CHAPTER 2 The Possibility

A human being is a part of the whole called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

 

Albert Einstein

According to conventional wisdom, hierarchies of dominance are required to bring order to human societies because we humans are by nature an inherently unruly and self-centered species prone to violence and lawlessness. We therefore require the discipline of a ruling class and the competition of an unregulated market to impose order. By telling only part of the story, this conventional wisdom becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, defining our beliefs about human possibility, the preferred architecture of our institutions, and the appropriate parameters of our political conversation.

Chapter 1 framed two narratives—one a dominator narrative of Empire, the other a partnership narrative of Earth Community. These stem from sharply contrasting assumptions about the human condition and our human nature. Although they appear to be in opposition, in truth they define possibilities. The dominator narrative defines the limited possibilities of the immature consciousness. The partnership narrative defines the far larger possibilities of the mature consciousness. Neither defines our destiny.

We are blocked from realizing our positive potential, not by our nature, but rather by the social dynamics of Empire. We now have the opportunity to liberate ourselves from its deadly addictions. The story of the journey of the individual human consciousness from newborn to elder is a tale rich with insight into the nature of and pathway to the realization of more mature human societies.

AWAKENING CONSCIOUSNESS

The first experience of individual human consciousness begins in the mother’s womb, where we float effortlessly in undifferentiated oneness with the warm and comforting fluids of the amniotic sac. The well-rehearsed processes of the body’s physical development take place at the cellular level far beyond the ability of our budding consciousness to monitor or influence. Our conscious mind experiences no demands, bears no responsibilities. There is no beginning, no ending. There is no “I” and no “not I.” Just to be is sufficient.

Suddenly an involuntary traumatic passage unceremoniously thrusts us into a world of unfamiliar and generally discomforting sensations. Our first reaction is typically one of outrage—an elemental expression of grief at what has been lost. We now face the challenge of adapting to our new circumstance, ordering sounds into rhythms, sights into images, and learning to distinguish between them. We experience the blanket as scratchy and irritating or smooth and pleasant, but with no awareness that these sensations come from an external object. The feel of a soggy diaper evokes discomfort unassociated with any cause or object. Suckling on the mother’s breast brings comfort, but with no sense of separation between breast and lip.

Our next important challenge is learning to differentiate the “I” from the “not I”—the first step in learning to relate to our world, and most importantly to other persons. Throughout our lives we will depend on our relations with other humans not only to meet our physical needs and secure ourselves from physical threat but also to obtain support in developing the cognitive, moral, and emotional capacities of our consciousness. Learning to relate to other humans is thus foundational both to ensuring our survival and to actualizing the possibilities of our humanity.

Below I set out a five-stage map of the developmental pathway from the least mature to the most mature orders of human consciousness. I draw from the work of many prominent students of human development, including Larry Daloz, Erik Erikson, Carol Gilligan, Stanley Greenspan, Robert Kegan, Lawrence Kohlberg, Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Sharon Parks, Jean Piaget, and Carl Rogers. The map provides a framework for understanding the central place of a politics of consciousness in the work of the Great Turning.

First Order: Magical Consciousness

The Magical Consciousness of a young child of two to six years of age experiences the world as fluid and subject to the whims of magical beings both benevolent and malevolent. It has only a rudimentary ability to recognize causal relationships; the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred. These are the years of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. The classic fairy tales of magical worlds populated by friendly and sinister spirits give expression to the rich fantasy life of these early years.

Because the Magical Consciousness is unable to distinguish between the enduring self and the emotional impulse of the moment, behavior is impulsive, immediate, and emotion driven. Limited in its ability to recognize the connection between the actions of the self and future consequences, the Magical Consciousness depends on external figures to make things magically right, experiences betrayal when trusted protectors fail to do so, and is unable to recognize the consequences of its own actions or accept responsibility for them.

Second Order: Imperial Consciousness

The transition from Magical to Imperial Consciousness normally occurs somewhere around the age of six or seven, when the child develops a greater capacity to distinguish between real and imagined events and discovers that many relationships are predictable and that actions have consequences. The discovery of order, regularity, and stability in the world is a significant advance that opens possibilities for controlling what once seemed a fluid and unpredictable reality.

The primary learning agenda at this stage is to develop an understanding of relationships and consequences and to explore one’s ability to influence the world through one’s actions. The residual of the Magical Consciousness is manifest in Imperial Consciousness through identification with superheroes, through which it plays out fantasies of possessing superhuman powers. As with the Magical Consciousness, the perspective of the Imperial Consciousness is primarily, if not exclusively, self-referential, even narcissistic.

