Chapter 5 from “After The Clockwork Universe”
The
Mind of God, Many and One
Sally Goerner
The Universe is built on a plan, the profound
symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our intellect.
Paul Valéry
Evolution did not stop with life per se. At the
very least it built brains from which sprang minds from which sprang
consciousness, the greatest of the world’s many mysteries. This chapter takes
up the question of brains, minds and consciousness. The not-so-surprising
implication here, is that these greatest of creation’s wonders are also part of
the story. No longer in long, slow, cycles of blind self-organization, somehow
the Great Ordering Oneness found a way to build a system which consciously
shapes the world and itself as if by plan. More self-aware and more potentially
powerful than anything that has ever existed, thinking beings are a
world-transforming force in their own right.
There is, of course, a reason I haven’t mentioned much about mind. Mind is even
more incomprehensible to clockwork thinkers than life. Early clockwork thinkers
thought that we were merely separated, mind from body. Later ones described
mind as an epiphenomenon, an illusion of a few lifeless chemicals. After all,
when you break brains down, there is no mind to be found. Traditional
evolutionary theory has essentially ignored mind, preferring genes instead. All
of this is likely to end in the relatively foreseeable future.
Currents of change can already be seen. Once a taboo topic, consciousness is
becoming an increasingly common subject in the popular press. Books such as The
Celestine Prophecy, for instance, paint a picture of humanity reaching a
new level of consciousness. People trapped in the cloying maze of modern reality, suddenly discover an invisible web of awareness
growing within themselves and others. Individually and collectively, human
beings are struggling precariously toward a new, more integral perception. The
potential is high. So is the need. The birth of a new level of consciousness seems
to be part and parcel of the project to save the world.
Now, I am not going to tell a romantic tale of New Age seers in the
Understanding the science behind this intuition, gives human hope a better
foundation. Thus, brain researchers too are hoping that new understandings of
consciousness will help bring about a global civilization which is less apt to
destroy itself and the world. Their hope seems particularly reasonable since
mind and consciousness are so central to the human condition. Indeed, I would
make a stronger statement — one cannot understand our condition or our
times without understanding the phenomenon of mind, including ways of looking
at the world and patterns of collective knowing.
Today, powerful new views are building which will have a profound affect on our
sense of ourselves. They quite literally redefine what
the human project is about. Not a lumbering automaton or a ruthless beast, here
human beings (one and many) become the ultimate learning system, the finest and
foremost spark of a learning world. That is the story that will unfold here, it
will simply be much more integrated into the larger story of evolution than
most people imagine.
The theory of mind presented here is new in its fine points largely because I
include the energy connection and other rarely-popularized points. Yet, the
core image is again remarkably old. Mind is a natural, interwoven outcome of a
much larger flow. What is interesting is its
implications for our times.
The Enigma of Mind
I doubt
whether there is a more decisive moment for a thinking being than when the
scales fall from his eyes and he discovers that he is not an isolated unit lost
in the cosmic solitudes, and realises that a universal will to live converges
and is hominised in him.
Sir Julian Huxley
Any pursuit of mind and consciousness should start with a necessary admission:
there is no universal agreement as to what these are, much less how they came
to be, or how they work. Most people try to understand mind by focusing on
brains. Still, no matter how much we know about brains, there remains an explanatory
gap between brain operation and the enigma of mind. This explanatory gap is
what led reductionists to describe mind as an
illusion of brain chemistry. As emergence becomes more scientifically
acceptable, however, so does mind.
The new brain science, thus, brings with it a new interest in the age-old
mystery of mind. In most new views ‘mind’ is more than the sum of brain parts,
but it is nevertheless a phenomenon of this real world. The
more daring even wonder how consciousness came into being.
How does the new science approach the enigma of mind? Our three old friends —
energy, organization and the Great Ordering Oneness — provide some new paths by
which to tread deftly through the minefield. Hence, here ‘mind’ is mostly a
matter of dynamic organization, the ways bits of matter work together to
produce the mind-like behaviors (described below).
Minds arose from older self-organizing drives which came together in radically
new ways. To properly understand mind, therefore, we must begin long before there
were brains.
Mind, From the Bottom Up
...if we
expect to get anywhere with the mind-body problem at the brain level, then our
concepts must at least be adequate...to explain the symbol-matter relation in
single cells where it all started.
Howard Pattee
How can we understand mind as a type of organization? A dictionary provides the
first clues. One of its definitions of mind is a “system which exhibits
purpose, intention, or will.” What Pattee suggests in
the opening quote (1982), is that the best way to build an understanding of
mind, is to look for the earliest possible stirrings
of these three. When you do this, you find that mind-like behaviors
started long before brains. If you start at the first stirrings, you can then
follow mind-like behaviors throughout evolution.
Here, human consciousness appears as the cutting edge of a long-standing drive.
What follows is an energy story of mind from the bottom-up.
Actually, we’ve already started the journey. In the last chapter, I described
how early cells began to search for food. This is a very mind-like thing to do.
What few people mention is that finding food involves a new kind of energy
activity, one in which small amounts of energy provide
information about something else. Thus, whether there is a chemical trail or a
pattern of light bouncing off food, cells must find food by following energy
trails which lead to a bigger energy concentration in the vicinity. These small
bits of energy are information in its physical form. Life had to learn to follow
energy information in order to eat (see Fig. 1).
Pattee points out,
therefore, that early life represents the first type of mind. Cells don’t think
and they aren’t self-aware, but they do begin responding to information in a
functional way.
Figure 1. Cells Follow Energy-Trails
(Information) to Food
Note too that the entire cellular system is tied up with this pursuit of
information. For life to reach food, little energy blips from outside must
trigger some form of locomotion that moves the cell toward its food. In turn, locomotion (whether by flagellum or pseudopod)
requires energy from the cell’s metabolic cycles. Hence, metabolism has
to speed up in order to answer the demand. In short, an entire, interlocked
system must kick into action in response to little energy nudges from the
outside. Furthermore, the system must respond differently to different kinds of
nudges!
If you look closely, you’ll see that this means mind activities (such as
following information) and bodily activities (metabolism and locomotion) are
inseparable. Getting food requires that the ability to perceive
information and to act appropriately be linked in one very
well-connected loop. Survival depends on this. If any part of the loop doesn’t
work, the cell does not get food and dies. This means that a whole lot of
systems inside the cell had to co-evolve in tight conjunction from very early
on. Furthermore, internal cycles had to be intertwined in a functional way
from the start.
If you put these kinds of ideas together, a fascinating picture begins to
emerge. First, mind-like behaviors started long
before brains. These mind-like behaviors appear to be
based in energy, now in the guise of information. Secondly, mind elements and
body elements are One. Break the chain anywhere and
the system doesn’t work and the cell doesn’t survive. Life, therefore, had to
be a kind of well-wired, little proto-mind from the beginning. Finally, if you
look at mind from the bottom-up, you find that what is most special about life
is exactly its mind nature. Life is an integrated perceiving-acting
system. It also manages to preserve information in its genes. It is much more
than self-organizing. Biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela sum up the image nicely, “To
live is to cognize.”
Increasing Intelligence
Obviously, nature did not stop with the mind of a
cell. Hence, looking at mind from the bottom up, also
opens the door to an aspect of evolution I haven’t mentioned yet. Not only does
nature make things more physically complicated, she also makes them smarter. As
living forms evolved, they learned to handle more and more information in more
and more complex ways. Handling more information in more complex ways also led
to more intelligent action. Thus, the path from cell minds to human minds is
notable for increasing intelligence, as well as increasing intricacy.
Increasing intelligence is still tied to energy, but in a very different way.
Hence, what we call information starts out as small energy blips. The energy in
these blips is minuscule compared to the big build-ups which push shapes (like
whirlpools) into being. In life, however, small nudges actually move more
material than the big build-ups. For instance, it takes less energy to get you
to move your finger away from a hot stove, than it does to make a whirlpool
rise.
Rod Swenson at the
An organism’s activity, however, is also governed by microscopic energy blips
(information). Hence, bacteria find desirable resources by perceiving and
acting on a trail of observables — that is, a fine-grained energy trail related
to molecules they consume. Information is based in energy,
it is just very fine-grained energy with a level of indirection. Hence, Swenson
says living systems respond to “patterns” in energy flow.
