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Reflections And Warnings - An Interview With Aaron Russo {Full Film}

Manly Hall - The 21st Century : A New Beginning

The Problem of the Children of the World.

Problems of Humanity - Chapter II - The Problem of the Children of the World

The Problem of the Children of the World

This problem is, without exception, the most urgent confronting humanity today. The future of the race lies in the hands of the young people everywhere. They are the parents of the coming generations and the engineers who must implement the new civilization. What we do with them and for them is momentous in its implications; our responsibility is great and our opportunity unique.

This chapter deals with the children and adolescents, under sixteen years old. These two groups are the most hopeful element in a world which has fallen to pieces before our eyes. They are the guarantee that our world can be rebuilt and - if we have learned anything from past history and its dire consequences in our lifetime - rebuilt along different lines, with different objectives and incentives and with well-defined goals and carefully considered ideals.

Let us remember, however, that visionary, mystical hopes and dreams, wishful thinking and the formulation of highly organized plans upon paper are useful as far as they indicate interest, a sense of responsibility and possible objectives but they are of small importance in any effective, transitional enterprise unless there is a grasp of the immediate problem and of the immediate possibilities, plus a willingness to effect those compromises which will lay the ground for later successful work. This work is largely that of education. Hitherto, there has been little effort to bring about a bridging between the needs of the future and the present forms of education. These forms have apparently failed to equip [33] humanity for successful and cooperative living and the newer aspects of mental training; no scientific bridging has been done and little attempt has been made to correlate the best of the present methods (and not all are bad) with future ways of developing the youth of the world so that it can cope with a new civilization which is inevitably upon its way. The visionary idealist has hitherto held the field against the established modes of teaching; his impracticality and his refusal to compromise has thus slowed up the process and humanity has paid the price. The day has now come when the practical mystic and the man of high mental development as well as of spiritual vision will take his place, thus providing a training which will enable the youth of any nation to integrate successfully into the world picture.

We start with the realization that our educational systems have not been adequate; they have failed to train children for right living; they have not inculcated those methods of thinking and acting which will lead to right human relations - those relations which are so essential to happiness, to success and to a full experience in any chosen sphere of human enterprise.

The best minds and the clearest thinkers in the educational field are constantly endorsing these ideas; the progressive movements in education have done something to remove old abuses and to instill new techniques, but they still constitute so small a minority that they are relatively ineffectual. It is well to bear in mind that had the teaching given to the young during the past few hundred years been of a different nature, the world war might never have happened.

Many and differing reasons have been given for the total war which engulfed us. This has raised the question whether the failure of our educational systems or the ineptitude of the churches may not be the basic [34] causes behind the others. But - the war happened. Our old civilization has been swept away. There are those who would like to see that civilization return and the old structure again rebuilt; they yearn for a peaceful return to the situation before the war. They must not be allowed to rebuild along the old lines or to use the old blueprints, even though necessarily we must build upon the old foundations. It is the task of the educators to prevent this.

Let us be willing to recognize that those countries in which the old mode of education is still peacefully practiced may be not only dangerous to themselves because they are perpetuating the bad old ways, but that they also constitute a menace to those countries which are in the happy position of being able to change their educational institutions and thus inaugurate a better way of preparing their youth for total living. Education is a deeply spiritual enterprise. It concerns the whole man and that includes his divine spirit.

Education in the hands of any church would spell disaster. It would feed the sectarian spirit, foster the conservative, reactionary attitudes so strongly endorsed, for instance, by the Catholic Church and the fundamentalists in the Protestant churches. It would train bigots, build barriers between man and man and eventually lead to a powerful and inevitable swing away from all religion on the part of those who would finally learn to think as they reach adult manhood. This is not an indictment of religion. It is an indictment of the past methods of the churches and of the old theologies which have failed to present Christ as He essentially is, which have worked for riches, prestige, and political power and which have striven with all available means to increase their membership and to imprison the free spirit in man. There are wise and good churchmen today who realize this and who are [35] steadfastly working for the new age approach to God, but they are relatively few in number. Nevertheless, they are waging war against theological crystallization and academic pronouncements. They will inevitably succeed and thus salvage the religious spirit.
Then let us endeavor to see what the goal of the new educational movement should be and what are the signposts on the way to that goal. Let us try to formulate a long range plan which will meet with no hindrance from the methods immediately employed, which will link the past and the future by using all that is true, beautiful and good (inherited from the past) but which will emphasize certain basic objectives which have hitherto been largely ignored. These newer techniques and methods must be developed gradually and will hasten the process of integrating the whole man.

There is no hope for the future world except in a humanity which accepts the fact of divinity, even whilst repudiating theology, which recognizes the presence of the living Christ, whilst rejecting man-made interpretations of Him and of His message, and which emphasizes the authority of the human soul.

The future which lies ahead is full of promise. Let us base our optimism upon humanity itself. Let us recognize the self-proven fact that there is a peculiar quality in every man, an innate, inherent characteristic to which one may give the name "mystical perception". This characteristic connotes an undying, though oft unrecognized, sense of divinity; it involves the constant possibility to vision and contact the soul and to grasp (with increasing aptitude) the nature of the universe. It enables the philosopher to appreciate the world of meaning and - through that perception - to touch Reality. It is, above all else, the power to love and to go out towards that which is other than the self. It confers the ability to grasp ideas. The history of mankind is [36] fundamentally the history of the growth of ideas, progressively realized and of man's determination to live by them; with this power goes the capacity to sense the unknown, to believe in the unproveable, to seek, search and demand the revelation of that which is hidden and undiscovered and which - century after century owing to this demanding spirit of investigation - is revealed. It is the power to recognize the beautiful, the true and the good and by means of the creative arts to prove their existence. It is this inherent, spiritual faculty which has produced all the great Sons of God, all truly spiritual people, all artists, scientists, humanitarians and philosophers and all who, with sacrifice, love their fellowmen.

Here lie the grounds for optimism and courage on the part of all true educators and here is the true incentive to all their efforts.

The Present Problem of Youth
The world, as known to people over forty years of age, has crumbled and is fast disappearing The old values are fading out and what we call "civilization" (that civilization we have thought so wonderful) is vanishing. Some of us are thankful it is so. Others regard it as a disaster. All of us are distressed that the means of its dissolution have brought so much agony and suffering to humanity everywhere.

Civilization might be defined as the reaction of humanity to the purpose and the activities of a particular world period and its type of thinking. In each age, some idea functions and expresses itself in both racial and national idealisms. Its basic trend down the centuries has produced our modern world and this has been materialistic. The aim has been physical comfort; science and the arts have been prostituted to the task of giving man a comfortable and if possible a beautiful [37] environment; all the products of nature have been subordinated to giving humanity things. The aim of education, generally speaking, has been to equip the child to compete with his fellow citizens in "making a living", in accumulating possessions and in being as comfortable and successful as possible.

This education has also been primarily competitive, nationalistic and, therefore, separative. It has trained the child to regard the material values as of major importance, to believe that his particular nation is also of major importance and that every other nation is secondary; it has fed pride and fostered the belief that he, his group and his nation are infinitely superior to other people and peoples. He is taught consequently to be a one-sided person with his world values wrongly adjusted and his attitudes to life distinguished by bias and prejudice. The rudiments of the arts are taught him in order to enable him to function with the needed efficiency in a competitive setting and in his particular vocational environment. Reading, writing and elementary arithmetic are regarded as minimum requirements, plus some knowledge of historical and geographical events. Some of the literature of the world is also brought to his attention. The general level of civilized information is relatively high, but it is biased and influenced by religious and national prejudices which are instilled into the child from his earliest years, but which are not innate. World citizenship is not emphasized; his responsibility to his fellowmen is systematically ignored; his memory is developed through the impartation of uncorrelated facts - most of them unrelated to daily living.

Our present civilization will go down in history as grossly materialistic. There have been many material epochs in history but none so generally widespread as the present or which have involved such untold millions. [38] We are constantly told that the cause of this war is economic; that is surely so but the reason is that we have demanded so much of comfort and of "things" in order to live "reasonably well". We require so much more than our forefathers needed; we prefer a soft and relatively easy life; the pioneering spirit (which is the background of all nations) has faded, in most cases, into a soft civilization. This is particularly true of the Western hemisphere. Our standard of civilized living is far too high from the standpoint of possessions and far too low from the angle of the spiritual values, or when subjected to an intelligent sense of proportion. Our modern civilization will not stand up to the acid test of value. A nation is today regarded as civilized when it sets a value on mental development, when it puts a premium on analysis and criticism and when all its resources are directed towards the satisfying of physical desire, towards the production of material things and towards the implementing of material purposes as well as towards dominating competitively in the world, towards the amassing of riches, the acquiring of property, the achievement of a high standard of material living and towards the cornering of the produce of the earth - largely for the benefit of certain groups of ambitious and wealthy men.

This is a drastic generalization but it is basically correct in its main implications, though incorrect where individuals are concerned. For this sad and dire situation (entirely of humanity's own making) we pay the penalty of war. Neither the churches nor our educational systems have been sound enough in their presentation of truth to offset this materialistic tendency. The tragedy is that the children of the world have paid and are paying the price of our wrongdoing. War has its roots in greed; material ambition has motivated all the nations without exception; all our planning has been [39] directed to the organization of the national life so that material possession, competitive supremacy and individual and national selfish interests would control. All nations, in their own way and degree, have contributed to this; none has clean hands and hence war. Humanity has the habit of selfishness and an inherent love of material possessions. This has produced our modern civilization and, for this reason, it is being changed.
The cultural factor in any civilization is its preservation and consideration of all the best the past has given, and its evaluation and study of the arts, the literature, the music and the creative life of all nations - past and present. It concerns the refining influence of these factors upon a nation and upon those individuals in a nation who are so situated (usually financially) that they can profit from them and appreciate them. The knowledge and understanding thus gained enable the man of culture to relate the world of meaning (as inherited from the past) to the world of appearances in which he lives and to regard them as one world, but one existing primarily for his individual benefit. When, however, to an appreciation of our planetary and racial inheritance, both creative and historical, he adds an understanding of the spiritual and moral values, then we have an approximation to what the truly spiritual man is intended to be. In relation to the total population of the planet, such men are few and far between, but they guarantee to the rest of humanity a genuine possibility.

