Key Words: social evolution, planetary crisis, emergence, integration, autonomy, wholeness

At the start of social evolution, human beings and societies exhibited certain qualities, which I call ground qualities:
1. connection with nature
2. sense of belonging and richness of experience
3. egalitarian community

As time went by, human population continually grew in a world of limited resources, and groups and societies threatened each other with war. Therefore over the course of human history we were forced to develop other emergent qualities in order to survive, giving us more conscious choice and power over our environment, other peoples, and ourselves:
1. technology
2. reflexive consciousness
3. social structure

These emergent qualities helped free human beings from the vagaries of weather and climate and threats from predators. They allowed us to grow more food and harness more energy, to coordinate increasing numbers of people. They gave societies the military power to protect themselves. They gave people a way of understanding themselves and the world and the advantages of civilization and higher culture. In time we had the opportunity for education and personal development. We can examine these qualities in more detail by dividing them into three realms.

The Material Realm. The material realm refers to how human beings deal with physical reality, especially technology and the natural world. In this realm, the ground quality is natural living, which means living in harmony with the biological world, using processes which work with the natural flows of the earth. This may be due to the virtual absence of technology as in the Stone Age when people had no choice but to harmonize with nature. In other cases, it can mean using technology that is aligned with natural process, following the existing patterns of biology whenever feasible and disrupting as little as possible, for example, technology designed to minimize consumption of energy and resources and to reuse wastes.

The emergent quality, technological living, means using both artifacts (especially machines) and specialized techniques in the material aspects of life. Today technological living emphasizes complex and sophisticated machines with an aim to maximize productivity and labor efficiency. It has given us much in the way of power, comfort, and protection, but this has come at the cost of alienating us from our roots in the natural world.

Over the span of social evolution, the material realm has evolved from hunting and gathering, through horticulture and agriculture, to the industrial revolution and today’s computers and biotechnology.

The Social Realm. The social realm refers to social structures of all kinds, from the family to corporations to governments and economies. The ground quality, community, characterizes a society whose people feel connected to each other and to the whole, where each person is valued and there are shared traditions and mores. Power is relatively equal and the community takes responsibility for the well-being of its members.

With the emergent quality, social structure, transactions are organized and mediated primarily through social roles and institutions rather than direct personal contact. Thus interactions can be influenced by status, rules of conduct, money, vested power structures, or other means. With increasing social structure, society becomes differentiated into various sectors with occupational specialization, and coordinated through institutions such as a government and an economy. Today’s social structure tends to be impersonal and oppressive, though it also has its positive side. Some kind of social structure is absolutely necessary for coordinating larger associations of people; this can’t be done through personal contact alone. Larger social structures have also brought together people from different cultures and traditions, thereby enhancing the possibility of intercultural understanding and appreciation.

Over human history, the social realm has evolved from families and bands, to villages and chiefdoms, through states and empires, to today’s nation states with market economies and some democracy. It is moving toward a global society and economy.

The Consciousness Realm. The consciousness realm refers to our inner life of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and spiritual experience. Participatory consciousness is the ground quality. It is characterized by a sense of belonging to the world and an aliveness and immediacy of experience. In this mode, people relate to the world primarily through instinct, emotion, the body, and the immediate present. Reality is experienced as animate, organic, and spiritual. We are fully alive in the present; our experience of life is not dulled or blocked. We experience our senses, our bodies, our emotions, and our spiritual attunement in a full and vibrant way.

Reflexive consciousness is the emergent quality. This means the ability to understand ourselves and the world through the mediation of images and ideas. It means being able to step back from and reflect on how we experience the world. Rather than simply experiencing, we can also conceptualize and analyze our experience as a way of seeing and understanding it more clearly. In the current stage, reflexive consciousness means using logical operations on abstract concepts. This can grant more objective understanding and allow us to make conscious choices about how to act. It enhances our ability to take control of our environment and plan for the future. Reflexive consciousness also enables the development of individuality.

Over the span of social evolution, the consciousness realm has evolved from magic and animism, to mythology, through the higher religions and philosophies, to today’s science and individualism.

In Earley (1997), I describe five specific stages of social evolution and examine how the ground and emergent qualities in each of the three realms evolved during each stage.

The Current Crisis. The ground and emergent qualities are complementary qualities, not opposites. Though they have tended to oppose each other historically, it is possible to integrate them. As social evolution proceeded and the emergent qualities became increasingly pervasive, a split developed between the ground and emergent qualities with some groups representing the emergent qualities and others the ground qualities. The emergent qualities have often been represented by men, the middle and upper classes, the developed nations, whites, Europeans and their descendants, corporations, and urban people. The ground qualities have usually been represented by women, oppressed classes, the Third World, people of color, communities, and rural people. This dissociation between the qualities occurs psychologically within individuals and also socially as groups take on one quality or the other exclusively. All of us have the potential for both qualities within us, but most of us have split off one quality or the other.

