We as individuals, traveling our own path, develop along a cycle of social, religious and spiritual growth, revisiting earlier stages and later stages over and over [read more about that here.]. It stands to reason that we, as a society, may also develop and grow the “hive mind” or group-think.
Many thousands of years ago, our days were consumed with finding food, having enough water, a place to sleep, basic safety from predators, and warmth and health. At that time, you could say that humanity was in Stage 3: I am my needs and Stage 4: Others have needs too. We were largely preoccupied with fulfilling our basic needs and those of our family or tribe. There was little opportunity to contemplate the mysteries of existence.
But at some point, we started to draw on walls and create ideologies to explain what we could not understand, like death, luck, all these other creatures and ourselves. Slowly, we evolved to a society wherein the ideology was everything. Entire nations adopted particular ideologies and drove out or killed or conquered anyone who suggested a different ideology. (The Roman Empire, the crusades, Catholics vs Protestants in England and beyond). Even today, there are some nations that base themselves on a particular religion, but they are far fewer than in the past, and considered to be somewhat “behind”. These societies were/are squarely in Stage 5: I am my ideology.
Fast forward to the 1900s where we see an acceleration of further societal development in the United States (as a good, but by no means unique example). For a while, we were our political ideology (democracy vs communism). Then, we came to a point where we could see the cracks and inconsistencies in our religious and political ideologies (about 1950), and we wondered if there was something more (Stage 6). By the late 1960s we were rejecting all ideologies (Stage 7). Leading the way were the hippies, and beatniks of the 1960s, and eventually the post-modernist movements which really picked up steam in the 1970s to the point of these concepts being taught overly in public schools (and some private ones). We are now deeply in Stage 7 (I reject all ideologies) – deconstructing any and every social, political and religious ideology as a human or societal construct and therefore not real and therefore entirely wrong.
Now at the same time as we have this significant portion of the US population in Stage 7 (I reject all ideologies), we also have the majority of the population in Stage 5-6 (I am my ideology – political and/or religious). But look at how we have evolved. We have come from MOST people being in Stage 3-4 to MOST people being in stage 5-6 with a significant portion of the population (enough to dominate the headlines) in Stage 7. That’s GREAT! No, really! Hear me out.
This is great news. First, we, as a society, will have to fully embrace and get through Stage 7. This is a very dangerous stage. If means rejecting all ideologies, flailing around for a while trying on every possible variant only to meet disappointment when reality shows it to be flawed, and THEN, after many bad choices, we as a society will finally get to the point where the majority of the population is in Stage 8 – a society where most people can see the truth at the heart of all ideologies and THAT will be a peaceful society indeed.
Of course it is a cycle – not a staircase. We, as humanity at large, have had our share of events that have pulled us back to earlier stages only to have to traverse them again, around and around. If you were to plot the timeline of history on the circular cycle of development, you would see us going around and around but in total, spending more and more time with the majority of the population in later and later stages. There is a neat infographic that someone could make here (send it to me if you do!).