Will cultured people realize their opportunity? Will our civilized citizens embrace the chance to build afresh - not a material civilization this time but a world of beauty and of right human relations, a world in which children can indeed grow into the likeness of the One Father and in which man can return to the simplicity of the spiritual values of beauty, truth and goodness? [40]

Yet, facing the worldwide reconstruction demanded and the well-nigh impossible task of salvaging the children and youth of the world, them are those today who are engaged in raising funds to rebuild stone churches and restore ancient buildings, thus demanding money which is sorely needed to restore broken bodies, to heal psychological wounds and to produce the warmth of love and understanding among those who believe that such qualities do not exist!

The Immediate Need of the Children
The magnitude of the problems to be faced may well leave us bewildered and at a loss how to answer the many questions which immediately arise in our minds. How can we lay the foundation for a long range program of reconstruction, of education and development as it affects the youth of the world and thus guarantee a new and better world? What basic plans must be laid which will be appropriate for so many differing races and nationalities? In the face of understandable hatreds and deep seated prejudices, how can we make a sound beginning?

The ethical and moral values among the children, particularly among the adolescent boys and girls, have deteriorated and the spiritual values will need awakening. There is direct evidence, however, that this spiritual awakening is already sweeping over Europe and that perhaps from that continent may come that new spiritual tide which will turn the entire world to better things and which will ensure that our materialistic civilization has gone, never to return. A spiritual renaissance is inevitable and is nowhere more needed than in those countries which have escaped the worst aspects of war. For this renaissance we must look and make preparation. [41]

The next urgent problem is surely the psychological rehabilitation of youth. It is a question whether the children of Europe, of China, of Great Britain and Japan will ever completely recover from the effects of war. The early and formative years of their lives have been spent under war conditions and - resilient as children are - there are bound to be certain traces left of what they have seen, heard and suffered. There will be exceptions, particularly in Great Britain and parts of France. Time alone will indicate the extent of the damage done. Much can, however, be offset and even obliterated by the wise action of parents, doctors, nurses and educators. It is sad to report that little has been planned by the psychologists and neurologists along this needed line of salvage; yet their specialized work is sorely needed and is as urgent a demand as that for food and clothing.

It is valuable also to remind ourselves in all our planning and with all our good intentions that the various nations, involved in the world war and whose countries have felt the full brunt of occupation, are laying their own plans. They know what they want; they are determined, as far as possible, to care for their own people, to salvage their own children, to restore their own special cultures and their lands. The task of the Great Powers (with their vast resources) and of the philanthropists and humanitarians throughout the world should be to cooperate with these people. It is not their task to impose upon them what they, from the vantage point of their position, believe to be good for them. These nations want understanding cooperation; they want the implements for agriculture, immediate relief in food and clothing, plus the wherewithal to start again their educational institutions, to organize their schools and to equip them with what is immediately required. They certainly do not want a horde of [42] well-meaning people taking over their educational or medical institutions, or imposing democratic, communistic or any other particular ideology upon them. Naturally, the principles of Nazism and of Fascism must be swept away, but the nations must be free to work out their own destiny. They have each of them their own traditions, cultures and backgrounds. They are being forced to build anew but what they build must be their own; it must be distinctive of them and an expression of their own inner life. It is surely the function of the wealthier and free nations to help them to build so that the new world can come into being. Each nation must tackle the problem of its restoration in its own way.

This need not mean disunity; it should mean a richer and more colorful world. It need not mean separation or the building of barriers or the retiring behind walls of prejudice and racial bias. There are two major linking relationships which should be cultivated and which will bring about a closer understanding in the world of men. These are religion and education. In this chapter we are considering the factor of education which has in the past so greatly failed to promote world unity (as the war has proved) but which can in the future so wisely control.

We are today witnessing the slow but steady formation of international groups, banded together to preserve world security, to protect labor, to deal with world economics and to preserve the integrity and the sovereignty of nations whilst committing each and all to a definite part in the work of securing right human relations throughout the planet. Whether we agree or not with the details or the specific commitments proposed, the formation of international advisory councils, and above all, of the United Nations, are hopeful indications of the moving forward of humanity into a [43] world where right human relations are regarded as essential to the peace of the world, where goodwill is recognized and where provision is made for the implementing of those conditions which will prevent war and aggression.
In the field of education some such united action is also essential. Surely a basic unity of objectives should govern the educational systems of the nations, even though uniformity of method and of techniques may not be possible. Differences of language, of background and of culture will and should always exist; they constitute the beautiful tapestry of human living down the ages. But much that has hitherto militated against right human relations must and should be eliminated.

In the teaching of history, for instance, are we to revert to the old ways wherein each nation glorifies itself at the expense frequently of other nations, in which facts are systematically garbled, in which the pivotal points in history are the various wars down the ages - a history, therefore, of aggression, of the rise of a material and selfish civilization and one which has fed the nationalistic and, therefore, separate spirit, which has fostered racial hatreds and stimulated national prides? The first historical date usually remembered by the average British child is "William, the Conqueror, 1066". The American child remembers the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and the gradual taking of the country from its rightful inhabitants and perhaps the Boston Tea Party. The heroes of history are all warriors - Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, Richard Coeur de Lion, Napoleon, George Washington and many others. Geography is largely history in another form but presented in a similar manner - a history of discovery, investigation and seizure, followed frequently by wicked and cruel treatment of the inhabitants of the discovered lands. Greed, ambition, [44] cruelty and pride are the keynotes of our teaching of history and geography.

The wars, aggressions and thefts which have distinguished every great nation without exception are facts and cannot be denied. Surely, however, the lessons of the evils which they wrought (culminating in the war 1914-1945) can be pointed out and the ancient causes of present day prejudices and dislikes can be shown and their futility emphasized. Is it not possible to build our theory of history upon the great and good ideas which have conditioned the nations and made them what they are? To emphasize the creativity which has distinguished all of them? Can we not present more effectively the great cultural epochs which - suddenly appearing in some one nation - enriched the entire world and gave to humanity its literature, its art and its vision?

The world war has produced great migrations. Armies have marched and fought in every part of the world; persecuted peoples have escaped from one land to another; welfare workers have gone from country to country, serving the soldiers, salvaging the sick, feeding the hungry and studying conditions. The world today is very small and men are discovering (sometimes for the first time in their lives) that humanity is one and that all men, no matter what the color of their skin or the country in which they live, resemble each other. We are all intermingled today. The United States is composed of people from every known country; over fifty different races or nations compose the U.S.S.R. The United Kingdom is a Commonwealth of independent nations bound together into one group. India is composed of a multiplicity of peoples, religions and tongues and hence her problem. The world itself is a great fusing pot, out of which the One Humanity is emerging. This necessitates a drastic change in our [45] methods of presenting history and geography. Science has always been universal. Great art and literature have always belonged to the world. It is upon these facts that the education to be given to the children of the world must be built - upon our similarities, our creative achievements, our spiritual idealisms, and our points of contact. Unless this is done, the wounds of the nations will never be healed and the barriers which have existed for centuries will never be removed.
The educators who face the present world opportunity should see to it that a sound foundation is laid for the coming civilization; they should undertake that it is general and universal in its scope, truthful in its presentation and constructive in its approach. What initial steps the educators of the different countries take will inevitably determine the nature of the coming civilization. They should prepare for a renaissance of all the arts and for a new and free flow of the creative spirit in man. They should lay an emphatic importance upon those great moments in human history wherein man's divinity flamed forth and indicated new ways of thinking, new modes of human planning and thus changed for all time the trend of human affairs. These moments produced the Magna Carta; they gave emphasis, through the French Revolution, to the concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity; they formulated the American Bill of Rights, and on the high seas and in our own time and day they gave us the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms. These are the great concepts which must govern the new age with its nascent civilization and its future culture. If the children of today are taught the significance of these five great declarations and are, at the same time, taught the futility of hate and war, there is hope of a better and happier as well as of a safer world.

Two major ideas should immediately be taught to [46] the children of every country. They are: the value of the individual and the fact of the one humanity. The war boys and girls have learned from appearances that human life has small value; the fascist countries have taught that the individual is of no value except in so far as he implements the designs of some dictator. In other countries, some people and some groups - through hereditary position or financial assets - are regarded as of importance and the rest of the nation as of little importance. In still other countries, the individual regards himself of so much importance and his right to please himself of so much moment that his relation to the whole is entirely lost. Yet the value of the individual and the existence of that whole which we call Humanity are most closely related. This needs emphasizing. These two principles, when properly taught and understood, will lead to the intensive culture of the individual and then to his recognition of his responsibility as an integral part of the whole body of humanity.

We have touched upon the physical and psychological rehabilitation of the children and youth of the world. We have suggested that the textbooks be rewritten in terms of right human relations and not from the present nationalistic and separative angles. We have also pointed out certain basic ideas which should be immediately inculcated: the unique value of the individual, the beauty of humanity, the relation of the individual to the whole and his responsibility to fit into the general picture in a constructive manner and voluntarily; we have sought to have the futility of war, of greed and aggression emphasized and that we prepare for a great awakening of the creative faculty in man once security is restored; we have noted the imminence of the coming spiritual renaissance.