Living organisms, therefore, are made of energy flow and they follow
energy patterns. Both sides are essential. Furthermore, life’s two energy
interactions are integrated, which is why mind is never separate from body.
This integration also creates a great irony. In living organisms, subtle
patterns are more powerful than big build-ups. Hence, as organisms began to
respond to information in more complex ways, larger and larger amounts of
matter moved in response to smaller and smaller bits of energy. As a result,
increasing intelligence is accompanied by increasing responsiveness to
ever more rarefied patterns. By the time one gets to reading words on a page,
entire populations move in response to incredibly microscopic bits of energy.
This is strange way to put it, but it is true.
Now, we certainly don’t know how all this came to pass, but it is not so hard
to imagine why it might. Natural selection favors
every addition which helps life follow information better because
following information is the main way life survives. The connection to physical
energy became fainter and fainter as life (especially with brains) began to
respond to very complex patterns. Yet, underneath, the phenomenon of
information is still based in energy.
A Brief History of Better and Better Minds
Why did evolution move from the cellular mind to
the wonder which is our brain? Oddly enough, the need to maintain collaboration
played a major role. We know that mind and body are integrated and that life is
a committed collaboration. In such a world, growing apart is deadly because
responses dis-integrate. Let us see,
therefore, how the pressure to stay collaboratively connected has contributed
to increasing intelligence from nerves to brains.
The Birth of Nerves
Life brought the miracle of responding to information to find food. Still,
though early cells represented a great leap in information processing, from our
perspective they are crude. Their responses are knee-jerk and their horizons
are limited. How did life get from there to here? The path is actually quite
understandable.
As evolution proceeded, single cells gave rise to multi-cellular organisms. As
we saw in Chapter 4, many-celled organisms are actually collectives of
specialist cells bound in committed collaboration. Once upon a time specialist
cells were capable of independent lives, but millions of years of evolution
forged them into a whole whose members need each other to survive. Herein lies a rub of great importance to the evolution of mind. A
living organism has to stay integrated to survive. Cells coordinate their
activities by circulating chemical and electrical signals. Information must
circulate thoroughly so that each cell can do its job intelligently. Lung
cells, for instance, have to know what is happening with the legs because
moving a leg requires more energy which requires faster metabolism which
requires more oxygen. (This is why we breath faster
when we run.)
Failure to communicate well inside, therefore, leads to death just as fast as
failure to perceive information from outside. Limbs, eyes, guts, and so on, can
only do their job if signals are timely and correct. If your lung cells don’t
get signals from your legs, for instance, they won’t increase oxygen which
means your legs won’t get enough energy to catch the rabbit.
This brings me to the point of mentioning all this. As organisms got bigger,
internal communication became harder. Information exchange happens easily when
cells are in close proximity. But signals dissipate over distance. As bodies
got bigger, member cells began to lose touch with each other (literally). The
whole began to fall out of sync. Unfortunately, when cells depend on one
another for basics such as oxygen (lungs) and nutrients (gut), growing apart
can be deadly.
Because losing sync is deadly, the evolutionary pressure to find a way to stay
connected grew. No doubt many organisms died as collaboration began to fail.
Others stopped growing and settled into a safe niche. Yet, eventually (through
some quirk of diversity), some organisms developed a new means of staying
cooperatively connected. A new type of specialist cell emerged whose job was to
carry signals between distant groups. We call them nerves.
OBS
Infogat senare fraktal liknelse om hur evolutionen
driver mot kommunikations- och samarbetslösningar
Nerve cells (restores coherence by circulating
information)
Figure 2. Growth Crises, From Clone Clusters
to Nerve Cells
Nerves are particularly important because they allowed the organism’s
mind-nature to grow more sophisticated. The quality of an organism’s response
to the outside world depends almost entirely on internal collaboration which in
turn depends heavily on information flow. Mind-body integration is crucial!
Nerves improved intelligence by increasing information flow which in turn
improved collaboration. More cellular specialties could develop and life became
vastly more complex and sophisticated too.
Brains - The Pattern Repeats
Evolution was not through, however. In simple forms of life, such as the
giant sea slug today, a single nerve cell often serves a whole organism. But as
life became more complex, the same pattern of growth and crisis played out
again. As bodies grew bigger, collaboration began to fail again. Pressure to
stay connected grew.
At first, nerve cells multiplied forming multi-lane information highways as it
were. Nerve highways brought signals from all over and spread information
throughout. Where nerves overlapped, signals from many directions intermingled.
At dense cross-roads, a new kind of cell began to emerge. We call this one a
brain cell.
Brain cells had a unique view. Positioned atop a cross-roads
with information pouring in from all over, the information they got was rich
and multi-dimensional. As a result, brain cells began to respond to extremely
subtle patterns in complex streams of energy (information). The horizons this
opened up were truly vast.
Brain cells responding to rarefied patterns in massive amounts of information
were actually beginning to respond to conglomerate pictures. Complex pictures
helped organisms see contexts and make choices. The brain’s owner began to see
how any bit of information fit in a larger whole. For example, an organism with
a brain is able to see that food and a predator means something different
than food alone. Unlike a planaria which responds to
information in a knee-jerk way, life with a brain began to learn to decipher
and choose. As brains learned to synthesize ever more complex pictures,
questions of how bits fit got complex indeed.
Brains also allowed life to develop complex responses based on subtle nuances
in the outside world. Sitting astride mixing centers
allowed brains to coordinate incredibly complex response patterns involving all
parts of the body. Like a keystone on top, brains solidified life’s ability to
perceive and act as a truly coordinated whole. Thus, brains are what brought
life out of the ooze and allowed multi-cellular organisms to locomote with legs and fins.
The irony of brains is that ‘staying connected’ produced a whole new stage of
evolution. Brains and other mixing centers (like
ganglia) helped an increasingly vast collective act like a truly coordinate
whole. Mind-like behaviors also began to take the
forms we associate with minds today — choices, contexts, significance, meaning. We are still deciphering like mad. Underneath,
however, the same evolutionary principles applied. United they stood! Multicellular organisms became a multi-level society of
mind because selection favored cells that 1) worked
together for the common well-being and 2) stayed linked.
The Fractal Nature of Mind and Body
Note, however, that the brain did not become the sole arbiter of
intelligence nor the controller of everything
underneath. This is a machine image. Local cells don’t just send information to
the brain and wait to be told what to do. Instead, most bodily responses are
handled locally and a lot of processing is done at various stages from bottom
to top. Processing information at lower levels increases the speed and often
the appropriateness of the response. It is also one of the reasons one’s body
can operate on auto-pilot while one’s thoughts spin off into space.
Nature thus built new levels of intelligence while keeping the old.
Furthermore, everywhere you look, cells work in groups. A brain is a mind
system which is still integrated into a larger mind system called the body
which is organized into smaller working groups, like lungs and liver. The whole
thing appears to work on a subsidiary principle reminiscent of one used by the
medieval Catholic Church — decisions should be made at the lowest level
possible.
This, of course, does not fit our usual picture of how a hierarchy works. It
means instead that intelligence is distributed fractally,
down to lower levels. This kind of organization is crucial. Without it, life
would be too slow and stupid to live.
Social Learning in Higher Organisms
Nature also did not stop with brains. Organisms with brains became great
sorters of information who chose paths based on subtle patterns. Freed from
knee-jerk responses, animals with brains began to explore the world and to
learn lots of new lessons. Most of these lessons were stored in the brain of
the beholder, in circuits etched by experience. (They were not stored in
genes.) Storing lessons in the brain allowed organisms to learn faster and to
learn without having to die.
Still, there was a problem. Lessons stored in a brain were lost when the
individual who owned the brain died. The next great evolutionary development
was the ability to preserve lessons by passing them between different
individuals and across generations. The two big agents here were modeling and signaling. They too
started for understandable reasons.
Since cooperation enhances survival, animals began to congregate in families or
herds. Communication between animals in a herd has the same benefit as
communication between cells in your body. Whether a honey-bee dancing
directions to a cache of nectar or a deer signaling
the approach of a predator, communication between members is an old and honored way for individuals to survive better by working
together.
