As humanity moves into Stage 6, perhaps our most important task is to take conscious charge of our social evolution. Until now our evolution has largely been driven by the Parable of the Tribes and population/environment constraints, both processes that are oriented primarily toward the survival of societies, not the well-being of people or communities or the earth. Now for the first time, our reflexive consciousness is evolved enough that we have the opportunity to consciously direct our evolution, and we face a crisis dangerous enough to force us to do that. But what exactly does it mean for a society (or a world) to consciously direct social evolution? Consciousness is a concept that usually applies to people, not societies.
Systems thinking has shown us that some important concepts can be applied to systems at many different levels of the containment hierarchy. Thus “autonomy” can apply to societies and cells as well as to persons. In the last chapter I used concepts such as “health” and “intelligence” to apply to systems in general, not just organisms or human beings. Gregory Bateson applied the concept of “mind” to systems in general.
Bateson...proposed to define mind as a systems phenomenon characteristic of “living things”...Any system that satisfies [certain] criteria will be able to develop the phenomena we associate with mind—learning, memory, decision making, and so on. In Bateson’s view, mind is a necessary and inevitable consequence of a certain complexity, which begins long before organisms develop a brain and a higher nervous system. He also emphasized that mental characteristics are manifest not only in individual organisms but also in social systems and ecosystems (Capra 1993).
I discussed at the end of the last chapter how consciousness is the most evolved mechanism for increasing autonomy in a system. It gives a system the opportunity to respond to situations in the way that is most appropriate to the needs of the moment. Instinct, learning, or more primitive forms of autonomy don’t have the same flexibility and creativity that consciousness has. It might be fair to say that consciousness is the form that autonomy takes in the most complex systems. Ken Wilber (1995) and others (Laszlo 1987; Berry 1990) have suggested that interiority (or consciousness in a different sense) is a property of all systems. Therefore there is no reason why the concept of consciousness can’t be applied to groups, organizations, societies, and the emerging global system. It won’t mean exactly the same thing as it does for a person, but it will be similar.
This chapter explores global consciousness as the hallmark of Stage 6, the next step in human evolution.
What exactly do I mean by global consciousness? It is a slippery concept, because “consciousness” has so many meanings. In this book I have used it to refer to the realm of the inner life and to mean being aware, rather than unaware or unconscious. My intended use of global consciousness is related but different from these. It is most closely related to "self-reflexive consciousness," the ability of human beings to be aware of themselves. This is the kind of consciousness that is characteristic of human beings, exists to a limited degree in the more intelligent animals, and is absent from the rest of the natural world.
Suppose that the entire human race were a single organism, a single creature. Would that creature be self-reflexively conscious? This is what I mean by global consciousness. Suppose that humanity as a whole wasn’t a collection of organisms, but a single organism, let’s say an enormous dinosaur. Suppose that humanity was an gigantic super-organism with five billion cells (humans) and various organs and body parts (perhaps nations, races, social movements, organizations). We then could ask whether this organism was conscious of itself.
By global consciousness I mean “collective global reflexive consciousness.” The word “reflexive” refers to the ability of consciousness to reflect back on itself, the ability of a being to be aware of itself. “Global” refers to all of humanity. I use the world “collective” because I am referring to the consciousness of the human race as a whole, not a global consciousness that any of us might have as individuals.
Individual vs. Collective Global Consciousness. I make a distinction between individual global consciousness and collective global consciousness. Individual global consciousness means the ability of a person to identify with humanity as a whole and to live and act accordingly. Collective global consciousness is the concept I am defining here. Collective global consciousness, of course, is dependent to a certain extent on individual global consciousness. The more people who are globally conscious, the better chance we have to achieve collective global consciousness.
