ON BECOMING CONSCIOUS

What is happening now cannot be told in a single story. A shift in consciousness is the gist of it.

Once upon a time . . .

After the terror of thunder and lightning subsided, embers glowed. Meat dropped onto them turned out easier to eat. To keep the fire alive, sticks were brought. Not letting it go out became an important ritual.

Evidence uncovered by archaeologists shows that about 50,000 years ago Neanderthals had learned to strike flint on hard minerals like pyrite, to spark a fire. By some accounts, controlling fire was the birth of civilization.

That long ago, there was probably no word for co-operation, but it was obvious that building a hut would be easier if several people helped. And anyone could understand that a group might do several things at once, an advantage over one person doings things in serial order. The group could use a sentry to warn against intruders, wild animals, unfriendly humans. An enclosure would be worth the effort.

Workers and sentries need to eat. But getting food also needs time and effort, and in greater amounts than for a group. The hunter gatherers of prehistory evolved to specialize-- meat or grains. Meat for immediate needs, grain to be eaten later, some perhaps stored.

Someone accidentally spilled grains and later noticed them growing on the ground. This was better than going out gathering. Stored grains would be another convenience, along with controlling fire. Stored grains could be planted to grow new ones when conditions were ripe.

Family enclosures with overwintering grains became villages, which multiplied into larger aggregates called towns. Enclosures were furnished with walls. Walled towns came to be called cities, and the inhabitants of these were called citizens. Collections of cities with all their inhabitants, and their activities, habits, products, thoughts and expressions have come to be called civilizations. And all of these, taken generically, are more simply denoted civilization.

With this, the narrative becomes an entity. It includes both recorded facts and reasonable guesses. So construed, civilization becomes an object of veneration, eliciting expressions of gratitude for past achievements, an accumulation of knowledge. And more especially, in comparison with our cave-dwelling ancestors, an overall increase in material well being. And proudly, landing on the moon: a giant step.

In the midst of this, almost unnoticed, is that there is no such entity as civilization. Rather, what persists is a collection of ad hoc arrangements.

* * *

What began as a division of labor elaborated and settled into a caste system. It has a grip on the entire world. Already long established in India, in America it dominated slavery. Slaves are told they deserve their lot, and any thought of being better or rising up is a mistake. Jim Crow laws were studied as the basis of a legal framework for exterminating Jews in Nazi Germany. Isabel Wilkerson describes this in her book, Caste.

When slavery was made illegal, American slaves were freed from involuntary servitude, but not their caste. As with various arrangements throughout the world, it remains in force. From the ground level grocery checker to the glass ceiling, workers must know their place. Hair and skin color still define boundaries. Language, place of birth, level of education, associates, place of residence, are just a few of the markers.

* * *

The end of plantation slavery came in tandem with the discovery of fossil fuel. Muscle power can't compete with the internal combustion engine. Crude oil also supplies new products in high demand. With the boost of fossil energy, prosperity has shifted more wealth to the dominate classes. Rapidly developing technology is also giving the fortunate ones more leisure time and disposable income to entertain fantasies and ideas for their own sake. Markets have emerged, prompting research into what motivates these new consumers.

Abraham Harold Maslow's investigation found a hierarchy of needs. The fortunate ones, in contrast with lower caste people subject to brutal suppression, find ascending levels of interest to pursue. As a need is satisfied, the next level opens up. For example, he explains that a starving person will not be concerned with security until food is obtained. Lower existential needs, upon satisfaction, give way to higher psychic ones. Each higher need presumes lower ones have been met. He saw these as a pyramid with the lower existential needs at the base. Those who arrive at the tip are already well fed and secure. Here the need is less survival and more immaterial. One might be interested in creative expression, perhaps painting or photography, designing one's own clothes, composing music, gardening, writing, psychology, philosophy, self realization. For every need a shelf, so to speak, in the new market place.

The most interesting aspect of his motivational marketing scheme is that, as he says, needs are not mutually exclusive. The unmet ones still have unconscious force, striving to be realized. It's true for everyone. Thus self realization, at the tip of the pyramid, and though perhaps dormant, motivates everyone.

* * *

A shift in this direction is happening. Two very different hierarchies are coming into dynamic relation.