Animal communication, no doubt, began in the usual haphazard way, with twitches
that eventually became associated with a meaning. These eventually developed
into clear signals. Active signaling also brought modeling. Young and old alike learned common signals and
worthwhile patterns of behavior. These began to
trickle down the generations. The herd was now working on patterns of
perceiving and acting. Learning accumulated from many members was preserved
over increasing periods of time. All of it enhanced survival.
The Social Nature of Mind and Learning
Brains
consist of neurons, which in turn are composed of organelles, molecules and
atoms. They are designed by biological evolution to work in pairs, families,
tribes and, by cultural evolution, to work in cities, nations and
empires...biologists have largely neglected those biological properties by
which brains join together in social cooperation.
Walter Freeman, Neurophysiologist
Notice the parallels in the patterns discussed so far. In the web view,
cooperation is the central path of evolution. Cooperative groups depend on
communication between members to survive. Growth, however, pulls groups apart
and makes collaboration break down. Hence, developmental leaps often come from
an invention which helps keep the group integrated.
Perhaps the most unusual observation in the new science, therefore, is that
each mind is a many-bodied society of mind. New levels of intelligent
action always arise from the cooperative, intricately-ordered activity of
smaller parts. The farther up the line one goes, the more clearly those smaller
parts are seen to be individuals which once lived independent lives. A complex eucaryotic cell, for instance, is a society built out of
previously-independent life forms. Its mind-like behaviors
depend on collaboration among individuals. The idea holds all the way up to
brains. As Margulis says:
Our nerve cells are the outcome of an ancient, nearly immortal marriage of two
arch enemies who have managed to coexist: the former spirochetes and former archaebacteria that now comprise our brains...These former
free-living bacteria are inextricably united. They probably have been united
for more than one thousand million years. (Cited in Combs, 1995, p.40)
The idea that all minds are built of lower societies and into higher ones, fits
nicely in a self-organizing world which builds macrocosms out of microcosms. It
helps us come to grips with the fact that intelligence is distributed
throughout our body and is not just limited to our brain. It is startling
because it puts community at the center of mind as
well as body. It is also important because it helps us rethink human societies.
The Cutting Edge of Collaborative Learning
In human beings, signaling evolved into language
which made passing information extremely precise. Speaking allowed
highly-structured information tapestries to be shot from one brain to another.
When writing emerged, these tapestries could be stored outside human bodies and
compared and contrasted over huge periods of time. People living today, for
instance, can benefit from learning accrued by people who lived five thousand
years ago.
Language and writing add tremendous survival value because they allow lessons
from many individuals to be synthesized into extremely precise patterns of
knowing and doing. Eventually, these highly synthesized systems of knowing and
doing became what human beings call culture. Myths, paradigms, worldviews and
scientific theories are all made of these.
In human beings, cooperative learning became unbelievably refined. Language
allowed learning to accumulate at tremendous rates. Information tapestries
became knowledge webs which grew over the ages. Where nature had once searched
the realm of possibility by casting about blindly, human beings now search the
realm of possibility with brains which process huge amounts of information from
personal, group and historical experience in order to maximize the foresight,
planning and prediction. These big brains eventually gave rise to
self-awareness, which we call consciousness.
Evolution’s second side, increasing intelligence, was leading to more and more
mass being moved by ever more subtle blips. As Swenson says:
In this way, the explosion in mass communication and globalization going on at
present is but a new phase of...the same evolutionary order-building behavior started some 4 billion years ago.
The
Learning Universe
That which
created us, designed us to create back. - J.S. May
Mind too evolved as part of the larger process. It went from crude
information-following behaviors to truly astounding
activities like language, writing and culture. It appears to be involved with
energy, especially of the information variety. It is a very social process.
Energy’s role in this process became invisible with the advent of brains. No
one can follow how physical energy gets transformed from blips to meaning
through the biochemistry of brains. We are responding to patterns in masses of
information, to flows about flows about flows. Nevertheless, energy
parallels still play out. Increasing intelligence is accompanied by greater
intricacy and energy flow. The human brain is the most intricate and fastest
energy cycling (per unity density) system on the planet. Furthermore, brains
also help increase energy flow in the world at large. This is particularly true
of big-brained humans who began restructuring the outside world as part of
their drive to survive. As a result, human organizations such as cities also
increase energy flow.
But seeing mind just as increasing energy flow is not very satisfying. So, let
us look at a more appealing explanation which also fits the facts. In this
story, human beings try to understand the world because the universe itself is
trying to learn. We are the leading edge of a learning universe, the product of
an evolutionary push that endlessly strives to find new ways. This story, from
evolutionary theorist Rod Swenson, is easy to understand. Yet, in it, our view
of ourselves and the world is utterly transformed.
The Stages of the Learning Universe
Swenson starts by pointing out that evolution is a learning process, the
primordial one. Learning is induced by problems. In energy terms, the universe
is faced with the problem of how to distribute energy as fast as possible given
inertia and the disorder that abound. It learns in that it configures and
reconfigures itself toward greater and greater intricacy and efficiency.
Learning is not intentional. Like a baby growing, the goal is not in mind. But
it is directed toward future states which are more intricate, and more
‘developed.’
Furthermore, the pressure to flow faster also involves a pressure to learn
better ways. Each stage is a current-best solution that works until the things
it cannot do, the efficiency it cannot achieve, creates a shortfall and a
crisis which begs for something more. At each stage the field uses diversity to
cast about in search of new ways to flow. The field also searches by cobbling
existing pieces into new forms which produce astounding new behaviors.
(Physicists call this coupling.)
With each cycle, the universe also learns how to perform some activity better. Table 1 shows
first four stages of the Learning Universe.
- Shaping change. In the beginning the universe
found ways to organize shapes and networks which made energy flow faster.
- Life-forms pursuing information. In the second stage, the
universe learned how to build systems that began to learn on their own.
Life-forms followed information and moved about in hitherto unknown ways.
The universe learned faster because living organisms learned faster and
preserved more.
- Brains organizing information into
tapestries. In
the third stage, brains accelerated learning even more, and even amazing behaviors emerged. Individual learning was now
preserved in brain circuits etched by experience. Modeling
allowed individual learning to be passed to others and preserved in habit
patterns passed from generation to generation. The universe began to learn
as never before because brains began to learn more intentionally and to
preserve exquisite details of experience.
- Communal learning via culture. The fourth great stage of
learning came with the human brain and society. In fourth-order
organizations, such as science and human culture, learning moves beyond
the individualÕs lifetime and is turned back on
the environment. What is learned is how to restructure the environment
itself, now with tools. The ability to learn intentionally and cooperatively
makes learning rates explode.
Table 1. Four Stages of
the Learning Universe.
We are the epitome of the fourth stage. With humankind, the Great Ordering
Oneness has produced an organism which can restructure the world more
powerfully than anything that has ever existed. Yet, since our brains were
created by the Oneness (as well as earned by us), chauvinism is not
appropriate. We too are servants of a higher process. Our project is to
endlessly strive to learn more.
This brings me to the final and most intriguing assertion of the Learning
Universe story: a fifth stage is now waiting in the wings. Conscious beings
should eventually evolve to the place where they begin to actively shape the
world, not for selfish personal ends, but wisely, responsibly, and for the good
of the whole. Books like the Celestine Prophecies are not so far off.
Fully conscious beings become stewards of the world because they ‘know’ that
they are part of something larger. They serve themselves, their fellows, the
biosphere and the larger process because everything is intertwined. Fully
conscious beings become the ultimate agents of the evolutionary process because
four billion years of learning has taught them to see how pieces fit. The fifth
great stage is Integral Consciousness and global learning aimed at the greater
good of the planet.
We are the leading edge of a learning universe. We have the capacity and the
need to help the world as ourselves. Still, apparently we aren’t there yet.
Rather, at the moment, we seem to be more of a threat to the world, than a
caretaker. Hence, right now, the Learning Universe view seems a bit hard to
swallow. The pragmatist looks around at the current violent, dysfunctional
state of the world and doubts that a vision this gentle could have much basis
in fact. But to understand why we are such a strange blend of killer and angel
requires we understand the specifics of our brain and its evolution. That is
the story I take up next.