However, collective global consciousness is not simply the sum of the individual global consciousnesses. Collective global consciousness is also determined by the larger configurations in the body of humanity, for example, multi-national corporations, nations, organizations, ethnic and religious groups, communication networks. (These are analogous to configurations in the human organism such as the heart, the shoulder, the immune system, or the superego.) These groups may also be globally conscious to a greater or lesser degree, which I will call group global consciousness. Collective global consciousness is influenced by various groups degree of global consciousness and how they interact with and contribute to the larger collective consciousness. This is summarizedin Figure 24.1.
Figure 24.1
|
Term |
Definition |
|
individual self-reflexive consciousness |
individual aware of self |
|
individual global consciousness |
individual aware of humanity-as-a-whole |
|
group global consciousness |
group aware of humanity-as-a-whole |
|
collective global consciousness |
humanity-as-a-whole aware of self |
Previous Studies. Planetary or global consciousness has been explored by Peter Russell (1983), Teilhard de Chardin (1965), and Sri Aurobindo (1970). Similar speculations have also been expressed in two classic science fiction novels--Star Maker and Childhood’s End. In both these stories, humanity develops powerful telepathic powers and eventually merges into a single planetary mind. All of these authors seem to feel that global consciousness depends on the widespread advancement of individual consciousness, in the form of telepathy or higher spiritual consciousness. They see global consciousness as developing out of a mystical or telepathic union of all people.
Though I don’t rule this out as a possibility, I wouldn’t want to depend on it for the resolution of our present crisis. Widespread emotional and spiritual development would certainly help, but the kind of global consciousness that I’m suggesting happens at a different hierarchical level than individual consciousness.
Defining by Analogy. Collective global reflexive consciousness can be explored by analogy to individual self-reflexive consciousness. Let’s look at what makes an individual self-reflexively conscious. I propose the following qualities:
1.
separateness
2.
identity
3.
observation of self (experience, behavior, and consequences)
4.
choice of action (based on these observations)
5.
understanding of dynamics underlying behavior
I will take each of these in turn, first understanding how each quality contributes to individual self-reflexive consciousness, then exploring the global analog in current society.
Separateness refers to the ability of a person to experience him or herself as separate from the rest of the world. This quality develops during the first three years of human life. It has been studied extensively by developmental psychologists (Mahler, Pine et al. 1975). A baby is born having little or no sense experience of separateness from its surroundings, especially its mother, who is the main surrounding for the first few years. Then the child grows through a sequence of stages gradually developing a sense of itself as a separate being. This is largely complete by age three, although the development continues to a lesser extent all through childhood and adolescence.
By young adulthood, we have a fairly solid sense of ourselves as separate individuals, distinct from our family, our community, and the natural world. Separateness is an important component of individuality. Ideally we feel separate yet connected.
What about our separateness as a species? Collective separateness means feeling separate from the rest of life, from the natural world. Because of the emergent qualities of technology and reflexive consciousness, humanity certainly has achieved this aspect of global consciousness, but at the expense of losing the ground qualities of natural living and belonging.
The second ingredient of self-reflexive consciousness is identity. This means recognizing yourself as a person with an ongoing existence who can be named and referred to. It is what allows you to say “I.” You have a sense of what you are referring to when you say your name. Experientially, you not only feel separate from the world, you sense your uniqueness and on-going existence as a person.
The sense of identity also develops primarily during the first three years of life. Margaret Mahler (1975), a pioneering investigator in this area, uses the term “separation-individuation,” referring to the twin processes of developing separateness and identity. She sees these as related but distinct developmental processes. As with separateness, the individuation process also continues later in life. In adolescence the search for identity is a major developmental task as described by Erik Erikson (1963).
Global Identification. What about our global identity, our identity as a species? This is something that we are only beginning to experience, and it is still quite tenuous. Before looking at our collective global identity, let’s review our discussion of a person’s individual global identification under Consciousness Realm solutions. This is an aspect of advanced reflexive consciousness which means the person identifies with the human race as a whole and links his or her welfare with all of humanity.
