If you want to heal the world, heal yourself

There is a divide in our culture that is fracturing friends and families. I think it’s important to recognize that this isn’t something we are just experiencing here in the U.S.
It is a global phenomena.
We are not alone in this plight.
If there is any future where this divide could be healed, it is not being discussed.
For the moment, let’s take a closer look at ourselves.
We are going thorough a difficult time of growth in the world. Growth that will require a shift in consciousness.
People of different cultures and religions are finding themselves intermixed at levels that have never been seen before.
The thing with culture and religion is, the very essence of them is rife with dogmatism. They need to be. They wouldn’t be effective if they weren’t.
Every religion is right. Every religion is speaking to an element of truth and attempting to express the wonder and awe we all experience. They are an attempt to show an elevated path and provide answers to the difficulties we experience and the questions we have. Every culture has remarkable beauty and pride. They have traditions and language that define them.
These are their truths.
This is what we are up against.
Everyone knows they are right, because they are.
With the advent of the internet and social media, the transfer of information has accelerated at an unprecedented rate. A consequence of this is that ideas don’t stay put, quite the opposite. Ideas can make it around the world in a matter of days or even hours. Ideas that would have never found a global audience, do. Ideas that wouldn’t have traditionally taken root in cultures, can find support. Isolated people find others of like mind, and contentious ideas emerge. These contentions exist in our nations, in our families, and amongst our friends. Destabilizing the security we formerly took for granted when our neighbors maintained similar beliefs.
This all fosters a sense of isolation that is growing at an unprecedented rate due to the advent of social media.
Now, we all have access to our neighbors’ subconscious.
Realms that, at one time, rarely saw the light of day.
The subconscious is an imperative component of the human psyche. It’s the place we sort out our ideas. It’s the place to make mistakes and reconstitute future ideas. It’s not meant for mass consumption. Now these undeveloped, immature ideas are regularly thrown about.
Reckless and reactionary dialog constitutes the new norm.
Every impulsive and adolescent thought is acted upon and shared. Feelings are hurt and people are incensed, and it snowballs.
No, it’s more like an avalanche.
Triggered by an unintentional act and within moments, homes and communities are being destroyed.
People don’t even need to leave their homes to feel attacked.

There is something called integral philosophy that can help us grow to understand this divide and give us the tools to grow through it.
It isn’t going to be easy.
Growth is hard.
From this perspective, the root of the problem is conflicting levels of stage development.
In order to understand this, you need to understand the levels of stage development I’m referring to. The first is “world view”. The stages build in a hierarchical fashion. It is important to understand that each stage builds upon the preceding stage.

1) Egocentric: Concern for self
2) Ethnocentric: Concern for family, tribe, or culture
3) World Centric: Concern for all of humanity
4) Cosmo Centric: Concern for all sentient beings

I’ll also refer to the developmental stages of human consciousness.

1) Archaic: Base level awareness.
2) Magic: Egocentric, superstitious, omnipotent, a belief that your gestures and ideas influence and control your external environment.
3) Mythic: Ethnocentric, conformist, petitionary prayer, pre-rational, traditional fundamentalist religious world view.
4) Rational: Industrious, capacity to take third person perspective, trans-rational, subscribes to the scientific method and objectivity.
5) Pluralistic: Everyone is equal, multicultural sensitive, with a deep desire not to marginalize or exclude. Politically correct.
6) Integral: Ability to see a partial truth in all stage structures. Has the ability to meet people where they find them. They have the ability to have respect for someone as they are, versus how they want them to be. Understands the hierarchy within the stages of consciousness development.
7) Transpersonal: Transrational and transverbal.

We are experiencing such cataclysmic divides due to the conflicting stages of development we are in. Speaking in generalized terms, it was the status quo for the majority of the population to be at an ethnocentric/mythic stage of development a little over a hundred years ago. But the world was a bigger place at that time. There was a very real possibility to live your entire life without experiencing another culture or religion.
Rationalism emerged as a recognized stage of development as the understanding of science and the scientific method infiltrated into our societies and cultures. Pluralism is a relatively new phenomena that gained traction in the 1960’s. What the mythic, rational, and pluralistic stages have in common is a dogmatic adherence to their stage perspective. They are unable to discuss opposing views without encountering conflict.
It is the integral stage of development that is able to see the value of all underlying stages. Although the integral stage is emerging, there isn’t a critical mass that supports it at this time. I believe the Dalai Lama was the first cultural leader who embraced this stage of development in his leadership. It was unprecedented for a religious leader to encourage a scientific study of his religion’s practices. To speak in stage development terms, this is an alliance between the mythic and rational stages of development.
An analogy that is often used to illustrate a hierarchical structure is understanding the relationship between cells, organs, and the organism. Cells are the building blocks for organs and organs are the building blocks for the organism.  The more complex structures wouldn’t exist without the less complex. Higher stages of development do not negate the value of the former stage, quite the opposite. The higher stage and more complex stage wouldn’t have been attained or even exist without their less complex counterpart.
This is where it gets difficult.
It may be easy to see the hierarchal structure in our biology, but to transfer that understanding to the human experience is an entirely different thing. The cultural war we are experiencing is between the ethnocentric/mythic/rationalist and the world centric/rationalist/pluralist. As I said before, the complexity arises in the dogmatism that all of these stages adhere to.
It’s the integral stage of development that can help us move through this. If we can speak to the problems that we see through an integral perspective, this would be a radical evolution in consciousness.
We all have so much to say and so much wisdom to share. There are so many opportunities at the dinner table, the water cooler, or talking with extended family. Social media has such broad reach and the tenor of the comments could definitely stand to be scaled up. It’s the orator alone who can transmit their message in a way that is heard and that will find success. Re-postulating your ideas, so they can be understood and appealed to by someone who embraces a different stage of development, is truly what we all want. I, so often, hear people say, “I don’t how anyone could think that way.” Remember, they don’t understand how you could think the way you do either.
You have three choices. Continue to argue from your perspective, surrender to an apathetic stalemate, or attempt to extract yourself from your dogmatism and reframe your argument to appeal to the stage of development of the person you are speaking to. The latter is the most evolved choice, but it isn’t easy and it will demand an evolution in the way you see and interact with the world.
That process will require the ability to learn to speak at a former stage of development and clearly understand the imperative value within that stage you’re appealing to.
Awareness is the key.
Recognize to whom you are speaking.
Honor their stage of development.
Reframe your argument in accordance with their stage.
Let go of any projections rather than reverting back to an old argument.
As they say, the art of a good therapist is for you to see your own folly.