Consciousness

In 1972 the psychologist Clare Greaves conceptualised that consciousness consisted of "Emergent, Cyclical, Levels of Existence". Greaves was by no means the first person to talk about consciousness, for millennia it has been the grist for the philosophy mill, and in psychology there have been other angles through which the consciousness and the self have been observed.

Freud talked about stages of ego development which was orientated around psychosexual development, where the child would transit through various stages as part of the trajectory laid down by the libidinal drive. These stages consist of the oral, the anal, the phallic, the latent, and the genital and he postulated that any anxiety at any of these stages would result in a neurosis as an adult. Not withstanding the many derivatives of arguments both for and against, the debate over Freud's libidinal drive theory is perpetual, which like much of his work suggests that it is less actual science and more like an art form open to multiple subjective interpretations.

Behaviourist such as Watson and Skinner postulated a simple formulation of an individuals action being in response to the environment in which they exist, such that they are constantly reacting to the world. In this formulation then all of action, thinking and feeling are just behaviours to be observed as behaviourism attempts to do away with the abstract hypothetical constructs of the mind. However this seems to unravel somewhat when you introduce language as a medium for abstract concepts, which is part of the position taken by Noam Chomsky, where language is something that an animal being studied in a lab is not capable of, which then calls into the question theoretical basis of a purely behavioural position. As we have already discussed, with advances in communication technology this simple reactionary world most likely becomes vastly more complex set of interactions.

Piaget developed a theory of cognitive development that mainly dealt with the unfolding of intelligence. He began from a biological perspective and suggested that the world a person experiences is seemingly chaotic, and in what appears to be a dynamic process of unfolding adaptation, the person will build schemas of understanding, assimilating new information and accommodating any existing schemas when new data is presented. The four stages he describes are the sensorimotor, the preoperational, the concrete operational and the formal operational stage. A central criticism of this theory is that the stages are more approximations as within a given individual there will be gaps and inconsistencies in the developmental trajectory. Another criticism is that there seem to be large variations between different domains of intelligence (eg: maths vs. language).

As well as consciousness, behaviour, intelligence, other models of development have been formulated. Lawrence Kohlberg formulated a theory of six stages of moral development, being 'obedience and punishment', 'self-interest', 'interpersonal accord and conformity', 'authority and social order obedience', a 'social contract driven' moral stage, and finally a morality based on 'universal ethical principles'. These six stages are broken down into three levels (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional) with the two stages in each, where at each level one stage has an external locus and the other an internal locus of organisation, So the individual transits from the first stage of 'obedience and punishment' they will internalise these function as part of a 'self interest' stage which has an intrinsic or internal locus of organisation. But then the external world will become more influential (external locus) when they transit to interpersonal accord and conformity. Again there are many factors of culture and gender which create a problem for the simple linear architecture of this theory, a problem that haunts the psychological field in general because you can never really abstract a generalised model from what is highly individualistic and contextual data, but to his credit, Kohlberg does end up at a stage of moral development which presupposes everything occurs in a context, and the moral reasoning engine is most advanced when it can take into account this context.

Abraham Malsow's constructed another theory in psychology that describes discrete levels of requirement, and is often cited in popular contexts. The "hierarchy of needs" has, at is base, the Physiological Needs (air, water, food etc) and until these needs are met the next stage of Safety Needs are not able to be sought or obtained. By meeting one level you create access to the next which continue with Love and Belonging followed by Esteem, Self Actualisation and finally Self Transcendence. Maslow proposed this theory in 1943 and 1954. The work being expounded below seems to draw heavily on this influence, and even though it is not explicitly stated it does seem that the work by Greaves was attempting to understand a similar 'hierarchy of consciousness' (I use the term carefully) that is separated by discrete existentialist challenges to the self.

So all these theories are useful, and they all have problems. That they all have problems is in itself a problem. There is no one answer (and probably never will be) even though supporters for each will argue vehemently for their position. However step back and look at them from a slightly different perspective. One thing to notice is that they are all conceptualisations which look at single aspects of development. Psychosexual, behavioural, cognitive, moral, social. Another point is the presumption that the stages of development occur on a basic linear trajectory that is often linked vaguely with chronological development, where at a specific age you will see the emergence of a specific stage of development.

Linearity underpins pretty much all of the psychological tradition (and most of science in general it has to be said), because it is the lens through which study occurs. What this means is that the whole field is generally viewed through a similar construct based on a statistical method called correlation. In the pure experimental set-up, this lens is one of cause and effect. Everything that becomes the focus of study is first isolated for extraneous variables and then studied in terms of how it correlates with other factors. What is fundamentally a statistical approach has come to dominate and even determine the progress of understanding the human psyche. Based on the generalised linear model, the approach presumes an orderly, predictable universe underneath the observations being measured. This is a Galileoian view of a 'clockwork universe'. Sure there is the occasional lip service to the wildly chaotic and dynamic process of interaction and development, but at it's core, all the measurement, all the empirical work is fundamentally accepting of factor A being associated to some extent with factor B, and if you isolate them to a satisfactory degree, and if you're really lucky, then you can throw them into an experimental design so that one factor can be turned off or on, in order to suggest that one factor 'causes' the other.

This is called a reductionist approach and it both degrades an holistic position and completely falls apart when confronted with chaos. A linear statistical way of thinking in research has a basic flaw which is the tendency to the problem of 'reductio ad absurdum', where contradictions, in fact the same contradictions, keep propping up. In psychology, the Nature vs. Nurture debate is one such contradiction, as is determinism vs. non-determinism, or intrinsic drive vs. object relations. It's only with one degree of abstraction that they become something that can be explained, where for instance, the nature/nurture debate is being regarded as an interaction of the two, where one factor may confound another. However the generalised linear model is not very good at handling two or more interacting variables and interpreting them in a way that humans can grasp. Sure, anyone with a doctorate in statistics is fine, but everyone else has no chance to understand the very complex data that is simplified into simple words like 'significant'.

This problem of oversimplification is confound because they may not actually be looking at a linear system at all, even though the statistical models are based on the presumption that they are looking at a linear model. The reductionist approach that comes from generalised linear modelling is basically like putting a square peg in a round hole. It is never going to be able to explain a chaotic world, because there will always be too many factors to consider.

The more you move away from the empirical and towards theoretical, the less dominant is this statistical way of viewing the world. A greater predisposition to philosophical investigation lends itself to theories which more readily use language of contextual understanding of the world, that is where the individual observation and the anecdote carry a message of understanding about how the systems of the person work. And there are some theorists worth mentioning in this light.

Erik Erikson was a post Freudian ego psychologist who dealt predominately with social development and how at each of the eight stages he mentions, there is a basic conflict between apparent polar opposites. For example, at the first such conflict there is trust vs. mistrust. The successful resolution of this stage requires the individual to be able to hold the validity of both sides and from this emerges 'hope'. Overcoming the dualist nature of reality is reminiscent of the meditation based practice of 'mindfulness' and staying in the liminal space of contemplation. Mindfulness also parallels the idea that an eastern philosophical tradition where the koan or paradox is what brings about enlightenment (consciousness growth). One such example of a koan would be the statement eluded to at the beginning of this work that "change is the only constant", it is through the rumination on this thought that fuels the enlightenment process, it could even be possible that it may cause a hypnagogic state of brain wave pattern (at ~ 4 hertz between delta and theta patterns), the one you have when the puzzle is solved and you get the 'ah-hah' moment.