This same issue also applies to groups—organizations, institutions, nations. For any group, one can ask how much that group as a whole identifies with humanity instead of with narrower interests. For example, how much do our corporations and our nation-states identify with the interest of the whole world? I will call this group global identification.
This finally leads us to the concept I am aiming for—collective global identity: How much does humanity as a whole identify with itself. This is more than just the sum of the number of people with global identification. It is also influenced by the communication, organization, and power dynamics of the human race, especially by the degree of global identification of our powerful institutions. When humanity decides what to do about the ozone layer or global warming or war in Iraq, do we consider the whole world? Mostly these decisions are determined by the interests of those with the power—the industrialized nations and the multi-national corporations—and their interests are rarely those of humanity as a whole. Often world wide decisions are made through competition and balancing of the various interests with no one looking after the whole. Therefore our collective global identity is still fairly weak.
The next attribute of self-reflexive consciousness is the ability to observe yourself. This includes observation of internal experience, behavior, and consequences of behavior.
Internal Experience and Behavior. This means the ability to stand back from yourself and recognize what you are feeling and doing. This ability is built upon our sense of identity and our cognitive and language capacities. It applies our reflexive consciousness to the self. It allows us to say such things as, “I am now getting tired.” “I have been talking on the phone for the last hour.” “I feel upset and angry.” The ability to observe your behavior also includes the ability to generalize about how you usually behave, to develop some understanding about the kind of person you are. It means having a self-image. This enables you to say such things as: “I bought a lot of clothes this year.” “I feel close to my sister.” “I am a talkative person.”
At a global level, reflexive consciousness means the ability to observe our actions and values as a species. It means being able to say things such as: “We are releasing X tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day.” “Democracy is becoming an agreed-upon value around the world.” "40,000 people die of starvation in the world every day.” This observational ability relies on our modern communication, transportation, and information technologies and our reflexive consciousness (Bugental 1965). Through these means humanity now collects data on a wide variety of our behaviors and values—personal, social, economic, environmental. Then through our tradition of research and scholarship we analyze, correlate, and attempt to understand this information.
We have become relatively successful at observing our behavior and values. Until recently, this was done primarily on a national basis, but now more and more organizations such as the Worldwatch Institute observe and study our behavior at a global level. However, we are not yet disseminating this information so that it is widely known and appreciated. This can be considered a global analog to making it conscious at the individual level. Therefore we can say that this kind of observation is only partially conscious at the global level.
Consequences of Behavior. The next step in observing yourself is to observe the consequences of your behavior. You are aware of what you are doing, and you can see where it leads. A person might say, “I’m eating too many sweets at night, and as a result I’m getting a roll around my middle.” Or, “I’m staying up late at night, and as a result I’m exhausted and irritable half the time.” This involves the ability to live in extended time, which includes the past and the future. Anyone who has raised children is aware that this kind of self-observation is something that is a hard-won developmental task, which only begins to appear in adolescence. Even for many adults, it is sometimes hard to really see the consequences of our behavior. However, it is within our capacity; it is part of our self-reflexive consciousness.
At the global level, this kind of observation means being able to see the consequences of our actions as a species. “As a result of the carbon dioxide we are releasing, there is a global warming trend.” “Our population growth is leading to major environmental and social problems.” In this area, we need not only the data, but the ability to understand cause and effect and to project trends into the future. In many cases we don't have clear cut statistics, so we must try to understand trends and correlations that are not fully proved, where we can't know the consequences for sure. Personal values and political considerations creep in. When there is no room for question, as with the danger to the ozone layer, we tend to take our observations seriously. However, if there is any room for doubt, as with the issues of global warming and over-population, then influential people and groups deny the danger, calling for “more research,” or simply ignore the threat. The denial comes from a focus on national, corporate, or other separate interests, from a lack of global identification. This then influences our choice of action.
In most circumstances, humanity has the information we really need to see the dangers ahead, but it isn’t widely known or given the priority it deserves. Therefore I think our global consciousness in this area is only partial.
