The Paradoxes of the Evolution of Consciousness

Protesters celebrate in Tahrir Square after the announcement of Mubarak's resignation.

The complex process of the evolution of human consciousness is replete with paradox. For instance, as the economist Jeremy Rikfin submitted, it is the materially advantaged societies that have evolved the farthest psycho-spiritually.[i] The economically developed and historically most exploitive countries tend to be inhabited by a small but significant portion of citizens whose worldviews are the most advanced (a little more about that later.).[ii] The less economically advanced a country, the less it has negatively impacted the Earth, and, paradoxically, the less evolved it tends to be. In the Arab Spring of 2010-2012, the leading edge of society—represented by the mainly young demonstrators in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East (MENA)—was primarily interested in jobs and participation in the political process, issues that were first articulated in England’s 1688 Glorious Revolution and in the 1789 French Revolution and that have been mainstream among industrial and post-industrial nations for the past century, at least.[iii] The Egyptian demonstrators’ call for “bread, freedom and social justice,” although essential, did not come even close to addressing the crises of population, water resources, food security, and carrying capacity that will soon crush Egypt and indeed all the MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) countries.[iv] And of course even this list is being framed here by the author through a human-centric lens; that is, a level of awareness far too limited to be of value in truly resolving the issues. Whereas the (mostly) Arab countries were just a few short years ago requesting a society built on rational discourse and individual freedoms, moving away from theocratic law and government autocracy, the West is moving on to a new paradigm where reason and individual rights need to be brought into an even larger perspective, into at least a biospheric worldview.[v] And throughout both the Middle East and Western “democracies,” there has a backslide in recent years to authoritarian, strong man, and otherwise antidemocratic policies.

Despite this geriatric-driven politics, it is in the First World countries, according to Rifkin, where a “biospheric” consciousness is evolving, especially among the youth.[vi] Where, for some, the circle of who is “us” has been enlarged beyond family, community, nation, and humanity to all sentient beings, to all life. Where a high school student wholly comprehends this leading-edge consciousness with a statement like, “Weeds are people too once you get to know them.”[vii] It is as if we have come full circle. 

            Although it is not a circle.  When viewed from a larger three-dimensional perspective, evolution appears more as a spiral.[viii] For those with a biospheric consciousness, we are back to considering our relationship with nature as being sacred, but one level up on the spiral.[ix] Cognitively we have evolved to understand that, rather than the rock and tree and animal merely possessing their own spirits, we are related to these in a far deeper way, materially, historically, and spiritually. We are both of nature, and it of us. We are both a holistic part of the global ecosystem and simultaneously internally more complex, enfolding within our consciousness all of nature before us. In the evolutionary process, the animistic monism of forager societies and the transcendent dualism of patriarchal religions become integrated into a newly emergent awareness, one that cannot be fully fathomed from the simpler, more limited perspectives. But it can be imagined. We can appreciate that, “all beings, in their mutual relations, form our extended body,”[x] and there is simultaneously “a tendency away from the concept of a God outside or above the universe, towards a divinity inherent in everything. Away from transcendentalism, toward immanence and pantheism.”[xi] So, it is neither by powering through the historical spiral with the “business as usual” model nor by going back down the spiral in some primitivist attempt of “returning to nature” that we will evolve into a sustainable species composed of billions of individuals. A biospheric consciousness implies an integration of what has come before into what will likely be some novel way of thinking, feeling, and behaving.  

For further irony, Rifkin also noted that just as we are getting a sense of this more mature perspective—one which could help us live in harmony with the rest of nature—we are facing the dire consequences of our historical immaturity.[xii] His analysis goes something like this: By appropriating much of the planet’s resources, the beneficiaries have become materially comfortable. In that comfort comes a sense of security, and from that we derive a sense of trust for our fellow humans and a caring for the rest of the earth.[xiii] “Now the bad news,” Rifkin writes. “The new global sensibility has been made possible by the creation of more complex, dense, and interdependent social structures, which, in turn, rely on more intensive use of fossil fuels and other resources to maintain their scaffolding, supply chains, logistics and services.”[xiv] It is another example of the human predicament—we have become materially comfortable and spiritually evolved by harnessing the abundant fossil photosynthetic energy of the past eons and by the trashing of our planetary home. So, as Rifkin continues, “[I]f advancing empathic consciousness and global cosmopolitanism are dependent on ever more intensive energy flow-through, doesn’t each cancel the other, leaving us with a bittersweet worldly wisdom as we descend into the dust heap of history?”[xv]

(Samuel Corum / Anadolu Agency / Getty)

            However, even when Rifkin is pessimistic he is actually far more optimistic than the situation warrants. When he speaks of a biospheric consciousness, he is considering only the leading edge of Civilization, not its less mature body. Not its 99.9 % majority.  The biospheric consciousness hailed as the salvation of humanity is represented by the very few, by far less—by anyone’s measure—than one percent of our human family![xvi]  The rest of us are still grounded in more traditional human-centered—usually self-centered—worldviews, where our principle concerns are jobs for our sustenance and our material betterment and perhaps a voice in the prevailing system. Where a vision of the future expands only the size of the economic pie. And where political, business, and religious ideologies remain rigid and hostile to every other worldview. Even the environmentalists and ecologists speak of other species from a human-centered instrumental perspective. Life is a resource that must be maintained for the good of all humans, present and future, or as part of a planetary bionetwork that serves as our life support system. Rarely is Life described as the Deep Ecologists might: as a sacred phenomenon within which all its species have the intrinsic right to exist. We have yet to awaken to even James Joyce’s nightmare of history, where human suffering is human-inflicted. How much deeper are we asleep to the true extent of the planetary damage.

Pilot whale meat and blubber are a food source that will help feed the 50,000 Faroese through winter.

ENDNOTES

[i] Rifin, J. (2009) The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. Jermey P. Tarcher/Penguin, New York.

Rifkin (2009).  Rifkin writes, “The surveys show that 83 percent of the high-income countries have transitioned into a postmaterialist culture, but 74 percent of the poorest countries have sunk back into a survival-values culture. So, while a minority of the world’s countries and populations are becoming increasingly cosmopolitan in their values, a majority is going the other way.” (Rifkin, 2009:452). Harrison (1997) and McIntosh (2007) come to similar conclusions.

Harrison, P. (1997) The Third Revolution: Environment, Population and a Sustainable World, Chapter 29 in Nelissen, N., van der Straaten, J. and Klinkers, L. (Editors) Classics in Environmental Studies: An Overview of Classic Texts in Environmental Studies, pp. 364-370.

McIntosh, S. (2007) Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution. Paragon House, St. Paul, MN.

[ii] McIntosh (2007), Rifkin (2009:414, 452).  This idea is theoretically supported by Maslow’s developmental model of the hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1943; and for a critique, Heylighen, 1992), wherein a person’s more fundamental needs (physiological, security, sex) must be met before she can focus on less fundamental but important psycho-spiritually needs (tolerance, fairness, compassion, etc.).  These also fit well with the developmental stages of yoga philosophy (for example, Gowan, 1974; Rama et al. 1976, Ajaya, 1983).

Heylighen, F. (1992) A Cognitive-Systematic Reconstruction of Maslow’s Theory of  Self-Actualization. Behavioral Science, v. 37(1), pp. 39-58.

Maslow, A.H. (1943) A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, v. 50, pp. 370-396.

Gowan , J.C. (1974) Development of the Psychedelic Individual, Privately printed.

Rama, Ballentine, R., and Ajaya (1976) Yoga and Psychotherapy: the Evolution of Consciousness. Himalayan Institute Press, Honesdale, PA.

Ajaya (1983) Psychotherapy East and West: A Unifying Paradigm. The Himalayan International Insitute of Yoga Science and Philosophy of the USA, Honesdale, PA.

[iii] Acemoglu and Robinson (2012:1-5), Ajami (2012), Freidman, (2012, June 16), Johnstone and Mazzo (2013). Although mainstream issues, it hasn’t been until the last 60-100 years that universal suffrage has been part of the political landscape in industrial countries Bowles (2012).

Acemoglu, D., and Robinson, J.A. (2012a) Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Crown Business, New York.

Ajami, F. (2012, March/April) The Arab Spring at One: A Year of Living Dangerously. Foreign Affairs, v. 91(2), pp. 56-65.

Friedman, T.L. (2012, April 7) The Other Arab Spring, New York Times. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/opinion/sunday/friedman-the-other-arab-spring.html.  Accessed January 30, 2013.