The Evolution of Humanity’s
Society of Mind
The concept of societies of mind is extremely important because it allows us to
rethink human societies as a collective struggling to act as an
intelligent whole. There is already ample reason to believe the analogy holds.
Hence, as Gaia’s James Lovelock says:
What is
remarkable about man is not the size of his brain, no greater
than that of a dolphin, nor his loose incomplete development as a social
animal, nor even the faculty of speech or his ability to use tools. Man
is remarkable because by the combination of all these things he has created an
entirely new entity. When socially organized and equipped with a technology
even as rudimentary as that of a Stone Age tribal group, man has the novel
capacity to collect, store, and process information, and then use it to manipulate
the environment in a purposeful and anticipatory fashion. (1979, p. 132)
Lovelock’s point is simple. What is unique about humankind is that, as a
collective, we gather, digest and apply information to help us survive and
prosper like no other species. This is our evolutionary strategy. We are not
swift of feet, strong of body, sharp of tooth or clever in niche finding. We
can change our behavior dramatically and we are very,
very, good at discerning patterns.
We bet our survival on behavioral flexibility and the
pursuit of better ways of knowing. In the process, we gained dominance of the
earth. And the one most overlooked fact is that now, as in the primordial
beginning, creating better ways of knowing is a profoundly social event.
We’ve also seen this image before. I started this book with the image of a hive
mind, a great web of humanity reaching a turning point in an on-going evolution
of ideas. We are part of an invisible dynamic network that is struggling to
learn, in ways often unknown to itself. The glimmering possibility is that this
is the normal state of affairs. We belong to a vast human society of mind which
digests billions of bits of information coming from billions of individual
minds. Every once in a while, our hive mind begins to
come to new conclusions. That is what is happening today.
There are concrete reasons for believing that human civilization is a powerful
(if struggling) society of mind. This idea also provides an image of humankind
which is both strikingly different and strikingly reasonable. It is not
selfishness and killing which define us. We are an information pooling,
picture-making cooperative which is centered on a
quest to understand the world.
So, the idea that civilization is a struggling society of mind is not lightly
based. The goal of this section is to lay out why it makes sense in concrete
terms. I start with why the human brain has several personalities because of
how punctuation has played out.
Our Three Brains
...the
brain has followed a now familiar formula. It has been a cooperative effort
between separate and relatively autonomous subsystems...In this respect the
brain follows the basic pattern for the entire human body, itself a cooperative
venture between the living cells that make up its various organs...
Allan Combs
Human beings have not one, but three brains, each of which appears to have been
the result of separate bursts of evolutionary activity. This fact is very
important to the story of humanity’s society of mind because each of these brains
comes with a personality. Hence, we are not the result of a unified brain, but
of a society of three brains each with their own personality.
In the 1930’s Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung noted that
people have a committee of personalities inside their head, a cast of differing
voices which often pull in different directions. Brain research now suggests
there is a physical basis for at least some of these voices. Thus, each of our
three brains has a great deal of self-sufficiency. Each appears to have its own
type of intelligence, its own motor, memory and other functions and even its
own peculiar sense of subjective experience. Each new brain emerged on top of
an earlier one, but underneath its predecessors still functioned and affected
the whole.
Our three brain-personalities are particularly important because they affect
our social relationships. Hence brains brought more than the ability to move
legs and fins. They also brought complex interaction patterns between
individuals, including nurturing, modeling, mating,
self-defense and much more.
Our three brains are most important, however, because they represent three
distinct survival strategies. Thus, each brain arose from pressures in
particular evolutionary juncture and each personality reflects the strategy
that successfully answered those pressures. We carry all three with us to this
day.
Since these three brains and their personalities profoundly influence human
society, one must understand them to understand it. So let us look more
closely. The most famous description of our three brains comes from Paul
MacLean’s 1969 book The Triune Brain. He calls the three, the
reptilian brain, the paleomammalian brain and the neomammalian brain.[[1]] Their
personalities are as follows:
Crude...
The reptilian, or the ‘lizard brain’ as it is sometimes called, is
the core brain for all vertebrates from early reptiles on up to mammals. This
brain is famous for routine, repetitive and instinctual behaviors.
Stylized mating rituals, migratory behavior,
imprinting, threat displays, fleeing and patterns of home-building are its
forte. It is heavily involved with the autonomic nervous system including
systems that regulate heart and respiratory rates, digestive functions, and
bodily cycles such as sleep and sex.
What you should envision with this brain is a scurrying lizard, with flicking
tongue, blinking eyes, and fixed patterns of behavior
with little flexibility and no thought. Still, you should also realize that
this brain is largely responsible for early vertebrates learning to live
complex lives in complex environments, particularly dry land.
Warm...
The paleomammalian, affectionately known
as the ‘furry mammal brain,’ comes next. It was literally plopped on top of the
lizard brain during a later burst of evolutionary activity.
The difference here is mainly emotion and behavioral
flexibility. The lizard brain has a crude type of emotional system shared by
fish and salamanders, but with the paleomammalian
brain, emotion becomes much richer. This richness has two great benefits:
faster learning and richer social relations. As neuropsychologist
Allan Combs puts it:
the
unique quality of the mammal is its ability to experience emotion, and through
it to benefit from personal experiences, retained as emotional reactions to
predators, friendly members of the same species, and so on. It also allows
close emotional bonding between mating partners, parents and infants, members
of families and larger extended groups. (1995, p. 41)
Thus, where the lizard brain tends to react rigidly and acquire new behaviors slowly, the furry mammal brain learns faster and
reacts with more diverse and flexible behaviors. The
icing on the cake is that new forms of emotional bonding support a richer, more
coherent social life and with it better social learning. Mammals nurture their
young and cubs play together as youths. Both activities enhance learning.
Thoughtful...
The third brain, the neomammalian or
‘thinking brain,’ is the most recent of all. It is found only in higher
primates—most notably ourselves. It is famed for vastly improved pattern
recognition and problem solving (including tool making). It is also notable for
increasing flexibility. Thinking beings can invent their own behavioral patterns to a remarkable degree. In humans, this
brain is the seat of complex cognitive skills such as language, reading,
writing, arithmetic and beyond.
Since the thinking brain is so crucial to humankind’s society of mind, let us
take a closer look at how it came to be.[[2]]
The Big-Brain Project: Legs, Language, Tools, and Upheavals
Our first bring, the lizard one, represented a phenomenal advance in
coordination which allowed life to become more complex. It, however, was
inflexible. Our next brain, the furry mammal one, was a great leap because
richer emotion improved individual and social learning. Yet, at some point it
too was not enough.
Why did we develop big, hyper-sensitive, pattern-recognizing brains? Like many
questions in science these days, this one is a topic of hot debate fueled by a flood of recent findings. I present here, not a
final answer, but a budding theory of how our own big brains emerged in
conjunction with legs, language, tools and environmental upheavals. The
astonishing outcome was a society of mind such as the world has never known.
But, let us begin at the beginning. Four to six million years ago the apes that
would become humankind came down from the trees and started walking on two
legs.[[3]] Eventually they also began making tools and engaging in
sophisticated information exchange (talking). This earned them the name
hominid. Then, as the story goes, millennia of walking,
talking, and tool-making accelerated brain growth, producing the well-known
bulge of our big brains. Why did all this happen? One thing most researchers
agree upon is that two-legged walking came first and led to the rest. But
explaining walking is tough. As Stephen J. Gould once wrote:
Upright
posture is the surprise, the difficult event, [it involves] the rapid and
fundamental reconstruction of our anatomy. The subsequent enlargement of our
brain is...secondary...an easy transformation. (1980, cited in Metzner, 1995)
So why two legs? Early researchers believed that the first tool-making hominids
evolved in
What do lakes and frequent jarring shifts have to do with walking? Well, first
the watery element fits with the aquatic ape theory of human origins first posed
by Oxford University zoologist Sir Alister Hardy in
1960.[[4]] This theory holds that early hominids lived in partially aquatic
environments and that such environments produced walking as well as numerous
other distinctive human features such as hairlessness, subcutaneous fat,
refined finger control, ventro/ventral sex, and the
ability to consciously control breathing (this last being a prerequisite to
complex speech).