One of our immediate educational objectives must be the elimination of the competitive spirit and the [47] substitution of the cooperative consciousness. Here the question at once arises: How can one achieve this and at the same time bring about a high level of individual attainment? Is not competition a major spur to all endeavor? This has hitherto been so, but it need not be. The development of an atmosphere which will foster the child's sense of responsibility and set him free from the inhibitions which fear generates, will enable him to attain even higher results. From the standpoint of the educator, this will entail the creation of the correct atmosphere around the child and in this atmosphere certain qualities will flourish and certain characteristics of responsibility and of goodwill will emerge. What is the nature of this atmosphere?
1. An atmosphere of love wherein fear is cast out and the child realizes that he has no cause for timidity. It is an atmosphere wherein he will receive courteous treatment and will be expected to be equally courteous to others. This is rare indeed to find in schoolrooms or in homes, for that matter. This atmosphere of love is not an emotional, sentimental form of love but is based upon a realization of the potentialities of the child as an individual, upon freedom from prejudice and racial antagonism and upon a true compassionate tenderness. This compassionate attitude will be founded upon the recognition of the difficulty of daily living, upon sensitivity to a child's normally affectionate response, and upon the conviction that love always draws forth what is best in anyone.

2. An atmosphere of patience. It is in such an atmosphere that the child can learn the first rudiments of responsibility. The children being born in this period and who are now to be found everywhere are of high grade intelligence; without knowing it, they are spiritually alive and the first indication of this aliveness is a sense of responsibility. They know they are their [48] brother's keeper. The patient inculcation of this quality, the effort to make them shoulder small duties and to share responsibility will call for much patience on the part of the teacher but it is fundamental in determining a child's character for good and his future usefulness in the world.

3. An atmosphere of understanding. So few teachers or parents explain to a child the reasons for the activities and the demands that are made upon him. But this explanation will inevitably evoke response, for a child thinks more than is realized and the process will inculcate in him a consideration of motives. Many of the things which an average child does are not wrong in themselves; they are prompted by a thwarted, inquiring spirit, by the impulse to retaliate for injustice (based on the adult's lack of understanding his motivation), by an inability to employ time correctly and usefully and by an urge to attract attention. These are simply the initial gestures of the emerging individual.

Older people are apt to foster in a child an early and unnecessary sense of wrongdoing; they lay emphasis upon petty little things which should be ignored but which are annoying. A correct sense of wrong action, based upon failure to preserve right group relations, is not developed but if a child is handled with understanding, then the truly wrong things, the infringements upon the rights of others, the encroachments of individual desire upon group requirements for personal gain, will emerge in right perspective and at the right time. Educators will need to remember   that thousands of children have looked on constantly at evil deeds perpetrated by older people; this will have perverted their outlook, given them wrong standards and undermined right senior authority. A child is apt to become anti-social when he is not understood or when circumstances demand too much of him. [49]

A right atmosphere, the imparting of a few correct principles, and much loving understanding are the prune requirements in the most difficult transitional period with which we are faced. An organized way of living will help much but the children we are considering have known little discipline. The work of sheer survival has been the prime preoccupation of their elders and of the children. It will be hard for them at first to react correctly to an imposed rhythm of living. Discipline will be needed but it must be the discipline of love and one which is carefully and exhaustively explained so that the child understands the reasons lying behind this mysterious new order of carrying on. The fatigue, inertia and lack of interest, incident to war and malnutrition, present definite difficulties at first. Educators and teachers will need to impose upon themselves a discipline of patience, understanding and love which will not be easy, for it will be paralleled by a profound sense of the difficulties to be overcome and the problems to be faced.

Men and women of vision in every country must be found and mobilized and they are there; they must have the equipment they need and the backing of those whom they can trust. Too much must not be demanded at first, for the immediate need is not the impartation of facts but the dissipation of fear, the demonstration that love does exist in the world and the inculcation of a sense of security. Then and only then will it be possible to proceed with those more definite processes which will make the long range plan which some of us have visioned a possibility.

The Long Range Plan
Let us now formulate a more extended plan for the future education of the children of the world. We have noted that in spite of universal educational processes [50] and many centers of learning in every country, we have not yet succeeded in giving our young people the kind of education which will enable them to live wholly and constructively. In terms of the last two or three thousand years, the development of world education has been progressively along three main lines, starting in the East and culminating today in the West. In Asia we have had the intensive training, down the centuries, of certain carefully chosen individuals and a complete neglect of the masses. Asia and Asia alone has produced those outstanding figures who are, even today, the object of universal veneration - Lao Tze, Confucius, the Buddha, Shri Krishna and the Christ. They have set Their mark upon millions and still do.

Then in Europe, we have had educational attention concentrated upon a few privileged groups, giving them a carefully planned cultural training but teaching only the necessary rudiments of learning to the masses. This produced periodically such important epochs of cultural expression as the Elizabethan period, the Renaissance, the poets and writers of the Victorian era and the poets and musicians of Germany, as well as the clusters of artists whose memory is perpetuated in the Italian School, the Dutch and the Spanish groups.

Finally, in the newer countries of the world, such as the United States, Australia and Canada, mass education was instituted and was largely copied throughout the entire civilized world. The general level of cultural attainment became much lower; the level of mass information and competency considerably higher. The question now arises: What will be the next evolutionary development in the educational world? What will happen after this complete world breakdown and the recognized failure of the educational systems to avert it?

Let us remember one important thing. What education can do along undesirable lines has been well [51] demonstrated in Germany with its wrecking of idealism, its inculcation of wrong human relations and attitudes and its glorification of all that is most selfish, brutal and aggressive. Germany has proved that educational processes when properly organized and supervised, systematically planned and geared to an ideology, are potent in effect, especially if the child is taken young enough and if he is shielded from all contrary teaching for a long enough time. Since that time Russia has used the same system. Let us remember that this demonstrated potency can work two ways and that what has been wrought out along wrong lines can be equally successful along right ones in a wholesome atmosphere of freedom.

We need also to do two things: We must place the emphasis educationally upon those who are under sixteen years of age, and the younger the better and, secondly, we must begin with what we have, even while recognizing the limitations of the present systems. We must strengthen those aspects which are good and desirable; we must eliminate those which have proved inadequate in fitting men to cope with their environment; we must develop the new attitudes and techniques which will fit a child for complete living and so make him truly human - a creative, constructive member of the human family. The very best of all that is past must be preserved but should only be regarded as the foundation for a better system and a wiser approach to the goal of world citizenship.

It might be of value at this point to define what education can be, if it is impulsed by true vision and made responsive to sensed world need and to the demands of the times.

Education is the training, intelligently given, which will enable the youth of the world to contact their environment with intelligence and sanity, and adapt themselves to the existing conditions. This is of prime [52] importance and is one of the signposts in the world today.

Education is a process whereby the child is equipped with the information which will enable him to act as a good citizen and perform the functions of a wise parent. It should take into consideration his inherent tendencies, his racial and national attributes and then endeavor to add to these that knowledge which will lead him to work constructively in his particular world setting and prove himself a useful citizen. The general trend of his education will be more psychological than in the past and the information thus gained will be geared to his peculiar situation. All children have certain assets and should be taught how to use them; these they share with the whole of humanity, irrespective of race or nationality. Educators will, therefore, lay emphasis in the future upon:
A developing mental control of the emotional nature.
Vision or the capacity to see beyond what is to what might be.
Inherited, factual knowledge upon which it will be possible to superimpose the wisdom of the future.
Capacity wisely to handle relationships and to recognize and assume responsibility.
The power to use the mind in two ways:
As the "common sense" (using this word in its old connotation), analyzing and synthesizing the information conveyed by the five senses.
As a searchlight, penetrating into the world of ideas and of abstract truth.
Knowledge comes from two directions. It is the result of the intelligent use of the five senses and it is also developed from the attempt to seize upon and [53] understand ideas. Both of these are implemented by curiosity and investigation.

Education should be of three kinds and all three are necessary to bring humanity to a needed point of development.

It is, first of all, a process of acquiring facts - past and present - and of then learning to infer and gather from this mass of information, gradually accumulated, that which can be of practical use in any given situation. This process involves the fundamentals of our present educational systems.

It is, secondly, a process of learning wisdom as an outgrowth of knowledge and of grasping understandingly the meaning which lies behind the outer imparted facts. It is the power to apply knowledge in such a manner that sane living and an understanding point of view, plus an intelligent technique of conduct, are the natural results. This also involves training for specialized activities, based upon innate tendencies, talents or genius.

It is a process whereby unity or a sense of synthesis is cultivated. Young people in the future will be taught to think of themselves in relation to the group, to the family unit and to the nation in which their destiny has put them. They will also be taught to think in terms of world relationship, and of their nation in its relation to other nations. This covers training for citizenship, for parenthood, and for world understanding; it is basically psychological and should convey an understanding of humanity. When this type of training is given, we shall develop men and women who are both civilized and cultured and who will also possess the capacity to move forward (as life unfolds) into that world of meaning which underlies the world of outer phenomena and who will begin to view human happenings [54] in terms of the deeper spiritual and universal values.

Education should be the process whereby youth is taught to reason from cause to effect, to know the reason why certain actions are bound inevitably to produce certain results and why - given a certain emotional and mental equipment, plus an ascertained psychological rating - definite life trends can be determined and certain professions and life careers provide the right setting for development and a useful and profitable field of experience.

Some attempts along this line have been undertaken by certain colleges and schools in an effort to ascertain the psychological aptitudes of a boy or a girl for certain vocations but the whole effort is still amateurish in nature. When made more scientific it opens the door for training in the sciences; it gives significance and meaning to history, biography and learning and thus avoids the bare impartation of facts and the crude process of memory training which has been distinctive of past methods.

