My wife introduced me to Ken Wilber’s work about three years after the Serpentfd.org website went up.  That was around 2003.  From there I read maybe six of his books (he’s written close to 20) and listened several times to the 10-CD interview he conducted.

In the previous piece, I noted the prerational and transrational distinction he makes that clearly demarcates the differences between aboriginal prepersonal points of view and more recent spiritual transpersonal experiences.  The two are often confused.  Wilber efficiently parses out the differences, using a system of seven stages of maturation that apply to both individuals and societies.

Wilber looks at some feminist inclinations to view ancient times as more evolved in human relations as another case of comparing seemingly positive aspects of earlier stages of societal evolution, or maturation, with later-stage negative features.  For example, human sacrifice was common in matrifocal agricultural society, a fact usually ignored by those seeking synthesis in the past.  Wilber suggests that some feminists pick and choose what they want to emphasize when comparing female-centered societies with contemporary patrifocal examples.

Paying close attention to similarities between evolution and maturation on both individual and social scales, Wilber, guided by the work of Habermas, Gebser, Adi Da, and others, feels to me to still be operating from a natural selection frame of reference.  Wilber’s trajectory is linear and pyramidal, male and hierarchical in many ways.  Though concepts of maturation are deeply integrated into his point of view, it seems to me that his point of view is informed mostly by a male orientation suggesting survival-of-the-fittest understandings.

What I think Wilber is at least partially missing is cyclical-based evolutionary changes over time.  In evolution by maturation, heterochronic theory, or what I’m now calling The Orchestral Theory, there are surges of maturational delay and acceleration, the prolonging of embryonic features into adulthood and the accordioning of adult features into embryos, which accompany evolution, often with a periodic, cyclic return of features and behaviors, modified as they reappear.

Clearly, both cyclic and linear patterns are in play.  Wilber’s concentration on the linear or hierarchical is probably mostly a function of the times we live in.  Then again, I’ve never noted Wilber ever quoting Gould or the heterochronists.  As a philosopher working with evolutionary principles, he does not often depart from natural selection orthodoxy on those rare occasions that it comes up.  Once, when on a forum discussing Dawkins’ positions on evolutionary theory, Wilber jumped in to make it clear he did not agree with much of what Dawkins says.  Wilber has opinions about biological evolution theory.  They just tend to congregate around natural selection, though not Neo-Darwinism.  It is perhaps odd that Wilber heavily focuses on maturational interpretations of societal change and personal transformation, while he at the same time ignores existing maturational interpretations of biological evolution put forth by the heterochronist Neo-Lamarckians of the nineteenth century.

Wilber, when he focuses on the confusions that accumulate around prerational and transrational, prepersonal and transpersonal, or ancient matrifocal as a current not belonging in the present, seems to overlook the power of cycles to explain much of what does not emerge in linear overviews.  Wilber describes the symbol of the serpent with her tail in her mouth, the oroborus, as not only an archaic representation of spiritual experience, but as a symbol that represents the prepersonal, or prerational, frame of reference.  I believe that Wilber misses the agency of cycles in both the prerational and transrational.  This can result in an interpretation of symbols that picks up some, but not all, of the connotations.  The serpent, as a powerful representation of prerational consciousness, also serves as a symbol of cycles that transcends the prerational, transrational split.

With Wilber, each stage transcends and includes previous stages, so nothing is actually lost or replaced as each transformation or maturation occurs.  Nevertheless, I believe it useful in a linear, nested hierarchy model to accompany these descriptions with the complementary opposite model of cycles, how things transform by maturing both backward and forward in time, often at the same time.  Wilber’s work is remarkable, astonishing and a joy to read.  Still, it could use a female’s touch.

To understand trends in current societal transformations requires an evaluation protocol that takes into consideration where we’ve come from, where we’re going and where we are.  This is particularly challenging when society origin myths, belief structures or paradigms are examples of some of the very content that is transforming.  Seeking understanding from a position with similarities to where we are headed should offer unique insights because the new understanding, at least temporarily, integrates all three frames.  Time will tell.

