The Remarkable Shift
“I’m just wondering why I feel so all alone
Why I’m a stranger in my own life
Every day is a faded sign
I get a little bit closer to feeling fine
I’ve been wondering if all the things I’ve seen
Were ever real, were ever really happening.”
Excerpt from Sheryl Crowe’s song
Looking back at our past thirty to fifty years it is clear that we in the twenty first century are in the midst of a profound shift of consciousness. Steve McIntosh in his book “Integral Consciousness” shows the way changes in a society flow like a gentle tide, but currently they’re flowing more like a king tide. A new consciousness is threatening to burst the banks of the past institutions and social arrangements that gave some kind of certainty and cohesion. The king tide of change is threatening to sweep away the ‘sand castles’ that structured the certainties of our communal existence.
When the scaffolding goes will the building be strong enough to stand?
Respect for the social arrangements of marriage, family, church, government, law and almost all internal and external authorities is fading. The arrangements that had us limit our behaviour for the sake of others are now being questioned, often in the name of personal freedom.
Where have we come from? Is this where we really want to go?
McIntosh demonstrates that the quiet revolution has changed the way we see ourselves personally and collectively. It happened while we were thinking about other things. He calls it the rise of integral consciousness and subtitles his book: ‘How the Integral World View is Transforming Politics, Culture and Spirituality.’
(continued next week)
Perhaps respect is fading because of the behaviour of those who inhabited those institutions and the damage done in their name.
I’m for coming up with better ones.
And this is only half the story. The rise of Green movements various show a strong collective consciousness and sense of the consequences of our actions for others.
Integral Consciousness sees the higher development as characterised by compassion, which I find a jolly good thing. Their priveleging of meditative consciousness over other kinds I have a good deal of trouble with – and with their forms of consciousness being organised in a hierarchy. But those who want to defend institutions would be in sympathy with that I would think.