As individuals, once we have observed our behavior and its consequences, we can choose to act differently if we don’t want the consequences. This means acting from a conscious understanding of the results of the action, not just from our immediate impulses and desires. This ability to choose is a basic of human nature, as has been recognized by existential and humanistic psychology (Bugental 1965). There are three aspects of choice of action--choice of short term consequences, choice of long term consequences, and choice of overall way of being.
Short Term Consequences. If we are aware of short term consequences, we can say: “If I stay up late tonight, I’ll be exhausted tomorrow, so I’ll go to bed now.” “If I express my anger at my boss, I might be fired, so I’ll keep quiet.” Like the other aspects of self-reflexive consciousness, this is an ability that gradually develops during the maturation process. Of course, even as adults, we don’t always act from conscious choice, as has been demonstrated by modern psychological studies of unconscious motivation. This is most apparent in the widespread problem of addictions today. However, we have the ability to consciously choose our actions, even if we don’t always exercise it.
At the global level, the ability to choose refers to our ability as a species to take actions to better our situation based on observations of our behavior and its consequences. It would include the ability to say, “The global economy is having certain difficulties, so we will cooperate on international bank actions to stabilize the dollar.” “The world will be safer if Russia becomes stable, so we will aid them in restructuring their economy.” In the last few decades we are beginning to be able to make these kinds of decisions about global issues with relatively short term consequences.
Institutions and Action. The ability to take decisive action at the global level currently resides in our political institutions and our multi-national corporations, but these are noted for self-interest, not global interest. Much of this power is vested in the political institutions of the nation-state, and too often these institutions are concerned primarily with the short-term interests of the nation’s special interest groups or with national prestige, power, and “security.” An increasing amount of this power lies in the hands of the large multi-national corporations, which are almost solely concerned with their own short-term profit picture. For example, despite all the evidence of enormous danger ahead from global warming, the Bush administration stalled on taking action, probably because the changes required would have caused significant disruptions for many influential corporations.
The political institutions that have some global identification and outlook are the United Nations along with some non-governmental organizations, but these have relatively little power. The most the U.N. can do is bring together the powerful nations and hope that they can agree on treaties that reflect a global orientation. Sometimes when the consequences are clear and immediate enough, the human race has been able to act. This has been possible because we now have enough global observational ability, some fledgling global institutions, and a degree of global cooperation. For example, the group of seven largest capitalist countries are sometime able to make economic decisions that take into account the short term improvement of the world economy. However, this ability is only recently gained, and sometimes even short term consequences are sacrificed to competing national or corporate interests.
Choice of Long Term Consequences. As individuals, besides making choices based on immediate consequences, we can look farther into the future. We can practice “delayed gratification.” For example, we can say: “Since I don’t like gaining weight from eating too much, I choose to eat less.” The weight loss won’t show up tomorrow, but weeks or months later, so we need the ability to choose based on longer term consequences. This requires a higher level of cognitive ability and a more mature emotional development.
At the global level this would include the ability to say: “We are seriously threatened by global warming, so we will make the changes necessary to reduce the release of carbon dioxide and other gases which cause the greenhouse effect.” “Over-population is a major threat, so we will start a major campaign toward population stabilization.” The consequences of global warming or over-population will not happen this year or next, so we must have more foresight to take them into account. (In the case of over-population, this is not strictly true. We are already suffering its effects, but it is a gradual, long-term process.)
Global Long Term Choice. Our abilities are dangerously lacking in dealing with long term consequences. The institutions that currently wield power in the world are strongly oriented toward interests that are short term and non-global. Unfortunately, most of the issues that threaten us are global and long term. Perhaps “intermediate term” would be even more accurate, because they are issues with consequences in decades, not centuries. If we had centuries, the current danger would not be so great.