The aquatic explanation of walking is easy to understand. It is also supported
by the only other example of upright walking. Hence, many animals stand up on
two legs briefly, to reach food or look about, but only one other primate, the
Proboscis monkey of Borneo, walks on two feet — and it learned to walk
on two legs while crossing stretches of water between the mangrove trees in the
swamp in which it lives. As the monkey travels through the swamp, its head has
to be elevated while its back legs push. Water helps support weight during
walking and eventually an upright posture evolves. Presumably, early hominids
experienced similar aids and pressures.
Other human traits also fit a watery background. Thus, fat babies float; smooth
hairless skin moves easily in water; and fine motor control is common in
shallow feeders (for example, raccoons). Conscious breath control is necessary
for swimming under water. Even the long Omega-3 fatty acids needed to make
large brains are best derived from marine food chains which humankind shares
with other big-brained mammals such as dolphins (who apparently went back to
water completely).
So a watery background helps explain walking, better finger control, and
precursors to talking. Frequent jarring changes then hearken to an even more
important cause of our nature — the need to be flexible. Repeated climate
change makes flexibility a crucial survival strategy with clear advantages over
fixed or slowly changing responses. Discerning subtle patterns makes complete
sense in this situation. We change our behavior by
changing our mind. Collaborative learning also makes sense. The richer the
perspectives, the richer (and more accurate) the resulting tapestry. The best
way to survive frequent change is to pool information, synthesize it by
communication and then change one’s behavior based on
a new view. This idea is becoming reasonable. Hence, as Richard Potts, an archeologist at the Smithsonian Institution in
The ratio
of brain size to body size in early hominids had remained similar to the ratios
for other primates. As a result of repeated climate and habitat shifts,
however, hominid brains began to bulge...This discovery dovetails with
preliminary evidence that stone-age groups responded to recurring crisis
situations by pooling information and making effective collective decisions. (Science
News, Vol. 148 Nov. 25, 1995 p. 359)
Rethinking Human Nature
We can now reconstruct the origins of human nature
from an interwoven perspective. Many threads came together to make us a
talking, tool-making, pattern-recognizing, information-sharing animal such as
the world had never seen.
Two of our brains, mammalian and thinking, spurred the transformation. The
furry mammal brain produced the social bonding needed for sharing and group
learning. The neocortex began with our ape ancestors,
but continual crises plus aquatic additions now paved the way for a new burst
of development. The picture-building process seen in brains, thus, accelerates
in human tribes. Where brains create rich tapestries by gathering information
from many cells, human societies create tapestries by pooling information from
many individuals. Collecting information and developing pictures became
a way of life that defined human groups.
Not only did individual brains become astute at pattern-finding, but pressure
to collaborate pushed talking which, in turn, increased brain development.
Thus, pooling information improved talking and talking led to better pooling.
It was a circular, mutual-effect affair! It also led to more complex social
relationships and group abilities which grew more sophisticated by the age.
Then too, that wonderful finger dexterity, born of shallow feeding, began to be
applied to tools. Where our lowest brain coordinates our bodies, the thinking
brain extends our bodies and our ability to act on the world by inventing
tools. Humankind began its epic journey as ‘shaper of the outside world’ that
would culminate in today’s ‘master of the universe’ mentality. What is often
overlooked is that we have a two-way relationship with our tools too. We build
tools, but tools also shape human societies. They extend what we can do, but
they also tend to shape what we believe — leading to the “if all you have is a
hammer” adage. Human societies actually co-evolve with their tools.
Yet, of all the characteristics we possess, flexibility is the most important.
Thus, our thinking brain has a paradoxical personality whose main
characteristic is ability to change itself based on the patterns it
perceives. This brain allow us to redefine our
relationships with others and the world depending on the patterns it perceives.
As a result, we build our societies out of what we think we know. We have come
back to James Burke’s thought, ‘Knowing leads to doing!
Our new view of human nature is now complete. Human societies represent a major
advance in learning, one that blended individual contribution and community
commitment into a totally new form. Individuality brings richness through
diversity of perspective. Emotional bonding brings sharing, caring and modeling. The combination makes human societies looser than
insect societies such as ants, but closer than many mammals
societies such as cows. (We are neither rigid automatons nor disinterested by-standers.)
Our great strategy lies in our ability to learn and to change ourselves via
culture. We survived upheavals by changing ourselves rapidly. There is already
evidence that Cro-Magnon Man, the direct ancestor of modern human beings,
survived where Neanderthals did not because Cro-Magnon showed greater ability
to change behavior in face of changing environment.
It was the ability to change appropriately that counted, not brain size per se
(this last is a materialist assumption).
A complex blend of upheavals and other conditions, thus, made us the leading
edge of the learning universe. Talking, walking, finger dexterity, big-brains
and close bonding eventually created a society of mind more subtle and powerful
than any before or since. We became a pattern-recognizing, information-sharing
animal such as the world had never seen — one that preserved lessons in
highly-structured little vibrations called words. These vibrations became the
most powerful mover of mass in the history of the world.
Nature was still not through, however. The next stage brought pressure for
individual minds to develop some distance from the collective in which they
lived. Such separation might seem at odds with community-building, but it
actually makes sense. Rich tapestries come from diverse views. The unexpected
implication here is that individuation is good for the community. It increases
accuracy by increasing the richness of input.
The next great evolutionary thrust was the evolution of consciousness. It
involved the long, slow birth of ‘selves’ which see themselves as separate and
distinct from the whole. The up-side of this evolution is that individuals with
distinct egos make richer contributions. The down-side is that big egos have
now become so self-absorbed that they do great harm to larger wholes at all
levels from family to planet.
The Evolution of Human
Consciousness
I do not
propose to solve the enigma of the relationship of consciousness to the
brain... My own view... however, places consciousness in a considerably larger
context while at the same time not denying its involvement at the level of the
brain.
Allan Combs
Hominids bring us to the beginning of complex minds and also to the glimmer of
historical times. Cro-Magnon emerged 70,000 to 40,000 years ago and the great
cave paintings about 20,000 years ago. Mesopotamian civilization and recorded history
began about 6000 years ago (4000 BC). The gap between then and now is getting
small. It is, therefore, time to leave the biological story and begin the
journey to historical times and the kind of mind that experiences the world
consciously. Consciousness researchers ask the delicate question: what kind of minds live inside big brains?
How did consciousness — defined in Webster’s as, “an inward sensibility of
something” — come into being? Once multicellulars
grew brains and sense organs like eyes, they could see their own bodies and the
first crude awareness of self could have emerged. From this point of view even
lizards have at least some form of consciousness. Still, most people skim past
lizard-level consciousness in search of the more alluring question: what about
our own?
The story of human consciousness too involves punctuation and cycles of
co-evolution. Researchers base their theories of early stages on studies of
cave paintings, burial practices, etc. and of later stages on writings, sculpture,
philosophy. They also cross-check their theories by
studying primitive peoples today who follow behavior
patterns similar to ones seen long ago. For example, some remote tribes still
have rituals similar to ones practiced by Cro-Magnon. Many insights into how
consciousness changes come from studying peoples who act similarly today. The
point is that, while the theories described here are clearly speculative, the
sense that consciousness has evolved through stages is grounded in a lot of
observation and evidence. It is not just New Age fantasy.
Gebser’s Stages of
Consciousness
What are the stages of consciousness? There are
many theories. I use Swiss philosopher, Jean Gebser’s
theory of consciousness as described by complexity researcher Allan Combs in his
book The Radiance of Being. The punctuated pattern should be familiar.
Gebser believed that consciousness evolved through
stages. New forms emerged on top while underneath earlier forms still played a
role. Each stage of consciousness has a distinctive perspective, personality
and subjective experiences of the world. Each brings a different perception of
time, space and of how individuals fit in the larger world. Finally, each stage
also brings distinctive patterns of how people relate to each other. Hence,
each implies a different kind of culture with a unique experience of the world.
