In my file of “interesting ideas” I had stashed a nice blog post called “free your mind” from the YES website – a quite refreshing site in its positive-ness. Sometimes we can get all wrapped up in problem-space, well just click over there for re-balancing.
The piece talked about the emergence of an “eco-mind, eco-mind”—looking at the world through the lens of ecology, which Consumershift readers might recognize as fitting with our notion of postmodern values with a smattering of Integral. The author, Frances Moore Lappe, suggests six traits to foster: (1) Cooperation (2) Empathy (3) Fairness (4) Efficacy (5) Meaning (6) Imagination, Creativity, and Attraction to Change. All good stuff!
Many futurists, analysts, citizens – lots of us – are concerned about the long-term prospects for humanity. I briefly reviewed an excellent account of the situation from fellow futurist Richard Slaughter, which he terms “The Biggest Wakeup Call in History.” If you’re a reader of ConsumerShift, or perhaps Spiral Dynamics or an Integral fan (I’m all three), an important question is whether the values and worldviews shifts we see emerging will emerge and spread to some sort of critical mass “in time,” that is before some sort of serious crisis happens, what some have called a global emergency. The Spiral folks raised the interesting notion of “2nd tier consciousness” (that I incorporated in ConsumerShift), which essentially suggests that what I’m calling Integral values represent a different approach to consciousness. Whereas previous values and worldviews each felt their way was the best way, and that we should all be that way, 2ndtier thinking says there is no single right way, and embraces the notion that that the appropriate values match the context (aka “life conditions). Many of us are hopeful that this significant shift, which gets us away from the damaging “who is right” conversation, can enable us to deal with the big issues ahead…and with us in the present. The rub is that the Spiral folks estimated the Integral worldview at just 1-2% of the population. And ConsumerShift showed that values changes take a long time, on the scale of generations. It may be possible to speed that up, but it’s clearly a big challenge. But challenges are what makes life interesting! Andy Hines
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