Friedman, T. (2012, June 16) First Tahrir Square, Then the Classroom, New York Times.  Available http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunday/friedman-first-tahrir-square-then-the-classroom.html?_r=1&emc=eta1.  Accessed June 18, 2012.

Johnstone, S., and Mazzo, J. (2013) Global Warming and the Arab Spring, pp. 15-22, in C. E. Werrell and F. Femia (Editors), The Arab Spring and Climate Change, Center for American Progress.

Bowles, S. (2012) Warriors, Levelers, and the Role of Conflict in Human Social Evolution, Science, v. 336, pp. 876-879.

Friedman, T.L. (2013, May 18) Without Water, Revolution. New York Times. 

[iv] Friedman (2012, April 7; 2012, June 16; 2013, May 18), Zurayk (2012). These overpopulated desertic countries are the world’s largest importers of food, suffer the highest population growth and have the greatest economic inequity (as measured by GINI coefficients) in the world.  The demonstrators might rightly argue that only by addressing the problems of inequality will the problems of food security and environmental damage be solved. Michel and Yacoubian (2011) contend that actually ““access to clean water” figured among the handful of issues that Arab youth labeled as their greatest concerns, even topping unemployment and the cost of living in several countries.”

Michel, D., and Yacoubian, M. (2011) Sustaining the Spring: Economic Challenges, Environmental Risks, and Green Growth, pp. 41-50, in C. E. Werrell and F. Femia (Editors), The Arab Spring and Climate Change, Center for American Progress.

Zurayk, R. (2012) Bread, Freedom, and Social Justice, Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community  Development, v. 2(2), p. 7–1. 

[v] On the other hand, Thomas Friedman (2012, June 16) stands out as a reasonable voice on the Arab Spring when he contends that “there is no differences across the board—not the slightest-between liberals and conservatives on priorities for the next government. They are jobs—No. 1—then economic development, security and stability and education, in that order. Take out security and stability, and they look just like American voters.”

[vi] For example, Rifkin (2009:171-172).  Others have noted the shifting consciousness of young Americans, “who are less inclined to feel a sense of duty to participate politically in the conventional ways such as voting or following issues in the news, while displaying a greater inclination to embrace issues that connect to lifestyle values, ranging from moral concerns to environmental quality” Bennett, Wells and Rank (2008).

Bennett, W.L., Wells, C., and Rank, A. (2008) Young Citizens and Civic Learning: Two Paradigms of Citizenship in the Digital Age, A Report from the Civic Learning Online Project, Center for Communication & Civic Engagement. 

[vii] Sylvia Channing (2010) senior quote in the Ross School yearbook, East Hampton.

[viii] I borrow this metaphor from many, including my dear friends Neal Goldsmith and William Irwin Thompson. See, for example, Thompson (1981:188) and Goldsmith (2012).

Thompson, W.I. (1981) The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, St. Martin’s Press, New York.

Goldsmith, N.M. (2011) Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development. Healing Arts Press, Rochester, VT. 

[ix] Thompson’s deeply-studied concept has been thoroughly developed for some twenty years by faculty and staff and has become the metaphorical structure for the curriculum at the Ross School, a private school in East Hampton, New York,

[x] Bender (2003:21). Bender, F.L. (2003) The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep Ecology, Humanity Books, Amherst, New York.

[xi] Harrison (1997).

[xii] Rifkin (2009:17).

[xiii] As evidence Rifkin notes that “surveys show that 83 percent of high-income countries have transitioned into a postmaterialist culture, but 74 percent of the poorest countries have sunk back into survival-values culture.” Rifkin (2009:452).

[xiv] Rifkin (2009:493).

[xv] Rifkin (2009:494).

[xvi] McIntosh (2007:56) estimates that less than five percent of the humanity possess a “Postmodern” consciousness, which, given the traits associated with this evolutionary stage, most resemble what is being referred to here as a biospheric consciousness.  However, actual behavior measured by some minimum criteria for a sustainable existence on our planet (Lianos, 2013), suggest that there are even fewer in the world who voluntarily live in a manner that reflects a biospheric consciousness.

Lianos, T.P. (2013) The World Budget Constraint. Environment, Development and Sustainability, v. 15, pp. 1543-1553.