During the transition to Imperial Consciousness, children learn that other people have other points of view and that getting what they want for themselves generally requires some form of reciprocity. To the understanding of the Imperial Consciousness this means an elemental “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” market exchange. The idea of justice is generally limited to a primitive and personally enforced “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” retributive justice. The ability to consciously constrain an emotional impulse—for example, anger— rather than to act it out physically, remains limited.

The Imperial Consciousness is able to acknowledge another person’s point of view for purposes of calculating how best to get what one wants, but with little concept of loyalty, gratitude, and justice. Kegan cites the example of an adolescent offender who was asked by a judge, “How can you steal from people who trusted you so?” The youth replied in all sincerity, “But Your Honor, it’s very hard to steal money from people if they don’t trust you.”

Most children of the age of Imperial Consciousness can recite the Golden Rule without hesitation—”Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”—but find it difficult to experience the self in the feeling place of the other. When asked, “What should you do if someone walks up and hits you?” a characteristic answer, at least for boys, is “Hit ‘em back. Do unto others like they do unto you.”

The Imperial Consciousness recognizes that conforming to the expectations of authority figures generally results in rewards. Good behavior is motivated more by a desire to please others in order to improve one’s position, or to avoid being caught, than by a selfless concern for others’ needs or an internalized ethical code. The Imperial Consciousness justifies bad behavior with the excuse “I didn’t intend to hurt anyone” or “Everyone else is doing it.”

Third Order: Socialized Consciousness

The transition from Imperial Consciousness to Socialized Consciousness normally begins around eleven or twelve. Coinciding with the onset of teenage rebellion against parental authority, it marks the transition to the internalization of the cultural norms of a larger reference group. It brings a growing emotional intelligence and a recognition of the extent to which personal security depends on the mutual loyalty of the members of one’s group in a sometimes hostile world. The Socialized Consciousness defines itself by its relationships with others whose acceptance becomes a primary criterion for assessing self-worth.

The Socialized Consciousness brings an ability to see one’s self through the eyes of another. In contrast to the Imperial Consciousness, which is able to take the view of others only to manipulate them in the service of one’s own purposes, the Socialized Consciousness is capable of empathy, the ability to feel and care sufficiently about what another person is experiencing emotionally to subordinate one’s own needs and desires to theirs. It also brings a recognition of group interests that transcend immediate self-interests.

The Socialized Consciousness brings a growing appreciation of the need for rules, laws, and properly constituted political and religious authority to maintain essential social and institutional order, and it internalizes a play-by-the-rules, law-and-order morality. In the eye of the Socialized Consciousness, fairness means a society that rewards those who work hard, leaves slackers to suffer their fate, and demands of wrongdoers that they pay their debt to society through fines, imprisonment, or execution. Not yet grasping the reality that complex system relationships might prevent whole classes of people from finding and holding jobs or staying on the right side of the law, the Socialized Consciousness views the concept of restorative justice as an invitation to break the rules with impunity.

The Socialized Consciousness constructs its identity through its primary reference groups, as defined by gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, class, political party, occupation, employer, and perhaps a favored sports team. It is commonly militantly protective of its own group and prone to take any criticism of it as a serious affront. It internalizes and adheres to the culturally defined moral codes of the groups with which it identifies in an effort to avoid a sense of guilt or shame, but lacks the ability to subject those codes to critical examination. Because it is highly responsive to prevailing cultural norms and expectations, the Socialized Consciousness might also be called the Acculturated Consciousness. It is the consciousness of the Good Citizens, who have a “Small World” view of reality defined by their immediate reference group, play by the existing rules, and expect a decent life in return for themselves, their families, and their communities. They represent the swing vote that tips the balance toward either Empire or Earth Community, depending on the cultural frame.

Highly adaptive to the dominant cultural and institutional context, the Socialized Consciousness is the foundation of conventional good citizenship. On the downside, it is also susceptible to manipulation by advertisers, propagandists, and political demagogues, and it is prone to demand rights for the members of its own identity group that it is willing to deny others.

Fourth Order: Cultural Consciousness

Adulthood commonly brings encounters with people who have cultural perspectives and beliefs different from those of one’s own identity groups. The initial reaction to such encounters is commonly a chauvinistic sense of cultural superiority and possibly an embrace of cultural absolutism: “The way of my people is the only right way.”