When an issue is clear cut, large sacrifices are not required, and the issue is not long term, then global cooperation sometimes now happens. This was the case with the danger to the ozone layer. There was a U.N. sponsored meeting about the ozone danger in which the countries involved agreed to a certain reduction in their emissions of CFC’s (the gases that are primarily responsible for ozone depletion). Then when it became apparent, a few years later, that this decrease was not enough, they met again and agreed to a further reduction over the next decade[ref]. This illustrates the kind of action that the world should be taking on a wide variety of issues that threaten us.
Ultimately what we need is political institutions at the global level with our long-term global interests at heart that have the power to act on the crucial issues facing us. We need a much stronger U.N. or possibly even some form of world government with the power to make these decisions and enforce them. We need a closer connection between those institutions with global observational ability and identity and those with the power to act. There are a growing number of non-governmental organizations and citizens’ groups that may be gaining in power and influence. Many of them have a global and long term perspective. If these groups network together and increase their membership and following, they may begin to provide a healthy form of globally conscious power.
Institutions and Global Consciousness. In exploring the question of global consciousness, it is interesting to notice which groups, organizations, and institutions perform the various functions I have been discussing. Here is a cursory summary:
Separation: Everyone
Identity: The U.N. and certain research and activist organizations
Observation and Understanding Dynamics: Research and academic organizations
Action: National governments and multi-national corporations
Notice that the organizations with the power are not the same ones that embody global identification and observation. It is not necessary that they be exactly the same, but it is necessary that those organizations with global power identify globally and listen to the groups with observational ability. Of course, it is also crucial that the average person develop global identification and that our institutions democratically reflect this.
The above summary doesn’t begin to cover the various organizations that perform some of the functions of global consciousness, now or in the future. That would be an interesting study in itself.
Before I discuss the third type of choice—the ability to choose one’s overall way of being—I will discuss understanding dynamics, because this capacity is necessary for this most difficult kind of choice.
Understanding Psychological Dynamics. The last component of individual self-reflexive consciousness is the ability to observe and understand the psychological dynamics behind our behavior. Whenever our behavior is motivated by something deeper than conscious choice (and this is much of the time), we can benefit from understanding what the underlying motivation is. Our perceptions are also strongly shaped by unconscious personal and cultural forces. Understanding dynamics includes everything from relatively simple surface perceptions and motivation to deep psychodynamic conflicts. It means the ability to say such things as, “I got irritated at you because I felt hurt by what you said.” “I try to please you because I’m afraid you’ll abandon me the way my mother did.”
In one sense I hesitate to include this ability in the list, because it is clearly not necessary for a person to have this kind of self-awareness to be considered self-reflexively conscious. Many people live their entire lives without it. However, this is the most advanced form of self-reflexive consciousness, and it is important for global consciousness, so I will include it. Self-reflexive consciousness has developed very gradually over the span of human social evolution, and the ability to understand dynamics is the most historically recent of our self-conscious abilities. It is only in the last forty years that this ability has begun to be widespread among the population.
Since much of our perception and behavior is influenced by things we aren’t entirely conscious of, whenever we can understand this influence, we have a greater chance of changing the behavior. Knowing why we act as we do, we can choose to act differently with a better chance of succeeding. Sometimes knowing the origins even changes the underlying motivation. This gives us a greater degree of freedom and choice.
Understanding Social Dynamics. At the global level, understanding dynamics means understanding the psychological, cultural, historical, economic, and political dynamics behind our behavior as a species. Here the psychological is just one of many areas we need to understand. In the global arena even more than the individual, humanity rarely acts from any conscious decision. Most of what we do and who we are is the result of complex social dynamics; often the result is something we wouldn't have chosen consciously.
An understanding of social dynamics gives us the ability to say things such as: “The main reason for massive hunger in the world is the lack of political and economic power in the hands of the poor.” “It is difficult for us to reduce the environmental threats because our economic system requires continued expansion of consumption.” Attempts to understand these dynamics come mainly from universities, think tanks, and independent scholars and theorists. It is the work of sociologists, political scientists, economists, political psychologists, and other social critics. Having this kind of understanding would help us deal with some of the really difficult problems we are now facing as a world.
