“The Future of Man”, Totalitarianism, and the ‘Planetization of Humankind’
Surfing the “Noosphere”! — my view atop the face of a cresting paradigm . . .
Owing its inception to a research project [see - Science of the Noosphere] initiated by Evolution Institute co-founder David Sloan Wilson and his sharing of an accompanying paper entitled, “Reintroducing Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to Modern Evolutionary Science”; this article aims to complement the evolutionary biologist’s efforts by likewise, delving “the major tenets of Teilhard’s vision from a modern evolutionary perspective” [emphasis added] (Wilson, 2021).
Therefore, and assuming a likelihood this composition’s reader (already) possesses a sense that ‘consciousness’ might well be an innate component of cultural evolution (see also - An Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of “Conscious Cultural Evolution”), the succeeding text highlights a few notable contributions arising over only more recent decades in hope of further informing the unfolding of a new evolutionary story better suited for actualizing our planet’s regenerative (and distributive) capacities in service of its future(?) inhabitants’ overall health and wellbeing.
Furthermore, and taking practical steps along this same path, let’s begin by acquainting ourselves with the person of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; the Noosphere’s diviner as abridged in Chapter 10 of his, The Future of Man (Teilhard de Chardin, 1964). Born the fourth among eleven siblings in 1881, Pierre launched his formal education at age twelve with enrollment at the “Jesuit college of Mongré”. Ordained as a Catholic priest in 1911, he initiated his career in paleontology around this same time, which in turn, coincided over ensuing decades with his drafting The Future of Man as a compilation of essays between 1920 and 1952 (Teilhard, 2021).
“For the observers of the Future, the greatest event will be the sudden appearance of a collective humane conscience and a work to make.” Teilhard de Chardin, from a Paris conference, c. 1930-31 (Teilhard, 2021).
With the Holy See’s refusal of “the Imprimatur for Le Milieu Divin in 1927” however (Teilhard, 2021), ‘public expression’ of Teilhard’s insight; in print media anyway, became an object of ‘Church’ censorship and consequently, works as significantly relevant as The Phenomenon of Man were generally accessible to the public only after his passing in 1955 (Phenomenon, 2021).
For these reasons though too, reconciling the potential impact of ‘Teilhard’s vision’ with the Vatican’s suppression of it, appropriates our adopting a working familiarity with 1930’s Western society. Thus, this analogous era playing host to the Great Depression; the advent of “swing jazz”, introduction of sound to cinema and publication of Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World (1932) ulteriorly harbored a sufficient acquiescence for Totalitarian ideology to concede its pervasion across Europe in a prelude to World War II.
Not coincidently then, it’s within this same societal context Teilhard penned his earliest Reflections about “consciousness” (“evolution is an ascent toward consciousness”) (Teilhard, 2021), the “law of complexity”, “interiority”, “involution”, the “Noosphere”, and “planetization”. What’s more, but to better guide our study with respect to a few of Wilson’s more salient points involving cultural evolution (Wilson, 2021), Ken Wilber has similarly noted the profundity of Teilhard’s influence in his 2017 tome, The Religion of Tomorrow (Wilber).
What modern science has found — and an Integral approach can certainly accept — is that “evolution” has resulted in a constant complexification of gross matter, whose objective “exteriors” (the phenomenon looked at from the outside in an objective fashion, individually and collectively become “more and more complex”, while their subjective “interiors” (the phenomenon looked at from the inside, from within their interiors, individually and collectively) become “more and more conscious” [hyperlink added] (Wilber, 2017, p. 130).
Summarily — “This is Teilhard de Chardin’s famous law of complexity and consciousness” [see reference - Teilhard de Chardin, 1959, p. 300] “namely, the more of one, the more of the other” [see also - Figs. 1 & 2]. Yet, astonishingly too, and as the thought leader further imparts, this subsequently “allows us to connect what was previously viewed as ‘otherworldly’ or ‘metaphysical’ or ‘super-natural’ with ‘this world,’ the natural and material world” [bold type and italics added] (Wilber, 2017, p. 130).