Returning to a previous section, notice the idea of staying in an undecided state is something that has been deprecated for over a century in the modern political context, remember because indecision is perceived as weak, and a united caucus is always "stronger" and therefore "better".

Lev Vygotsky and Losev Zinchenko also in this vein of socially based development of personality, suggest higher "psychical" or mental facilities develop as a function of "cultural mediators" (word, sign, symbol, and myth), and where the individual must inhabit the environment transformed by their predecessors. There is a resonance here with Freud's notion of vicissitudes as the moulding agent for a persons drives, which in itself led to later work by the Object Relation theorists like Klein, and it is also connected somewhat with the philosophical underpinnings of phenomenology. It is through the constant interaction with the phenomenological world 'out there' that the self is moulded and shaped 'in here'.

Heinz Kohut was another from the Freudian tradition who developed a broader understand of how the self was formed, particularly by coming to another way of understanding the narcissistic personality structure. Ostensively an outshoot of Klein's object relations theory his ideas also hint at stages of empathic development which if interrupted can lead to disruptive relationship processes at a later age. From this conceptualisation and incorporating an array of other philosophical traditions like existentialism and phenomenology, writers such at Stolorow, Attwood, Orange and Brandchaft developed the intersubjective model of human interaction which suggests that humans only really develop in relationship. The once separated mind and body are now understood as intrinsically connected, and in a logical extension of this, the Intersubjective Field is a theory which holds that a mind and body in one person is intrinsically connected (via language, communication and the empathic resonance of subconscious communication) to the mindbody of another person. Intersubjectivity suggests that it through congruent relationship that a person will come to understand the world in which they live.

These last few approaches can be broadly understood as "biopsychosocial" models of human development, which leads us to work of Clare Graves. In order to connect the brief overview of communication and the development of the psyche over time, the work of Graves and his antecedents becomes the focus of this section.

It is odd that the ideas first put forward by Graves are not very widely known, however by some of those who have read it there seems to be an instinct click of "yes this is on the right path." The irony is that the Gravesian theory could be interpreted in a way such as to predict this ability to "get" or "not get" theory itself. Admittedly this is a kind of perverse recursive logic.

Before attempting to summarise the Gravesian theory of consciousness, there is first a warning. At a very simple level of understanding it would appear the levels of consciousness he proposed are another linear system of development, but this is to entirely miss the point of what theory is attempting to explain. We have become so use to understanding the world through the lens of cause and effect that we naturally tend to see everything in a linear sense, where everything is a set of correlations between factors. Instead, Gravesian theory is trying to explain how the environment and the self interact over time, such that at any level of consciousness there will be things that are 'not quite right' in how the person understands the world. Similar in many ways to Eriksson's work, these incongruencies, often dilemmas which are contextual and environmental, will cause the self to become at first highly efficient at it's current level, before the need to transit becomes too great and a shift in consciousness occurs. As the pressure of incongruence builds, what Graves refers to as the "existentialist dilemma", there needs to be a fundamental change in how the world is viewed in order to better accommodate the experiences of a person.

What may be occurring at this transition between stages of consciousness is that the less malleable emotional organisation of experience in the limbic brain has become incongruent with the more neuroplastic conceptual experience in the prefrontal cortex, which because of the addition of new contextual information is leading the change. Or conversely, where the emotional brain organisation of experience has changed due to experience, such that the conceptual schemas no longer feel right.

For example, the first stage of consciousness is basically equivalent to that of a human as an animal, albeit a very clever animal. Labelled as the "A" stage of neuropsychological adaptation, it was seen to have an existential problem of living labelled as "N", thus the entire stage is referred to as "A|N". The next stage is also given a letter in the 'linear' sequence where the neurological makeup is "B" and the existential problem faced is "O" (thus B|O is the nomenclature). The next stage being then C|P and so on.

Later work at communicating effectively this theory led to the different levels being labelled with a single colour, and this seems to detract from the "double helix" nature of theory consisting of 1.) the current neurological make we have, and 2.) the existential problems we face as a result of this makeup. When describing theory, it's always a tough decision to include the colours or not, because they can be a distraction, however in this work they are included once merely for clarity.

In the A|N stage (labelled with the colour beige) the dominant need is purely physiological and the state is referred to as an "Autistic" state (although again this creates confusion with the pathology of autism and the definitions needs to be clearly stated). This level of consciousness is about the very basic fundamental needs of living, in terms of human developmental, it is mostly concerned with a baby that eats, sleeps, shits and needs to be comfortable. As an adult pathology, this state may be the best way to describe someone that is homeless or living rough on the streets. As a transient state that could be experienced by anyone, the best analogy would be the members of an audience in a horror movie, or far more realistically, it also may come to dominate in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster when the entire social fabric is ripped away. At a macro level this stage of consciousness is really about survival in a fearful world, and would have been equivalent to the pre-historical homo-sapiens.

As an aside, you will notice in the above definition that there are references to the individual and their stage of development, but also the various contexts in which this may be experienced, and also to broader aspect of civilisation in general. This is one of the reasons Greaves work resonates so well, because it can be extrapolated into different realms. However it is also something to be wary of, because we may be talking about an individual in one sentence and them referring to a cultural phenomena or general level of civilisation in the next. One of the biggest criticism of Greaves work and it's followers is that there is NOTHING that fundamentally connects the level of consciousness in the individual to the level of consciousness in the group. Later in this theory, it is this very basic connection that is being reconciled, where the system in the individual is connected to the system in the group because they are both part of the same chaotic (dynamical) system, and are seen as fractally related (or self similar). But for now here is the core of the Gravesian theory of consciousness.

At the A|N stage of consciousness there is no real planning, there is no awareness of others needs and no real differentiation between inner and outer worlds, such that the focus is on the control we can exercise on the outer world. However the existential problem that occurs to the A|N individual is that the supply of needs is not always going to occur. Sometimes (as a baby), cry as you might, the comfort and support does not come as it should. This creates a fundamental separation between the self "inside" and the world "out there". And the resources out there are not infinite and immediately accessible.

This basic separation between 'inside me' and 'outside me' is at it's core the process of self formation. And a key point of this work is that as it can occur to an individual, it can also occur to a group. This is something that we will return to later, but consider for now that in the same way an individual learns what is 'me' and 'not me' the group can also reflect this sentiment by expressing what is 'us' and what is 'them'. It is no wonder that the expression of racism is often expressed in terms of basic resources, with the complaint being that "they took our jobs" (hopefully no to put too glib a definition to it).

But back to the individual who faces an existential problem of the separation of self/other. The B|O stage (purple) emerges in order to better cope with this separate world out there. At it's most fundamental conceptualisation this stage is Animistic where life is seen in all things both animate (living) or inanimate (non-living) and that there is perhaps a possible movement between the two. The world is not yet a place we can predict, but it is one we believe we can control if only we behave in the appropriate way. At it's most fundamental representation for the infant baby, crying will bring aid. In an adult pathology this is also about crying, but in the more complex forms of whining and complaining.