Have we achieved global consciousness in this area? I think we have some understanding of our dynamics, but far from what we need. There is much we don’t really understand, and there are enormous disagreements in this area about what the really fundamental dynamics are. Many thinkers are ensconced in various competing schools of thought that have ideological blinders to seeing the value of other schools. Even more dangerous is that our power centers are disconnected from our centers of understanding. Even where there is some agreement among the scholars, the politicians and corporations are not paying attention because their interests are not those of humanity as a whole.
Choice of Way of Being. At the individual level, you can go further than just choosing specific actions. You can also, in some cases, choose your overall way of being, the kind of person you want to be. If you realize that you procrastinate and lack discipline, you can work on changing your basic habits to become a more successful worker. If you realize that you are too rigid and constricted and lack job in life, you can work on becoming spontaneous and expressive. These changes are not easy to make, but they are part of our human repertoire; they are an outgrowth of our self-reflexive consciousness.
In making these changes, it is a great help to understand the psychological dynamics that cause you to be the way you are. This would allow you to say things such as, “I am a workaholic because it was only by working hard that I could get my father’s approval.” Then you can set out to make deeper changes in your basic personality. This usually requires a persistent effort over a long time. This is the domain of the various psychotherapies and spiritual disciplines.
Choice of Society. Similarly, at the global level humanity needs to be able to choose not only specific actions, but also the kind of society we want—our values, our culture, our basic institutions. In fact, the current planetary crisis requires not only specific remedial actions, but a fundamental change in our whole way of living. As with individual change, this requires an understanding of the dynamics that have caused our society to be as it is. This book, of course, aims at increasingly this kind of understanding. We also need a better understanding of the dynamics of large scale social change.
To make this kind of choice, we must acknowledge that radical change is needed, and then foster serious public debate about the basic direction of our society. These discussions shouldn’t be just about policy changes, but about fundamental issues such as our level of consumption, the urban breakdown of community, our consciousness, and all the other issues I touch on in this book. Most importantly, we need the courage and foresight to take action to transform our planet.
We are certainly far from globally conscious at the level of choosing our culture. At this moment we are barely able to take the remedial actions necessary to save ourselves from immediate ruin. Our leaders are certainly not acting out of a desire to make basic changes in our societies. The general population is beginning to become aware that something is seriously wrong, but most people don’t understand the scope of the problem or the changes it requires.
In defining global consciousness, instead of asking if the human race as a whole is conscious, I could have asked if the planet earth is conscious. In an early section I asked “what if” humanity as a whole were an organism, but the earth may very well be an organism. James Lovelock (1982) has formulated a scientific hypothesis that the earth as a whole is a living organism, with most of the crucial attributes associated with living creatures. He was especially struck with the planet’s homeostatic mechanisms which maintain the conditions for life. He named this the “Gaia hypothesis” after the Greek goddess of the earth.
The Gaia Myth. Along with the scientific merits of his work, he struck a deep chord in the planetary psyche. The Gaia concept has become extremely popular. Many people have been captivated by the idea that the earth is a living creature, perhaps even an aware being or a goddess. Everywhere you turn, the word “Gaia” is in use, referring to the living planet.
I would even suggest that Gaia is the emerging myth of the new planetary culture. Mythologists such as Joseph Campbell (1973) and Jean Houston (1987) teach us that each culture has a myth (or myths) that explains reality to its people. These myths define the larger context for people’s lives, giving meaning and providing a guide for behavior. In this sense, the word myth means “guiding story,” not “false story.”
In our early Western history, people were guided by the Greek and Roman myths that we all studied in high school. Then the Christian myth shaped our civilization for over a millennium. More recently we have been guided by the Horatio Alger myth of the self-made man and the myth of unending scientific and technological progress. Mythologists are now speculating about the myths that may emerge to guide us through our current historical transition and give meaning to the new culture we must create.