In addition to this dissociation, the emergent qualities have come to dominate and the ground qualities have been suppressed and devalued, causing us to lose our original vitality and wholeness, as societies and as individuals. We have become alienated from the natural world, from each other, and from ourselves. Our economic system emphasizes material growth at all costs. Our technical power and our population are so large that we are acting in ways that threaten our ecological well being and perhaps our very survival.

1. We have developed technology and destabilized our environment.
2. We have gained understanding and lost vitality, meaning, and empathy.
3. We have developed social structure and lost equality and community.

The Next Stage of Social Evolution. This is a dialectical model of social evolution, and today is the time in history for synthesis. Now that we are beginning to be aware of the problem with the suppression of the ground qualities, we have an opportunity to consciously redress it by reclaiming them. These qualities haven’t disappeared; they have been held by the above mentioned groups of people and societies, and they exist in each of us as well, though sometimes unconsciously.

However, it is not enough to focus on regaining the ground qualities. The emergent qualities are also valuable for a healthy society. Our difficulties at this time are not because the emergent qualities are too pervasive or because they are innately destructive, but rather because we have suppressed the ground qualities. The suppression and devaluing of the ground qualities has caused the emergent qualities to become distorted. It is these distorted versions of the emergent qualities that are threatening our society.

At this time in human history we need integration—integration of conscious power and organic vitality. We must have both sides of our nature now. We are called on to practice this in our personal lives and to embody it in our institutions and our culture. Then we will have:

1. ecological technology
2. integrated mind and heart
3. social structure that promotes community and equality

This can help us create a global society that is natural, loving, democratic, pluralistic, and dedicated to the good of all human beings and the earth.

Integration. It is especially important to recognize the need for integration. Too many progressive thinkers, seeing the destructiveness of the current versions of the emergent qualities, believe that the ground qualities are all-good and the emergent qualities all-bad. They praise the wonders of emotions, intuition, and spirituality (ground) and warn of the dangers of rational, linear thinking (emergent). They speak of the beauty of nature (ground) and the evils of technology (emergent), the joy of community (ground) and the dangers of the market and multi-national corporations (emergent).

While much of this is true, this kind of split thinking throws the baby out with the bath water. While nature, emotion, and community are beautiful, technology can be enormously beneficial, rational thinking is essential for much that we value, and some form of large scale social structure is necessary in coordinating a world of billions. Even people who understand the value of both qualities often subtly slip into an attitude of devaluing the emergent qualities. This model attempts to clarify this problem and restore balance and integration to our understanding of the human qualities needed for a healthy resolution of the current crisis and advancement into the next stage of social evolution.

What do the emergent qualities—technological living, social structure, and reflexive consciousness—have something in common. Human beings were originally embedded in our biological nature, and we have gradually emerged and separated ourselves from our primordial environment. This includes not only emergence from the natural world through technology, but also emergence from the unconscious through reflexive thinking, and emergence from the biological bonds of community through complex social structure.

Emergence has two aspects—separation from embeddedness in a biological ground and the development of a new mediated relationship with that ground. Here I mean mediation in the broadest sense of the term—being an intermediary between two parties. To mediate between two entities is to join them, to come between them, to facilitate their interaction in some way. Thus a common thread among the emergent qualities is that they all involve a differentiation and organization of reality through mediation. Technology mediates between human beings and physical reality, roles mediate between people, and concepts mediate between people and our inner experience, as shown in Figure 1.

We can look at this model of social evolution according to the degree of alignment between the evolving societies and the underlying nature of reality. Viewing reality as a whole, including human, social, and material reality, I believe that it has certain intrinsic properties. Reality is an integrated organic, systemic whole that is participatory, vital, and meaningful. These are deep philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality that probably can’t be proved or disproved. They must be taken as fundamental assumptions. However, this view of reality is consistent with that of many scholars today (e.g. Johnston 1984, Wilber 1995, Harman 1988).

Reality is an integrated whole because its parts are related and connected to each other, and it contains sub-wholes (and they contain sub-wholes, etc.) that are also integrated. The physical world has been shown to be integrated by subatomic physics, ecology, and General Systems Theory (von Bertalanffy 1968), and the science of Complexity (Waldrop 1992). The social world has always been integrated at the level of community and is now becoming more and more integrated through social structure at the world level.