Gebser described five major types of consciousness—archaic,
magic, mythical, mental, and integral. Their
history is as follows:
|
Archaic |
Embedded
in nature (little different from animals) |
|
Magical |
First
symbols (greater separation from the world) |
|
Mythical |
First
cities, first myths (also the Agrarian Revolution) |
|
Mental |
Individuation
for richer contribution (also the Age of War) |
|
Integral |
Strong
selves and strong bonds (not there yet...) |
1. Archaic Consciousness. Archaic consciousness belongs to the time when
our hominid ancestors were still at one with the natural world. Gebser often likened it to a state of deep, dreamless
sleep. The self experiences itself as completely embedded in the world and is
not aware of itself as separate. Humankind is said to
live in perfect harmony with Nature and probably in complete identity with it.
Who had this type of consciousness? Perhaps all three-brained primates have
this type of consciousness, certainly the very early
hominids are candidates. Hence, the archaic state is meant for protohumans who did not exhibit a recognizably human
culture (that is, with tools and language). Australopithecus, a
vegetarian ape that foraged in
2. Magical Consciousness. The next stage of consciousness, magical
consciousness, brought language, adept tool use and also a new form of
imagination seen in the beginnings of ceremony and symbolism.
Neanderthals, some 500,000 years ago, are thought to have had magic
consciousness. They made a variety of tools and engaged in speech (albeit a
crude speech, judging from throat development). More importantly Neanderthals
were also the first to bury their dead ceremoniously as if to issue them into
an afterlife. Bodies were often placed in sleeping postures, legs curled up and
head cushioned on one arm, or in fetal postures, as
if to suggest a sleep from which one might awaken or a hope of a rebirth. In
some cases whole families have been found with a man and a woman placed heads
together and children at the woman’s feet. Some Neanderthal finds even show
evidence of religion in the form of bear worship.
These kinds of ceremonial practices mark a change from earlier times. Many
scholars believe they signal a budding awareness of self as separate from
nature, a form of individuation. This awareness brought a new concern with what
happened to individuals even in death — hence new care with burials.
The new awareness also brought a new concern about how to influence an
increasingly separate world. Magic consciousness thus also brings humankind’s
first attempts to manipulate the world through symbols. Magical consciousness
gets its name because the first symbols were used for magical substitution. For
example, paintings of animals in the cave sanctuaries such as
Gebser believed that all magic started with symbolic
substitution of one object for another. Yet, we must go slowly here. People in
earlier stages of consciousness experienced the world very differently than
most modern people do today. To understand magic consciousness one must realize
that, in this state, symbol and actual are experienced as equally real.
Thus, when Pygmy tribes in the
Gebser believed that magical consciousness reached
its heights with Cro-Magnon and his cave paintings. Yet, this stage (and all
the others) is still buried within us. This has both pros and cons. Magic
conscious is crude by current standards, but it also has a richness of
community which is still buried within us today. As Combs says:
[Magical
consciousness brings] a deep sense of community...of belonging to a family or
any other group of people. Music, with its ability to transport us out of the
moment, is also a product of magic consciousness. On the negative side, there’s
a tendency for the magic structure to hold too tightly to other persons,
sometimes refusing to allow them space to breathe. There’s also a very
dangerous tendency to follow the drumbeat of collective ideological movements,
religious or politically totalitarian, as was experienced so widely before the
Second World War and all too much today. The only remedy to these tendencies is
to shift one’s attention to the more recent structures of consciousness. (1995,
p. 102)
Cro-Magnon, however, was probably also a transitional case and 20,000 BC probably
marks the beginning of a slow transition to a new phase. This time witnessed an
acceleration of tool making and social development which led to the kind of
societies which mirror our own.
3. Mythical Consciousness. The next stage, mythical consciousness, was
certainly in full sway by the time of the Neolithic farming revolution, which
is usually given as around 14,000 to 8,000 BC.
Nomadic life was giving way to stationary communities. Sophisticated speech was
now the norm and so too were sophisticated tools. Animals were domesticated,
crops were planted and villages blossomed into cities. Staying in one place
allowed new technologies to flourish. Crafts like pottery and weaving emerged
alongside the wheel, boats, musical instruments, and painting. New social
specialties from policeman to priest grew with them. Religious symbolism became
sophisticated and focused on the idea of fertility and bolstering life. The
concept of law was invented and also central political control. In short, human
societies began to look much like our own.
By 6500 BC an entire Old European civilization based on agriculture was well
established throughout
Mythical consciousness gets its name because this was the time of myths.
Language was now sophisticated and the telling of tales was beginning. These
stories allowed information to be preserved and passed along through time.
Myths also helped usher in a new sense of time that is at least somewhat
linear. This was probably not the modern sense of time, but what Gebser calls temporicity,
the feeling of being in a certain time, for example, during the reign of
a certain king. Hence, mythic tales take place ‘once upon a time’ or ‘long ago
and far away’ and have a sense of an enchanted time that has long since escaped
the world of day-to-day affairs.
This sense of enchantment also fed another theme The
imagination that began in magical consciousness ripened into a deeper reverence
for nature and the life force. Spirituality took a theme appropriate to the new
agricultural society. This theme was the bountiful Earth/Mother Goddess.
The Goddess image was reflected everywhere. Thus, archeologists
studying this era have uncovered large numbers of female figurines standing or
seated, usually naked, often pregnant, and sometimes holding or nursing a
child. But we must go slowly here lest we impose our own biases on these people
too. Many experts argue that exaggerated breasts and pregnant abdomens
symbolize fertility and were used to beg the Goddess for help with crops. No
doubt this was partly the case. Yet, other researchers say that the people of
mythical times felt a more present force. They were, after all, still immersed
in nature and in tune with it in ways we no longer are. This meant their
experience of spirituality was more direct. Hence, as American mythologist
Joseph Campbell says, Goddess images point “not to a new theory about how to
make beans grow but to an actual experience in the depth of that mysterium tremendum that
would break upon us even now if it were not so wonderfully masked.”
Hence, Goddess images probably represent recognition of and gratitude to the
life force at work in the world. UCLA archaeologist Marija
Gimbutas calls it, “the celebration of life energy.”
We might call it the first articulated awareness of the Great Ordering Oneness.
Yet, this awareness was also blended with a new step toward individuation. No
longer utterly embedded in Nature or lost in the tribe, humankind became a
child of nature, at once awed by and grateful to the life force. Mythic
consciousness thus brought humankind’s first covenant with nature. This age was
“the time when human kind discovered its own soul and that of the world at
large,” as Combs says. It expressed both in the worship of life.
Mythic culture thus brought the first high forms of technological, artistic and
spiritual culture. It brought the main inventions of civilization from weaving
and the wheel to cities. It climaxed in the great artistry and technology of
ancient Greek civilizations, such as the Minoans on
The deep mythic experience, formed during the neolithic
period carried over into ancient civilizations such as
4. Mental Consciousness. The next stage was mental consciousness,
the time when thinking came into its own. Hence where stone tools signaled the change from archaic to magical consciousness,
so cognitive tools highlighted the change from mythic to mental consciousness.
Number systems began to appear in the
Writing gives researchers a better glimpse into changing experiences. The Epic
of Gilgamesh written about 2700 BC, for example, suggests self-reflection is
becoming strong. Having failed in his quest for immortality Gilgamesh
experiences an almost existential crisis, an exquisitely personal emergency not
seen in recordings of more ancient myths.
The new stage, of course, also brought a new emphasis on thinking — especially
as separate from feeling. Not surprisingly, this new type of consciousness
places the sense of self somewhere in the head. This contrasts with earlier
tradition seen in ancient Greeks and Native Americans who experience their
essence as being in the heart.
Centering oneself in one’s
head brings, in turn, what Gebser called a perspectival element of consciousness. We perceive
the world as if it comes in through our eyes and informs a ‘self’ which is
located in the head right behind those eyes. This new perspective also reflects
another major development, the birth of highly individuated egos. No longer
embedded in Nature or the tribe, the separate, self-aware, and often
self-serving ego emerges.
Evolving slowly since the time of
Strongly associated with reason and critical thinking, mental consciousness had
arrived. By the time of the
We are still in the age of Mental consciousness, but
the next stage, Integral consciousness, is simmering. It is simmering because
the current age is exhausted and a new way is needed. Let me take a moment,
therefore, to expand on the problems that Mental
consciousness is facing.
