In A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber describes the hierarchical structures for governments, organisms, philosophies and personal development. Each successive level is more complex offering more opportunities for success and additional opportunities for failure. This is not light reading but does help explain different political views and the difficulties inherent in rapidly converting a state ruled by tribal leaders into a representative democracy with a strong central government. He has a Integral Life web page devoted to providing a better understanding of the world.
He describes the five stages of development in the world as archaic, magical, mythical, rational and pluralistic. Each one of the more advanced stages of development have ridiculed the previous stages for being infantile. He offers this as the cause for the current cultural wars between individuals in mythic, rational and pluralistic stages. He also notes that we all progress through theses stages starting as infants at the archaic world view and progress to through some of the stages during maturity.
He suggests that the world is going through a 6th stage of development where all of the partial truths of the other stages are recognized and not denigrated. He suggests that when more than 10% of the population reaches this stage of development that it will be a cultural tipping point. He suggests a similar tipping point occurred with respect to the rapid abolishment of the institution slavery over a period of 100 years. Prior to that slavery had been practiced since the beginning of recorded history.
Ken Wilber on a Brief History of Everything
The book, A Brief History of Everything is available from Amazon.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment