Recently, another group of friends came to Singapore. I joined them on some of their journeys. A few routes were particularly memorable, like the afternoon we spent at the Twin Lin Zen Temple in Singapore. After turning past a tower, we saw overlapping peaks of clouds rolling in against the clear blue sky. Just like yesterday evening, while walking by Marina Bay, I looked up and the sky appeared like a massive, coiled, dark yellow dragon spine, almost lifelike. Later, we trekked a mountain path. The night sky became clear and bright, with a bright moon and a star hidden behind a tree, set against a backdrop of pale, cloud-like colors, modest but luminous.
The familiar social circle remains cluttered and noisy, as boisterous as ever. Today, I thought of a new term discussed with friends: the "shared field". Unfortunately, I couldn't find this term on Wikipedia, so it might just be a small thought experiment for now. Without rigorous verification, it shouldn't be treated as a practical concept. But I still wanted to write about it. If it provides insights, great; if not, that's perfectly fine too.
So, what is a "shared field"? In scientific terms, it refers to a domain where certain interactions permeate, predicated on our coexistence and varying by time and space. Simply put, it's the mutual interaction in a given time and space where we coexist. Or from another perspective, it's the world influenced by our collective consciousness.
Back to our reality, this shared field is the world created when I chat with a friend on the sofa, or when I open WeChat and see our conversation from five minutes ago. It's also the world built within Web3 communities on platforms like Discord, where people discuss NFTs.
This "shared field" isn't mine or yours but ours—a slice of space in a particular timeframe. The difference between the shared field and my personal field is that we often mistakenly believe we are always in our personal fields. But the influence of the shared field on our perceived world is much greater than we think. For instance, when chatting with a friend on the sofa, I always felt it was he who entered my field. But after he left, I realized many ideas were unique to that shared moment with him. Perhaps it's always been our shared field, sometimes stronger, like the day we talked.
From this perspective, most of us are not in our personal fields but shared ones, especially in the digital age. In ancient times, isolated individuals might have spent a lot of time in their personal spaces. But nowadays, once we go online, we enter various shared fields: a chat, a group conversation, or a shared social circle on platforms like WeChat, Discord, or Twitter. The nature and impact of these shared fields on us might be beyond our realization.
Modern life places us deep within informational shared fields, making it hard to find personal ones. If we split our social life into real and online experiences, in reality, as Marx suggested, we are a summation of our social relations, existing within actively and passively constructed shared fields. Online, this becomes more pronounced. Different platforms create different shared fields, ranging from strong relational fields like video calls with loved ones, to weaker ones in chat groups, and neutral ones shaped by algorithms.
To put it simply, in the digital age, our energy and spirit are greatly influenced by strong shared fields like close companionship. Our cognition and thought patterns get shifted by neutral fields, like group chats. Meanwhile, platforms like social media sway our emotions. The lines between personal fields and shared fields often blur. Our energy level, particularly with close companions, heavily influences our shared fields. Positive energies resonate and strengthen each other, while negative ones cancel out. In some ways, the collapse or strengthening of these shared fields can significantly influence our disposition.
To some extent, we can easily overlook the influence of a shared concept on us. It's similar to how in a family, we often overlook the subtle influences the family environment has on us. In fact, the family environment might affect many of us in ways that surpass our initial perceptions. Similarly, in a corporate setting, we might neglect the influence that partners and WeChat groups have on our judgment and decisions. For instance, when making career choices, especially during critical decision-making moments, the influence of these shared environments often exceeds our awareness. It's like how everyone's investment decisions seem to mirror the prevailing sentiment of the group. Cognitive biases are amplified in these shared environments, particularly inaccuracies in decision-making processes, like the kind of warped logic often found in investment strategies. Rational thought gets twisted, and thinking patterns homogenize – these might be characteristics of such environments, and to a degree, they influence our tastes.
The shared environment in social media circles is even more pronounced. Public events tend to magnify shared emotions, while individual rationality is subdued. This phenomenon could explain the herd mentality, where we believe we are making independent judgments when, in fact, the likelihood of such independent thought in a social media environment is minimal. Amplifying shared emotions and suppressing individual rationality is a prominent feature of these environments, especially during public events. What we perceive as rational arguments might just be emotional biases manipulated by the group. To some extent, our moral and conceptual biases might stem from the magnification and contagion of shared emotions, especially concerning societal and public issues.
We could look at it from a different perspective, not from the past or present viewpoint but from a future one. Imagine in the next ten to twenty years, as our next generation grows up. If we consider DAOs as continuous shared environments, or consensus environments, we might be part of various family, friend, or community-based A, B, C DAOs. We'll choose which DAO "ID" to identify with, pick our "role" within the DAO, and decide our "contribution and feedback" mechanism to iterate and replenish. In this scenario, the whole idea becomes a systematic loop of energy acquisition and expenditure. In such new organizational structures, these shared environments become consensus environments, deeply influencing our cognition, thinking, and behavior. Eventually, the rules of our economy might undergo a major reform influenced by these consensus environments.
With the term "shared environment," the concept of "presence" aptly describes the ethos of our times. "Anwesenheit" is an important concept in German philosophy, suggesting a kind of intrinsic intuition. It means explaining A without referring to B, similar to the Buddhist concept of "presence." Regardless of the strength of the shared environment, our inherent cognitive and emotional limitations might have already confined us. So, perhaps focusing less on knowledge and more on presence might be a good approach. Such presence might give rise to powerful shared environments, like future DAOs, developing in small groups in previously unnoticed ways.
Of course, we can choose to disengage from potentially negative shared environments, whether or not we're connected to the internet or have opened our WeChat.
In short, shared environments might be one of the cognitive biases that have eluded us. Intersubjectivity might need more emphasis in this era, and the strategy of being present might gain more attention. If we want to find stability in the torrents of shared environments, we need the courage to believe that the world we desire, see, and want has always been in our shared environment and will eventually clear up and return to its original state.
When walking on a mountain path, it wouldn't hurt to look up and gaze at the sky. Whether it's a sunny day or rainy, afternoon or midnight, the clouds we see might surprise us, much like the dew-covered leaves on a clear morning we all imagine.