CONSCIOUSNESS FOR THE TWENTY‐FIRST CENTURY

Human action and experience result from both genes and memes, with consciousness mediating their claims and guiding choices. The ordering and direction of consciousness is therefore important. Sorokin's typology of sensate (materialist, secular) and ideational (spiritual) factors, and their dialectic, is relevant. In the current historical period, sensate factors need dialectical counterbalancing by memes that value spiritual intimations beyond the senses. Approaching the twenty-first century, memes undergirding spirituality will resacralize nature and emphasize human unity with all universal reality in an idea of common 'beinghood.' Spiritual systems must integrate sensate and ideational, reflect the 'flow' state of optimal experience matching skills with challenges, and shift worldview from the human being to the network of beings and its evolution.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract. Human action and experience are the outcome of genes and memes. Not only are both of these represented in consciousness, but consciousness mediates their claims and thus governs our choices. Hence it is important how consciousness is ordered and where it is directed. Sorokin's typology of the sensate and the ideational (“spiritual”), and the dialectic between them, is relevant to this issue. In our period of history, the sensate factors of materialism and secularism need to be dialectically counterbalanced by the reinforcement of memes that value the spiritual intimations of the realm beyond the senses. As we approach the twenty‐first century, the memes that will undergird our spirituality will be those that resacralize nature and emphasize our unity as humans with all of universal reality, in an idea of common “beinghood.” Spiritual systems that accord with this trend in evolution will have to respect three conditions. They will (1) integrate the sensate and the ideational; (2) reflect the importance of the “flow” state of optimal experience, which matches ever‐complexifying skills with comparable challenges; and (3) move the fulcrum of their worldview from the human being to the network of beings and its evolution.