It's strange. Forty years have passed since the Collective Superconscious became available to the entirety of humanity, and we have undeniably regressed. The acceleration of global culture stopped and reversed, our largest nations have splintered into smaller fractions of their former power and our economy has been horribly stunted.
My parents told me that before I was born, before the CS satellites were launched, people's thoughts were their own. You could walk outside unshielded and not immediately be crippled by the blurred roar of hundreds of millions of voices roaring in your head. Communities would reach beyond small clusters of minds that could tolerate each other, forming impressive supply chains and intellectual collaborations that would invent and implement new technological wonders. In some ways it was worse, since back then you couldn't prevent a war from happening by directing public outcry at the offending armies, and if you were trapped in domestic abuse then anyone who could help would be out of your voice's reach.
Supposedly there was a group about thirty years ago that tried to shoot down the satellites, to silence the channels that changed human civilization functioned, but it didn't succeed. It took significant resources and engineering to build a surface-to-orbit cannon, so the secret made it out even with everyone involved wearing lead helmets. Some people don't want this world to go back to the old ways, to give up whatever fifty-mile square of land they call their empire. Others didn't trust the project. A gun that can shoot into orbit can technically shoot any place on Earth if your calculations are good enough, and by the time you realize what happened it will be too late to stop. This meant the only way to stop it was to focus your voice on that spot within the Northern Texas Coalition, to mentally beat down several hundred people until they could barely have the functionality to eat and sleep.
They had to thicken their helmets, but that much weight meant back problems, quick exhaustion and a greater risk of injury from simple accidents. Rumor is that everyone there died of starvation, unable to farm the surface unless they wore gear that reduced a workday to two hours at best. Aid could have been sent, but enough of the surrounding territories made sure that supply caravans wouldn't be allowed to pass through. Nobody knows when the last person died, but when scouts checked the place four years into that mental siege all of the signs of life were well into decay.
That story makes me think. Was humanity meant to be so intimately connected in this way? Would it be for the better if those machines in the night sky were destroyed? Maybe Collective Superconscious could be rebuilt in a way that doesn't cripple progress. I don't have the answers, and I don't think anyone does. I've done my pilgrimage outside of the shielding, communing with the horrific and chaotic sea of my brethren's thoughts without any filter. When the individual voices blur together, you see the tides of their underlying whims coalesce in writhing masses in constant conflict with each other. There's no such thing as true agreement, no such thing as true quiet. Hell is ourselves, and by inventing the perfect communication we trapped humanity in a cage of mirrors.
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