I suggest that one of these may be the Gaia myth. This is not a myth in the usual sense, because there isn’t a story accompanying the Gaia concept. Perhaps such stories will emerge as the myth takes shape, or perhaps it will remain in its current, more nebulous form. In any case, its popularity is unmistakable. Furthermore, it points to the crucial issue of our time—global consciousness.
Earth Consciousness. As Wilber (1995) points out, the scientific question of whether Gaia is an organism is a very different question from that raised by the Gaia myth, which tends to see Gaia as conscious in some sense. The scientific Gaia operates at the level of planetary geology, while consciousness operates at a much higher level of evolution. Asking whether Gaia is conscious is probably equivalent to asking the question of this chapter—whether the human race as a whole is conscious. It seems that if the planet were conscious, her brain and nervous system would consist of the human race and our information processing and communications systems. Of course, there is a deep organic intelligence to the natural world and the biosphere which is more fundamental than human intelligence. However, I am referring to consciousness here, and human beings and human society seem to be the only possible source for that. If Gaia is to become conscious, we are her means of consciousness.
If the earth is to become conscious through us, we must be identified with all the earth, not just the human race. We must not be dissociated from the biosphere. This means expanding our sense of individual identity even beyond humanity to encompass the natural world. Earlier I discussed expanding our identities and concerns beyond our ethnic groups and nations to include all of humanity. We are called on to expand even further, to feel our kinship with birds and trees, animals and insects, forests and oceans, to recognize that our fate is bound up with the health of the earth. This will help us to make the difficult ecological changes that are necessary for our survival.
Deep Ecology. We could rely on our cognitive understanding of ecological reality to motivate us to care for our environment, but if we also identify with the earth as a whole using our emotional and spiritual capacities, we are more likely to succeed. We need to move beyond global identification to earth identification, beyond global consciousness to earth consciousness. This is what is espoused by the "deep ecology" movement, which believes that animals and the natural world have value in their own right, not just as resources for the benefit of human beings.
Then our human global consciousness can be integrated with the underlying intelligence and dynamics of the earth, leading to collective earth identity and collective earth consciousness.
The Transition to Consciousness. Let’s compare the issues humanity faces now in the transition to global consciousness with those which individuals faced during our pre-history in the transition to self-reflexive consciousness. The major issue that had to be faced in the development of individual self-consciousness was the development of appropriate cognitive and communication (language) skills to make individual identity and self-observation possible. These capacities were developed gradually over hundreds of thousands of years of first biological and then social evolution. Over this time we became intelligent enough to develop ways of naming and understanding objects in our surroundings, and then applied this ability to ourselves.
In the development of global consciousness, we have sufficient global cognitive and communication abilities. The communication skills are represented by our communication and information technology, which started with writing and numbers, then moved to printing, and now includes telephones, computers, fax machines, satellites, and the mass media. Our global cognitive capacities started with philosophy and the higher religions and now include our scientific, research, and scholarly traditions. These abilities have only become powerful and accessible enough to allow global consciousness in the last half century.
However, these cognitive and communication capacities are not enough to develop global consciousness. We also need wholeness. At the individual level, as we moved from animal to human, we needed only the right cognitive development; we were already whole as a result of our biology. Once we had the cognitive skills, self-reflexive consciousness followed. The human race is not very whole, not very well integrated. Though we are biologically integrated as part of the planetary ecosystem, we have extracted ourselves technologically and emotionally from our ecological base. We have developed societies that are not integrated with the earth and not integrated with each other. As a world, we are fragmented into competing nations, races, ethnic groups, and corporations. We have the cognitive capacities for global consciousness, but we aren't unified. Wholeness is the final step that is needed.