As regards understanding, convention is useful.  The following is a proposal for a new shared evaluation protocol.

What we understand “teleology” to mean is central to how we interpret current events, societal change, politics, geopolitical dynamics, the control of resources and the ability of the disenfranchised to feel free of want.  “Teleology” can be defined as the belief that there are overriding, perhaps spiritual, forces at work, compelling society to evolve or transform in particular directions featuring progress, improvement and an enhancement of individual positive experience.  There are atheist humanists that nonetheless display teleological tendencies insofar as they experience a confidence that our species has been acting and will continue to act, more or less, in our own best interest, compelling…

Maturity is not the same as progress.  To pass through a series of ontological stages evidencing the look, sound and behavior of the personal epochs that have been experienced is not progress.  It is life.

All mixed up in contemporary theorizing are three things:  the exact nature and difference between that which transforms over time that is changing as a result of random interconnections, that which is changing as a result of progress or improvement over time and that which is changing as part of a larger pattern of maturation.

Evolutionary biology tends to take the position that evolution follows Darwin’s wedges metaphor, with every feature of every being emerging as a direct or indirect result of what is necessary to survive to procreate.  Features acquired by individuals are random, unconnected to the environment or the parents’ experience, making random feature survival the central focus of evolution.  There is no such thing as progress.  There is no larger picture to inform what survives to procreate.

Society, religion and spirituality tend to focus on the idea that either we are on a pathway toward improvement or we are not.  Those saying not are often atheists, and often they find themselves sympathizing…

Rosanna and I are conducting an overview of matrifocal societies around the world, seeking correlations with the primary elements of the thesis.  I’m estimating that a matrifocal society will have females with higher testosterone and higher estrogen than a modern conventional society, males with lower testosterone and lower estrogen, more frequent anomalous cerebral dominance with both cerebral hemispheres more often the same size, a leftward shift of Annett’s handedness distributions (more left-handers), delayed puberty and tendencies to exhibit specific diseases and conditions characterized by the hormonal tendencies just mentioned.

There is the possibility that matrifocal societies will have language structures characterized by an emphasis on the present tense as in the Hopi and Trobriand Islanders.  This would suggest an affinity to primary process in waking consciousness:  one time, one place, no negatives.  An implication might be a different kind of sense of humor and a possible different kind of creative imagination.

Elia and I were talking last night about the relevance of myth.  Elia suggested that the structure of the mythology of matrifocal societies may reflect the unique neurological constellation we are proposing.  We considered that the myths might show a single story line, main character almost always present (no…

If I’m not mistaken, primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh came up with her “Theory of Mind” to explore differences in great ape behavior and other species that seemed not capable of estimating that another individual retained separate consciousness.  Simon Baron-Cohen applied this principle to autism, calling it “mindblindness,” to offer an explanatory paradigm that parsed out differences between the autistic and the nonautistic mind.

Last week, I was exploring some unique language structures of two matrifocal societies, the Hopi and the Trobriand Islanders.  The languages display a unique attitude toward tenses, reminding me of Gregory Bateson’s interpretations of Freud’s description of primary process.  It seems that aspects of dream consciousness and primary process thinking are characteristic of these two languages.  This included only one time or tense (you can’t imagine another time without being there), one place (you can’t imagine another place without being there) and no negatives (you can’t image what something is not without imagining the something).

Stephen J. Gould would sometimes write of three-fold and four-fold parallelisms.  He was alluding to late nineteenth century and early twentieth century hypotheses that there are equivalencies between different scales of experience:  biology, society, ontogeny and personal experience.  Regarding Sue Savage-Rumbaugh’s “Theory of…

Gregory Bateson in his Steps to an Ecology of Mind discussed a unique feature of the human species that he believed is responsible for our destructive behavior. Humans are able to visualize a future, splitting time, and then focus on the steps necessary to achieve a specific future. In addition, with humans, steps imagined and achieved on the way toward a future don’t have to be examined for their repercussions on other people or other aspects of the environment.

Competitors are encouraged to “stay focused.” Shutting out the world achieves goals. Bateson might suggest that this ability to shut out the world also destroys it.