If the Socialized Consciousness is sufficiently secure in its identity, however, it may come to recognize that culture is itself a social construct, that each culture has its own logic, that different cultural “truths” lead to different outcomes for individuals and society, and that cultural norms and expectations are subject to choice. This represents a profound step in the development of a true moral consciousness based on examined moral principles, and the beginnings of a capacity for cultural innovation.

The Cultural Consciousness recognizes the need for legal sanctions to secure the order and security of society from the predation of sociopaths who lack the moral maturity to avoid doing harm to others. Whereas the Imperial Consciousness is primarily concerned that the law protect and advance its own security and interests, the Cultural Consciousness is concerned with equal justice for all people, not just for oneself and those of one’s own kind, and it works to repeal or revise unjust laws.

A Cultural Consciousness is rarely achieved before age thirty, and the majority of those who live in modern imperial societies never achieve it, partly because most corporations, political parties, churches, labor unions, and even educational institutions actively discourage it. Each of these institutions has its defining belief system to which it demands loyalty. Those who raise significant challenges are likely to be subjected to a loss of standing, if not outright rejection. But because those who achieve a Cultural Consciousness have the capacity to question the dysfunctional cultural premises of Empire, they are the essential engines of the cultural renewal and maturation that the Socialized Consciousness is inclined to suppress as threatening to the established social and moral order. Persons who have achieved a Cultural Consciousness have an “Inclusive World” view that sees the possibility of creating inclusive, life-affirming societies that work for all. As elaborated in chapter 4, such persons recognize culture as a social construct subject to change by conscious choice. Thus, we may call them Cultural Creatives, to use the terminology of Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson.

Fifth Order: Spiritual Consciousness

The Spiritual Consciousness, the highest expression of what it means to be human, manifests the awakening to Creation as a complex, multidimensional, interconnected, continuously unfolding whole. It involves coming full circle back to the original sense of oneness of the womb experience, but with a richly nuanced appreciation for the complexity and grandeur of the whole of Creation as manifest in each person, animal, plant, and rock. The womb experience is wholly passive. Persons who have attained a Spiritual Consciousness have an evolving “Integral World” view and find meaning in serving as active partners or co-creators in Creation’s evolutionary quest to actualize its possibilities. Call them Spiritual Creatives.

Spiritual Consciousness is the consciousness of the elder statesperson, teacher, tribal leader, or religious sage that supports an examined morality grounded in the universal principles of justice, love, and compassion common to the teachings of the most revered religious prophets. It approaches conflict, contradiction, and paradox not as problems to overcome, but as opportunities for deeper learning.

Like each of the previous transitions to a higher order of consciousness, the transition from Cultural Consciousness to Spiritual Consciousness is acquired by relating to diverse people and situations in search of an ever deeper understanding of life’s possibilities. Each such encounter opens a window to a piece of reality previously hidden from the conscious mind. Eventually, what once appeared to be disconnected fragments of experience link together to awaken a profound sense of the spiritual unity of Creation.

Far from marking the end of the developmental process, the step to Spiritual Consciousness opens the way to new learning opportunities. As observed by psychologists John and Linda Friel, “The depth and breadth of an aged person’s connectedness with creation is wondrous to behold, and it can only emerge if he is gradually willing to let go of his narcissism in stages all the way along life’s path.”

The Socialized Consciousness is prone to characterize persons who have achieved a Spiritual Consciousness as lone contemplators disaffiliated from society, because they disavow special loyalty to any group or identity. That, however, is a misinterpretation. The Spiritual Consciousness simply transcends the exclusiveness of conventional group loyalties to embrace an identity that is inclusive of the whole and all its many elements. Thus, it extends outward to encompass a larger whole: the sense of duty and loyalty once reserved for members of one’s immediate family, ethnic group, nationality, or religion now extends to the whole. To the Spiritual Consciousness, the satisfaction of living in creative service to the whole is its own reward.

Able to take a holistic view of social relationships, the Spiritual Consciousness rejects retributive justice as neither just nor pragmatic, because it leads to an endless cycle of revenge that fails to advance the well-being of either the individual or the society. The Spiritual Consciousness is focused instead on restorative justice that, to the extent possible, makes the victim whole and rehabilitates the wrongdoer while deterring both past and potential future wrongdoers from committing harmful acts. The Imperial or Socialized Consciousness sees this as coddling, or even siding with, the wrongdoer, as it lacks an inclusive systems perspective that allows it to think and act in terms of a larger concept: the well-being of the whole.