At a macro level this stage of civilisation corresponds to the magical, superstitious, ritualistic society. It is easy to extrapolate how a society can be embedded at this level, where even the most bizarre behaviours can be understood, for example a connection (correlation) can be seen in how the soil brings life and fertility in crops, and also how the menstrual bleeding of a woman is also connected with life and fertility, it therefore follows that the two must be connected, so in order to have a better crop we need blood. Animal blood is ok, but human blood would be better, female blood is even better because they have an obvious association with fertility, in fact and the blood of virgin woman even better still. So it is through this sort of reasoning that we end up with virgin sacrifice in order to appease the gods and make the crops grow. It's is Animistic but it also attempts to resolve the existential problem of there not being any food in hard times. Yes, to look on this chain of reasoning from the stage of consciousness that you the reader are currently in (which is explained below), this 'logic' seems absurd, and this is one of the key points around consciousness theory, one level will supersede the previous levels, however the caveat is that the previous levels need to have been gone through first.

As individuals we have all gone through this Animistic stage of consciousness. It occurs very early in development and it is associated with the Transitional Objects suggested by Winnicott, where we better learn to appreciate the separateness of self and other. Winnicott proposed that a young child will often latch onto inanimate objects and imbue them with pseudo-animate properties. The favourite spoon, bowl or cup, without which feeding becomes a nightmare for parents. The doll or the rug or the whatever that seems to be dragged around everywhere, and if lost can cause serious problems, let alone the dilemma of how to clean it. These Transitional Objects serve an important function because as the child-parent bond is slowly severed more and more through the realisation that self and other are separate, the transitional object can take on the properties of the comfort-giving agent that is the primary caregiver. Eventually the child will (usually) successfully internalise the ability to comfort themselves and the need for the transition object is reduced.

It is at the B|O Animistic stage where the use of memes begins. Richard Dawkins first coined this term "memes" to mean cultural units of inheritance, and it really refers to ideas and resultant behaviours that are carried down through time by the culture, where they undergo a form of evolution such that the better adapted memes will survive. The B|O Animistic stage is also where the focus turns from the control of the outer world to the focus on the internal world, where it becomes important what superstitions the individual follows as determines the ability to control the world.

The idea of a virgin sacrifice outlined above is also an example of how each stage of consciousness can get 'stuck' and fail to develop any further, creating a whole suite of extra problems, which can build on themselves through memetic (cultural) evolution to become very serious problems. Consider as another example the large stone totems of Easter Island which are famously ascribed to the demise of that culture. In this story of extinction, the creation of the stone totems, probably tied to family status, took on such grandiose importance that all else seemed unimportant, even the trees that were cut down to move them around, thus denuding the ecology of the islands and resulting in extinction. People can get so wrapped up in their traditions that they just can not see a better way to live. As part of the overall model of consciousness, each stage will have a 'gotcha' that can become particularly nasty, for the B|O Animistic stage this is taking traditions and superstitious behaviour to extremes.

Looking at the stages thus far, there is the beginning of a pattern where each stage appears to move between 'outer' and 'inner' worlds, and between 'individual' and 'collective' action. Where the A|N stage was about coercing the outer world, the B|O stage is about building the inner realm in order to better cope psychologically. And where the A|N stage was individualistic in behaviour, the B|O stage was really a major leap forward in cultural development because the group eventually becomes the focus of intention. Group action really starts with the B|O stage of consciousness as Animistic thinking also had the effect of building a cohesive (memetic) framework that a group or society of individuals could then adhere to.

So the B|O animist would obey the tribal ways, they would give up their self to the collective and they would just work, eat, grow old and... basically become really bored. The existential crisis faced by the individual in the tribe is one of boredom. The resting down and making sense of the world afforded by the B|O stage of consciousness leads inevitably to the arousal of curiosity about the world. "This can't be all there is" or "I wonder what's just over that mountain". The existential crisis leads to the creation of a new stage of consciousness, which when positively framed is the 'The Explorer', and which if given a slightly negative valence becomes 'The Egocentric'. The C|P stage of consciousness (red) is where the organism again becomes self aware. They are more than just the group and they no longer want to give up their autonomy.

The C|P stage is perhaps best emulated in human development by the 'terrible twos', that period in childhood where the child learns to say "NO!". It's actually not that terrible, because looking at it from a higher perspective, this is where the true self of the individual forms and begins to assert itself in the world. The problem lies with the adult parent taking it personally and thinking that their two year old is out to get them. As an adult pathology this C|P stage can manifest in the selfish and egocentric personality, and it is correlated with the same stage of development where if something goes wrong then narcissism, machiavellianism or psychopathy can occur (discussed below). At a macro level, this C|P society is perhaps best identified by the Vikings or the Mongols, and the rape/pillage/plunder this invokes. When completely out of control, it's about taking whatever you want ...gold, cows, sheep, and bugger the consequences (and sometimes the cows and sheep).

But notice here something which appears as an inconsistency, but which really helps to explain how consciousness forms. With the Vikings, if you treat the Viking group as a C|P level organism, they behave in a selfish-rape-and-pillage sort of way. However they probably still have a sense of cohesion as a group, where they adhere to a set of within group rules and norms. At the C|P stage of consciousness the group is not removed entirely, but rather it is augmented somewhat by the later stage. This additive nature of consciousness is part of the overall picture, where one level necessarily builds in order to get to the next, which is similar to a lot of the other theories of development previously mentioned. What is crucial however is this symbiotic relationship between self and group, where it ultimately comes down the apparent area of perception in the phenomenological world.

There is an Arabic saying than helps to explain this, and is paraphrased, "Me against my brother, but me and my brother against the family, but me and my family against the village, but me and my village against the neighbouring town..." etc. So that, like babushka dolls embedded in one another, the individual "I" is just a different layer of the group "us". Consciousness is related almost directly to the area of perception we have, specifically the degree to which the individual feels they belong to a group. If the world of the individual consists of a cot in a room, then when the world expands to include the house, then the street, then the suburb, then the city then the country, then the world, so too the neurological demands on the individual increase. As the individual experiences greater and greater areas of phenomenological experience there will be a demand on their consciousness to expand.

So many problems in the world come from having different levels of phenomenological reality. The world will seem different to someone struggling to survive after an earthquake. It's a jungle out there and it's about survival of the fittest. Or it's about looking after your immediate family because that's what's important. Or it's about upholding the tribal ways because that's what's important and outsiders just are not welcome. Or it's about being a good citizen and upholding the national ethos, such that every speech a U.S. politician gives has to end with "...and God bless the United States of America". Or it's about living on a world that is 24,000 kilometres in diameter and NOT growing any bigger. When one phenomenological view of the world comes into conflict with another, or when level of technology associated with one view becomes accessible in another (guns, drugs, slavery) then you have a cascading set of problems. What is crucial to understanding the problems in the world is seeing that all groups and individuals will be at a different stage of awareness about the world, and will resonate to different levels of what constitutes "us" and "them".

Returning to the model, the existential crisis (P) faced by the C|P egocentric is that the forever exploiting and taking of whatever you want can leave others with less. Here we see the fundamental change that is the very creation of empathy. When a child sees the fear or hurt experienced by others as a result of their behaviour they have an "internal" feeling that is not very nice. The formation of empathy is discussed in more detail later, but in summary, empathy forms from the neurological structures understood as "mirror neurons" and it seems to support the notion that humans have a conceptual view of the world which can sometimes be in conflict with an emotion understanding about the world. It does not feel nice to the observer when the observed is in pain. If Vikings learn empathy with people beyond their group, then they would no longer be a barbarian hoard. Or more concisely if the group to which they felt they belonged extended beyond their original phenomenological constraint, then they would no longer be the barbarian, because they would realise that the group over there has individuals that feel and hurt as well.