Spiritual Capacities. This wholeness will need to emerge from another set of capacities from the Consciousness Realm, especially empathy, compassion, vision, and interconnectedness. These attitudes will help us to realize that we are one, that all people and all life are our brothers and sisters. Today the fate of each person’s ethnic group and country is intertwined with that of all people and the earth, but this is not easy for many people to see. When a person’s psychospiritual capacities are developed, these understandings flow more easily.
At the global level, how are these spiritual integrative capacities manifested? Throughout our history these capacities have been the province of religion, but too often religion has also been divisive and war-like or has been concerned with the heavenly realm while ignoring the material plane. Today there are promising developments in traditional religion toward becoming more socially concerned, ecumenical, and earthy. In addition, the spiritual capacities of compassion and integrative vision are being developed in some the popular consciousness movements of today as reflexive consciousness advances into Stage 6. I have hopes that this will provide us with the planetary abilities that are needed for wholeness, allowing us to become globally conscious.
It should be clear now that I intend global consciousness to be more than just an interesting metaphor. I believe that it is just as valid to apply the concept of consciousness to a society as to a person. A society is simply at a higher level in the containment hierarchy, where we can’t directly empathize because we are at the individual level. I believe that at this time in history we are in the process of forming the next level in the containment hierarchy—the global level—and developing its complexity and autonomy. Global consciousness is a crucial step in its evolution.
What would the world be like if humanity were globally conscious? People everywhere would see themselves not only as French or Kurds or Hindus, but also as world citizens. They would identify their fate with the fate of humanity and the earth. Rather than having to win a war or an economic competition to feel successful, people would rejoice when humanity as a whole made strides forward. For example, we would feel successful when we could stabilize world population or eradicate hunger.
Globally Conscious Institutions. We would have well funded, prestigious research and scholarly organizations studying all aspects of our global behavior and attempting to understand our social dynamics. The results of these studies would be widely disseminated and taken seriously by all world citizens, especially those in power.
We would have either a world government or a collection of planetary institutions that have the power to make and enforce decisions on those issues that are truly global in nature. These institutions would deal with war, world environmental issues, population and immigration, trade, development, and certain other issues that necessarily cross national boundaries. They would have global identification. They would serve the interests of humanity as a whole, not just those of the powerful nations. These global institutions would look after our long term interests, rather than only being concerned with this year's economic results. They would be democratically run, so they truly reflected the will of the world's people and could not be used as instruments of domination and exploitation.
In addition, there would be a myriad of grass roots movements, non-governmental organizations, and activist groups that care for various aspects of our global (and local) governance and our future. There would especially be groups concerned with our culture as a whole, our social institutions, our world view, our way of life. One of our global values would be the celebration of cultural diversity. We would give birth to a richer and healthier world society through the creative interaction of many different viewpoints and traditions. Most importantly, we would advance into the future making conscious choices about who we want to be and how we want to live.
If a person becomes part of a larger organism, will he or she lose any individuality or freedom? No more than we already do to political oppression and economic exploitation. Human beings have been struggling against domination five thousand years and have even made some headway recently. We must work to ensure that our global institutions are at least as democratic as our best nations, and in the long run strive to improve our overall level of democracy. In this way our global decisions will reflect the needs of the earth’s people as individuals and communities as well as being attuned to the good of the whole.
A Conscious Earth. There are science fiction stories in which a computer becomes conscious. Perhaps because of its increasing size and complexity, there comes a time when the computer becomes aware of itself. Instead of being simply a machine that does what it is programmed to do in a mechanical, unconscious way, it wakes up and discovers that it can choose what to do. It develops relationships with human beings. It learns to program itself. It becomes like a person.
I am suggesting that humanity as a whole may now be approaching this turning point in our evolution, that Gaia may soon wake up. Just as human beings had to evolve a brain and then a neocortex in order to develop self-reflexive consciousness, Gaia must do the same. The earth has developed its neocortex in the human race and our technologies, and now humanity must develop the global social structures and institutions to play the role of coordinating system in the global brain.