Raising consciousness for a new world
The Rise of Homo Noeticus
Before the industrial revolution, everyday ordinary life for a typical family was very different and much simpler than it is today. There was very little dependance beyond the immediate family for everyday living. Each family unit was responsible for most of their own daily needs. They built and maintained their own houses and made and repaired their own clothes. They hunted, gathered, grew or raised their own food. They fetched their own water. They made their own implements, tools and furniture and gathered their own fuel for cooking and heating. The nearest neighbor often lived a considerable distance away and whatever they did on their property almost never had any impact on their neighbors. In general, life was much simpler and hardly anything of significance ever changed.
Other than the occasional need for a specialist like the local blacksmith, sheriff, or doctor one thing that they looked for beyond the family unit on a regular basis was for support for their religious and spiritual needs which were usually provided by the nearest neighborhood church. Other than those few things, everything that a family needed to survive and lead a productive life could be obtained from within the immediate family from skills learned from their parents before they reached adolescence.
In the modern era, life is much more complicated. We live in a technological world that is highly interconnected and interdependent and one that requires specialized knowledge that did not exist or was not even discovered in preindustrial society. Today we rely on many skilled individuals, specialists, and institutions to provide us with our basic needs. This reliance includes most of the necessities of life: everything from clothing, to food, to safety, to housing, and many other everyday needs such as water, energy, health care, education, and transportation, etc.
The complexity and sophistication of current technologies offer us a standard of living that could not have even been imagined in preindustrial society. With all these modern technologies, humanity has thrived. But with it came unanticipated consequences. Our sciences and our technologies have become so powerful that, in the wrong hands, they can easily destroy civilization as we now know it and quickly thrust us back to living as it existed in the preindustrial era. They also make us highly interdependent and also extremely vulnerable to disruptions whether caused by other humans with malicious intent, collectively by groups espousing civil disobedience or unrest, wars or by natural disasters. With egoic consciousness still firmly implanted in the humanity psyche, these motivations and/or events create dangerous and threatening propositions for most of us.
Because of modern technologies, especially agriculture, sanitation and healthcare, earth's global population has grown large and is placing huge demands on both renewable and nonrenewable resources. These demands also create waste and pollution on scales never before seen. Taken together, they are threatening the natural environment from which we evolved and are still totally dependent upon. Because of this, they also place our long-term sustainability in question not only for humanity but for all life on earth as well.
Our spiritual needs in the modern era are also vastly different than the preindustrial era. We no longer require the intermediary of the church to interpret and provide us with spiritual and transcendent direction and understanding. Many have moved beyond antiquated religious beliefs and practices in favor of individual spiritual practices more consistent with modern scientific and metaphysical understandings. These practices offer the promise of a more direct and personal connection with the divine and even the possibility of answering the big questions of life and what may follow after it.
In the preindustrial era change was very slow and managable, but now constant and rapid change is the rule of the day and with that comes the need for constant growth, learning and the need for new understandings and perspectives. Ancient and time-tested beliefs and understandings no longer serve us well and can even be detrimental to our wellbeing and survival.
With this complexity and interdependence comes a growing recognition that humanity can no longer continue as we have in the past, doing as we please without regard for the welfare of others particularly when we are ruled by our individual egoic tendencies. We now recognize that to ensure a sustainable future for ourselves and our descendants, we must change, not only our ways, but our thinking and even our long-held beliefs and values.
Our metaphysics, the underlying understanding of true nature of reality, is also evolving. Ancient eastern wisdom traditions have long promoted the idea of universal consciousness as a fundamental aspect of that reality, and that of the oneness that it implies for all living beings. In the west, many now recognize that we are a part of this interconnectedness as this view is increasingly being supported by modern scientific understandings and discoveries. It includes the recognition that because of our shared consciousness; whatever we do to our environment, to others (including nonhuman living creatures) we also do to ourselves.
With all the issues and challenges that humanity now faces (as described under sustainability in this website) , there is now a growing recognition that humanity is only as strong as the most vulnerable among us. It includes the recognition that we must promote the common welfare and support justice, equity and fairness for all.
Unfortunately, there still remains a small powerful minority, individuals with influence or with selfish and vested interests as well as some of our public and private institutions. These privileged individuals and groups are determined to protect and maintain their advantage and privilege at the expense of the wellbeing of the vast majority of the global population.
If humanity is to move to a sustainable, just and equitable future, this rule by the powerful and privileged minority must end. To move to an equitable society where we can all thrive and not just survive, a new paradigm must emerge. When that happens it will be one where we fully support the common good and are fully in harmony with each other and also with the larger consciousness of nature and the cosmos at large of which we are also a part. When we consciously understand these implications and focus on that harmony and of these higher states of being in mind and in spirit, humanity will evolve to a new species. That next step in the evolution of humanity will be one of an enlightened new species called “homo noeticus”.
The primary method of evolving consciousnesses to homo noeticus is through expanded awareness, mindfulness, and by direct experience. It requires a highly developed sense of self-reflection, contemplation, introspection and intuition in addition to rational thought with logic and reasoning. The evolution to homo noeticus also implies the widespread adoption of values such as selflessness, compassion and empathy, open mindedness, spiritual growth and expanded awareness. As we fully integrate these traits, humanity will evolve beyond the current egoic mind of the selfish human condition, not only in mind but also in spirit. With this conscious evolution, we will also experience the expanded consciousness and the interconnectedness of humanity at large as well as that with all living beings comprising the universal, infinite and eternal consciousness of which we all are a part.
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