Please note that the following post was originally a presentation based on Steve McIntosh's book, Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution, so the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect my own. My intention was to create for a psychology Honors group an original presentation that portrayed the book's conclusions, without necessarily presenting my own views. For example, McIntosh's speculations on the neural correlates of various stages of development, in my opinion and experience, do not reflect the empirical findings of modern neuroscience. However, these incorrect speculations do not necessarily negate the value of the Spiral Dynamics model, since they reflect only McIntosh's interpretation of the model. Nonetheless, I believe his book is of great value, and I highly recommend it.
Biological Evolution & Cultural Evolution
© The brain of an infant born today is basically identical to the brain of an infant born 10,000 years ago.
© If no biological evolution has taken place within the last 10,000 years, what can account for the cultural evolution that has arguably taken place in that time?
© By cultural evolution we are including the evolution of the human mind
© The amount of information modern humans process on a daily basis has been estimated to be many orders of magnitude greater than those processed by their prehistoric ancestors.
© Modern humans are also believed to be capable of distinguishing fine subtleties which would go undetected by their ancient forbears.
© While modern humans may lack the sense of smell their ancestors once had, their ability to discriminate countless types of aesthetic experience is far greater than that of the average prehistoric ancestor.
© Modern humans have been empirically found to possess a conceptual ability to think about themselves and their communities from panoramic vistas not yet accessed by tribal peoples.
© Studies conducted with present-day tribal peoples have repeatedly confirmed that their cognition is mostly “representational,” meaning that their words typically correspond with individual objects, not larger categories of phenomena; syllogisms and logical types aren’t usually found in the thinking of tribal peoples.
© Rather than pointing to biological or racial differences in such findings, some pioneering developmental psychologists explain such differences as the result in varying levels of evolved consciousness.
© How can a mind evolve independently of the evolution of the brain?
© The accomplishment of previous generations has been built up and passed through the advances of language, art, and technology.
© As human culture evolves, individual human consciousness evolves with it.
© Before human emergence in the evolutionary journey, an organism’s inner world evolved in perfect synchrony with its outer world (i.e., the brain).
© With human emergence, however, the inner world (i.e., the mind) is partially liberated from its physical constraints and is able to evolve along a new mental, emotional, and spiritual path.
© This kind of development takes place within consciousness and culture: the interior universe.
Evolution of the Interior Universe
© All aspects of human civilization—language, art, aesthetics, technology, architecture, organizations, governments—depend upon essential human relationships for their evolution and expression.
© Question: What is actually evolving?
© Answer: The quality and quantity of relationships between people, assuming the form of shared meanings, agreements, relationships and groups of relationships.
© The cultural domain is inter-subjective, because it exists between subjects, yet is often not objectively identifiable.
© But the fact that these shared spaces of meaning are not objectively identifiable does not hinder us from experiencing them as being real.
© As such, the subjective world includes not only individual consciousness but the inter-subjective domain of relationships as well, making the interior universe much more substantial.
© These relationships are real, yet they exist in the internal universe.
© The evolution of this internal universe accounts for the fact that women, children, and minorities now experience and possess more freedoms than in any time in written history.
Systems Theory and Psychology
© Just 100 years ago, physicists interpreted the 2nd law of thermodynamics as predicting the “winding down” of the universe .
© Biologists, however, showed that biological systems actually “wind up” over time into progressively higher orders of organization.
© From this anomaly arose systems science, which discovered that the universe evolves via the developments of self-organizing dynamic systems.
© This discovery unified the fields of physics and biology.
© Systems theorists like Ervin Laszlo have attempted to develop a meta-theory that synthesizes physics, biology, and sociology, but have often fallen short, due to the fact that objective, third-person perspectives cannot adequately know and experience the inter-subjective space of meanings and values.
© In other words, the interior universe is known principally by interpretation and not by scientific observation.
Dialectics and Progressive Stages of Human Development
© Georg Hegel, a nineteenth German idealist philosopher, demonstrated the divine order and logic underlying human history, the basis of which develops through a dialectical process of struggle that makes possible the emergence of higher levels of order.
© This dialectical process takes the following form: THESIS – ANTITHESIS - SYNTHESIS
© “[Because developmental psychology] tells a story of increase, or greater complexity, [it is] thus more provocative, discomforting, even dangerous, and appropriately evokes greater suspicion. Any time a theory is normative, and suggests that something is more grown, more mature, more developed than something else, we had better check to see if the distinction rests on arbitrary grounds that consciously or unconsciously unfairly advantage some people (such as those who create the theory and people like them) whose own preferences are being depicted as superior. We had better check whether what may even appear to be an “objective” theory is not in reality a tool or captive of a “ruling” group (such as white people, men, Westerners) who use the theory to preserve their advantaged position.” ~ Robert Kegan, Professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard University
© Obviously, Kegan concludes that the discoveries of developmental psychology do indeed pass this test.
© Psychologist Clare W. Graves conducted research that revealed the same interior stages discovered by other researchers.
© Yet Graves’ work went a step further by showing that these stages form part of a larger dynamic system.
© His research revealed this larger system to be a dialectical spiral of development, a living evolutionary system.
© Graves also demonstrated that the stages of interior development were a recapitulation of the stages of human history.
© In other words, the development of the human mind roughly approximates human cultural evolution.
© Each stage has its own way of making meaning and its own way of comprehending and expressing power in the world.
© These stages act as living dynamic systems by which whole societies (and the individuals within them) are organized.
© Each stage represents a system of values that provides identity and a sense of loyalty, organizing and nourishing a person’s sense of self.
© Something to keep in mind: These stages describe NOT “types of people,” but types of consciousness through which people are capable of evolving and with which they identify.
© Most people occupy more than one stage at different times, so that these levels often appear as “chords” rather than as single notes.
Purple: Tribal Consciousness
Red: Warrior Consciousness
Blue: Traditional Consciousness
Orange: Modern Consciousness
Green: Postmodern Consciousness
Integral Consciousness