The Spiritual Consciousness joins the Cultural Consciousness in seeking to change unjust laws. It recognizes, however, that at times it must engage in acts of principled nonviolent civil disobedience both to avoid being complicit in the injustice and to call the injustice to public attention. It undertakes such acts with awareness of the potential legal consequences.

PSYCHOLOGY OF EMPIRE

In the work of the Great Turning, we face a paradox. One of the highest priorities of a mature society devoted to the partnership principles of Earth Community is to support every individual in negotiating the pathway to a fully mature consciousness. Creating a mature society, however, requires leadership by people of a mature consciousness.

This creates a difficulty. Cultures and institutions afflicted with the addictions of Empire throw up active barriers to the acquisition of a mature consciousness and favor leaders who act from an Imperial Consciousness. The Imperial Consciousness is a normal and essential stage in the developmental processes of children. In adults, however, it is sociopathic.

Adulthood and Magical Consciousness

In adults, Magical Consciousness is expressed in a fuzzy grasp of elemental causal relationships, fantasies of possessing supernatural powers, and faith in magical protectors to set things right. The adult operating from a Magical Consciousness lives in an “Other World” in denial of its responsibilities in this world. Primary examples are those economists who fantasize a world in which markets magically turn greed into a public good and those religious believers who point the finger of responsibility for earthly ills to a distant God and thus absolve themselves of responsibility for their complicit actions. In adults, the Magical Consciousness is most likely to be experienced as a subtext of the Imperial Consciousness.

Adulthood and Imperial Consciousness

The self-referential morality of the Imperial Consciousness can be quite jarring when encountered in an adult. Kegan offers the example of Roxanne, an inmate in a women’s correctional institution who had a history of picking pockets, stealing welfare checks, and using other people’s credit cards. When interviewed, she expressed the view that stealing was wrong except when necessary to meet her needs. When asked whether it would be fair for another person with similar needs to steal her checks, she replied that it would not be fair because she herself needed the money. Members of the ruling class who think nothing of demanding millions in government subsidies, but excoriate the poor who accept government help exhibit this same self-referential double standard on a grand scale.

When an Imperial Consciousness manifests in adults, the self-referential morality leads to a division of the world into friends and enemies: “Those who are not for me are against me.” Definitions of good and evil are similarly self-referential. Good is what serves my interests, and evil is what conflicts with my interests. The Imperial Consciousness has a “My World” view of most everything, assessing each situation with an eye to potential gains and losses for the self. These are the Power Seekers, who play up to those more powerful and exploit those less powerful—in colloquial language, they “kiss up and kick down.”

Adult expressions of the Magical and Imperial orders of consciousness are generally far more complex than their childhood expressions. Although adults operating from these lower orders of consciousness may be incapable of ethical behavior based on empathic understanding, they may possess a highly developed intellect capable of formulating and executing complex political strategies. They are often accomplished liars skilled in crafting moral arguments attuned to the emotional and moral sensibilities of the persons whose loyalties they seek to manipulate. Unable to distinguish self-interest from collective interest, admit error, accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions, or feel guilt or remorse for harms caused, these individuals may be incapable of acknowledging even to themselves that they are engaged in deception. Truth becomes what they want it to be. Believing their own lies, they are able to lie with great sincerity.

Combine a highly developed cognitive intellect with a morally and emotionally challenged Imperial Consciousness, and the result is likely to be a skillful practitioner of the Machiavellian art of political manipulation. Such individuals may possess highly advanced abilities to plan, make deals, manipulate others, and strategize to achieve their goals, and to use dominator power to personal advantage. Furthermore, they may be highly skilled in developing elaborate arguments to justify self-interested acts as acts of self-sacrifice in the interest of a larger good, and will respond with self-righteous indignation to any suggestion that such claims are less than sincere.

Such persons are easily identified by their inability to acknowledge their mistakes, by their claims to righteous exemption from rules that apply to lesser mortals, and by their habitual scapegoating —projecting their own moral flaws onto perceived evil enemies to justify acting out their fear and anger as a righteous mission. The emotional drive for retribution may be so strong that questions of actual guilt or innocence are dismissed as irrelevant.

Shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack I happened to be seated on an airplane next to a senior executive of a major U.S. corporation. The United States had just launched the invasion of Afghanistan, and I shared with him my reservations about the war and its cost in innocent Afghan lives. He responded that in his opinion, since “they” had killed five thousand of our people (an early estimate later revised downward to three thousand) we, the United States, would not be even until we killed at least five thousand of their people.