This blog describes a hypothetical proto society characterized by dance-and-song-driven rituals and a population selecting neotenous features in our species over time. We lived in dreamtime. We communicated by gesture. Both cerebral hemispheres were the same size, the corpus callosum brain bridge was still wide, we did not split time and children did not know who their fathers were. We were random-handed, left and right-handed half the time.

There were changes, changes described in this work. The result was society stopped selecting exclusively for aesthetics and started selecting for those adept at spoken language, splitting…

In meditation, I sometimes have an experience of an underlying consciousness characterized by a twin identity:  creation and perception.  It’s sort of a pitcher-catcher relationship, like a basketball player that plays superb offense and defense.  It is also called yin and yang.  There is the cosmic artist and the cosmic appreciator.  Each moment is filled with a seemingly infinite intelligence and vast humor engaged in deep play.

I’ve wondered if this dichotomy is a vagary of human split consciousness with our physicality deeply informed by estrogen and testosterone.  Probably so.  Regardless, with the body I have and the instrument of perception that I was granted, that is how the music sounds.

As we have observed the evolution of the web and the dissolution of our consumer economy, it seems as if that music is growing louder.  There is an emergence of creativity and appreciation in purer, less hindered forms as the Internet encourages the pairing up of performers with audience.  Without the barriers of money, geographic distances or even language, new venues have emerged, such as Youtube, that allow a profound proliferation of creative content while training visitors to see and listen with new eyes and ears.

The line between…

Talking with my son Elia last night (Elia is an anthropology major at Loyola), I brought up a conundrum that I’ve been playing with for a few years.  It has to do with the origin of language, metaphor and god.

I presuppose or assume that consciousness existed before humans evolved and probably always existed.  I don’t go so far as to define consciousness, though Gregory Bateson’s interpretation of Freud’s primary process has been a useful foundation for me.  According to that definition (extrapolating primary consciousness to god), god consciousness is not unlike that of an infant:  only one time, one place and no negatives such as “no.”  This consciousness is much like that experienced during dream.  In dream, you cannot imagine something without it becoming true.  You cannot be two places at once.  You cannot think of the future without being in the future.  You cannot read, because if the words acquire meaning, you travel to what the words describe.

So, I assume consciousness exists and always existed, existing up to, and including, the appearance of human beings.

I characterize human consciousness as split consciousness.  I hypothesize that when the right hemisphere began to reduce in size along with the…

There is a five-step evolution continuum that begins with natural selection and then moves to the next step to where sexual selection, usually by the female, focuses on a specific pattern when they choose a mate. Step three transitions to human sexual selection, where adept practitioners of novel pattern creation (beginning with dance) are selected as procreation partners by mates with sensitivity to these nuances. The fourth step is taken when novelty itself becomes desirable outside the partner selection process, and society is compelled to embrace in its productions the infinite nuances of new. In the fifth stage, awareness of evolution’s stages attended by an awareness of the awareness that accompanies evolution provides an identification with the five-stage creation continuum.

The fifth stage loops around to stage one, what we think of as competitive evolution, accompanied by awareness.

1) natural selection
2) sexual selection (selecting for pattern when seeking a mate)
3) human sexual selection (selection for novel pattern when seeking a mate)
4) art (selecting for novel pattern outside of mate selection)
5) awareness of the selection or creative process

Story has structure. Lifted from the infinite associational matrix of experience, a story allows the…

Watching the wind stir leaves and branches as it flows around and through the trees, I often wonder what conclusions we could come to if we could not feel the wind.  It would be clear that something was influencing the movement.  We might conclude that all the leaves and limbs somehow know to respond together, motivated by an identical impulse.  Because branches have no muscles, we would posit that a force was in play that we could not see or feel.

It is impolitic among academics to suggest that evolution evidences an awareness that connects and encourages the existence and behaviors of species across the planet.  We still suffer the repercussions of an interventionist deity that demands that society conform to his alpha male point of view.  We’re throwing out the messiah baby with the Abrahamic bathwater, not having stopped to notice the baby is a girl.  We’re committing female deity infanticide.  All to make absolutely sure that myth and science don’t mix.  Reasonable.  Beside the point.  There are the Eastern myth-less studies of awareness.

