenomenon of Man, his book explaining it and his concept of the Omega Point, until after his death in 1955.
Rather than, like many Christians, dismiss the reality of evolution, Teilhard embraced it and consequently was able to outline fascinating ideas about how Homo sapiens emerged and how we will ultimately, through a process of self-awareness, reach a supreme or end-point of consciousness. He called this supreme consciousness the Omega Point — and he equated it with merging with God.
As the internet emerged and grew, with social media filling up a significant part of many people’s lives, scholars and new age authors alike dusted off Teilhard’s writing, as it took on a revitalised aura. Twitter seemed like an obvious contender for the noosphere. While it could never be claimed that the collective of interactions that made up Twitter were quite a global mind (not least because some countries ban access to it), it was a good start. Until Elon Musk gained control of it.
It should be acknowledged that Twitter wasn’t perfect even before Musk got his talons into it. There were always malicious trolls, bots, disinformation and vast troubling deserts of incredible ignorance. It was an emerging, pulsating. global(ish) mind, visible enough for many of us to see areas of dis-ease and misfiring neurons. But while there were weak areas of distinct pathology, incitement of hatred (a crime in many countries Twitter operates in) was met with lifetime bans under the previous stewardship.
Unless he’s intent on destroying it, perhaps on behalf of nefarious cronies, who were troubled by the role Twitter played in the Arab ‘spring’ (Musk has strong links to authoritarian Saudi Arabia), he has made a LOT of mistakes with X-Twitter.
One of the worst, which has impacted negatively on perceptions of the site and of Musk’s personal brand, was to restore the accounts of banned far-right propagandists, and of miscreants who maliciously spread dangerous medical disinformation (as opposed to innocent misinformation, spread through ignorance). A Venn diagram of far-right propagandists and disinformation peddlers would overlap significantly.
There are a number of possible reasons why Musk might have done such an antisocial and dangerous thing, in fanning the flames of fascism and enabling disinformation agents. I’ll outline some suggestions.
Musk is narcissistic and likes attention — even if that attention stems from doing something repellent, like a spoilt child smearing excrement on a restaurant window. He paid well over the odds for Twitter — a deal he tried to get out of once he realised that his big mouth and bloated ego were costing him a ridiculous amount of money. Therefore, a possible reason is Musk has been desperately trying to increase engagement on the site (and therefore advertising spend). Bringing back divisive figures who cause arguments makes sense in that context, though it’s almost psychopathically unethical because he’s putting his profits above human safety and social harmony.
Another possible reason why Musk welcomed back banned far-right propagandists and conspiracy theorists, many of whom support Donald Trump, is he is aligned with their ‘values’. He used to come across as a quirky but essentially benign geek — but antagonism towards social liberalism and democracy have been disturbing aspects of his apparent metamorphosis into a sort of Steve Bannon / Rupert Murdoch / Mike Teavee hybrid.
There would have been better ways to increase the profitability of Twitter, without opening the door to a braying mob of far-right scammers, liars and thugs. Having them back does perhaps create more arguments and brings some users back from the likes of Truth Social and the bowels of 4Chan — but it also loses people to platforms that don’t pander to fascists.
A combination of wanting to create fireworks — let’s face it, most of Musk’s rockets / erectile dysfunction remedies have been little more than grandiosely expensive (yet rather shit) fireworks — and a desperate attempt to wring some money out of the site might be plausible. But given his link to authoritarians, both in the US and abroad, supporting the likes of Trump while enacting a managed decline of the site makes more sense.
Regardless of the specifics of why Musk has done what he’s done, the fact is the site is in decline. The emerging global mind that many linked to the visionary Teilhard has deliberately been contaminated by disease and pushed towards neurodegeneration.
The tumour of the far-right, the brain virus of conspiracy theories and head traumas caused by Musk’s erratic driving could destroy what was Twitter forever. But, as Mastodon, Spoutible and Threads have shown, creating a glorified 1990’s style chatroom isn’t hard.
Keeping the poison out is harder. But even that isn’t so difficult if you are committed and have ethics. It’s just that Musk went out of his way to flood it with poison. It’s akin to filling a computer with every virus you can find and then complaining that it doesn’t work properly.