There are three personality structures that can signify the failure to adequately build the appropriate systems of empathy. Sometimes referred to as the "dark triad" of narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy, this is a very abridged version of their aetiology, but it is useful to see how the C|P stage gives way to the D|Q (blue) stage of consciousness. The narcissist will essentially be fragmented by empathy as a result of receiving a non-congruent or non-appropriate echo (mirroring) from their caregiver, which will lead them to be constantly defending their own fragile self with overt grandiose expression or by keeping it hidden from others through covert self-deprecation. The machiavellian, due to a serious breakdown in trust, will keep any hot empathic responses effectively walled up, separated in a somatic sense, whilst being able to fully develop a cold conceptual understanding of others behaviour. The machiavellian will not properly develop the hot-embodied empathic resonance, but will instead develop a cold-conceptual empathy, which (among other things) makes them extremely adept at manipulation. The machiavellian is sometimes labelled as a 'non-violent', 'successful', or 'corporate' psychopath because they do not need to resort to violence and because of their cold-conceptual empathy are able to plan where the true psychopath is prone to violence (also called anti social personality) and is not able to plan in the long term sense.

The true (and often violent) psychopath to some degree just does not perceive fear and sadness in others and so can not adequately develop the appropriate next level of consciousness. The later levels will form, but they will be somewhat maladaptive. For the psychopath the news is grim because they will never fully realise the full benefits of higher order life organisation, even though they will be amongst the first to survive should civilisation crumble. In a way, the psychopath represents a more primitive form of human that would have thrived when groups were a lot smaller. There is a connection between these three pathologies and often there is a lot of overlap as well, making clear delineation for any individual a bit tricky.

When the C|P level gets stuck, you have a whole range of messy problems that derive largely from the perceived level of group function (who is "us" and who is "them"). At the individual level, the psychopath best exemplifies the problem. and at the group level, some of the most extremes examples of this level being "stuck" occurred with organised crime, where one level of group sense takes from an antecedent larger level of group function (mafia families, triads, cartels, bike gangs, street gangs etc). The 'warlord' is just another term for the feudal lord in a contemporary view of the world, and he is often someone acting in a selfish and despotic way. The transition a warlord has to make to become a "lord" is where the take on the responsibility to protect people who are not able to protect themselves. The formation of empathy is co-constructed with the internalisation of respect in the individual, and honour, chivalry and nobility in the group leader.

When someone with an egocentric C|P level consciousness sees the pain in another, they quite literally build new neurological mechanisms (empathy) in order to cope. Feeling another's pain, leads to the an existential crisis, and a need develops which is to work out how to cope with all the suffering they see around them. In the emergent D|Q stage, there has to be necessary explanation of the "haves" and the "have nots" so that the behaviour of the previous level can ameliorated. Here we see the development of religion proper, and specifically the monotheistic dogmas which can easily cope with the inequalities of life by saying that it is Gods plan to have it this way. But like every stage it has distinct advantages over its fore-runners. The D|Q stage like the B|O stage, helps to build group cohesion. In an immediate within group sense, it fosters peace and understanding. From this stage of consciousness other beneficial memes develop, such as honour and the chivalric code, and it forms the basis of the feudal system of government where the "have" is obligated to look after the "have nots", not withstanding that the eventual reduction of this approach is to have a master and slave relationship.

Of course this is what should happen "ideally" however as is more often the case the system will often reduce to a corruption of the system. Just like the B|O level may end up with virgin sacrifice, the C|P level could result in Mongol hoards destroying all before them, at the D|Q stage the a benevolent overlord is not guaranteed, and you may only get order under the crushing weight of a dictator. Someone who interprets the will of the people for their own aggrandisement and in order to further their own selfish ends.

The D|Q stage is referred to as an Absolutionist existential state where everything is clear cut, good or bad, and that is just how it is. It thrives on the idea of punishing the bad and rewarding the good, and it serves again to re-cohere a larger group of individuals. With the D|Q stage of Consciousness, the tribe can increase in size to be a nation state, as it becomes exceedingly good at building the group cohesion that occurs at an ethnocentric level of group perception.

For an individual, this stage is usually at it's peak when a person ponders that "the world would be a whole lot better if everyone thought as I did". This is the "why can't we all just agree and get along" stage and it can and often does work for the immediate ethnocentric group. You can construct a very high level of agreement in a population when everyone is basically drinking from the same cool aid.

At this stage we also start to see how the transition occurred between levels, and a particularly good contemporary example of the transition between C|P and D|Q is that of the prison. The convicted individual will be sent to prison because the were egocentrically operating outside the law (C|P) but when in prison, the greatest irony is that they are then subject to a deadly serious set of rules that are basically incongruent with the rest of society yet which never really advance to the next state of consciousness. Prisoners themselves have a curious set of behaviours in prison where the dominant individual will be able to look you in the eye, but the non-dominant individual will not. The structure of this system of domination will actively prevent the development of empathy, because empathy can only form through the face to face recognition in others. If most prisoners never look at each others face, then the required group memes of empathy never develop properly and the "top dogs" are those who are probably most walled off from their emotions (Machiavellians) or completely unable to have them (psychopaths). In general a prison is full of empathically incapable persons who because they do not understand the signalling ability of fear and sadness are less likely to display fear and/or sadness. The group then develops in a downward spiral where empathy is weakness.

In another example where C|P transits to D|Q but not as you would expect, consider the biker gang or the street gang. The individuals will self label as socially rebellious, that is they rebel against the mainstream or larger organisation group construct. However when they put on their jacket or their colours, they become absolute conformists to the social structure in which they operate (smaller organisation group construct). From one perspective the rebel is seen as a C|P egotist but they can also be viewed as D|Q absolute conformists. The take home point is in understanding that this distinction really refers to the area of perception that the individual has. A person may be an absolute conformist within a subgroup whilst rebelling in the larger group.

But the strict adherence to a higher authority creates a host of problems associated with logic. The D|Q level of absolute determinism is challenged by the enquiring mind that is not satisfied with the "truth" as laid out in dogma. This is because new information gets added, the pre-frontal cortex is subtly changed as the context of the experience is changed. For example, the society an individual belongs to may have an interpretation of a dogma that is at odds with another societies interpretation of the very same dogma. Competing memes end up in outright war, as equally unequivocal sides purport to know the absolute truth and they will kill anyone who disagrees. Where the B|O animist stage can lead to things like virgin sacrifice, the C|P egotistic stage resulting in barbarian hordes, the D|Q becomes a problem when it becomes fundamentalist. Add to this other memes from D|Q like 'an eye for an eye' will create an ongoing cycle of violence.

Some of the very big problems in the world come from competing Absolutionist positions. Often atheists will go directly to the argument which states that religion causes war. But actually it is more accurate to say that it is competing Absolutionist positions which is at fault. Actually the cause of large scale conflict often has more to do with resources (land, money, access to minerals, food resources etc) and the selfishly motivated machiavellian dictator (C|P dysfunction) who manages to manipulate the large group to enter into conflict with another group and they use the Absolutionist (D|Q) position expressed in their particular dogma in order to do it. Wars are fought by young men who believe in a cause, but the are mobilised by old men who have something to gain or loose.

