Elgin also posits seven phases of human development. In the first three phases we have been separating ourselves from nature and developing our sense of autonomy.
Ideally, in the following four stages we will be able to reintegrate our ourselves with nature, find ways to explore a deep bonding with one another, and learn to act in conscious harmony with the universe.
He offers the following images: Archaic humans reveal a "contracted consciousness," in a sense similar to a black hole where nothing can escape - even light. Hunters and gatherers displayed a "sensing consciousness." Farm-based civilizations revealed a "feeling consciousness," based on a settled community life. In scientific-industrial civilizations, a "thinking consciousness" has prevailed. And in the communication era -- an "observing, self-aware consciousness" is evolving.
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In the era of communication, which we have already entered -- the observing capacity will begin to become aware of itself and create opportunities for an expansion of awareness; in the process, the results will produce both profound stress and challenge.
The perceptual paradigm of the scientific industrial era generated an epoch of unprecedented social dynamism, moral relativism, nation-state egotism and a no-limits-to-growth mentality. At the same time, we have paid a very high price for the accumulated learning of this era.
The life and mystery of the cosmos was bleached out by analytical sciences, leaving us adrift in a universe that seems indifferent to our struggles. At least at the conscious level, magic and myth were experiences long-gone.
One crucial point regarding the development of a planetary-wide observing consciousness is that it is likely to involve sincere grief, shock, and appropriate feelings of outrage as we begin to recognize the effects of our assault on the earth, human rights, and on the human spirit.
Knowledge cannot help but spread - leading to an awareness of the major problems generated by the scientific-industrial era - overpopulation, pollution, climate change, social dis-regulation and resource depletion, to name a few.
This will need to be worked through on a species level. There will be tones of anger, sadness - and, hopefully - remorse as we struggle with what we have wrought.
Emerging successfully from this stage -- if we can avoid self-destruction -- will lead us into what Elgin foresees as the "reconciliation era," possibly followed by the bonding era, the surpassing era, and finally a "mature species-civilization."
In a sense each of these perceptual paradigms -or worldviews must die, for the next one to be born.
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Elgin predicts that in the next decades the world will become like a super-heated pressure cooker in which there is nowhere to escape.
These pressures can be predicted to be unrelenting, such that the world will either descend into chaos -- or ascend in a process of global transformation with a unified intent to come together and generate a world that works for all people and the Biosphere.
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