The Cultural Evolution of Consciousness
We all use our brains to think, but few people seriously take the time to think about thinking. Why are we conscious? Why do we think? The common assumption is that we think solely because we have big brains. It is assumed that our ancestors gradually evolved bigger brains, and consciousness came with the gray matter. But this exclusively biological theory for the origin of consciousness simply doesn't fit the archaeological record.
For instance, pottery was apparently discovered when one of our ancestors either intentionally or accidentally burned a clay-coated basket in a fire. For generations afterwards our ancestors made baskets, coated them inside with clay, and incinerated them to make pottery. Eventually they made pottery without the basket molds, but for many more generations they still scratched lines on the pots to produce the basket-like appearance.
Now I know that people from our own time would immediately forget the basket part and focus careful research on the properties of the clay. We would use logic and scientific methodology to quickly gain mastery of this new resource. Our ancestors had virtually the same brains as we do today, yet took generations to make simple leaps of thought. If they used their heads the same way that we do then they would have built computers and rocketships tens of thousands of years ago.
I am not suggesting that our ancestors were dumb. On the contrary, after practicing and teaching primitive survival skills for fifteen years, I am convinced that our ancestors had to learn far more than people do today to survive in the world. The difference is that in primitive societies children learned those skills by mimicking others, and through accumulated experience. From generation to generation they passed down vast encyclopedias of information about the world, but it was knowledge acquired without conscious thought, by copying it, the same way that babies learn to talk. We don't send them to school for that. They just listen, observe and copy.
Dr. Julian Jaynes of Princeton University was probably one of the first people to theorize that consciousness is cultural, and not just biological. In his book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Jaynes makes the startling assertion that the first glimmerings of consciousness and introspection came only about 3,000 years ago--after our ancestors had developed languages, farming, and even after they had built cities.
The reason for the conscious awakening was simple: the mimicked behaviors and the accumulated experiences of the past were inadequate to deal with new and unfamiliar problems that arose from increasingly complicated societies. The evolution of our culture forced our ancestors to find new coping strategies for dealing with problems: they had to think and imagine new possibilities.
As outrageous as the concept may sound at first, Julian Jaynes provides nearly 500 pages of meticulous evidence to support his hypothesis. He walks the reader through many ancient texts and artifacts pointing out details that point to a gradual awakening of the human mind.
Author Ken Wilber also covers the cultural evolution of consciousness in his book, A Brief History of Everything. Children today develop through many well-documented mental stages on the way to maturity, for example, from magical thinking to mythical and ultimately objective thinking, and for some, holistic thought. Among other provocative ideas, Wilber suggests that cultures evolved consciousness following a similar path that children mature through. His writing is difficult to read sometimes, but worth the effort.
Wilber especially talks of world-views and how they change as people and cultures mature. World-views are not philosophies, so much as patterns of thought. For example, a magical world-view was common through many stone-age cultures, like the Jivaro head-hunters of South America who brought home the heads of their enemies, skinned them, and through an elaborate process shrunk them to the size of a fist. They danced around the heads to get the magic out, after which the trophies were "powerless" and discarded with yesterdays news.
Magical thinking can be highly successful within the context of the appropriate culture. However, it is useless in a culture with a different world-view. This was demonstrated by a Brazilian man I read about in the paper who found a glowing piece of metal in a landfill (left over from X-ray equipment). He rubbed the metal on his private parts in the hopes of gaining special powers, but instead suffered severe injuries. Before we poke fun at such backwards thinking, it is important to keep in mind that in this rapidly changing world we are all in danger of becoming dated.
Although our cultures has essentially left magical thinking behind, much of our thought is still rooted in mythological thinking, defined by a God-and-the-Devil outlook, where all issues are black and white, right and wrong, and there is no middle ground. It is the world we saw on television decades ago, where the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black.
Mythological thinking tends to be highly ethnocentric and nationalistic. There is tremendous allegiance to one religion, one team, one viewpoint, and everyone else is simply wrong. It was this pattern of thought at work in Iran when their soccer team beat the Americans in 1997 and the entire country partied in the streets for days, chanting slogans like, "We have beaten the Great Satan!" It is the same kind of world view espoused by the religious right in our country, which perceives no gray areas in issues like gun control, foreign policy, or the deviant sexual behavior of Presidents.
The mythological world view was relevant at the height of the Cold War when there was a clear line between who was right and who was wrong, but that line blurred even before Ronald Reagan battled the "Evil Empire". The falling of the Berlin Wall merely punctuated the death of mythological thinking in the modern era. The new world is much more complicated and full of shades of gray. To those who remain from the old guard, it is a scary time, riddled with United Nations conspiracies and the decay of society. The end of the world seems eminent, but it is only the extinction of a world-view that is inevitable. Our culture and thought is continuing to evolve.
The objective world view has been building momentum for decades, applying what might be called scientific reasoning or linear thought to the issues of an increasingly complicated, diversified world. Objective thinking reminds people that other religions or other ways of being are equally valid, that no one has the monopoly on the truth. It is a world view where there is more than one right answer and many shades of gray. This objectivity translates to unprecedented individuality, allowing for example, people to show up for work with nose rings and purple hair.
The objective world view may have gained a slight majority in our time, but already it is inadequate pattern of thought for dealing with an increasingly complex world where all cultures are rapidly melding into one. As the middle managers discovered at the close of the 20th century, linear thought and growth is simply unacceptable. Survival demands broad, creative leaps of integrated or holistic logic, connecting together many diversified concepts. Leadership is often coming from a younger generation that has grown up in the new world with a new mode for tackling problems. It is this difference in world views or patterns of thought that we call the "generation gap". Older modes of thought were not necessarily wrong, just incompatible with a world in flux.
Although Jayne's and Wilber's terminology are as different as night and day, their ideas fit together like a hand and a glove. They expressed ideas which were important for finishing Direct Pointing to Real Wealth: Thomas J. Elpel's Field Guide to Money. I spent many years working to tie the idea of cultural consciousness into the book, but couldn't ever find quite the right words until I discovered the works of Julian Jaynes and Ken Wilber. As always, the examples and the choice of words used here are my own.
Books about the Cultural Evolution of Consciousness
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Dr. Julian Jaynes
Paperback. 491 pages. Reprinted October 1990.
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A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber
Paperback.
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The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader by Ken Wilber
Paperback. 176 pages. October 1998.
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Sex, Ecology, Spirituality : The Spirit of Evolution by Ken Wilber
Hardcover. 831 pages. February 1995.
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The Eye of Spirit : An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad by Ken Wilber
Hardcover. 432 pages. March 1997.
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Check out Direct Pointing to Real Wealth: Thomas J. Elpel's Field Guide to Money
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