[UA] Hiveminds, Avatars and Obsessions - why clutter the IC?

[R. Menzi]

     Why do people seem to want to clutter the IC with
every sort of person or stereotype?  I say that IC
ascension requires an extreme, ironic, or just plain
cool twist to work out... and here's a way for it to
work, and explain how the IC can do what they do:


---- John Scott wild at park.net wrote:
> ObUA: Hiveminds - what happens when an avatar 
> becomes part of a Hivemind?  UA is so much 
> based on the power (and responsibility) of the 
> individual that I'm not sure that sharing like 
> that would work (with some notable exceptions - 
> the Twins, the Lovers, and a few other archetypes.)

     I'd say that avatars function as a result of the
a hivemind/gestalt(sp?)/zeightgeist(sp?).  They become
more and more perfect instruments for recieving the
broadcasts of an IC member (willful transmitters). 
The IC exists in the fabric between everything and
everything else, including the fabric specifically
between minds - the gestalt, universal unconscious,
whatever.  A good portion of that fabric just guides
the feedback loops that humanity uses to both reading
its script and makes it up as it goes.  

     The IC can influence this system, just as it can
other parts of reality.  (This power is most
pronounced when the world ends and they get to build
the next one from the ground up.)  From their seats,
the IC broadcasts their signals via the collective
unconscious, which carry over to the reciever (an
avatar) and the world around the avatar (their
channels).

     However, people can become well-tuned recievers
of things that aren't archetypes: their obsessions. 
This does much to explain why a characters' obsession
and obsession skills have such noticable effects, and
why tuning directly into to many signals at once makes
you nuts.  (Because you can't rewire your brain from
the begining, you can't switch either - still have to
work with the meat that hosts the mind.)  Heck, the
guy who has Gunfighting as his obsession skill might
be an avatar of the idea "shoot first, go through
their pockets later."

     The strength of channeling the paradoxical
thoughts behind the schools of magic are pretty
obvious.  This is really a side-effect of the way the
universal unconscious and reality have some crossed
wires.  The IC have a bridge between the universe and
the collective unconscious, and even the individual
conscious.  The bridge goes both ways, however.  By
specifically tuning into the school's signal/idea
(making it their obsession), adepts can resonate their
specific will back into the CU and across the bridge
into the collective sub/super-reality to manifest in
the physical world.  With some effects, the impact
never even leaves the direct reach of the hivemind.

-----

     In this type of set up, just because there's a
large number of dull cubicle jobs today does not mean
that the Dilbertean Employee got a seat in the IC, and
artistic trends in comics do not take off because
comic artists are avatars of a replaced Visual
Narrator.  And calculus was not developed by several
isolated people within a few year of each other
because they were avatars of the Math Geek.  That's
just the way the hivemind functions on a mechanical
level.  A seat on the IC lets you influence the way
the mundane hivemind apperatus works, but that's only
a subset of the influence that comes from existing
between the whole and the sum-of-its-parts.

     So, if you're a well-tuned instrument for
recieving a viewpoint, a mentality, a skill or some
other non-conscious abstraction, it becomes your
character's obsession.  If a character uses the CU to
tune into a IC member (a willful transmitter), the
character becomes an Avatar.

     So I can have a cubicle job or work at McDonalds
and not become an avatar of the Dilbertean Character
or the McEmployee (of the Month).  Or as Freud's weird
OU-hip younger brother said:

"Sometimes, the collective unconscious influencing our
thoughts is just the collective unconscious
influencing our thoughts."


-------

Among his other quotes: 

"Pretty good stuff, ya?  It's my brother's stash."

"So, tell me about The Mother."



Regards,
-R. Menzi


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