Cultural Evolution or a (much deeper) Consciousness Evolution?

Cultural Evolution or Consciousness Evolution?

By

Giorgio Piacenza Cabrera

We need to move beyond a "classical" approach to Integral Theory for this theory to be instrumental in saving the world from our anachronistic patterns of behavior. We need to embrace the non-local and the realm where it originates. Then, a deeper, more inclusive instinct related to the realm that subsumes and transcends the physical may take guide our lives while in the physical world relating us to the wisdom of its self-sustaining, autopoietic aspects.  

Since as a species we've  had the capacity to think rationally (perhaps a 100,000 yrs ago more or less) we may have just gone through the evolving cultural phases mentioned in evolutionist/developmental Integral Theory...while still using this capacity and more fundamentally being already settled in its macro stage. This stage would be an adaptation to a predominantly classical exterior world. The cultural levels of development correctly mentioned in Integral Theory may have been sub phases within this major level. In fact, moving into the next cultural sub phase (the emergent Integral phase as it is currently conceived) may actually be insufficient to stop producing wars and predating upon each other, all potentially useful living beings and the natural 'resources'. 

To change how we meet material needs and destroy the world's resources we might need a much deeper shift into what really motivates us. Even if our psychology indeed evolves including and transcending more atavistic, primitive, survival stages we keep ourselves feeling, sensing, intuiting and thinking that the rational thing to do is to adapt to classical reality with its space and time limitations. This is how we deeply feel how the world is: a dangerous world of competing exterior objects. We barely touch upon the autopoiesis of its inside order connected with a Subtle Realm subsuming Time and Space limitations.  Perhaps tribal stage and mythic stage sub phases of cultural evolution were more in harmony with some elements of this other realm. However, my take is that even in the tribal and mythic sub phases most people were not really comfortable with a healthy instinctual understanding of the rules of that more inclusive realm. They still engaged in classical physicalist solutions to appease elements of that realm or to maintain a harmonious relation with it. They had still forgot for the most part that they originated in that more inclusive realm and took in the instincts of the classical experience developing values accordingly.  

While tribal and mythic stage people normally used reason in an indistinct or less defined way than modern age "rationalists;" while they were more able to link with Subtle phenomena using a less rigid and more flowing and relational logic, they were still predominantly instinctively held back by their conscious participation in a classical physical world. In some contactee literature this is called "third dimensional level of consciousness."  If we were able to be motivated and to include in our awareness non local ways to control classical physical limitations we would be operating on a "four dimensional level of consciousness."  We would then be able to intelligently join in the conversation of space-faring civilizations which have awakened past their original embeddedness with the classical aspects of the physical world and become able to live with its autopoietic connections with the Subtle Realm. Perhaps part of the post postmodern cultural shift and perspective-taking capacities really emerging (but not formally recognized within the more psychologically inclined "classical" integral community) will also connect with this understanding but, be as it may, that shift would be truly post postmodern. It would go beyond formal reasoning and the unstated feelings and assumptions about reality that support it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that changing ideas and recognizing ideas and models is not enough. Cultural evolution is not enough. Going kumbhaya with good intentions is not enough. We need to stabilize our consciousness under more inclusive instincts that most deeply inform our motivations, perceived needs, ideas and values. Being conversant and comfortable with non-locality, with the world quantum mechanics (and other more esoteric fields) is slowly making us aware of is part of building the more stable "kumbhaya" we are seeking. This would call upon a deeper level of instincts and motivations transcending, overriding the "have to be selfish to survive" imperatives of who we have been since before the coming of the basic rational capacity perhaps in the Paleolithic or Neolithic eras.

This means that to promote such a quantum leap in perspective taking associated with instincts that correspond to another world, a non-local world, we need to cease following the taboo of not wanting to know about orthodox quantum mechanical physics events and non-orthodox "paranormal" events all having to do with non-locality. Our nature and our Second Tier hopes might only come to pass when we awaken to instincts and motivations associated with a world without time and space limitations, a world with its own kinds of challenges to be sure but also capable of giving us the tools to manipulate physical parameters of time and space and inertia and gravity to free us from the need to pay heed to classical instincts and motivations. In other worlds, the "integral" movement also needs to include going beyond our most fundamental ways of being adapted to classical physical reality and to explore the varieties of non-classical physical realities.