I countered that most of the people we were killing in Afghanistan were innocent of any involvement in the attack. He replied that this was irrelevant, as the people killed in the attack on the World Trade Center were also innocents. I was stunned. This was an educated man in his fifties or sixties who held a position of considerable power and responsibility and yet lacked the moral maturity to recognize that retribution against innocents was as immoral as the original act of the terrorists and would lead to a pointless escalation of violence. It brought me face-to-face with a reality I had long denied.

In my earlier writing and speaking, I had held to the argument that the failures of our ruling institutions were the result of bad systems, not bad people. Yet a wave of exposés in 2002 and 2003 of pervasive corruption at the highest levels of corporate and governmental power suggested that many of our most powerful institutions are in the hands of ethically challenged human beings.

Moral Autism

For all the efforts of the corporate media to portray the scandals as the work of a few bad apples, it became clear that the corruption was on a grand scale and carried out by profoundly ethically challenged individuals. The responsible individuals did not necessarily intend to harm others. Rather, they appear to have been acting from the purely self-referential perspective common to young children. Catholic theologian Daniel Maguire refers to this pattern as moral autism.

Like the young delinquent mentioned earlier, the adult operating from an Imperial Consciousness may have the social intelligence to recognize that it is easiest to steal from those who trust you, but lack the moral capacity to recognize that to do so constitutes a wrong in itself and destroys the fabric of trust essential to healthy social relationships. When such adults appear among the lower socioeconomic classes, the ruling establishment commonly identifies them as sociopaths and confines them to a prison or mental institution. By contrast, when they appear among the higher socioeconomic classes, the ruling establishment is prone to judge them especially suited for positions of leadership in the political and corporate institutions of imperial power. Persons of an Imperial Consciousness are also likely to be most highly motivated to endure the ruthless competition to achieve such positions of power. Products of the dominator cultures and institutions of Empire, the developmentally challenged become its servants.

PSYCHOLOGY OF EARTH COMMUNITY

In contrast to Imperial Consciousness, Cultural Consciousness and Spiritual Consciousness embody the human capacities for creative self-direction and choice within a framework of responsibility to and for the whole. These capacities are the foundation of positive cultural innovation, democracy, and the higher possibilities of our human nature. Potentially within the reach of each human, they are most likely to be achieved if intentionally cultivated by the individual and supported by the community. Chapter 4 points to evidence that the number of people operating from these higher orders of consciousness is growing rapidly in response to an intensification of cross-cultural communication, the great social movements of the twentieth century, and a growing awareness of the realities of an interdependent world.

Those who lead an examined life grounded in a mature worldview understand complexity, identify with the well-being of the whole, have no interest in acquiring arbitrary power, and are unlikely to succumb to the manipulations of advertisers, propagandists, and demagogues. They encompass the whole within a greatly enlarged circle of individual identity and see opportunities for the peaceful resolution of conflict and advancement of the common good that are invisible to those of a Magical or Imperial Consciousness. At their best, they are the visionaries and wisdom keepers of Earth Community and mature democratic citizenship.

Persons acting from the different orders of consciousness understand the nature and meaning of democracy quite differently. The Imperial Consciousness views democratic participation as a contest for power to advance one’s personal interests and even as an opportunity to impose one’s own values and preferences on others. The Socialized Consciousness is likely to approach democratic participation rather like voting in a popularity contest or rooting for the home team at a sporting event. Neither provides a sound basis for mature self-governance. By contrast, the Cultural or Spiritual Consciousness approaches the practice of democracy as a process of collective problem solving aimed at enhancing the well-being and potential of all. These two orders of consciousness may be referred to jointly as the democratic orders of consciousness.

CULTURAL POLITICS

The simple model of the five orders of consciousness defines a range of possibilities that provide a framework for understanding the cultural politics of the Great Turning. Magical and Imperial Consciousness support the dominator cultures of Empire. Cultural and Spiritual Consciousness support the partnership cultures of Earth Community. Whichever prevails as the primary culture of the global society will determine what the future developmental direction of the human species will be and thereby whether future generations will look back on our time as the Great Unraveling or the Great Turning.

Competing for the Swing Vote

Socialized Consciousness, which is the consciousness of most American adults, adapts to the values and social roles of the prevailing culture. It represents the swing voters, and it is pivotal to the cultural politics of the Great Turning because it can adapt to either the dominator culture of Empire or the partnership culture of Earth Community. (See figure 2.1.)

To the extent that the culture of Empire prevails, the Socialized Consciousness will lean politically in favor of the agenda of Empire. To the extent that the culture of Earth Community prevails, it will lean politically in favor of the agenda of Earth Community. In the contest for the loyalty of the swing voters, each side has its natural advantage.

