Ken Wilber Trump

In order to understand today’s post, you should make sure to read yesterday’s piece: Lost in the Political Wilderness. That article zeroed in on why I feel completely isolated from the current political dialogue, and expressed that those of you who feel similarly should resist the urge to be pulled into any of the ascendant tribes vying for dominance. If none of the currently popular political ideologies resonate with you, this doesn’t mean you’re the problem. Perhaps you’re just a member of a sane minority being relentlessly bombarded by divisive nonsense with the intent of bringing your consciousness down to a lower level where it is more easily manipulated. Don’t let this happen.

Yesterday’s post touched upon the evolutionary human development model known as Spiral Dynamics. I’m just getting up to speed on the concept so bear with me. I was initiated into the model via a 2000 article by one of the more prominent names in the field of consciousness development, Ken Wilber. The article is titled, The Integral Vision at the Millennium, and I strongly suggest you read it if you haven’t already.  I’m not going to summarize my understanding of the model in detail, because that would take a lot more reading and the publication of a book to do it any sort of justice. Nevertheless, I’m going to highlight some of what Mr. Wilber wrote in order to initiate readers into the concept. Naturally, I don’t expect it to speak to all of you, nor do I think it represents “the answer” to anything. It’s merely a framework, and one I find incredibly useful in current times.

What follows are some excerpts from the article. They will be followed with some of my own observations.

We live in an extraordinary time: all of the world’s cultures, past and present, are to some degree available to us, either in historical records or as living entities. In the history of the planet earth, this has never happened before.

It seems hard to imagine, but for humanity’s entire stay on this planet—for some million years up to the present—a person was born into a culture that knew virtually nothing about any other. You were, for example, born a Chinese, raised a Chinese, married a Chinese, and followed a Chinese religion—often living in the same hut for your entire life, on a spot of land that your ancestors settled for centuries. From isolated tribes and bands, to small farming villages, to ancient nations, to conquering feudal empires, to international corporate states, to global village: the extraordinary growth toward an integral village that seems humanity’s destiny.

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