The new education will consider a child with due reference to his heredity, his social position, his national conditioning, his environment and his individual mental and emotional equipment and will seek to throw the entire world of effort open to him, pointing out that apparent barriers to progress are only spurs to renewed endeavor. They will thus seek to "lead him out" (the true meaning of the word "education") from any limiting condition and train him to think in terms of constructive world citizenship. Growth and still more growth will be emphasized.
The educator of the future will approach the problem of youth from the angle of the children's instinctual reaction, their intellectual capacity and their intuitional potentiality. In infancy and in the earlier school grades, [55] the development of right instinctual reactions will be watched and cultivated; in the later grades, in what is equivalent to the high schools or the secondary schools, the intellectual unfoldment and control of the mental processes will be emphasized; whilst in the colleges and universities the unfoldment of the intuition, the importance of ideas and ideals and the development of abstract thinking and perception will be fostered; this latter phase will be soundly based upon the previous sound intellectual foundation. These three factors - instinct, intellect and intuition - provide the keynotes for the three scholastic institutions through which every young person will pass and through which, today, many thousands do pass.

In the modern schools (grammar or primary schools, high or secondary schools, colleges or universities) there can be seen an imperfect but symbolic picture of the triple objectives of the coming education: Civilization, Culture and world Citizenship or unity.

The primary schools might be regarded as the custodians of civilization; they should begin to train the child in the nature of the world in which he should play his part, teaching him his place in the group and preparing him for intelligent living and right social relations. Reading, writing and arithmetic, elementary history (with the emphasis upon world history), geography and poetry will be taught and certain basic and important facts of living imparted, plus the inculcation of self-control.

The secondary schools will regard themselves as the custodians of culture; they should emphasize the larger values of history and literature and give some understanding of art. They should begin to train the boy or girl for that future profession or mode of life which it is obvious will condition them. Citizenship will then be taught in larger terms and the world of true values be [56] pointed out and idealism consciously and definitely cultivated. The practical application of ideals will be emphasized.

Our colleges and universities should be a higher extension of all that has been already done. They should beautify and complete the structure already erected and should deal more directly with the world of meaning. International problems - economic, social, political and religious - should be considered and the man or woman related still more definitely to the world as a whole. This in no way indicates neglect of individual or national problems or undertakings but it seeks to incorporate them into the whole as integral and effective parts, and thus avoids the separative attitudes which have brought about the downfall of our modern world.
It might prove later (when true religion is again restored) that this training will be fundamentally spiritual, using that word to mean understanding, helpfulness, brotherhood, right human relations and a belief in the reality of the world behind the phenomenal scene. The fitting of a man for citizenship in the kingdom of God is not a religious activity to be handled exclusively by the churches and through theological teaching, though there is much that they can do to help. It is surely the task of the higher education, giving purpose and significance to all that has been done.

The following sequence suggests itself as we consider the curriculum to be planned for the youth of the immediate generations:

Primary education - Civilization - ages: 4-12
Secondary education - Culture - ages: 12-18
Higher education - World citizenship - ages: 18-25
In the future, education will make a far wider use of psychology than heretofore. A trend in this direction is already to be seen. The nature - physical, vital, emotional and mental - of the boy or girl will be carefully [57] investigated and his incoherent life purposes directed along right lines; he will be taught to recognize himself as the one who acts, who feels and who thinks. Thus the responsibility of the central "I", or the occupant of the body will be taught. This will alter the entire present attitude of the youth of the world to their surroundings and foster, from their earliest days, the recognition of a part to be played and a responsibility to be assumed. Education will be regarded as a method of preparation for that useful and interesting future.

It, therefore, becomes increasingly apparent that the coming education could be defined in a new and broader sense as the Science of Right Human Relations and of Social Organization. This gives a comparatively new purpose to any curriculum imparted and yet indicates that nothing hitherto included need be excluded, only a better motivation will be obvious and a nationalistic, selfish presentation avoided. If history is, for instance, presented on the basis of the conditioning ideas which have led humanity onward and not on the basis of aggressive wars and international or national thievery, then education will concern itself with the right perception and use of ideas, of their transformation into working ideals and their application as the will-to-good, the will-to-truth and the will-to-beauty. Thus a much needed alteration of humanity's aims from our present competitive and materialistic objectives into those that will more fully express the Golden Rule will come about and right relations between individuals, groups, parties, nations and throughout the entire international world will be established.

Increasingly, education should be concerned with the wholes of life as well as with the details of daily individual living. The child, as an individual, will be developed and equipped, trained and motivated and [58] then taught his responsibilities to the whole and the value of the contribution which he can and must make to the group.
It is perhaps a platitude to say that education should occupy itself necessarily with the development of the reasoning powers of the child and not primarily - as is now usually the case - with the training of the memory and the parrot like recording of facts and dates and uncorrelated and ill-digested items of information. The history of the growth of man's perceptive faculties under differing national and racial conditions is of profound interest. The outstanding figures of history, literature and art and of religion will surely be studied from the angle of their effect and their influence for good or evil upon their period; the quality and purpose of their leadership will be considered. Thus the child will absorb a vast amount of historical information, of creative activity and of idealism and philosophy not only with the maximum of ease but with permanent effect upon his character.

The continuity of effort, the effects upon civilization of ancient tradition, good and evil happenings and the interplay of varying cultural aspects of civilization will be brought to his attention and the dry-as-dust information, dates and names will fall into the discard. All branches of human knowledge could, in this way, come alive and reach a new level of constructive usefulness. There is already a definite tendency in this direction and it is good and sound. The past of Humanity as the foundation for present happenings, and the present as the determining factor for the future will increasingly be recognized and thus great and needed changes will be brought about in human psychology as a whole.

The creative aptitude of the human being should also, under the new era, receive fuller attention; the child will be spurred on to individual effort suited to [59] his temperament and capacity. Thus he will be induced to contribute what he can of beauty to the world and of right thought to the sumtotal of human thinking; he will be encouraged to investigate and the world of science will open up before him. Behind all these applied incentives, the motives of goodwill and right human relations will be found.

Finally, education should surely present the hypothesis of the soul in man as the interior factor which produces the good, the true and the beautiful. Creative expression and humanitarian effort will, therefore, receive a logical basis. This will not be done through a theological or doctrinal presentation, as is today the case, but as presenting a problem for investigation and as an effort to answer the question: What is man? What is his intrinsic purpose in the scheme of things? The livingness of the influence and the proclaimed purpose behind the constant appearance of spiritual, cultural and artistic world leaders down the ages will be studied and their lives subjected to research, both historical and psychological. This will open up before the youth of the world the entire problem of leadership and of motive. Education will, therefore, be given in the form of human interest, human achievement and human possibility. This will be done in such a manner that the content of the student's mind will not only be enriched with historical and literary facts but his imagination will be fired and his ambition and aspiration evoked along true and right lines; the world of past human effort will be presented to him in a truer perspective and the future thrown open to him also in an appeal for his individual effort and personal contribution.

The above in no way implies an indictment of past methods except in so far that the world today itself presents an indictment; it does not either constitute an [60] impractical vision or a mystical hope, based on wishful thinking. It concerns an attitude to life and the future which many thousands of people hold today, and among them many educators in every country. The errors and mistakes of the past techniques are obvious but there is no need to waste time in emphasizing them or in piling up instances.

What is needed is a realization of the immediate opportunity, plus the recognition that the required shift in objectives and change in methods will take much time. We shall have to train our teachers differently and much time will elapse as we grope for the new and better ways, develop the new textbooks and find the men and women who can be impressed with the new vision and who will work for the new civilization. We seek here to emphasize principles with the recognition that many of them are by no means new but that they require new emphasis. Now is the day of opportunity.
A better educational system should therefore be worked out which will present the possibilities of human living in such a manner that barriers will be broken down, prejudices removed and a training given to the developing child which will enable him, when grown up, to live with other men in harmony and goodwill. This can be done, if patience and understanding are developed and if educators realize that "where there is no vision, the people perish".

An international system of education, developed in joint conference by broadminded teachers and educational authorities in every country is today a crying need and would provide a major asset in preserving world peace. Steps towards this are already being taken and groups of educators are getting together and discussing the formation of a better system which will guarantee that the children of the different nations (beginning with the millions of children now demanding [61] education today) will be taught truth, without bias or prejudice.

World democracy will take form when men everywhere are regarded in reality as equal; when boys and girls are taught that it does not matter whether a man is an Asiatic, an American, a European, British, a Jew or a Gentile but only that each has an historical background which enables him to contribute something to the good of the whole, that the major requirement is an attitude of goodwill and a constant effort to foster right human relations. World Unity will be a fact when the children of the world are taught that religious differences are largely a matter of birth; that if a man is born in Italy, the probability is that he will be a Roman Catholic; if he is born a Jew, he will follow the Jewish teaching; if born in Asia, he may be a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, or belong to one of the Hindu sects; if born in other countries, he may be a Protestant and so on. He will learn that the religious differences are largely the result of man-made quarrels over human interpretations of truth. Thus gradually, our quarrels and differences will be offset and the idea of the One Humanity will take their place.

Much greater care will have to be given in picking and training the teachers of the future and particularly those who, in the war torn lands, will endeavor to bring educational facilities to the people. Their mental attainments and their knowledge of their particular subject will be of importance, but more important still will be the need for them to be free from prejudice and to see all men as members of a great family. The educator of the future will need to be more of a trained psychologist than he is today. Besides imparting academic knowledge, he will realize that his major task is to evoke out of his class of students a real sense of responsibility; no matter what he has to teach - history, geography, [62] mathematics, languages, science in its various branches or philosophy - he will relate it all to the Science of Right Human Relations and will try to give a truer perspective on social organization than has been done in the past.