The world of life is organic in that it is organized according to the principles of biology. Ecosystems, organisms, and human communities all have a natural, alive, flowing kind of order to them that is different from that of a machine or bureaucracy. Even the non-living world and the sub-worlds of chemistry and physics have a systemic inter-relatedness that transcends machine models.

Reality is participatory in that all parts participate in the whole, and no one can be a completely separate observer. When observing the non-human world, we can achieve a certain amount of objectivity, but atomic physics has shown that even this is limited. When it comes to the human and social world, a pretense of complete objectivity can lead to serious misunderstandings.

Reality has an intrinsic vitality and aliveness, and it is meaningful in a spiritual and emotional sense, rather than simply being a mechanism. I believe that meaning is not just something that we humans attribute to reality but an intrinsic quality of it. Moreover, the meanings we give reality arise from it in a natural way, since we are part of reality, not separate observers.

All these properties I have attributed to reality are also ground qualities in this model. They are the qualities of society in its early stages when it is completely embedded in biology. Thus early societies were naturally and unconsciously aligned with reality because it has yet to emerge from embeddedness.

Emergent Control. During human social evolution, to better control reality for our well-being and security, we emerged from being embedded in it and made relatively objective observations and analyses of it. We differentiated it and organized it through mediation. We did this in two ways, by conceptually dividing reality into various pieces and analyzing the relationships among them, and by actually carving up reality so that it became more differentiated materially and socially.

Human beings emerged from nature, divided it into parts, and analyzed the parts and their interactions with each other. We built tools and machines to change the world to our liking. We created an entire artificial environment in which to live, and we organized this world according to mechanical principles.

We emerged from our original communities and created large societies. We differentiated social reality into sectors and fields and professions and occupations, into finer and finer pieces as each person became a specialist or a cog in the social machine. In order to allow such fragmented societies to function, we organized these pieces according to the principles of bureaucracy and monetary exchange.

Unsophisticated Emergent Quality. We have emerged from organic embeddedness in naturally aligned societies and created societies with our minds and our technology. However, our understanding and our methods of creation were unsophisticated, and still are to a great extent. Modern society analyzes reality in mechanistic, fragmented ways that ignore the connected organic nature of things. Our technology and our social structure are also largely immature. We aren’t yet sophisticated enough to recognize the actual nature of reality, which is the basis for the ground qualities of natural living, community, and participatory consciousness. Therefore we not only fail to understand these qualities in the design of our societies, we also undermine them through the changes we make in reality, and so our world seems to lack them.

However, we can’t fully destroy them, because these ground qualities are built into our nature and the nature of reality. We imagined that our unsophisticated view of reality captured the truth and that we could fully control things. As our power to control reality has grown in scope and depth, we have tried to organize more and more of reality for our own ends with our unsophisticated methods. We have taken over more of the earth and more of genetic and sub-atomic reality. Now we are incurring massive and unprecedented side effects, consequences that we didn’t intend but are occurring because of the interconnected, organic nature of reality. Nature is organic and integrated, so when we treat it as a machine, we generate ecological breakdown. Human beings need community, so when we treat our institutions and societies as machines, we foster social breakdown. We also need vitality, creativity, and intimacy, so when we perceive ourselves as isolated, passive thinking and pleasure machines, we engender psychological breakdown.

The emergent qualities aren’t intrinsically at odds with the underlying nature of reality, only our current unsophisticated, dissociated versions of them. Earlier in our history, when our methods were even less sophisticated, we weren’t able to control much of reality, so we couldn’t do as much damage. In the future as our methods become more sophisticated and tuned to the real nature of things, we won’t cause harm. In the meantime, to modify an old saying, "A medium amount of knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Integration. To evolve further, we need to integrate the emergent qualities with the ground qualities, or to say it another way, the emergent qualities need to evolve further to become more sophisticated in their recognition of the nature of reality. We must recognize that we are participants in a larger whole, not completely separate observers, so in studying reality we must become participant-observers. We need to understand the organic, connected nature of reality, and differentiate and organize it in a way that respects this. We must structure our societies in a way that respects the human need for community and equality. We need to design our technology in a way that respects the organic quality of nature. We must exercise power that is governed by an understanding of the deeper meaning of life. When we exercise power over nature and society and over our own bodies and minds, we must do it with goals that are informed and motivated by the vital and meaningful nature of human life and the earth.

Now let’s look at how this model of social evolution relates to general evolution.