Like it's precedent stages, the D|Q Absolutionist stage of consciousness can go horribly wrong, the result being open war. And it can get locked into this stage very easily because one side will not acknowledge the position of another. In fact the very idea of alternate positions is the fundamental existential problem that is faced by the D|Q stage. There is always some very good artwork that deals with this problem. When you can see the hurt on the faces of the people that your side is attacking, where the pain and suffering of "us" is exactly the same as the pain and suffering of "them". There is an entire library of antiwar songs that attempt to encapsulate this dilemma. "War! What is it good for! Absolutely nothing!" or "Imagine there's no heaven..." or "I hope the Russians love their children too" and the list goes on. This existential problem is probably most succinctly encapsulated by Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet. "I am hurt. A plague o' both your houses!".

What needs to happen, and often what is not happening, is that both sides of the conflict need to "chill out a bit". This is stated a bit flippantly, but it really is what needs to happen. During the conflagration, the sympathetic nervous system is stimulated in it's extreme and the "fight / flight" activation becomes dominant. In this state it is literally impossible to fully engage the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, because it is constantly being overrun by the amygdala (emotions) as it attempts to survive. By "chilling out", that is by relaxing, the PFC can again be brought into the decision making process. In order to advance this, what needs to happen is a quietening of the aggression that dominates. Calmness, stillness and peace however can only occur when the individual is made to feel safe. What needs to happen is fundamentally biblical in nature because to stop the conflagration you need to make your enemy feel safe so they can overcome their predominance of amygdala activation. Essentially you need to "love your enemy, and pray for those who persecute you". Pretty tall order when they are bombing your village or flying planes into your skyscrapers.

But it is through the calmness that the enquiring mind is emergent. The re-activation of the PFC will allow the pain and fear on the enemies faces to be seen. Often, quite spontaneously, it is the creative pursuits that can come to drive through the Absolutionist positions and build a bridge to understanding.

It's the quiet mind that can develop the empathy for a larger group. But all the noise of the Absolutionist and the pounding out of their dogma through the broadcast medium of communication delivery that prevent us from seeing that we actually don't need to fight. That we are all part of McLuhan's 'global village'.

"Our side believes fervently that we are right, and their side believes fervently that they are right." This is the core of the existentialist dilemma that needs to be faced at the D|Q level of consciousness. How can both sides be right?

Like the B|O Animistic boundary with the C|P egocentric, again the need erupts to explore other possibilities. To discover conceptually and to enquire and explore academically. At the end of the C|P stage of consciousness the prime mover of consciousness is simple curiosity. To end wars and conflict there has to be a curiosity to discover and through this an understanding and compassion to see the subjectivity of the other side. But it starts in the quiet realm, sort of off to the side, that comes with curiosity. Where the thought "hmmm, I wonder ...". It is no wonder that religions also teach prayer and meditation. It helps.

What emerges is the E|R Multiplistic-achievist (scientific/strategic) existential state (orange) where the enquiring individual is able to stand back and logically reason out what is going on in the world. This stage of consciousness gives birth to the hypothetico-deductive method we see in science, the blind lady justice and the impartiality of the jury process, and it fosters the rise of democratic processes. The E|R stage is about rational decision making where there are many ways to perceive something, and allows for the application of Ockham's Razor, saying that the hypothesis with fewer assumptions (unknowns) is most likely correct. At this stage of consciousness it is about shedding light on the unknowns, and is concretised by the formation of advance schooling and universities. The E|R stage of consciousness also gives rise to mechanistic thinking and to large and complex bureaucratic management processes.

The E|R stage returns the focus of action from the benefit of the group to the benefit of the individual, albeit extremely curtailed by the group. Again the previous stages are not lost, but rather superseded and augmented somewhat. The dominant moralistic framework would be to do what ever is in your best interest so long as it does not bring down the reprisals of others. This exploration and discovery is an individualistic enterprise but rather than the physical exploration of the early C|P egocentric, this is really about the conceptual exploration of science, literature, the arts and philosophy. It is also at the core of the engine that drives the modern capitalist system of exchange and ultimately through this consumerism.

This stage is collinear with the philosophical leaning of Objectivism promoted most strongly by Ayn Rand the author of Atlas Shrugged, a utopian pseudo science fiction novel which has come to dominate the political realm of the contemporary right wing politician in the U.S., a noted supporter of which is Alan Greenspan amongst others. It is worth quoting a central character in the book, John Galt who says "The political system we will build is contained in a single moral premise: no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force." The vision exposed by this book, and it would seem by a lot of contemporary right wing commentators, is that the world is messed up because the social state exists and a pure laissez faire system should replace it, and whilst a bit simplistic, the central argument of Rand is that of rational self-interest. Note the return to a self centred phenomenological organisation of experience.

However the E|R vision starts to enter a bit of a grey area, and all philosophical arguments against objectivism aside (and they are complex and many), the E|R vision does not specifically exclude cheating, it merely stipulates that you should not get caught.

Some people referred to as having a machiavellian structure love this world view. This is because throughout time an arms race has existed between lying and detection of lying. When a typical person lies, the body will have a somatic arousal to the act of lying, this is the primary data that a electro-encephalograph and other lie detectors work from. But before the lie detector, humans would evaluate the truth of what someone is saying by the somatic expression in the person. Essentially facial cues specifically, and bodily cues in general, tell us what is really happening in the other person. Even when trying to hide the lie or omission, there are micro expressions which give the game away. That is unless the person is a machiavellian, who unlike 'normals' can peruse the vision of a rational self interest, to the detriment of others and easily get away with.

And this also leads into the eventually problem with E|R academic stage of Consciousness. What this level can highlight is how an harmonic can occur between different levels. Say for example a person who never really fully developed empathic understanding of others is able to live and work in an E|R world. They will cope relatively well if they are able to stay under the radar of other peoples wrath. The E|R phenomenological world then can lead to the extreme excesses we see in the capitalist system. But it is not enough to return to a D|Q absolutistic world view that by way of a communist system, something more advanced has to take its place.

The classic hypothetical situation that emulates this existentialist problem is called "the tragedy of the commons" and was expressed by Garret Hardin in an article of the same name (1968). The problem is expressed in terms of a common land where cows could be allowed to graze. If thirty farmers each with one cow were to use this commons, and given that the land size itself could accommodate 30 cows without degrading the plot over time, then it will work. However any single farmer may decide that they want to put more than one cow on the plot, in Ayn Rand's view, acting without violence to pursue a self interest. Mathematically what happens is that when individuals act in a seemingly logical but self-interested way, the commons will end up with too many cows and the plot will be degraded over time, such that everyone eventually suffers.

Consider a microbe in a test tube that is able to double it's population every minute, replacing the food medium as it does so. Given the mathematics of compound accumulation, after one hour this hypothetical test-tube will be full. What this means is that at 59 minutes, everything looks hunky-dory, because hey, there is still 50% of the medium left, so what's your problem? So a rational self-interest is ok, so long as a persons perception or phenomenological experience of the world begins with the premise that the world is infinite. And like in other areas, the objectivist view of the world will destroy itself. Again we come across a set of paradoxes that confound a stage of consciousness, for Randian self interest, the paradox is that an objective view of reality based on a persons perception will fall apart psychologically if you mention, say, a monothematic delusion like tinnitus. Is the ringing in my ears there or not, I am perceiving it but does that mean it is there?