When the young people of the future - under the proposed application of principles - are civilized, cultured and responsive to world citizenship, we shall have a world of men awakened, creative, and possessing a true sense of values and a sound and constructive outlook on world affairs. It will take a long time to bring this about, but it is not impossible, as history itself has proved. Some day an analysis will be made of the contribution of the three great continents - Europe, Asia and America - to the general unfoldment of humanity. The progressive revelation of the glory of the human spirit still needs expression in writing - its composite glory and not just those aspects of it which are strictly national. It consists in the fact that every race and all nations have always produced those who have expressed the highest possible point of attainment for their day and generation - men who have united within themselves that basic triplicity: instinct, intellect and intuition. Their numbers were relatively few in the early stages of man's unfoldment but today those numbers are rapidly increasing.
It will be only common sense, however, to realize that this integration is not possible for every student passing through the hands of our teachers. Students will have to be gauged from the three angles which form the background of this chapter:

Those capable of being civilized. This refers to the mass of men.
Those capable of being carried forward into the world of culture. This includes a very large number. [63]
Those who add to the assets of civilization and culture an ability to function as souls, not only in the two worlds of instinctual and intelligent living but also in the world of spiritual values and to do this with a complete triple integration.
All, however, no matter what their initial capacity, can be trained in the Science of Right Human Relations, and thus respond to the major objective of the coming educational systems. Indications of this can be seen on every hand but as yet the emphasis is not laid in training teachers or influencing parents. Much, very much, has been done by enlightened groups everywhere and this they have done whilst studying the requirements for citizenship, whilst undertaking research work into social relations and through the many organizations which are trying to bring to the mass of human beings a sense of responsibility for human happiness and human welfare. This work should be started in infancy so that the consciousness of the child (so easily directed) can from its earliest days assume an unselfish attitude towards its associates.

It is bridging work which has now to be done - bridging between what is today and what can be in the future. If, during the coming years, we develop this technique of bridging the many cleavages found in the human family and in offsetting the racial hatreds and the separative attitudes of nations and people, we shall have succeeded in constructing a world in which war will be impossible and humanity will be realizing itself as one human family and not as a fighting aggregate of many nations and peoples, competitively engaged in getting the best of each other and successfully fostering prejudices and hatred. This has, as we have seen, been the history of the past. Man has been developed from an isolated animal, prompted only by the instincts of self-preservation, eating and mating, through the stages [64] of family life, tribal life and national life to the point where today a still broader ideal is grasped by him - international unity or the smooth functioning of the One Humanity.

This growing idealism is fighting its way into the forefront of the human consciousness in spite of all separative enmities. It is largely responsible for the present chaos and for the banding together of the United Nations. It has produced the conflicting ideologies which are seeking world expression; it has produced the dramatic emergence of national saviors (so-called), world prophets and world workers, idealists, opportunists, dictators and investigators and humanitarians. These conflicting idealisms are a wholesome sign, whether we agree with them or not. They are definite reactions to the human demand - urgent and right - for better conditions, for more light and understanding, for greater cooperation, for security and peace and plenty in the place of terror, fear and starvation.

Conclusion
It is difficult for modern man to conceive of a time when there will be no racial, national or separative religious consciousness present in human thinking. It was equally difficult for prehistoric man to conceive of a time when there would be national thinking. This is a good thing for us to bear in mind. The time when humanity will be able to think in universal terms still lies far ahead but the fact that we can speak of it, desire it and plan for it is surely the guarantee that it is not impossible. Humanity has always progressed from stage to stage of enlightenment and from glory to glory. We are today on our way to a far better civilization than the world has ever known and towards conditions which will ensure a much happier humanity and which will see the end of national differences, of class distinctions [65] (whether based on an hereditary or a financial status) and which will ensure a fuller and richer life for everyone.

It will be obvious that very many decades must elapse before such a state of affairs will be actively present - but it will be decades and not centuries, if humanity can learn the lessons of the world war, if the reactionary and the conservative peoples in every nation can be prevented from swinging civilization back on to the bad old lines. But a beginning can immediately be made. Simplicity should be our watchword for it is simplicity which will kill our old materialistic way of living. Cooperative goodwill is surely the first idea to be presented to the masses and taught in our schools, thereby guaranteeing the new and better civilization. Loving understanding, intelligently applied, should be the hallmark of the cultured and wiser groups, plus effort on their part to relate the world of meaning to the world of outer efforts - for the benefit of the masses. World Citizenship as an expression of both goodwill and understanding should be the goal of the enlightened everywhere and the hallmark of the spiritual man. In these three, you have right relations established between education, religion and politics.

The keynote of the new education is essentially right interpretation of life, past and present, and its relation to the future of mankind; the keynote of the new religion must and should be a right approach to God, transcendent in nature and immanent in man, whilst the keynote of the new science of politics and of government will be right human relations and for both of these education must prepare the child. [66]

(c) Copyright LUCIS TRUST (United Nations NGO) 2000 - All rights reserved

The Problem of Capital, Labor and Employment - by Alice Bailey

In a unique sense we stand today at the dawn of an entirely new economic age. This is increasingly obvious to all thinking people. Because of the triumph of science - the release of the energy of the atom - the future of mankind and the type of the incoming civilization is unpredictable. The changes which are imminent are so far-reaching that it is apparent that the old economic values and the familiar standards of living are bound to pass away; no one knows what will take their place.
Conditions will be basically altered; along certain lines, such as the distribution of coal and oil for lighting, heating and transportation, is it not possible that in the future neither of these planetary resources will be required? These are two instances of the fundamental changes which the use of atomic energy may make in future civilized living.
Two major problems will grow out of this discovery - one immediate in nature and the other to be later developed. The first is that those whose large financial interests are bound up in products which the new type of energy will inevitably supersede will fight to the last ditch to prevent these new sources of wealth from benefiting others. Secondly, there will be the steadily growing problem of the release of man power from the grueling labor and the long hours today required in order to provide a living wage and the necessities of life. One is the problem of capital and the other is the problem of labor; one is the problem of established [67] control of the purely selfish interests which have for so long controlled the life of humanity and the other is the problem of leisure and its constructive use. One problem concerns civilization and its correct functioning in the new age and the other concerns culture and the employment of time along creative lines.
It is not useful here to prophesy the uses to which the most potent energy hitherto released for man's helping can or will be put. Its first constructive use was to end the war. Its future constructive use lies in the hands of science and should be controlled by the men of goodwill to be found in all nations. This energy must be safeguarded from monied interests; it must be turned definitely into the usages of peace and employed to implement a new and happier world. An entirely new field of investigation opens today before science and one which they have long wished to penetrate. In the hands of science, this new potency is far safer than in the hands of capital or of those who would exploit this discovery for the increase of their dividends. In the hands of the great democracies and of the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian races, this discovery is safer than in other hands. It cannot however be kept in these hands indefinitely. Other nations and races are discovering this "secret of release" and the future security of humanity is, therefore, dependent upon two things:
1. The steady and planned education of the people of every nation in right human relations and the cultivation of the spirit of goodwill. This will lead to a complete revolution of the present political regimes, which are largely nationalistic in their planning and selfish in their purposes. True democracy, at present only a dream, will be founded on education for goodwill.
2. The education of the children of the future in the fact of human unity and the use of the world's resources for the good of all. [68]
Certain nations, because of their international character and the multiplicity of races which compose them, are normally more inclusive in their thinking and planning than are the others. They are more prone to think in term of humanity as a whole than are the others. Such nations are the United States, the British Commonwealth of Nations and the united Soviet Socialist Republics. Many nations and races constitute these three Great Powers - the central triangle at the heart of the coming new world. Hence their opportunity to guide mankind at this time and their innate responsibility to act as world leaders. Other races have no such inherent capacity. They are not, for instance, successful colonists and are more nationalistic and exploiting in their approach to "subject races". For the three Great Powers, the fusion of the many elements composing their nationals into a united whole has been a necessary conditioning impulse. The basic intention of the United States is the well-being of all within its national jurisdiction and the "pursuit of happiness" is a familiar citation of this intent; the fundamental principle governing British rule is justice for all; the underlying motive of the U.S.S.R. is right living conditions, opportunity for all and the general leveling of all separative classes into one thriving group of human beings. All these objectives are good and their application to the life of humanity will guarantee a happier and more peaceful world.

In every country without exception there are the good and the bad elements; there are progressive and reactionary groups. There are cruel and ambitious men in Russia who would gladly exploit the world for the gain of Russia and who would seek to impose the will of the proletariat upon all classes and castes throughout the civilized world; there are thinking men in Russia and men of vision who are opposing them. There are reactionary and class conscious people in the British [69] Empire who fear the growing power of the masses and who hang on desperately to their inherited prestige and standing; they would hold back the British people from progress and would like to see the restoration of the old hierarchical, paternalistic and feudal system; the mass of the people, speaking through the voice of labor, will have none of it. In the United States there is isolation, the persecution of such minorities as the Negro race and an ignorant and arrogant nationalism, voiced by some Senators and Representatives with their racial hatreds, their separate attitudes and their unsound political methods.
Fundamentally, however, these three Great Powers constitute the hope of the world and form the basic spiritual triangle behind the plans and the shaping of the events which will inaugurate the new world. The other powerful nations, little as they may like to realize it, are not in so strong a position; they have not the same idealism or the same vast national resources; their national preoccupation limits their world vision; they are conditioned by narrower ideologies, by a greater struggle for national existence, by their fights for boundaries and material gains, and by a failure to offer full cooperation with humanity as a whole. The smaller nations have not quite the same attitude; they are relatively cleaner in their political regimes and constitute basically the nucleus of that federated world which is inevitably taking shape around the three Great Powers. These federations will be based upon cultural ideals and will be formed to guarantee right human relations; they will not eventually be founded on power politics; they will not be combinations of nations banded together versus other combinations for selfish ends. Boundaries and regional controls and international jealousies will not be controlling factors. [70]
To bring about these happier conditions, one major adjustment must be made and one fundamental change brought about. Otherwise no hope of peace will be found on earth. The relation between capital and labor and between both of these groups and humanity as a whole must be worked out. The problem is one with which we are all familiar; it is one which evokes violent prejudices and partisanships and in the clamor of all that is being said and in the violence of the battle it might serve a useful purpose to approach the subject from a more universal angle and with an eye to the emerging spiritual values.
First of all, it must be recognized that the cause of all world unrest, of the world wars which have wrecked humanity and the widespread misery upon our planet can largely be attributed to a selfish group with materialistic purposes who have for centuries exploited the masses and used the labor of mankind for their selfish ends. From the feudal barons of Europe and Great Britain in the Middle Ages through the powerful business groups of the Victorian era to the handful of capitalists - national and international - who today control the world's resources, the capitalistic system has emerged and has wrecked the world. This group of capitalists has cornered and exploited the world's resources and the staples required for civilized living; they have been able to do this because they have owned and controlled the world's wealth through their interlocking directorates and have retained it in their own hands. They have made possible the vast differences existing between the very rich and the very poor; they love money and the power which money gives; they have stood behind governments and politicians; they have controlled the electorate; they have made possible the narrow nationalistic aims of selfish politics; they have financed the world businesses and controlled oil, coal, [71] power, light and transportation; they control publicly or sub rosa the world's banking accounts.
The responsibility for the widespread misery to be found today in every country in the world lies predominantly at the door of certain major interrelated groups of business men, bankers, executives of international cartels, monopolies, trusts and organizations and directors of huge corporations who work for corporate or personal gain. They are not interested in benefiting the public except in so far that the public demand for better living conditions will enable them - under the Law of Supply and Demand - to provide the goods, the transportation, light and power which will in the long run bring in heavier financial returns. Exploitation of man power, the manipulation of the major planetary resources and the promotion of war for private or business profit are characteristic of their methods.