Complexity. The most common general definition of evolution, biological or social, involves complexity. More evolved systems are defined as those that are more complex, more differentiated. This means they have a greater number of subsystems which can be interconnected in more ways or they have a greater number of different kinds of subsystems which have a wider variety of modes of interacting. For example, the human body is differentiated into an endocrine system, an immune system, a nervous system, etc., and each of these is differentiated further into organs, and each of these into cells.

System theorists have investigated the unfolding of the physical universe from the beginning of time until the present and noticed a trend that moves from small, simple systems toward larger more complex ones (Laszlo 1987). This includes physical, biological, and social evolution. This doesn’t mean that all systems necessarily become more complex or larger. Some have stayed the same for millions of years. Some even regress in evolutionary terms. However, over time systems have continued to appear that were more complex than what preceded them. These can usefully be considered as more evolutionarily advanced.

In human society, differentiation takes a variety of forms. One is the specialization of function into different sectors, occupations, roles, and sub-specialties. Another is the stratification of society into different classes or castes, where the differentiation is according to status and power. A third is the proliferation of different religious and ethnic groups and cultures.

Autonomy. In addition to complexity, systems theorists have noticed a number of other system properties associated with increasing evolution. The most important of these for social evolution is autonomy. More evolved systems tend to be more autonomous with respect to their environment. They have more degrees of freedom, they are more determined by their own inner workings than by the systems that contain them, and they have more ability to respond adaptively and creatively to changes in their environment. For example, a human being has more freedom and choice about how to deal with an unusually cold winter than a robin does.

Autonomy is just as important as complexity, but not as widely recognized. To underscore its importance, I will review the ideas of some systems theorists on autonomy: The Tree of Knowledge (Maturana and Varela 1987), which develops a systems approach to the study of cognition, sees autonomy as a primary characteristic of all living systems.

Ervin Laszlo notes that in evolution there is a movement toward less binding energy and therefore more degrees of freedom. This is a low-level form of autonomy.

As we move from microscopic systems on a basic level of organization to macroscopic systems on higher organizational levels, we move from systems that are strongly and rigidly bonded to those with weaker and more flexible binding energies...Protons and neutrons within the nucleus of atoms are bound by nuclear exchange forces, the strength of which is strikingly demonstrated in nuclear fission. Atoms within complex molecules are joined by ionic or covalent bonding and related weaker forces. The forces that join chemical molecules within organic macromolecules are weaker still, while those that bond cells within multicellular organisms are another dimension down the scale of bonding energy (Laszlo 1987, p. 22-24).

In the biological arena, Gregory Bateson discusses three ways that organisms handle changes in the environment. "Adjusters" are organisms that allow the environment to impinge on their organism and then adjust to the result. An example would be cold blooded reptiles, which allow their body temperature to change with that of their surroundings and then must adjust their activity level accordingly. "Regulators" handle impingements from the environment at their body boundaries. Thus warm-blooded mammals keep their internal body temperature fixed and regulate this through fur, sweating, movement, shelter, etc. This gives them more autonomy with respect to the surrounding temperature. "Extraregulators" achieve control outside their bodies by changing their environment. Thus human beings wear clothes and build houses to control their body temperature, thus giving them even more autonomy. "In the broad picture of evolution...natural selection...favors regulators more than adjusters, and extraregulators more than regulators" (Bateson 1972, p. 361-363).

Arthur Koestler describes the evolutionary increase in autonomy as follows:

Generally we find on successively higher levels of the hierarchy increasingly complex, more flexible and less predictable patterns of activity with more degrees of freedom (a larger variety of strategic choices) (Koestler 1978, p. 46).

At the human level, three levels of behavioral response can be distinguished. (1) Instinctive behavior is built in genetically, with adaptation happening only over the span of many lifetimes through biological evolution. There is no possibility of adapting to any recent changes in the environment. (2) Learned behavior changes through processes like conditioning or modeling, which gives us the chance to adapt to changes in our environment during our lifetime, as long as there has been enough time in the new situation for learning to have occurred. This gives us more autonomy. (3) Conscious choice allows us to choose our response according to the uniqueness of a given situation, even one that we may never have encountered before. This includes not only selecting from a given set of alternative choices, but also generating new possibilities for action. This gives us maximal autonomy through being able to respond most appropriately to circumstances. Notice again that with these three types of behavior, the more evolved response patterns are the ones with more autonomy.

Adaptability. Complexity and autonomy are two sides of the same coin. The more internal complexity a system has, the more autonomy it has with respect to its supersystem(s). The complexity gives the system greater functional capacity in adapting to changes in its environment, and therefore greater autonomy. I speculate that the reason evolution has led toward systems of greater complexity and autonomy is that these systems are more adaptable, enabling them to better survive the inevitable changes that will occur in their environments.