However, beginning by at least 1959 as evidenced in T.H. Huxley’s (“Darwin’s Bulldog”) older grandson (Huxley, 2021) — Julian Huxley’s, “Introduction” to Teilhard’s posthumously published, The Phenomenon of Man — the crux of the priest’s efforts, particularly with respect to “consciousness” appears diverted by the shadow of an ulterior agenda (e.g. “evolutionary humanism”? - see below).
In my Romanes Lecture on “Evolutionary Ethics”, I made an attempt (which I now see was inadequate, but was at least a step in the right direction) to relate the development of moral codes and religions to the general trends of evolution; in 1942, in my “Evolution, the Modern Synthesis”, I essayed the first comprehensive post-Mendelian analysis of biological evolution as a process: and just before meeting Pere Teilhard had written a pamphlet entitled “UNESCO: its Purpose and Philosophy”, where I stressed that such a philosophy must be a global, scientific and evolutionary humanism” [quotation marks substituted for italics] - Julian Huxley from his “Introduction” to Teilhard’s, The Phenomenon of Man (Teilhard de Chardin, 1959, p. 12).
In contrast to this however, David Sloan Wilson underscores the attribution of a “thinking dimension” to Teilhard's “evolution”, highlighting the cleric’s use of “the terms ‘biosphere’ and ‘noosphere’ to describe the impact of other lifeforms and humans, respectively on earth processes” — along with Teilhard’s annotation of “humankind as evolution ‘becoming conscious of itself’” [Teilhard de Chardin, 1959, p. 226] [emphasis added] (Wilson, 2021, p. 5). Moreover, but within this same context, Wilson also affirms:
As with the study of “cultural evolution”, “evolutionary science” veered sharply away from the concept of “evolution” as having a “conscious” component in the middle of the 20th Century. The “modern synthesis” was centered squarely on “Mendelian genetics” as it was understood at the time, in which “variation” was random (in the sense of arbitrary with respect to selection pressures) and the immediate environment did the “selecting”. This left no room for anything that could be regarded as “purposeful” about evolution [quotation marks and hyperlinks added] (Wilson, 2021, p. 6).
Not surprisingly then, Wilson’s overall body of work (particularly in recent years), resolutely suggests that while the exerted strength of a self-interested individual within a group has generally, always wielded evolutionary advantage (e.g. “survival of the fittest”) “within” ‘the pack’, that same individualized advantage doesn’t retain its ‘evolutionary’ dominance “between” groups where “prosocial” relations serve as an elemental determinate of a coterie’s (i.e. family’s) overall health and wellbeing (Wilson, 2019).
Moreover, but relating particularly to the scientific community as a whole, this entire scenario takes on even greater significance given Teilhard’s appreciation that “as the fastest of the two evolutionary processes, cultural evolution takes the lead in adapting human populations to their environments, with genetic changes following at a (far) slower pace” [emphasis and parentheses added] (Wilson, 2021, p. 6).
Still, within this general context and as Ken Wilber disclosed to Rebel Wisdom interviewer David Fuller — because by “the 60's” mainstream academia so eschewed the notion of (theoretical) ‘hierarchy’, a bevy of “pioneering developmentalists” took to initiating associations with Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Consequently, figures like Lawrence Kohlberg, Jane Loevinger, Kurt Fischer, Howard Gardner, and Robert Kegan — all, beyond a point, generated (their) respective efforts through affiliation with the university (Rebel Wisdom, 2019b) [see - Fig. 5 - ”Growing Up” as ’y’ axis].
In this way too, Robert Kegan’s studies (Kegan, 2009) relating to developmental capacities involving “Self-Authorship” and “complexity” (or, the vertical ‘y’ axis in Fig. 4) are of special note in contrasting the means by which an “accretion” of conscious awareness as the ‘y’ axis in Clare Graves’
model (Fig. 3) relationally translates in a “resolution of existential problems” on the ‘x’ axis [emphasis added] (Graves, 1981, p. 3). What’s more, and although both these respective models can be viewed from Wilber’s perspective as hierarchical stages of “Growing Up” (Wilber, 2016b), neither of the two simulations specifically address (nor account for), individual happiness or (subjective) wellbeing — at least as we typically employ those terms.