In every nation, such men and organizations - responsible for the capitalistic system - are to be found. The ramifications of their businesses and their financial grasp upon humanity were, prior to the war, active in every land and though they went underground during the war, they still exist. They form an international group, closely interrelated, working in complete unity of idea and intention and knowing and understanding each other. These men belonged to both the Allied Nations and the Axis Powers; they have worked together before and through the entire period of the war through interlocking directorates, under false names and through deceptive organizations, aided by neutrals of their own way of thinking. Today, in spite of the disaster which they have brought upon the world, they are again organized and renewing their methods; their goals remain unchanged; their international relationships remain unbroken; they constitute the greatest menace mankind faces today; they control politics; they buy prominent [72] men in every nation; they insure silence through threat, cash and fear; they amass wealth and buy a spurious popularity through philanthropic enterprise; their families live soft and easy lives and seldom know the meaning of God-ordained work; they surround themselves with beauty, luxury and possessions and shut their eyes to the poverty, stark unhappiness, lack of warmth and decent clothing, the starvation and the ugliness of the lives of the millions by whom they are surrounded; they contribute to charities and church agencies as a salve to their consciences or to avoid income taxes; they provide work for countless thousands but see to it that these thousands receive so small a wage that real comfort, leisure, culture and travel are impossible.
The above is a terrible indictment. It can, however, be substantiated a thousand times over; it is breeding revolution and a growing spirit of unrest. The masses of the people in every land are aroused and awakening and a new day is dawning. A war is starting between the selfish monied interests and the mass of humanity who demand fair play and a right share of the world's wealth.
There are those, however, within the capitalistic system who are aware of the danger with which the monied interests are faced and whose natural tendency is to think along broader and more humanitarian lines. These men fall into two main groups:
First, those who are real humanitarians, who seek the good of their fellowmen and who have no desire to exploit the masses or to profit by the misery of others. They have risen to place and power through their sheer ability or through inherited business position and they cannot avoid the responsibility of the disposal of the millions in their hands. They are frequently rendered helpless by their fellow executives and their hands are largely tied by the existing rules of the game, by their [73] sense of responsibility to their stockholders and by the realization that, no matter what they do - fight or resign - the situation remains unchanged. It is too big for the individual. They remain, therefore, relatively powerless. They are fair and just, decent and kind, simple in their way of life and with a true sense of values, but there is little of a potent nature that they can do.
Second, those who are clever enough to read the signs of the times; they realize that the capitalistic system cannot continue indefinitely in the face of humanity's rising demands and the steady emerging of the spiritual values. They are beginning therefore to change their methods and to universalize their businesses and to institute cooperative procedures with their employees. Their inherent selfishness prompts the change and the instinct of self-preservation determines their attitudes. In between these two groups are those who belong to neither the one nor the other; they are a fruitful field for the propaganda of the selfish capitalist or the unselfish humanitarian.
It might be well to add here that the selfish thinking and the separative motivation which distinguishes the capitalistic system is also to be found in the small and unimportant business men - in the corner grocery, the plumber and the haberdasher who exploits his employees and deceives his customers. It is the universal spirit of selfishness and the love of power with which we have to contend. The war has, however, acted like a purge. It has opened the eyes of men to the underlying cause of war - economic distress, based on the exploitation of the planet's resources by an international group of selfish and ambitious men. The opportunity to change things is now present.

Let us now look at the opposing group - Labor.
A powerful group, representing the capitalistic system, both national and international, and an equally [74] powerful group of labor unions and their leaders, face each other today. Both groups are national and international in scope. It remains to be seen which of the two will eventually control the planet or if a third group made up of practical idealists may not emerge and take over. The interest of the spiritual workers in the world today is not on the side of the capitalists nor even of labor, as it is now functioning; it is on the side of humanity.
For thousands of years, if history is to believed, the wealthy landowners, the institutional heads of tribes, the feudal lords, the slave owners, merchants or business executives have been in power; they exploited the poor; they searched for the maximum output at the minimum cost. It is no new story. In the Middle Ages, the exploited workmen, the skilled craftsmen and cathedral builders began to form guilds and lodges for mutual protection, for joint discussion and frequently to promote the finest type of craftsmanship. These groups grew in power as the centuries slipped by yet the position of the employed man, woman or child remained deplorable.
With invention of machinery and the inauguration of the machine age during the 18th and 19th centuries, the condition of the laboring elements of the population became acutely bad; living conditions were abominable, unsanitary and dangerous to health, owing to the growth of urban areas around factories. They still are, as witness the housing problem of munitions workers during the past several years and the situation around the coal fields both in the States and Great Britain. The exploitation of children increased. The sweat-shop flourished; modern capitalism came into its own and the sharp distinction between the very poor and the very rich became the outstanding characteristic of the Victorian era. From the angle of the planned evolutionary [75] and spiritual development of the human family, leading to civilized and cultural living and to fair play and equal opportunity for all, the situation could not have been worse. Commercial selfishness and wild discontent flourished. The very rich flaunted their superior status in the faces of the very poor, paralleled with a patronizing paternalism. The spirit of revolution grew among the herded, overworked masses who, by their efforts, contributed to the wealth of the rich classes.
The spiritual principle of Freedom became increasingly recognized and its expression demanded. World conditions tended in the same direction. Movements of every kind became possible, symbolizing this growth and the demand for freedom. The machine age was succeeded by the age of transportation, of electricity, of railroads, the automobile, and the airplane. The age of communications paralleled this also, giving us the telegraph, the telephone, the radio and today, television and radar. All these merged into the present age of science which has given us the liberation of atomic energy and the potentialities inherent in the discovery. In spite of the fact that a machine can do the work of many men, which greatly contributed to the wealth of the man with capital, fresh industries and the growth of worldwide means of distribution provided new fields of employment and the demands of the most materialistic period the world has ever seen gave a great impetus to capital and provided jobs for countless millions. Educational facilities also grew and with this came the demand by the laboring classes for better living conditions, higher pay and more leisure. This the employers have constantly fought; they organized themselves against the demands of the awakening mass of men and precipitated a condition which forced labor to take action. [76]
Groups of enlightened men in Europe, Great Britain and the United States began to agitate, to write books which were widely read, to start discussions, and to urge the monied classes to awaken to the situation and to the appalling living conditions under which the laboring class and peasantry lived. The abolitionists fought slavery - whether of Negroes or of whites, of children or of adults. A rapid developing free press began to keep the "lower classes" informed of what was going on; parties were formed to end certain glaring abuses; the French Revolution, the writings of Marx and of others, and the American Civil War all played their part in forcing the issue of the common man. Men in every country determined to fight for freedom and their proper human rights.
Gradually employees and laborers came together for mutual protection and their just rights. The Labor Union movement came into being eventually with its formidable weapons: education for freedom and the strike. Many discovered that in union there is strength and that together they could defy the employer and wrest from the monied interests decent wages, better living conditions and that greater leisure which is the right of every man. The fact of the steadily increasing power of labor and of its international strength is well known and a primary modern interest.
Powerful individuals among the union leaders came to the surface of the movement. Some of the employers, who had the best interests of their workers at heart, stood by them and aided them. They were relatively a small minority but they served to weaken the confidence and power of the majority. The fight of the workers is still going on; gains are steadily being made; shorter hours and better pay are constantly being demanded and when refused the weapon of the strike is used. The use of the strike, so beneficent and helpful [77] in the early days of the rise of labor to power, is now itself becoming a tyranny in the hands of the unscrupulous and self-seeking. Labor leaders are now so powerful that many of them have shifted into the position of dictators and are exploiting the mass of workers whom they earlier served. Labor is also becoming exceedingly rich and untold millions have been accumulated by the great national organizations everywhere. The Labor Movement is itself now capitalistic.