Complexity and Autonomy in Social Evolution. Let’s look at complexity and autonomy in our model of social evolution. Here the system in question is the human society, and its supersystems are the natural world and the system of all human societies. The emergent qualities always involve an increase in complexity and autonomy no matter which realm is involved.

In the material realm, with the emergence of technology our means of working with physical reality have become increasingly complex. Humans first used very simple tools and gradually evolved to the point where we now use very complex machines and computers. This has given our societies greater autonomy with respect to the natural world in that it has allowed us to protect ourselves better from weather and predators, feed more people, travel further and faster, etc.

In the social realm, social structure obviously involves an increase in the social complexity of a society. A more complex society is more able to trade effectively, secure resources, avoid being conquered, etc. This gives it more autonomy with respect to the natural world and also in dealing with other societies.

In the consciousness realm, reflexive consciousness has permitted our thinking to grow in complexity, and this has given us conscious choice, a crucial aspect of autonomy. In addition, reflexive consciousness has supported the growth of technology and social structure, the emergent qualities in the other realms.

Wholeness. Along with complexity (differentiation) and autonomy, there is a third concept that is crucial to understanding the evolution of systems. Wholeness indicates the tendency of a system to be coordinated as a coherent unit. Wholeness is necessary for the health of a system. If a system becomes very differentiated or its subsystems become extremely autonomous, this may disrupts the wholeness of the system, threatening its health and maybe its viability. Therefore there is a crucial dialectical relationship between wholeness and both differentiation and autonomy, which I discuss below. Wholeness doesn’t necessarily increase with evolution, but it is crucial to understanding the dynamics of evolution.

Wholeness vs. Autonomy. Let’s first look at the relationship between wholeness and autonomy. Arthur Koestler has defined this as a dynamic tension between the integrative tendency (wholeness) and the self-assertive tendency (autonomy) of systems.

Every holon is possessed of two opposite tendencies or potentials: an integrative tendency to function as part of the larger whole, and a self-assertive tendency to preserve its individual autonomy. The most obvious manifestation of this basic polarity is found in social [systems]...From the rights of the individual to those of clan or tribe...from ethnic minorities to sovereign governments, every social holon has a built-in tendency to preserve and defend its corporate identity. This self-assertive tendency is indispensable for maintaining the individuality of holons on all levels, and of the hierarchy as a whole...At the same time the holon is dependent on, and must function as an integrated part of the larger system that contains it (Koestler 1978, p. 57).

The right balance of tension must be maintained between these two tendencies, between the wholeness of a system and the autonomy of its subsystems, as shown in Figure 2. On the one hand, if a system’s wholeness is not strong enough, then its subsystems will not interact with each other in a coherent enough way to maintain it as a viable system. It will degenerate into anarchy or disease or dissociation. On the other hand, if a subsystem’s autonomy is not strong enough, it will be swallowed up by its system and lose its viability in that way, as when a person becomes merged in a cult. This sets up a dialectical relationship between wholeness and autonomy, where autonomy may increase at the expense of wholeness for a while, but then wholeness much catch up in order to maintain the viability of the system.

A New Type of Evolution. Earlier I mentioned three types of behavioral response—instinctive, learned, and conscious—representing increasing levels of autonomy. These also correspond to three types of change—biological evolution, learning, and conscious choice—which occur over vastly disparate time scales using different mechanisms.

(1) Biological evolution happens by natural selection through genetics, taking place over perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Traits are selected that give the species the best chance of survival. (2) Learning happens through reinforcement, classical conditioning, modeling, and other psychological mechanisms over the lifetime of an organism. Behavioral responses are selected according to various criteria which presumably enhance the organism’s survival. (3) Conscious choice happens in the moment. It means choosing a particular response according to what a person decides is best for his or her well-being given the circumstances and the person’s understanding of consequences. The higher types of change don’t supersede the lower ones; they augment them. Thus when a conscious choice is made, learned and instinctual influences may also be operating.

The new social pattern that is evolving at this time in history may be more than just the next stage in social evolution. It may represent a new type of evolutionary mechanism. An inclusive framework for evolution recognizes physical, biological, and social evolution, each with a different mechanism of change. (Physical evolution isn’t included in the above chart.) The process may now be moving to a fourth type of evolution, where the mechanism of change is consciousness.

Thus our social evolution is really part of the larger story of the universe. In moving to the next stage of social evolution and creating a healthy planetary society we are not only saving ourselves from disaster and fulfilling our potential; we are also contributing to the larger unfolding of creation.

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