With this initial awakening and a time of a nomadic life of hunting and gathering, we entered an era which witnessed the manifestation and growth of language, art, trading networks, musical instruments and new tools of stone, wood, and bone.
Then, roughly 10 thousand years ago we began to develop a settled life in small villages that relied on subsistence agriculture. Farming consciousness arose. Relatively peaceful and simple village life endured for thousands of years.
Out of this lifestyle emerged the world's largest cities, which appeared between five and six thousand years ago. Major civilizations emerged around the world, and here we saw the development of writing, division of labor, a priestly class, armies, slavery, religion, state governments and massive architecture.
By the 1700's Europe's magical and mythical worldview began giving way to an impersonal science and the analytic intellect. There emerged a progressing time sense coupled with a materialistic view of reality, which was focused on a new era of quantifiable progress. Technical innovations were accompanied by mass production, the development of massive urban centers, and the rise of strong nation states.
The power of the scientific-industrial era to create technological aids, luxuries, and conveniences was certainly seductive. Beyond this, people in industrialized societies are much more psychologically differentiated and intellectually sophisticated than our predecessors. However, there was a price to pay for "progress." We are also more isolated. The life and mystery of the cosmos has been bleached out by analytical science, leaving us adrift in a universe that seems indifferent to our struggles.
Particularly in the United States, where these trends have been taken to an extreme, feelings of companionship and community have been worn away, leaving many people feeling alone and alienated. In general, this era has had no sense of direction beyond sheer accumulation of wealth and power. It is a dynamic with no vision or moral direction as to where we are going.
Although it has brought many gifts, the industrialized paradigm has also generated nation-state arrogance, out-of-control technological growth, and profound moral confusion, with little guiding ethic other than endless consumption and power over others.
Cultural evolution has continued and we have moved forward. In our current phase of development, given the pervasiveness of computers, and satellite systems - people around the world are finding themselves joined via a "communications revolution." This also greatly enhances our capacity for self-awareness, reflection and the capacity for standing back and "witnessing" our mind.
This is occurring just in time to provide us with the possibility of entering into dialogue regarding how to cope with the intertwined system of problems that now threaten our future. Elgin believes that with communications so widespread it will be possible to discover a shared vision of a sustainable future. These communications systems are one factor contributing to an increasingly widespread awakening of consciousness across the planet.
Paradigms and Culture
A paradigm is a set of assumptions about reality, so pervasive that, generally, we don't recognize they are simply hypotheses. It is a web of beliefs about the world, which are essentially so invisible that we take them to be reality. To the degree that we are unaware of them, paradigms tend to guide our lives at an unconscious level.
Elgin suggests that each of the societal stages noted above emerged out of a "perceptual paradigm" in which we experience life to the limited degree that the given paradigm (or "world-view") allows. Each new dimension or context is designed to call forth new potentials from us. As we perceive the possibilities inherent in each new dimension, we begin to actualize them, so that each provides new opportunities or learning contexts for individuals and societies to fill with creative actions.
Each paradigm is an organizing framework, which in the beginning allows for increased novel action, and later, as it winds down, creates problems that cannot be solved within the limits of the paradigm.
It is only later, when a prevailing paradigm loses its power to shape a period's worldview, that we move on to develop a new one. Once every corner of a paradigm has been explored and new data accumulate that do not confirm the existing model, key questions are raised. Today, our "solutions" are creating new problems, in large part because they fail to take into account that problems are interconnected.
However, well-established paradigms tend to have enormous stability and inertia. A given cultural paradigm can last as a stable, self-reinforcing system for hundreds or thousands of years before its exhaustion creates conditions of untenable crisis that push both societies and individuals to move toward a more inclusive level of perception and action. An example is the "power-with" vs. "power-over" paradigms, explored below.
A paradigm shift occurs when the way we see reality stops aiding our lives to work smoothly, which we are seeing today. New views of the world begin to emerge. This turning-point is often a tumultuous process, which may take years or centuries.
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