Labor and Labor Unions have done noble work. Labor has been elevated into its rightful place in the life of the nations and the essential dignity of man has been emphasized. Humanity is being rapidly fused into one great corporate body under the influence of the Law of Supply and of Demand which is a point to be remembered. The destiny of the race and the power to make national and international decisions, affecting the whole of mankind, is passing into the hands of the masses, of the working classes and of the man in the street. The inauguration of the labor unions was, in fact, a great spiritual movement, leading to the uprising anew of the divine spirit in man and an expression of the spiritual qualities inherent in the race.
Yet all is not well with the labor movement. The question arises whether it is not sorely in need of a drastic housecleaning. With the coming-in of labor governments in certain countries, with the growth of democracy and the demand for freedom, with the uprising of the rule of the proletariat in Russia, and the higher educational standard of the race, it might well appear that new, better and different methods may now be used to implement the Four Freedoms and to insure right human relations. If there is a realization that there should be right human relations among nations, it is obvious that such relations should exist also between capital and labor (composed as both groups are of [78] human beings) and between the quarreling labor organizations. Labor is today a dictatorship, using threat, fear and force to gain its ends. Many of its leaders are powerful and ambitious men, with a deep love of money and a determination to wield power. Bad housing, poor pay and evil conditions still exist everywhere and it is not in every case the fault of the employer.
Power in the future lies in the hands of the masses. These masses are moving forward and by the sheer weight of their numbers, by their planned thinking and the rapidly growing interrelation now established between labor movements all over the world, nothing today can stop their progress. The major asset which labor has over capital is that it is working for countless millions whilst the capitalist works for the good of a few. The norm of humanity lies at the heart of the labor movement.
We need to grasp somewhat this picture of a worldwide condition of misery, based on both the capitalistic and the labor movements, to see this entire picture realistically and fairly. In some form or another the interplay between capital and labor, between employer and employee and between the monied interests and the exploited masses has been present. With the steam age, the scientific age, the age of electricity and the age of planetary inter-communication, this evil grew and spread. Capital became more and more potent; Labor became increasingly restless and demanding. The culminating struggle was presented in the world war and its aftermath, a thirty year war in which capital implemented the war and the efforts of labor won it.

Certain questions arise. In the answering of these questions, humanity will solve its problems or, if they remain unsolved, the human race will come to an end.
1. Is the capitalistic system to remain in power? Is it entirely evil? Are not capitalists human beings? [79]
2. Will labor itself, through its unions and its growing power, vested in its leaders, become a tyranny?
3. Can labor and capital form a working agreement or amalgamation? Do we face another type of war between these two groups?
4. In what way can the Law of Supply and Demand be implemented so that there is justice for all and plenty for all?
5. Must some form of totalitarian control be adopted by the various world governments in order to meet the requirements of supply and demand? Must we legislate for material ends and comfort?
6. What standard of living will - in the New Age - seem essential to man? Shall we have a purely materialistic civilization or shall we have a spiritual world trend?
7. What must be done to prevent the monied interests from again mobilizing for the exploitation of the world?
8. What really lies at the very heart of the modern materialistic difficulty?
This last question can be answered in the well known words: "The love of money is the root of all evil". This throws us back on the fundamental weakness of humanity - the quality of desire. Of this, money is the result and the symbol.
From the simple process of barter and exchange (as practiced by the primeval savage) to the intricate and formidable financial and economic structure of the modern world, desire is the underlying cause. It demands the satisfaction of sensed need, the desire for goods and possessions, the desire for material comfort, for the acquisition and the accumulation of things, the desire for power and the supremacy which money alone can give. This desire controls and dominates human thinking; it is the keynote of our modern civilization; it is also the octopus which is slowly strangling human [80] life, enterprise, and decency; it is the millstone around the neck of mankind.
To own, to possess, and to compete with other men for supremacy has been the keynote of the average human being - man against man, householder against householder, business against business, organization against organization, party against party, nation against nation, labor against capital - so that today it is recognized that the problem of peace and happiness is primarily related to the world's resources and to the ownership of those resources.
The dominating words in our newspapers, over our radios, and in all our discussions are based upon the financial structure of human economy: banking interests, salaries, national debts, reparations, cartels and trusts, finance, taxation - these are the words which control our planning, arouse our jealousies, feed our hatreds or our dislike of other nations, and set us one against the other. The love of money is the root of all evil.
There are, however, large numbers of people whose lives are not dominated by the love of money and who can normally think in terms of the higher values. They are the hope of the future but are individually imprisoned in the system which, spiritually,must end. Though they do not love money they need it and must have it; the tentacles of the business world surround them; they too must work and earn the wherewithal to live; the work they seek to do to aid humanity cannot be done without the required funds; the churches are materialistic in their mode of work and - after caring for the organizational aspect of their work - there is little left for Christ's work, for simple spiritual living. The task facing the men and women of goodwill in every land today seems too heavy and the problems to be solved seem well-nigh insoluble. Men and women of goodwill are now asking the question: Can the [81] conflict between capital and labor be ended and a new world be thereby reborn? Can living conditions be so potently changed that right human relations can be permanently established?
These relationships can be established, and for the following reasons:
1. Humanity has suffered so terribly during the past two hundred years that it ispossible to bring about the needed changes, provided that the correct steps are taken before the pain and agony are forgotten and their effects have passed out of man's consciousness. These steps must be taken at once whilst patent evidences of the past are still present, and the aftermath of world war is before our eyes.
2. The release of the energy of the atom is definitely the inauguration of the New Age; it will so completely alter our way of life that much of the planning at present being done will be found to be of an interim nature; it will simply help humanity to make a great transition out of the materialistic system now dominating into one in which right human relations will be the basic characteristic. This new and better way of life will be developed for two main reasons:
a. The purely spiritual reasons of human brotherhood, of peaceful cooperative enterprise and the constantly unfolding principle of the Christ consciousness in the hearts of men. This may be deemed a mystical and visionary reason; it is already more controlling in its effects than is believed.
b. The frankly selfish motive of self-preservation. The release of atomic energy has not only put into human hands a potent force which will inevitably bring in a new and better way of life, but also a terrible weapon, capable of wiping the human family off the face of the earth. [82]
3. The steady and selfless work of the men and women of goodwill in every land. This work is non-spectacular but surely founded on right principles and it is one of the main agencies for peace.
On account of this energy discovery capital and labor are each faced with a problem, and both these problems will reach a point of crisis in the next few years.
Money, the accumulation of financial assets and the cornering of the earth's resources for organizational exploitation will soon prove utterly useless and futile, provided that these resources of energy and the mode of their release remain in the hands of the people's chosen representatives and are not the secret possession of certain groups of powerful men or of any one nation. Atomic energy belongs to humanity as a whole. The responsibility for its control must lie in the hands of the men of goodwill. They must control its destiny and make it available along constructive lines for the use of men everywhere. No one nation should own the formula or secret for the release of energy. Until mankind, however, has moved forward in its understanding of right human relations, an international group of men of goodwill - trusted and chosen by the people - should safeguard these potencies.
If this energy is released into constructive channels and if it remains safely guarded by the right men, the capitalistic system is doomed. The problem of labor will then be the major problem of unemployment - a dreaded word which will be meaningless in the golden age which lies ahead. The masses will then be faced by the problem of leisure. This is a problem which when faced and solved will release the creative energy of man into channels undreamed of today.
The release of atomic energy is the first of many great releases in all the kingdoms of nature; the great [83] release still ahead of humanity will bring into expression mass creative powers, spiritual potencies and psychic unfoldments which will prove and demonstrate the divinity and the immortality of man.
All this will take time. The time factor must govern as never before the activities of the men of goodwill and the work of those whose task it is to educate not only the children and the youth of the world but also to train humanity in the major undertaking of right human relations and in the possibilities immediately ahead. The note to be struck and the word to be emphasized is humanity. Only one dominant concept can today save the world from a looming economic fight to the death, can prevent the uprising again of the materialistic systems of the past, can stop the re-emerging of the old ideas and concepts and can bring to an end the subtle control by the financial interests and the violent discontent of the masses. A belief in human unity must he endorsed. This unity must be grasped as something worth fighting and dying for; it must constitute the new foundation for all our political, religious and social reorganization and must provide the theme for our educational systems. Human unity, human understanding, human relationships, human fair play and the essential oneness of all men - these are the only concepts upon which to construct the new world, through which to abolish competition and to bring to an end the exploitation of one section of humanity by another and the hitherto unfair possession of the earth's wealth. As long as there are extremes of riches and poverty men are falling short of their high destiny.
The Kingdom of God can appear on earth, and this in the immediate future, but the members of this kingdom recognize neither rich nor poor, neither high nor low, neither labor nor capital but only the children of the one Father, and the fact - natural and yet spiritual - that [84] all men are brothers. Here lies the solution of the problem with which we are dealing. The spiritual Hierarchy of our planet recognizes neither capital nor labor; it recognizes only men and brothers. The solution is, therefore, education and still more education and the adaptation of the recognized trends of the times to the vision seen by the spiritually minded and by those who love their fellowmen. [85]

(c) Copyright LUCIS TRUST 2000

Kristo about his activities during the last years.

It's Time To Wake Up - We Are All One

Krishnamurti - It doesn't matter if you die for it

Interview Series with UN Foundation Board Members: Kofi Annan

Ken Wilber Summary of Spiral Dynamics model.

For more on Ken Wilber and Rational Spirituality, go to Rational Spirituality and Ken Wilber.

Ken Wilber Summary of Spiral Dynamics model.

Ken Wilber is perhaps the most fundamental influence on the Rational Spirituality perspective, both because of his overarching developmental model, and his focus on the relationship between non-dual consciousness (experiential spirituality) and physical//social/material  reality.  His use of Spiral dynamics to simplify and communicate the essence of a developmental model in a way that not only explains but also illuminates is one of his most important contributions to the popular understanding of both the existence and importance of STAGES in Human Development.
Shambhala Pulbishing has a number of pieces available for public consumption that Ken has written on their website at www.shambhala.com. This piece is from one of those publicly available documents, and includes an extended quote from Ken's book: "A Theory of Everything."
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KW: In Integral Psychology I present charts that summarize over 100 developmental psychologists, East and West, ancient and modern and postmodern. Spiral Dynamics is only one of the 100, but I have recently been using it quite a bit because it is simple and fairly easy to learn, even for beginners. Based on extensive research begun by Clare Graves, Spiral Dynamics (developed by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan) sees human beings evolving or developing through eight major waves of consciousness. For convenience, I will reprint my brief summary of these from A Theory of Everything.