The Problem with Rational Thought
Mental consciousness begins the story of rational thinking, but, it is not
the story one might expect. Gebser stressed that
rational thought was not the pinnacle of mental consciousness. Indeed, he
described it as an inferior form, a distortion of the true mental miracle.
Gebser said that each form of consciousness had an
authentic and a distorted form (or as he said, an efficient
and deficient form). The authentic form of mythic consciousness, for
example, created myths which encapsulated deep insight in metaphoric form. We
have a hard time grasping the deep meaning and hidden accuracy of such myth
because we no longer understand the symbolism. The result is the distorted form
of mythic consciousness — myths as tall tales. The stories of the Greek gods,
for example, were eventually told as colorful yarns
not intended to convey real meaning.
The authentic form of mental consciousness is menos:
balanced thought which evolves through discussion. The object of balanced
thought is to improve through dialogue and continual rethinking. Socrates
dialectics and Plato's Dialogues are examples. ‘Rational thinking is a
distorted form because it was characterized by ratio, or as Combs says, “by divisive, immoderate, hair-splitting reason.” The object
rational thought is to pick things apart, often as a destructive act. The quest
to refine understanding is lost to obsessive love of haranguing over
microscopic bits. Small wonder Gebser saw it as
inferior. Understanding its inferior nature is of importance to our times
because this hair-splitting thought is often held up as the one true form of
thinking. As Gebser says:
Ratio must not be interpreted...as
‘understanding’ or ‘common sense,’ ratio implies calculation and, in
particular, division...This dividing aspect inherent in ratio and
Rationalism...is consistently overlooked, although it is of decisive importance
to an assessment of our epoch. (Cited in Combs, 1995, p.
110.)
Rational thinking, therefore, is divisive and often destructive. If you add
egos which can become big and self-absorbed you can see some of the threads
which lead to a change. Self-centeredness and focus on division tends to thwart
balanced, evolving thought (menos). Instead,
one gets rigidity and an inability to go beyond one’s own perspective instead.
Human learning shrivels.
These kinds of distortions help push a new stage of consciousness which Gebser believed was in the offing. On the other hand, a
more pressing problem is simmering.
The Great Transition — From Collaboration to Coercion
Mental consciousness came with a new society, of course. The catch is that
the epoch which brought it is best described as the Age of War (or, if you
prefer, the Age of Empire-building). Hence, Mythic culture was shunted
underneath and a new more violent culture rose in its place.
The Neolithic culture of Old Europe and the
Whatever the cause, the most notable effect of the crisis period of 4,000 BC to
2000 BC was a large and distinctive shift in the direction of war. Metallurgy,
for example, had been known for some time, but Old Society metal implements
were religious, domestic and agricultural. Weapons of war were distinctly
absent. The 3500-2500 BC time period, however, brought the Bronze Age and with
it bronze weapons such as daggers, maceheads, and
thin sharp axes. These appear first along what are believed to be the routes of
barbarian attack — hence the theory that invaders brought change.
But, bronze weapons were just one symptom. The whole culture changed. Burial
practices, for example, also changed. Large-boned male skeletons began being
accompanied not only by weapons and riches but also by the skeletons of
sacrificed women.
Mental consciousness was thus forged in the fires of what I call the Great
Transition, a shift from a social system based on the life-force and mutual
contribution to one based on war and domination. The contrast here is
important. The original Neolithic culture was agricultural and egalitarian. Its
people often lived in large townships where land and all principal means of
production for example, animals, plows and looms were
held in common. Social power was viewed as a responsibility, a trusteeship used
for the benefit of all. Elder women or the heads of clans administered the
distribution of the fruits of the Earth which were seen as belonging to all
members of the group.
In short, the Old Society had a fundamentally cooperative social organization
and absence of fortifications and weapons attests to the fact that they lived
in peaceful coexistence. It was this peaceful society which brought many of the
core inventions of civilization as we know it from the wheel and metallurgy to
farming, pottery, music and religion. The palaces, arts and technologies —
including indoor plumbing — of Minoan civilization show the heights to which it
led. I call it a mutualist society because it
is based on mutual benefit between members.
This cooperative culture was replaced by a socially-stratified patriarchal
society that exalted war. The contrast in ideology is striking. Where weapons
were nonexistent in Old Society imagery, the New Society symbols were the dagger
and battle ax. Where Old Society religion focused on
the cycle of birth, death, and regeneration, embodied in an Earth/Mother
Goddess, the New Society worshipped virile, heroic warrior gods that forced
their bloody will on the world. The biggest difference of all, however, was in
social organization. Riane Eisler,
perhaps the most famous researcher of the Great Transition, calls this a dominator
society because it is based on domination. It included:
- A hierarchical social structure dominated
by strong-man elites
- Accumulation of wealth for status,
- Coercive social power,
- Private ownership of land and means of
production,
- Slavery and human sacrifice
- The reduction of women and children to the
property of men,
- A central focus on war and militarism.
Dominator
beliefs soon made struggle and war the order of the day. The Tigris-Euphrates
valley, an invasion crossroads in Eisler’s terms,
spawned a series of aspiring empires — Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and
Hittite — known for their bloody ways.
These kinds of contrasting before-and-after images have led some scholars to
argue that the Garden of Eden is a myth about the
Mental consciousness, thus, grew up in a battle between radically different
cultures. This struggle is particularly apparent in spirituality, one of the
key aspects of consciousness. Hence the new culture brought Gods who exalted war.
Religion also became part of the political control structure. As a matter of
expedience, the king often served as head priest or even proclaimed himself a
God. Religious hierarchies that pulled resources up and issued commands down
became common. The new culture also remade older Gods in the new order’s image.
Struggles between the life-force Goddess of the old religion and new, violent,
vengeful, male insurgents such as Horace, Marduk,
Zeus, and Yahweh ensued. The recording of ancient traditions, thus, often
includes a blending of old and new myths as priests rewrote ancient stories.
This is clearly seen in the Bible with its conflicting images of a
compassionate and a vengeful god.
I shall have more to say about these two cultures later. Meanwhile their
struggles set the stage for mental consciousness and all the history to follow.
We are still in this Age. For the last five thousand years human societies have
been centered on war, empire-building and domination.
The social structures listed above remain and so do many of the violent
cultural ways. Human societies have not always been so, but most are today.
5. Integral Consciousness. Mental consciousness is still dominant,
but there are problems. Indeed, many of today’s problems can be traced to deficient
aspects of mental consciousness.
Thus, the down side of the strong ego is the grandiose ego with its need to be
the center of attention. The down side of balanced
evolving thought (menos),
is divisive, hair-splitting rationalism. Add a society centered on dominator imperatives and one gets the two egos
of modern times the embattled, lonely ego...and the arrogant, self-centered ego which sees the world through the lens of
conquest and domination. Naturally enough, individuals and communities both fail
with alarming frequency. Gebser’s description of
failure, thus, echoes those of many observers of the Modern condition.
Isolation is visible everywhere, isolation of individuals, of entire nations
and continents...in the political arena in the form of ideological monopolistic
dictatorship, in everyday life in the form of immoderate, ‘busy’ activity
devoid of any sense-direction or relationship to the world as a whole;
isolation of thinking in the form of the deceptive dazzle of premature
judgments or hypertrophied abstraction devoid of any connection with the world.
And it is the same with mass phenomena: overproduction, inflation, the
proliferation of political parties, rampant technology, atomization
in all forms. (Cited in Combs, 1996)
Unfortunately, since mental consciousness still dominates, many academics view
it as the highest and final form of consciousness. Gebser,
however, saw things differently in part, because he had lived through the worst
effects of the calamitous twentieth century.
Born to an aristocratic family in
Gebser spent many years charting evidence that
Integral consciousness was emerging. His book, The Ever-present Origin,
details that evidence in a impressive array of cultural forms including
physics, mathematics, biology, sociology, philosophy, jurisprudence, music,
painting, and literature. For instance, Gebser
believed Integral consciousness brought a growing ability to make multiple view
points appear as integral wholes. He saw this new ability evident in the
paintings of Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee, for
example. It suggested a new freedom from possessive, ego-based consciousness.
The new consciousness also brought a new sense of time as a tangible
experience, and not the abstract quantity known since the age of
Paradoxically, while time became more tangible, the experience of reality also
became more fluid, or as Gebser called it, diaphanous.
