Over the last few decades I have been watching the world going downhill fast, and I have been trying to understand the causes, and trying to suggest ways to turn this around. In my last post (Catastrophe Fatigue, Despair, and a Solution), I repeated an idea I have had for some time, that, by going up the ladder of Prior Problems (vide: The Prior Problem), we come to the sinking levels of Consciousness as the root cause of so much of the chaos that is overtaking our planet. Prior to that, there is the planetary devastation caused by climate change, which in turn is largely the result of the loss of the trees. So, to reverse all of this, the most urgent priority is to replant the forest, planting trillions of trees as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the planetary collapse has reached such an extreme that multiple tipping points have already been reached, making the problem a whole lot more serious.
Two hundred years ago, an aggressive program of tree planting might have saved us from the present catastrophic collapse of our fragile biosphere, but it is too late for that now. Now, not only do we need that urgent program of tree planting more than ever, but we also need to implement a great many other measures to address the collapse by which we are assailed on every hand. We need to stop the ongoing escalation of warfare all over the planet. During the best of times, war is very bad news, but, on top of the collapsing biological health of our planet, the depredations of war are especially troublesome.
Then, in addition to war itself, there are the increasing conditions leading to global unrest and further conflict. These conditions take many forms, but the unifying factor is an increasing trend toward sharpening, leading to intolerance and ultimately fascism (vide: It’s Not Going to Get Better). This trend is apparent world-wide in the form of the increasing influence of far right political movements. All of these developments are caused by the declining levels of consciousness world-wide, and must be addressed as an adjunct to the urgent program of tree planting, which is absolutely essential for any hope for the survival of life on earth. In that last essay of mine I suggested that the fastest way to implement a revival of consciousness were to promote the mass ingestion of LSD all over the world. Today I want to take a closer look at just exactly what this elevation of consciousness would look like.
At the very bottom of the ladder there is the emergence of life as an individual apart from the rest of the cosmos. It is the function of the personal ego to maintain this distinction, to provide for the survival and health of the individual unit of life in opposition to the rest of the cosmos around it. The primary directive is to survive, first of all, and then to flourish and grow. An example of this primitive state of consciousness is Donald Trump, who is selfish, aggressive, and single-mindedly concerned with his own benefit in every situation.
The next stage in the evolution of consciousness is to bond with another individual point of life, so that the identity enlarges to include the pair as a single entity. The standard paradigm for this process is the marriage of a man and a woman, but there are many other variants of bonding without regard to gender (and many marriages in which no actual bonding takes place at all) ~ there are bonds between persons with different, but complementary qualities, such as a practical, analytical type bonded with a nature spirit, who is more likely to be found in a garden rather than a business office. Artists and musicians and others my form bonds without regard to the usual gender dichotomy. Sometimes an older person will bond with a younger person, or a boy may bond with his dog. The union of a boy with his dog, for example, is an expression of a much higher state of consciousness than that of Donald Trump, or any single individual.
The evolution of consciousness continues when the identity of the unit expands to encompass a family, then an extended family, or a tribe. This identity with a larger whole can continue to expand to include a town, city, state, or country, but it may also grow more narrowly to a bond determined by race, language, or religion, or some other limiting parameter. These bonds are exclusionary as well as inclusive. Not only do the members feel a bond with each other, but they maintain an exclusionary distinction toward others of a different gang, race, language, or religion.
The level of consciousness rises higher when the group with which one identifies includes the entire human race, but it can go higher still when it includes all animal life on the planet, and, finally, includes plants and trees in the whole family of life. When one finds one’s identity to include all life on earth, that is a very high level of consciousness, exceeded only by the cosmic consciousness of identity with the entire universe. This is the final expansion to full consciousness, identified in many religions as an ecstatic union with God.
It need hardly be pointed out that, in our present world, there are very few individuals whose consciousness extends beyond their own solitary self, scrounging along at the bottom of the consciousness barrel. Most people in the world are selfish and aggressive, concerned only with their own welfare, and loving only themselves. In the United States, a large part of the population is just like Donald Trump ~ white males who are selfish, aggressive, angry, and stupid, speaking only English, and worshipping Money and Power. These persons constitute Trump’s base, who naturally look to him as their leader, since he embodies all of their principles, or lack of them. Any persons of different racial or gender expression, speaking a different language, or worshipping anything other than Money and Power, are just considered aliens or weirdos.
An expanding consciousness would offer some radical changes in the world. Suppose the Israelis were suddenly to discover that the Palestinians, the earlier inhabitants of the land that they had invaded (going all the way back to Biblical times when the land given to the descendants of Abraham was already occupied, whose residents had to be removed before the Hebrews could enter into their “inheritance”) are their brothers and sisters ? If they were to spend the next seventy-five years attempting to discover, love, and appreciate their lost brothers, sisters, and cousins, in contrast with the previous seventy-five years, in which they have attempted to destroy them, the land of Palestine could grown green again with living food crops, instead of the death, disease, and desolation of endless war.
And if Vladimir Putin wanted the people of Ukraine lovingly to embrace Mother Russia, he might have spent the last four years (or the last twenty years or more) supporting schools, health care, scientific and industrial research, as well as the arts, music, and literature of the region, instead of bombing their towns and villages, and kidnapping their children for relocation into Russia. It sounds like a no-brainer to me, but no-brainer is exactly the experience of war, the epitome of a primitive consciousness wreaking havoc.