Empire’s Advantage

Empire’s well-established cultural and institutional hegemony gives it a decided advantage. Empire also enjoys another important advantage: anyone who has reached the level of the Socialized Consciousness has experienced the world through the lens of the Imperial Consciousness and thus is familiar with its organizing principles. By contrast, only those who have moved beyond the Socialized Consciousness to a Cultural or Spiritual Consciousness can understand fully the deeply democratic possibilities of Earth Community. Empire also enjoys an advantage in the inclination of adults of an Imperial Consciousness to be attracted to the competitive struggle for positions of institutional power from which they can dominate others—thus reproducing the dynamics of Empire.

Finally, the uncertainties of our time, including job insecurity, severe weather events, and terrorist threats, favor Empire. Fear causes a regression to a more primitive consciousness and increases susceptibility to manipulation by advertisers and demagogues who seem instinctively to speak to our fears and insecurities. “Buy my product and it will bring you beauty and love.”“Elect me and I will make you prosperous and protect you from evil enemies.” “Believe in my God and he will grant you salvation for your sins and eternal bliss in the afterlife.”“Trust in the magic of the unregulated market to convert your unrestrained greed and self-indulgence into a better life for all.” Each of these refrains plays to the fears and fantasies familiar to the frightened child that resides in each of us.

The culture and institutions of Empire feed on, and reward, psychological immaturity and dysfunction and reproduce it from generation to generation. In so doing they stifle healthy human development and the creative capacity required to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. This has been a chronic condition of the dominant human societies for five thousand years and now threatens the very survival of the species. Taking the step to maturity requires that we accept individual and collective responsibility for the shadow side of our human nature and set about to create a mutual support system, rather like a global Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that provides the emotional support required to move beyond our psychological dependence on domination and violence.

Earth Community’s Advantage

Although Empire would seem to have an insurmountable advantage, four circumstances give the ultimate advantage to the possibilities of Earth Community. First, the drive to realize the fullness of our humanity is inherent in our nature. Second, a substantial majority of people have achieved a Socialized Consciousness or beyond and are therefore capable of understanding the concept of a public good that transcends narrowly defined individual interests and requires cooperation to achieve. Third, as elaborated in chapter 3, we face ecological and social imperatives distinctive to this moment in the human experience to embrace the higher potentials of our nature. Fourth, as elaborated in chapter 4, breakthroughs in global communication and in our understanding of the interdependent nature of our relationship to one another and the planet are supporting the awakening of the higher orders of consciousness at an unprecedented rate. Although persons of a mature consciousness are generally averse to the competitive struggle for dominator power, they are strongly attracted to leadership roles in social movements engaged in challenging Empire’s dominion.

Perhaps the best indicator that the values of Earth Community ultimately hold the edge is the behavior of contemporary demagogues. Those who seek to align the electorate behind imperial agendas favoring elite power and privilege find they must resort to stealth tactics that hide their true aims and values. To gain political support they must profess a commitment to advancing the Earth Community values of care for children, family, community, justice, democracy, and environmental stewardship. Like the young man who observed that it is easiest to steal from people who trust you, they prey on the trust that people are naturally inclined to place in their leaders. Such deceptions may work for a time, but eventually trust persistently betrayed becomes trust denied.

Contrary to those who maintain that we humans are destined to lives of violence and greed, our nature embodies a wide range of potential. The possible levels of achievement range from the criminal sociopath who is unable to consider any need or interest other than his own to the profound social and spiritual sensibility and vision of a Jesus, Gandhi, Buddha, or Martin Luther King Jr.

At birth, we humans do not have the physical capabilities normal for an adult. Nor do we have the consciousness of an adult. The journey by which the human individual acquires the higher-order moral and emotional maturity required for responsible adult function is one of life’s most extraordinary adventures. As we saw in the case of the Hacienda Santa Teresa, success depends in substantial measure on a supportive setting and the guidance of mentors who themselves possess a mature consciousness.

Five orders of human consciousness define the path to emotional and moral maturity. The lower orders of Magical and Imperial Consciousness produce a culture of Empire. The higher orders of Cultural and Spiritual Consciousness produce a culture of Earth Community. The Socialized Consciousness, from which the majority of people operate, is capable of adapting to the values and expectations of either Empire or Earth Community, depending on which culture prevails. Dramatic changes in the human context since the mid-twentieth century have created the imperative and the possibility for the human species to make a conscious collective choice for a culture of Earth Community.