The objectivists also wanted to build a philosophy based on mathematically constructed sentences, problem is that mathematics also has things like the square root of minus 1 and the Möbius strip. The problem with a reductionist way of thinking is that it is destroyed by a paradox.

Unable to face the paradox, the objectivist view of the world, will extend the boundaries of their level of consciousness to the point of breaking. And once more there is the making of a "dark side" to the level of consciousness. The malevolent side to E|R consciousness is rampant individualistic consumerism. When E|R gets stuck, it gets stuck in a horrible way, and what you end up with a degradation of the environment and a depletion of systems that underpin the E|R technology. This is a 'slow boiling frog' problem because each successive step will seem relatively harmless, that is until the whole of the ecology just collapses, as happened for example, to the Cod fisheries of the Grand Banks of the north east coast of America.

At present China argues quite rightly that they should be able to expand their industry and with this their CO2 consumption, because the west has been doing excessive consumption for years. On the other hand the relatively small economy of Australia is arguing that they should not act on climate change because anything they do will be inconsequential given the vast CO2 output of China, even though Australia is the largest emitter of CO2 per capita.

In the E|R neurological stage of consciousness we have the tools which solve a lot of the problems of living. But eventually the solutions themselves can come to seem hollow and meaningless. Another existential crisis emerges which challenges the notion that if having one plasma TV makes me feel better, then having ten would be ten times as good, i.e.: more is not necessarily better. Also being challenged is the idea that some people will have invested and struck it rich whilst others are being passed over. There is again a return to the ideas of empathy, however this time it has more to do with universal human rights.

To cope with the ideas of universal human rights and equality that will help build and cohere a group instead of leading it to ruin by resource reduction, the F|S relativistic stage of consciousness emerges. Very aptly given the "green" colour, this stage looks towards understanding the holistic nature of the world in which we live, with the multiple possible subjectivities that are possible therein. The lecture theatre of science is replaced with the round circle of chairs for sharing experiences. The group that is ceded to, can be at any level of family, village, nation or globe and the goal of decision making is to achieve a consensus. The action will be expressed as "not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for you country."

At the previous E|R Multiplistic-achievist, academic stage of consciousness nothing is ever really proven, you just go about building the logic that surrounds any particular idea, subject this idea to scientific enquiry and build a best case hypothesis for what may be occurring. There is always a built in caveat that you don't really know what is occurring and later data may change everything. However this also presupposes that an absolute 'truth' exists, it's just that we can't ever really know the veridically of what that truth is, and only a best guest is possible.

At the F|S stage of relativistic thinking, the answer lies in the deconstruction of the absolute position. What emerges is the relative position where one side believes what they believe because of their relative position. Like Kohlberg's sixth stage of moral reasoning, the F|S relativistic stage of consciousness brings in context to the debate and must include an understanding of the multiple possible interpretations of reality. But not only in subjective/objective language of post-modern philosophical thought, this is also connected to relativity in general (or general relativity). Science is not done away with, rather it is augmented to include the new data and the language changes to become the "observer" and the "observed" the "subjective" and "objective".

At the F|S stage of relativistic thinking, the dominant perception of 'the group' changes from an ethnocentric view of the world to a global view of the world. A typical sentiment would be "we are all humans living in a space capsule called planet earth, and we need to work out how to live harmoniously within finite boundaries". Where the capitalist/consumer would fail to see any boundaries, thinking that exponential growth is not only possible, it's a requirement, the green eco-living environmentalist will point out that you can't have an infinitely growing thing (economy) within a finite thing (Earth).

Arguably, the first green was Rev Thomas Malthus (1798 - An Essay on the Principle of Population) who proposed that eventually we would run out farm land. Successive generations of capitalist (E|R) have pointed out that with advancements in agriculture, Malthus was wrong, but the contra argument is the his "when" was wrong whilst his basic proposition is fundamentally correct. If we need population to be increasing then we will eventually run out of room. We can build down, we can build up, but eventually we will run out of room. At the present rate of population growth, and excluding the land mass of Antarctica and Greenland, there will be 1 person per quarter acre block in 2050, and 1 person per square metre in 150 years. In 1000 years the weight of the people on the earth will outweigh the earth and in 10,000 years if each child were place on their parents shoulders we will expanding outward from earth at the speed of light. Clearly not possible, and so something has to give, which is exactly the point. What will give? Oil, farmland, water. The only hope really, in staying with the E|R academic / capitalist system is to hope and prayer something like 'anti-gravity' is developed, and the objectivist (Randian) view of the world is that it surely will be. However the eco-aware F|S green will say this is a bit of a gamble we should not and do not need to take.

The most likely outcome will be extinction because this sort of thing happens all the time in biological systems when a species outgrows and significantly alters its underlying environmental constraints. So the application of Ockham's razor (an E|R construct) would suggest the best possible way forward is to use the precautionary principle (another E|R construct) and try to do something to arrest rampant consumerism (a problem when E|R gets stuck). Notice again how the later stage of F|S population peril will augment on earlier stages of E|R logic. Just as the uber-elite in Rands vision of utopia (E|R) cannot build a skyscraper by themselves an actually need the physical effort of a workforce that has every right to bargain collectively to help those who have less (a D|Q construct). No one level of consciousness exists in isolation, they all require having first been through previous levels.

Instead the existentialist crisis of an unsustainably growing population can be met with an approach that attempts to balance the inputs and outputs of the economic system such that there is a balance which leads to sustainability. At present the whole debate around climate change is at the boundary between E|R and F|S. The E|R side literally does not see that the atmosphere is finite. It is not part of their phenomenological world view and they contend that you can pump an increasing (an thus infinite) amount of CO2 into it without consequence. The F|S view, which is rooted in the E|R tradition of scientific enquiry is seeing that something different is happening and the rate of climate change is far too rapid to be safe. Once again the higher level of Consciousness will augment previous levels, such that the environmental basis of the ecological argument necessarily must have the building blocks of scientific enquiry at it's base. The core difference between climate change sceptics and the climate change research is actually one of a phenomenological world view. Ask a laissez-faire capitalist what the circumference of the world is, and for some reason they start to get uncomfortable? More specifically they have an EMOTIONAL response to a conceptual piece of information. Ask them if anti-gravity exists and their denial is based on downright frustration.

But some luminaries have had this conversion on the road to Damascus, arguably the most profound being Ray Anderson’s, founder and chairman of Interface Carpets which is a hero's journey to environmental sustainability. Often this transition for the very successful E|R capitalist manifests as philanthropy (Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Steve Bulmer, Richard Branson, Dick Smith.... the list is too long to even start. etc). All having a fundamental shift when they realise that the world has problems that need to be addressed.

Like the B|O Animistic and D|Q Absolutionist, it is a return to understanding physical laws out there that must be taken into consideration when undertaking individual action. More specifically it is the understanding of physical laws in a LARGER out there. That is, the phenomenological view of the world has increased. It is also a return to the group and to belonging to the herd once again, with "we all have to live together in peace and harmony" etc.