SPIRAL DYNAMICS AND THE WAVES OF EXISTENCE

The first six levels are "subsistence levels" marked by "first-tier thinking." Then there occurs a revolutionary shift in consciousness: the emergence of "being levels" and "second-tier thinking," of which there are two major waves. Here is a brief description of all eight waves, the percentage of the world population at each wave, and the percentage of social power held by each.

1. Beige: Archaic-Instinctual . The level of basic survival; food, water, warmth, sex, and safety have priority. Uses habits and instincts just to survive. Distinct self is barely awakened or sustained. Forms into survival bands to perpetuate life.

Where seen: First human societies, newborn infants, senile elderly, late-stage Alzheimer's victims, mentally ill street people, starving masses, shell shock. Approximately 0.1% of the adult population, 0% power.

2. Purple: Magical-Animistic . Thinking is animistic; magical spirits, good and bad, swarm the earth leaving blessings, curses, and spells which determine events. Forms into ethnic tribes . The spirits exist in ancestors and bond the tribe. Kinship and lineage establish political links. Sounds "holistic" but is actually atomistic: "there is a name for each bend in the river but no name for the river."

Where seen: Belief in voodoo-like curses, blood oaths, ancient grudges, good luck charms, family rituals, magical ethnic beliefs and superstitions; strong in Third-World settings, gangs, athletic teams, and corporate "tribes." 10% of the population, 1% of the power.

3. Red: Power Gods . First emergence of a self distinct from the tribe; powerful, impulsive, egocentric, heroic. Magical-mythic spirits, dragons, beasts, and powerful people. Archetypal gods and goddesses, powerful beings, forces to be reckoned with, both good and bad. Feudal lords protect underlings in exchange for obedience and labor. The basis of feudal empires --power and glory. The world is a jungle full of threats and predators. Conquers, out-foxes, and dominates; enjoys self to the fullest without regret or remorse; be here now.

Where seen: The "terrible twos," rebellious youth, frontier mentalities, feudal kingdoms, epic heroes, James Bond villains, gang leaders, soldiers of fortune, New-Age narcissism, wild rock stars, Atilla the Hun, Lord of the Flies . 20% of the population, 5% of the power.

4. Blue: Mythic Order . Life has meaning, direction, and purpose, with outcomes determined by an all-powerful Other or Order. This righteous Order enforces a code of conduct based on absolutist and unvarying principles of "right" and "wrong." Violating the code or rules has severe, perhaps everlasting repercussions. Following the code yields rewards for the faithful. Basis of ancient nations . Rigid social hierarchies; paternalistic; one right way and only one right way to think about everything. Law and order; impulsivity controlled through guilt; concrete-literal and fundamentalist belief; obedience to the rule of Order; strongly conventional and conformist. Often "religious" or "mythic" [in the mythic-membership sense; Graves and Beck refer to it as the "saintly/absolutistic" level], but can be secular or atheistic Order or Mission.

Where seen: Puritan America, Confucian China, Dickensian England, Singapore discipline, totalitarianism, codes of chivalry and honor, charitable good deeds, religious fundamentalism (e.g., Christian and Islamic), Boy and Girl Scouts, "moral majority," patriotism. 40% of the population, 30% of the power.

5. Orange: Scientific Achievement . At this wave, the self "escapes" from the "herd mentality" of blue, and seeks truth and meaning in individualistic terms--hypothetico-deductive, experimental, objective, mechanistic, operational--"scientific" in the typical sense. The world is a rational and well-oiled machine with natural laws that can be learned, mastered, and manipulated for one's own purposes. Highly achievement oriented, especially (in America) toward materialistic gains. The laws of science rule politics, the economy, and human events. The world is a chess-board on which games are played as winners gain pre-eminence and perks over losers. Marketplace alliances; manipulate earth's resources for one's strategic gains. Basis of corporate states .

Where seen: The Enlightenment, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged , Wall Street, emerging middle classes around the world, cosmetics industry, trophy hunting, colonialism, the Cold War, fashion industry, materialism, secular humanism, liberal self-interest. 30% of the population, 50% of the power.

6. Green: The Sensitive Self . Communitarian, human bonding, ecological sensitivity, networking. The human spirit must be freed from greed, dogma, and divisiveness; feelings and caring supersede cold rationality; cherishing of the earth, Gaia, life. Against hierarchy; establishes lateral bonding and linking. Permeable self, relational self, group intermeshing. Emphasis on dialogue, relationships. Basis of value communities (i.e., freely chosen affiliations based on shared sentiments). Reaches decisions through reconciliation and consensus (downside: interminable "processing" and incapacity to reach decisions). Refresh spirituality, bring harmony, enrich human potential. Strongly egalitarian, anti-hierarchy, pluralistic values, social construction of reality, diversity, multiculturalism, relativistic value systems; this worldview is often called pluralistic relativism . Subjective, nonlinear thinking; shows a greater degree of affective warmth, sensitivity, and caring, for earth and all its inhabitants.

Where seen: Deep ecology, postmodernism, Netherlands idealism, Rogerian counseling, Canadian health care, humanistic psychology, liberation theology, cooperative inquiry, World Council of Churches, Greenpeace, animal rights, ecofeminism, post-colonialism, Foucault/Derrida, politically correct, diversity movements, human rights issues, ecopsychology. 10% of the population, 15% of the power. [Note: this is 10% of the world population. Don Beck estimates that around 20-25% of the American population is green.]

With the completion of the green meme, human consciousness is poised for a quantum jump into "second-tier thinking." Clare Graves referred to this as a "momentous leap," where "a chasm of unbelievable depth of meaning is crossed." In essence, with second-tier consciousness, one can think both vertically and horizontally, using both hierarchies and heterarchies (both ranking and linking). One can therefore, for the first time, vividly grasp the entire spectrum of interior development , and thus see that each level, each meme, each wave is crucially important for the health of the overall Spiral.

As I would word it, each wave is "transcend and include." That is, each wave goes beyond (or transcends) its predecessor, and yet it includes or embraces it in its own makeup. For example, a cell transcends but includes molecules, which transcend but include atoms. To say that a molecule goes beyond an atom is not to say that molecules hate atoms, but that they love them: they embrace them in their own makeup; they include them, they don't marginalize them. Just so, each wave of existence is a fundamental ingredient of all subsequent waves, and thus each is to be cherished and embraced.

Moreover, each wave can itself be activated or reactivated as life circumstances warrant. In emergency situations, we can activate red power drives; in response to chaos, we might need to activate blue order; in looking for a new job, we might need orange achievement drives; in marriage and with friends, close green bonding. All of these memes have something important to contribute.

But what none of the first-tier memes can do, on their own, is fully appreciate the existence of the other memes. Each of the first-tier memes thinks that its worldview is the correct or best perspective. It reacts negatively if challenged; it lashes out, using its own tools, whenever it is threatened. Blue order is very uncomfortable with both red impulsiveness and orange individualism. Orange individualism thinks blue order is for suckers and green egalitarianism is weak and woo-woo. Green egalitarianism cannot easily abide excellence and value rankings, big pictures, hierarchies, or anything that appears authoritarian, and thus green reacts strongly to blue, orange, and anything post-green.

All of that begins to change with second-tier thinking. Because second-tier consciousness is fully aware of the interior stages of development--even if it cannot articulate them in a technical fashion--it steps back and grasps the big picture, and thus second-tier thinking appreciates the necessary role that all of the various memes play . Second-tier awareness thinks in terms of the overall spiral of existence, and not merely in the terms of any one level.

Where the green meme begins to grasp the numerous different systems and pluralistic contexts that exist in different cultures (which is why it is indeed the sensitive self, i.e., sensitive to the marginalization of others), second-tier thinking goes one step further. It looks for the rich contexts that link and join these pluralistic systems, and thus it takes these separate systems and begins to embrace, include, and integrate them into holistic spirals and integral meshworks. Second-tier thinking, in other words, is instrumental in moving from relativism to holism, or from pluralism to integralism .

The extensive research of Graves, Beck, and Cowan indicates that there are at least two major waves to this second-tier integral consciousness:

7. Yellow: Integrative . Life is a kaleidoscope of natural hierarchies [holarchies], systems, and forms. Flexibility, spontaneity, and functionality have the highest priority. Differences and pluralities can be integrated into interdependent, natural flows. Egalitarianism is complemented with natural degrees of ranking and excellence. Knowledge and competency should supersede power, status, or group sensitivity. The prevailing world order is the result of the existence of different levels of reality (memes) and the inevitable patterns of movement up and down the dynamic spiral. Good governance facilitates the emergence of entities through the levels of increasing complexity (nested hierarchy). 1% of the population, 5% of the power.

8. Turquoise: Holistic . Universal holistic system, holons/waves of integrative energies; unites feeling with knowledge; multiple levels interwoven into one conscious system. Universal order, but in a living, conscious fashion, not based on external rules (blue) or group bonds (green). A "grand unification" [a "theory of everything" or T.O.E.] is possible, in theory and in actuality. Sometimes involves the emergence of a new spirituality as a meshwork of all existence. Turquoise thinking uses the entire Spiral; sees multiple levels of interaction; detects harmonics, the mystical forces, and the pervasive flow-states that permeate any organization. 0.1% of the population, 1% of the power.

With less than 2 percent of the population at second-tier thinking (and only 0.1 percent at turquoise), second-tier consciousness is relatively rare because it is now the "leading-edge" of collective human evolution. As examples, Beck and Cowan mention items that include Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere, chaos and complexity theories, universal systems thinking, integral-holistic theories, Gandhi's and Mandela's pluralistic integration, with increases in frequency definitely on the way, and even higher memes still in the offing....
Mark Michael Lewis

Source: http://rationalspirituality.com/articles/Ken_Wilber_Spiral_Dynamics.htm