In further reference to Kegan’s model though, where Figure 4 reflects two of the “most common stages (Stages 3 & 4) of mental development in adults” [parenthesis added], at Stage 5 “the self-transforming mind is not only aware of its unique identity within society, but can view its identity somewhat objectively, critique it, and shift it toward new beliefs and behaviors it views as more suitable” [emphasis added] (Schulte, 2020). In other words and at this stage, it can be said the . . .
. . . person’s sense of self is no longer bound to any particular aspect of themselves or their history, and they are free to allow themselves to focus on the flow of their lives (Constructive development, 2021).
Concerning the Integral (AQAL) Model however, a key distinction warranting accentuation here is the relational primacy between what Ken Wilber refers to as the “two major paths” of growth — experienced all too frequently perhaps, as an existential sense of ‘disconnect’ when integrating 1st person state experience (‘ontic) with 3rd person structural (cognitive or ‘epistemic’) development [see - Fig. 5] (Wilber, 2017, p. 54-57).
So humans have “two major paths” of incredibly important growth, and yet never in humankind’s history have they been brought together in one place. This means that humanity, up to this point, has been training itself to be partial, fragmented, and broken. Bringing these two together, not only in “theory” but in actual “practice”, has been one of the major contributions of Integral Theory and Practice and is, I believe, part of what should be included in any genuinely “Integral Spirituality” . . . [bold type substituted for italics, quotation marks added] (Wilber, 2017, p. 57)
Consequently though, while states of consciousness (see - Fig. 5 - e.g. “Waking Up”) as direct 1st person ontic experience has been of particular focus among Eastern traditions (see - Three Bodies Doctrine) for millennium, structures of consciousness (e.g. Growing Up) by comparison as the epistemic lens through which we view and subsequently interpret the world, has really only come to command ‘’scientific’ attention within the last century or so (Wilber, 2016a, p. 8-9). Intriguingly then, and within this same overview of the Integral Model however, Figure 5’s unattributed graphic image offers itself as enigmatic evidence of a paucity of research otherwise informing causal relatedness between “state-stage” experience and “structure-stage” development.
All of which, nevertheless, serves in bringing us back to my initial analogy of ‘surfing the Noosphere!’ [see - “I’m Here!” - Fig. 6). Thus, Figure 6 adopted here from Thomas Piketty’s extraordinary research for Capital in the 21st Century proves hugely helpful in reflecting the historical prevalence for one (e.g. “Income Inequality”) of what are presumably, the two primary socioeconomic issues of our time — that is; (1) global ‘inequity’ (i.e. ‘inequality’) and (2) the present climate crisis!
Disturbingly, but from a purview of world history, these patterns of “income inequality” in the United States, particularly in reflecting the waning health of civil society’s “democratic” values over the last hundred years, signal a troubling course for global humanity’s immediate future [quotation marks added]. in referring to Figure 6 from, “Toward Integral Economic Democracy: Learning and Leading Innovation in Second-Tier Distributed Networks” (McConnell, 2014).
So, and in concluding this (my) desultory précis of consciousness, evolution, religion, and spirituality — yet, just to tidy loose ends a bit, I’ll reference Ken Wilber’s, The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion (1998) for which I initiated its Wikipedia page in January of 2013. So, and where the field of Economics as we currently know it, has recently become subject to a transformative design revision with Kate Raworth’s introduction of a circular economy in her landmark publication of 2017's, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist —Western governance (‘democracy’?) stands poised as the next (my!) popular nominee for ‘evolutionary re-envisioning’!
No, if there is to be a genuine integration of modern science and premodern religion, it will have political dimensions sewn into its very fabric. And just as the integration of modern science and premodern religion actually involved the integration of the differentiations of modernity with the Great Chain of Being, so the political integration of modernity and premodernity would involve the integration of the Enlightenment of the West with the Enlightenment of the East [hyperlinks added]. excerpt from “Political Awareness” in The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion (Wilber, p. 211, 1998).
This article can be downloaded in pdf format from academia.edu as, “Conscious Cultural Evolution! — steps toward an Integral Political Democracy”.
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