Saying something like this last expression "...like to live in a just and sustainable world" may seem flippant, and surely tree-hugging, and true enough smelly hippies cop a lot of insult, but the F|S level of consciousness, like every other level, has a malevolent side to it as well, often referred to as the "mean green meme" by Grave's successors. One aspect of this is that the F|S person is so intrinsically orientated around the idea of equality that they struggle with the very idea of different levels of consciousness. In a simplistic understanding of developmental psychology in general, the idea of people being at different levels immediately brings with it, connotations of some sort of judgement about inequality that inevitably must lead to racism. All to redily the conversation will turn to Nietzsche and Fascism. This is the immediate objection that F|S individuals will have with the Gravesian theory of consciousness, because in the F|S way of viewing the world each individual is valued as equal and imposing a hierarchy on this would mean that some are "better" than others.

But there are two observations to be made from this. The first is that all along there has been the stipulation that each stage builds on top of the previous necessary stages, and that this does not necessarily imply that one is better than the next. What is important is that no stage can exist in perpetuity because there are fundamental existential problems with it that need to be overcome. The second observation is that this valence judgement about higher levels being better is an existential problem that the F|S individual is faced with. But it gets really tricky because there is a tendency to then talk about race in terms of a level of consciousness and with the automatic assumption that one level is better, there is thus a tendency to sound racist even though nothing racial is being implied... because ultimately it is consciousness and memes of a group that are being discussed not the specific racial makeup of the group itself.

The 'mean green meme' is about the advancement of political correctness. Here there is a return to a position that everyone must behave according to the rules we have achieved consensus upon, and resonates with Absolutionist position of D|Q. It is of course a nonsense, because if someone were to deviate from the politically correct meme in question, then ipso-facto the consensus was never really reached in the first place. The problem here is that the F|S level of consciousness has confused the subjective and the objective interpretations of their world. Returning to the problem of levels of consciousness being seen as racist, what is happening is that the F|S basic predisposition is to see the world as equal and it "feels" wrong to see any other way of view it.

That it "feels" wrong is the key to unlocking the very problem of "F|S". To explain, first consider something that has no valent (good/bad) quality to it. Consider the ability to do maths. Now a two week old child can not add numbers together, or if they could, they can't do complex differential and integral calculus. There are a lot of adults who can't do differential calculus, but who can add numbers together. The very fundamental neurological underpinnings to achieve an understanding of complex maths can be taught to a child, but it is nonetheless ...taught. Only over many generations do the very best mathematicians advance the ability to do more complex maths. This idea around the advancement of maths seems fairly benign, because it is an emotionally neutral thing to say. That any individual can't do differential calculus does not mean that they are some how 'lesser than'. We are dealing with an emotionally neutral topic, yet we can accept that there are neurological underpinnings that pertain to mathematical ability. At some level the maths is being performed on a neurological substrate.

But there must also be neurological underpinnings to consciousness.

The problem is that an F|S individual will "feel" that it is wrong to suggest different levels of consciousness, but this is a subjective organisation of experience. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the other extreme of this argument which suggests all races are different and should be treated as such, is ALSO a subjective "feeling" based organisation of experience that results in racism. The point is that both extremes are subjective organisation of experience.

To explain objective and subjective more fully, and as a point of deviation or extension of the work of Graves, (which ironically depends on your subjective point of view), the ways in which we build schemas of the world need to be clearly defined. The argument presented here is that we have two distinct yet connected neurological structures that are responsible for organising our experience, where one mechanism will intone a subjective feeling, the other will infer an objective understanding. Where we may have only one neurological structure for understanding mathematics, we seem to have two for doing the job of making sense of the world we experience. The first question to ask is whether or not it is possible to have two neurological mechanisms doing roughly equivalent jobs.

To answer this, and speaking generally, in nature and throughout evolution, we see the same systems being reused in slightly altered forms all of the time. For instance the haemoglobin molecule, which is responsible for oxygen capture and transport in animals is a structure of 273 atoms with an iron atom somewhere at it's centre. If you were to take this iron atom and replace it with magnesium, you would have something fundamentally (but not exactly) like chlorophyll, which is the transport molecule in plants. Same complex structure, slightly altered to a different purpose, but still both involved in energy transport. Within a single organism another example would be the massive concentration of nerve endings to produce sensory organs, from the tongue and olfactory bulb which 'tastes', to the follicles in the inner ear that 'hear', to the cone receptors in the eye which 'see', they are all just modified nerve endings, adapted over evolutionary time to meet different needs, but still involved it the process of perception.

In neurology, the story of adaptation has been to build better and better mechanism for taking in information, organisation it, understanding it and then building quickly referenced maps or schemas from which to draw upon (extrapolate) at a later date were similar environmental conditions to occur.

It is entirely possible that the neurology to organise experience has evolved more than once.

In mammals there is a common neurological structure called the amygdala, which typically sits at the top of the somatic autonomic nervous system and integrates information from the body. The amygdala is what is understood to be associated with emotion and feeling. When mammals first evolved, they developed a useful trick for coping with dangerous situations through the "flight or fight" response known as the sympathetic autonomic nervous system. Unlike reptiles, whose vision is based on movement, the mammal did not have to freeze in response to danger and hope the predator will not notice them. Instead they could run away or fight back, and it is only when the mammalian system breaks down (like a frozen operating system on a computer) that the underlying freeze response occurs (in computer analogy, the bios clock still works). The contrary but interdependent system associated with the sympathetic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system which enables the organism to rest down, slow heart rate, ingest food, process nutrients, to sleep, and to build back the immune system that might have degraded through excess cortisol. The parasympathetic response, through the adjustment in hormones and neurotransmitters, also enables the organism to take time to integrate and work out the information from their experience, i.e.: to build the maps or schemas of experience.

What might have happened for humans however is that a second integration system has evolved in the pre-frontal cortex (including the basal ganglia and associated structures), a feature of the homo-sapiens brain is that it is distinctly different, even from our immediate evolutionary siblings. Here the information is much less somatically based and is more conceptual and abstract in nature. We also know that the pre-frontal cortex is an area of the brain that develops properly only as the infant grows a bit older and is subject to several growth spurts not the least of which happen during adolescence.

Theory then is that there are two overlapping and interacting mechanisms for the organisation of experience. A lot of previous thinking has tried to label the hemispheres of the brain in a similar way, however the known adaptive ability of both hemispheres does not carry this beyond the left side being associated with language (but may be reversed, particularly in left handed people) and the right is usually associated with holistic thinking, maths and creativity. A simple hemisphere argument is limited, but what's called the "lateralization of function" means that the different hemispheres can take on different specialist jobs as humans evolved. The lateralization of function may have hinted at a real design differentiation that does exist between the amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex.

With the amygdala, the information is always subjective in nature, where it is the internal sense of reality that is being examined. When someone says they are "angry" then they are always going to be correct and it would be wrong to tell them that they are not (as so often happens). However the subjective understanding of the world can really only be relevant to the emotional way in which someone is perceiving the world. How it makes them feel. The amygdala was never designed for abstract conceptual understanding, and so this job falls to the pre-frontal cortex and associated structures where the main evolutionary role is to organise objective information.

In the levels of consciousness discussed, the movement between internal and external worlds is reminiscent of this dual process model for making sense of the world. The A|N stage, the C|P stage and the E|R stage are all amygdala driven, orientated around a "known" way in the world and acting quickly on gut feelings. However the alternating B|O, D|Q, and F|S stages are brought into existence by the ability to better makes sense of the world and organise the reality we experience. One stream is predominately sympathetic, fight or flight, individual survival and the other is parasympathetic, resting down, group cohesion and making sense of things. Sure there is overlap, that's because the other contra system to any one system is never totally absent.