Using the Buddhist term Void, Gebser described
this new experience as “a spiritual transparency by which we experience the
whole almost as the whole lives through us.” He argued that this transparent
quality came from a new spiritual awareness which was again grounded in felt
experience of the creative force which permeates the world.
This new spiritual awareness was important. Mental consciousness had brought
institutionalized religion heavily involved in social control. Such religions
invariably moved toward increasingly rigid and often hair-splitting beliefs
that smothered the spiritual awareness from which all true religions emerge.
Integral consciousness brought a new spiritual depth, one which contained a
solid clarity missing in earlier forms. This clarity was supported by a more
integral reason, and new scientific abilities to apprehend the design in which
humankind is embedded. Thus, no longer an awed child or an arrogant adolescent,
humankind returns to its spiritual roots, now with a more lucid awareness of
the mysterium tremendum.
Gebser saw a danger, however. Powerful contact with
spiritual roots often left soulful selves lost in the light. These souls follow
blindly, without judging ideas critically or cross-checking their validity
(these last traits being mental consciousness’ great strength). Thus, Integral
consciousness had a deficit form, diaphainon,
a shining through of spiritual light which lacked substance.
Well-meaning New Age romantics, filled with the light, but unable to separate
quality from quackery, are an example of diaphainon.
Unfortunately, the lack of grounding makes this kind of spirituality a
natural feeding ground for charlatans, megalomaniacs, and psychopaths in many
guises. The rise of charismatic cults producing horrific ends in this century
is a sign of diaphainon’s inability to
discern. Jim Jones, David Koresh, Aum
Shinrikiyo — the list is long. Charismatic leaders’
ability to play on blind passion, is one reason that
it is important to keep the new vision well-grounded.
Gebser hoped that the twentieth century’s great
calamities were part of the birth struggle of a new way. He viewed the outcome
as uncertain, however. Hence, though he believed humankind’s only hope lay in
the embryonic new consciousness, he found that most people were still mired in
egoistic, rationalistic consciousness and that the power structures that
supported these traits still seemed secure. As he said:
...the
coming decades will decide whether a fundamental transformation will occur
during the next two generations or not for the next two millennia.
The Evolution of Consciousness Revisited
Gebser’s work helps us see that the evolution of
consciousness is not a figment of New Age imagination. Whether you believe his
theory in detail or not, this and other research makes it clear that changes
have taken place inside our big beautiful brains. Consciousness changes
are directly relevant to the kinds of cultures human beings produce.
The contrast between Integral and Mental consciousness also helps us see our
crisis more clearly. Individuation enriches the community, but the pendulum has
swung too far. Modern individuals often lose all sense that they are
contributing to anything larger than themselves — a predicament enshrined in
the image of selfish genes. Small wonder fragmentation now plagues the
end-of-the-millennium world. As biologist David Sloan Wilson says, “Western
societies seem to spawn far more self-absorption than sacrifice for any greater
good.”
Self-absorption among some, however, spawns the opposite among many. Frightened
and alone selves often fall prey to blind, yearning need. They willingly
submerge their identities to charismatic leaders and commit atrocities —
usually in the name of community and soul.
Add the centrality of war and you get the modern world. The age of Mental consciousness has left us 1) brilliant but
disconnected, 2) powerful but vicious, 3) antagonistic and often
self-destructive.
This list helps us understand the direction of the return swing. Learning is
enhanced by strong selves and strong bonds. The two must go together.
Strong selves without strong bonds produce self-absorbed egos who ravage society and the world. Strong
bonds without a strong self is the basis of pathological conformity.
Integral consciousness must have both because either side without the other can
lead to disaster — a society with very little group intelligence and a lot of
destructive tendencies.
The Learning Universe
Revisited
The story
of the stars, that of life, of human beings, and of
thought, are one and the same story.
Yves Coppens
We are back to our own time, now with a new sense of how our minds fit in
evolution and history. Thanks to the Enlightenment, rational thought spread
across the world along with public education. Human societies of mind now reach
phenomenal levels, best seen in that most rapidly-learning society of mind,
science. On the other hand, big egos and the idea that war is central to the
world also leave us ever-floundering on the edge of extinction. How can we
achieve a more viable way? The next section explores some of the obstacles to
human learning in detail. Meanwhile, let me close with a review.
Clockwork thinkers were apt to argue that life was an anomaly going nowhere.
Consciousness was merely the latest pin-stripe on the lumbering automaton that
selfish genes call home. An alternative view is emerging, however.
Just how differently might our descendants view the world? Perhaps they will
believe that humankind’s great strategy is a mind one. Our inquisitive,
collaborative nature was forged in a cauldron of crisis. From this came our one
defining task — ‘knowing and doing’ in ever better forms.
Then too, perhaps our descendants will believe that the Great Ordering Oneness
gave us consciousness that we might consciously aid in the project of creating
an ever-more harmonious, well-flowing world. After all, when mind is seen as a
project of the world (and not just a human quirk), then one has to wonder
whether the ability to see so far has some aim beyond, say, making money.
And so the noble thought. We were born of a universe which is driven to learn
and this urge is implanted deeply in us. Following this urge is what makes us
who we are. Following this urge together has made us the most remarkable
creatures on the face of the earth. It is time we started using those big beautiful
brains to envision something wiser and more loving than parochial self-interest
and quality through war.
Humankind is not a finished product. Our ultimate place in history remains to
be seen. Our existential question looms large. Yet, there is reason for hope.
We can remake ourselves rapidly. That is what culture is for. We have done so
many times before. So while our straits are dire, our potential is still great.
If anything emerges from the ideas in this chapter, I hope it is that
humankind’s strategy is learning, done in community and aimed at
wellbeing—our own, our society’s and that of the world with which we are so
tightly bound.
References
Calvin, William H. (1995). The Ascent of Mind: Ice Age Climates and
the Evolution of Intelligence.
Combs, Allan. (1996). The Radiance of Being:
Complexity, Chaos and the Evolution of Consciousness.
Freeman, Walter .J. (1995). Societies
of Brains.
Potts, Richard. (1996). Humanity’s Descent.
END NOTES
1. The reptilian brain consists of the midbrain and basal ganglia, plus a thin
shell of cortex including the hippocampus. It is found in all animals with a
brain. It is called the lizard brain because salamanders were the favorite subjects of early researchers trying to study this
brain in its most basic form. The paleomammalian
brain surrounds this core reptilian brain and is primarily associated with the
limbic system (the part of the brain most associated with emotion). It is found
from lower mammals up to human beings. The neomammalian
brain, found only in higher primates, is the neo-cortex.
2. Each brain’s characteristics reflect pressures which gave it birth. Thus,
the lizard brain would have been the brain that brought us out of the ooze. It
provides a tremendous amount of coordination between primitive survival needs
and internal visceral response. It represents a kind of primary consciousness
based on millions of years of experience on the four basic elements of
survival: feed, flee, fight and reproduce.
Unfortunately, the lizard brain is inflexible. As life evolved, simple lizard
brain responses probably reached their limit. As the ecosystem began to fill
with other animals, simple responses were not enough. Survival began to demand
more complex responses and speedier learning. A new strategy came into being
which used rich emotions to enhance personal learning and bonding emotions to
enhance group learning. The furry-mammal brain allowed faster learning and
produced more diverse responses. Modeling emerged as
a way of transmitting learning to one’s fellows. Yet, apparently at some point,
this strategy too was insufficient and the thinking brain emerged.
3. Paleontology is a rapidly changing field and
estimates of the dates of this event vary wildly. I am using a rather mid-range
estimate. More recent work puts the split between the Homo genus and its
nearest relative Pan, the genus of chimpanzees, about 8 million years
ago during a tectonic shift that left an East/West rift in the African
continent with mountains in between.
4. And now championed most strongly by Elaine Morgan, see The Aquatic Ape
(1982) and The Scars of Evolution (1990).
5. Riane Eisler is the most
famous proponent of this theory. In her book, The Chalice and The Blade,
she reports three main waves of barbarian attack, No. 1 about 4300- 4200 BC;
No. 2 about 3400- 3200 BC; and No. 3 about 3000- 2800 BC. (1987, p. 44).