Imagine that awareness informs biological, societal and personal evolution.  The paradox I come back to is how is it that evolution unfolds in a manner…

After the 60s, when more female academics began achieving tenure, a nonmale-centric view of human evolution began to form.  Female observers of female behavior began to come to conclusions different from those of their white, male colleagues.  Women theorists hypothesized ancestral serial monogamy based on the time (3-4 years) it takes to wean a child, female control of band foraging patterns, invention of language by females and the choosing by females of cooperative mates, thus encouraging noncombative social environments as a foundation for human evolution.

A female biologist hypothesized that in human beings, estrus, or ovulation, grew hidden as women evolved to control their own procreation opportunities.  Men wouldn’t determine when to mate based on their observation of when a woman was fertile.  The women would decide.

And so began a process that is coming to fruition only now, these last three generations, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years after women learned to hide the best time to have a baby.

It is believed that there are traditions that have carried through this stretch of time.  Remnants of red and ochre coloring are some of the oldest signs of human culture being found in close proximity to early digs.  It…

There is a five-step continuum that begins with primordial competition and ends with what may make human beings unique.

Darwin struggled with three selective processes, seeking ways that they could make sense together. He is best known for natural selection. Darwin also discovered sexual selection. In addition, he wrote detailed accounts of how he estimated Lamarckian selective processes influence evolution. Unable to find a way to make the three different processes elegantly nest, Darwin is remembered mostly for his contribution to our contemporary paradigm that believes natural selection is the most important selective process.

I have suggested (see sexualselection.org) that the evolutionary processes themselves have unfolded in their own meta evolution. Natural selection evolved sexual selection and Lamarckian selection. Sexual selection then evolved language and society. I have proposed that society and human split-consciousness emerged as a direct repercussion of dance and art.

The five-step continuum begins with natural selection and then moves to sexual selection, with animals focusing on particular patterns when they choose a mate. Step three begins with a bridging over to human sexual selection, where adept practitioners of novel pattern creation are selected as procreation partners by mates with sensitivity to these nuances. The fourth…

A pidgin is a kind of quasi-language composed of the pieces of more than one language crunched together when speakers of different languages are forced to communicate. Pidgins vary from place to place depending on the languages involved. For example, English in combination with local languages have created several different pidgins around the world.

In some communities, a pidgin gives birth to a creole. If children grow up listening to a previously unconnected smorgasbord of words and phrases, those children will provide those words and phrases grammar, syntax and the other civilized accoutrements of communication. In a single generation, a creole is born. Strangely, this creole is not as unique as you might imagine.

Creoles born of pidgins across the planet use an almost identical grammar, syntax and language structure. It seems that great minds think alike, in this case revealing a universality of thought. But the roots of language suggest a deeper hidden source for this way of thinking. There is only one language in the world with deep structural similarities to creoles born of pidgins.

That one language is sign language.

Sometimes when watching people talk, I become mesmerized by the movement of people’s hands. It’s obvious when…

The symbol of our earliest known religions, back when goddesses ruled the world, was the serpent. The goddess had several familiars or manifestations. The serpent was unique.

“The snake is life force, a seminal symbol, epitome of the worship of life on this earth. It is not the body of the snake that was sacred, but the energy exuded by this spiraling or coiling creature which transcends its boundaries and influences the surrounding world. This same energy is in spirals, vines, growing trees, phalluses, and stalagmites, but it is especially concentrated in the snake, and therefore more powerful. The snake was something primordial and mysterious, coming from the depths of the waters where life begins. Its seasonal renewal in sloughing off its old skin and hibernating made it a symbol of the continuity of life and of the link with the underworld.” Marija Gimbutas, 1989

Over tens of thousands of years, the snake transformed into the dragon. The Western dragon is the serpent demonized by Indo-Europeans who conquered goddess culture. In India, Indo-Europeans demoted serpent deities to a lower caste, suppressing the serpent gods in myth and story. Farther East, the serpent was deified and made magical by the Chinese,…