The problem is that the subjective emotional understanding of the world is confused with the objective conceptual understanding of the world.

In this problem the conservative politician will say "homosexuality is wrong, because I just know it is". What is probably occurring is that the person is feeling say "disgust" at the idea of homosexuality because it anathema to their subjective world view and this is being interpreted not for what it is (an internal emotional state) but as a window into a conceptual understanding of the world, where ... "it is just wrong!".

Similarly the liberal activist who gets up at the end of a public forum to ask a question, but just ends up spouting off about their particular gripe, is being subjectively driven by their own sense of helplessness, (an emotion), all the whilst thinking that they are making a significant objective and rational contribution to the debate.

And the opposite can happen as well. For example, the scientist, or the criminal investigator, who decides to move in a slightly different direction because they are acting on a "hunch". This sounds like an emotional organisation of experience, but is it? Here the subconscious conceptual impressions of the data though an intuitive process is letting them "feel" their way to a possible solution, but it is probably more because they have been subconsciously building a better conceptual schema of what is actually going on in their work. Intuition is often a conceptual organisation of experience that is interpreted as a "feeling". The great leaps in science that were based on "hunches" were probably due to the fact that the scientist in question has been ruminating on the data for years.

In a similarly way, the criminal investigator will be taking in a whole range of detail about a case in a subconscious way, where it will be organised without them really being aware of it, such that they will then think they are acting on a gut feeling, but it's really just previously assimilated data they are not consciously aware off.

The F|S level can bring about massive shifts in creative energy, however it is limited by the confusion between objective and subjective organisation of experience. When holistic problem solving (F|S) is coupled with the training in reason and logic that precedes it (E|R) then a a true seismic shift in consciousness occurs.

At this point Graves suggests that the individual moves from the first six "survival" levels of existence into the first of the "being" levels. The best way to understand this transition is that the individual learns to accept all that has gone before, where all behaviour and ways of seeing the world are useful when viewed in context. The key is here is CONTEXT and being able to witness your own self.

The first six levels of consciousness, termed the "egoic levels", are superseded by the "being levels" which begin with understanding the world in context, such that when appropriate it is ok to be any one of the previous levels of consciousness. Playing a game of tennis you may want the egotistical C|P of just going out there to win. When formulating a plan of action to overcome an significant obstacle at work then it may be better to be F|S and work out the best solution for all. In the break room at work, the best modality for interacting with colleagues is the B|O approach of communal sharing and interaction, gossip around the 'village well', about what's happening in the 'village' where you work. When investing in the stock market you need E|R and when building a network of roads for a country you probably want to plan for the community D|Q but implement it in a way that is logically efficient and cost effective E|R, but does not impact to badly on the physical environment (F|S).

This integration of egoic function is what transcends the person to the being levels, at which we reach another harmonic where the first being level, the G|T (yellow) is a person is trying to work out how to survive in the world so that they do not have to worry about being chained to the economic wheel. Graves also nominally calls it the A'|N' level because of its similarity with A|N. The sea-change or tree-change phenomena depicts this move, but so does becoming self employed or taking on a profession that you are truly passionate about.

Another hurdle for the F|S to overcome is that they must realise it might be necessary to include some of the aspects of the hated E|R that precedes F|S. Often people wake to find themselves at one level of consciousness only to realise that they never really experience the previous levels. They likely did, but it could be an integration problem, or they deny the previous stage. Which is a problem if, at a being level, its the integration of all previous egoic stages that is required. On the surface, to the liberal activist green, this may be viewed as "selling out", but it is also about seeking self realisation as well as group cohesion in a positive and sustainable way. To do this you really need 'purpose'.

Because the F|S individual may be faced with a fundamental problem of survival, i.e.: not being able to pay the rent, then the key objective, the existential problem to overcome is that they have to consider how they can live in the world and this requires them to accept the previous levels of consciousness that may not be fully developed. It may often occur to the fundamentalist green that it is probably better that they do not have children who will only cause the further degradation of the planet, and in the extreme sense it may even be better for the planet if they just stop breathing. Obviously this is an existential crisis about the nature of being itself, and it leads to problems of hopelessness, drug addiction, depression, self harming, suicide etc, the most recent incarnation of which is the "emo" (emotional), a Gen Y expression of the Gen X Goth, which again is similar in function to the hippy (baby boomers), which even goes as far back as the Bohemian movement.

At it's core, all these problems with the self of an F|S individual is a problem of feeling helpless. Survival requires the opposite of being helpless, and often the only possible way out for the body that experiences such dire states of hopelessness is to shut down the entire system. The master switch on the body that turns off all feeling is the last resort of the desperately fragmented and is commonly understood as depression.

Some F|S individuals will see the world in a way which could be fair and just, they see what needs to happen and the inevitable extinction event that will result if nothing changers. They cannot understand others who cannot see the finite limitations of the 'spaceship earth' we inhabit. They see a world that is illogical and corrupt, and they get incredibly frustrated when others wont hear, or are unable to hear their message.

Another contradiction exists here, and it goes something like this. A hypothetical F|S protestor, may for example, understand that earths resources are limited and that market structures should reflect this, but the do not understand why others cannot see them. With someone who is F|S keep asking "why" and they eventually get to the very edge of what the F|S meme will cope with. Why do people pollute? Why are they greedy? Why are people corrupt? Eventually the F|S individual will just give up and say "Because they are stupid!". But these other people in E|R or D|Q levels of consciousness are not actually stupid, they are just not experiencing the world in the same way that the F|S individual is. But this means being challenged by the notion that it is not intelligence perse, but consciousness.

To move beyond the six stages of egoic consciousness the key word is 'surrender'. Surrender to the way things are, the path your life has taken, the fact that not everything can be remedied. As the Alcoholic Anonymous 'serenity prayer' suggests, surrender is about the knowing difference between what you can and can not do. Again there is a contradiction here, a paradox or koan, where the surrendering is also about allowing helplessness to be ok, however this surrendering is also an ACTION and is therefore not helplessness.

Helplessness is transient, like all states, but when it is not integrated properly, when the self system fragments to the point where helplessness cannot be integrated properly, then trauma results. What we are seeing now is an unprecedented level of trauma in F|S individuals, because at this stage, when chronically maladaptive, they are less able to integrate the self successfully.

There instead needs to develop a witness consciousness that is able to step outside the ego in order to observe it, and it is with this witness consciousness that we learn the true nature of choice. There is a whole lot more that can be said about the further stages of consciousness, but for this discussion we leave this tail end not closed. We'll return to it in a later section when talking about what individuals and societies can do in order to advance the spiral of consciousness, and basically it goes a lot further than just recycling bottles and writing a letter to your local member of parliament.

So we are nearly halfway there. What comes next is an extrapolation of the information so far presented where a connection between the history of communication and their correlate shift in consciousness is constructed. Then we follow with two new ideas, the first being a matrix that helps to explain how groups make decision which ultimately suggests an integrated approach and finally back to how the self is formed and how this is fractally related to the group. Bringing it all together to explain where to next in order to sort out the current madness.