Abstract: The most difficult challenge facing humanity is not devising solutions to the energy crisis or climate crisis or population crisis; rather, it is bringing stories or narratives of the human journey into our collective awareness that empower us to look beyond a future of great adversity and to see a future of great opportunity. What visions of humanity’s journey are sufficiently compelling to transcend age-­‐old differences and bring us together in a common venture of inhabiting the Earth in ways that are sustainable?

 by Francis Weller 

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” 
—Theodore Roethke 

We are living in turbulent times on this beautiful planet. All pretense of immunity is collapsing as we realize how completely entangled our lives are with one another—with kelp beds and calving glaciers, with wildfires and rising sea levels, with refugees and the anxious dreams of young people everywhere. The disequilibrium shaking the world feels like a continual tremor along the fault lines of our psychic lives. 

Very few things feel stable. It is like a fever dream. Maybe we have reached the initiatory threshold required to wake us up. Whatever is happening, much will be asked of us if we are to make it through the whitewater of this narrow passage. We do not know what lies ahead, but one thing is sure: This is a time for bold gestures. It is time to wake up and humbly take our place 

This is a wide-ranging inquiry into collective consciousness and cultural healing. These are among the core themes of this report:

• Collective crises and collective consciousness. The condition of the world reflects the condition of our collective consciousness. Collective or group consciousness (also sometimes called the empathic field or collective knowing) provides a common context from which we can collectively recognize—and begin to heal—the psychic wounds that divide humanity (such as racial and gender oppression and

injustice). Perhaps the most basic challenge that we face is to awaken our capacity for collective knowing and conscious action so that we can respond successfully to the immense social and ecological difficulties that confront us.

• Science and collective consciousness. The view of reality emerging from the frontiers of science seems congruent with the possibility of a functioning collective consciousness. The new cosmology in physics views our vast cosmos as an “unbroken wholeness in flowing movement.” Consciousness or an observing capacity seems a natural part of this new view of the universe.

• Collective consciousness in everyday life. A functioning collective consciousness is recognizable in many settings—in relationships, classrooms, groups and organizations, communities, nations, and, increasingly, in the overall human family. Although subtle and easy to overlook, collective consciousness is a pervasive and powerful force in our everyday lives.

• The evolutionary inflection and species awakening. Humanity is on a collision course withnature and will soon hit an evolutionary wall, probably within the next few decades. This does not have to be a crash. Instead, the human family could mobilize itself for an evolutionary bounce by releasing humanity’s collective energy for the common work of building a positive and nurturing future.

• Enabling qualities of consciousness. The evolution of consciousness is highly empowering for both individuals and civilizations. Perhaps the most important enabling quality of an empathic field is that it may allow people to recognize intuitively how to live in harmony with others and the world.

• The communications revolution. Within 10 to 20 years, the human family will have in place the communications infrastructure that could support a quantum increase in the collective intelligence—and the collective consciousness—of the species. The communications revolution is perhaps the most powerful force for enabling the awakening of collective consciousness at a planetary scale.

• The mass media and the madness of materialism. Civilizations can “go crazy.” Television’s flood

An interview with Duane Elgin
by Carter Phipps
What is Enlightenment? Magazine, Spring/Summer 2001

INTRODUCTION

My first exposure to Duane Elgin’s work was, in a word, frightening. I picked up his new book, Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity’s Future, and began reading the first few chapters only to run headlong into a very cogent, very clear, and very devastating description of the state of our embattled world. Indeed, as he laid out the daunting ecological and social challenges we face as an evolving species at this point in history, all kinds of dire scenarios of the future began to unfold in this reader’s head, scenarios that were a lot closer to Blade Runner and Waterworld than Star Trek or The Jetsons. What I did not know at the time, but would soon learn, is that Elgin, despite initial evidence to the contrary, is a profound optimist. In fact, Promise Ahead, like all of his work, is infused with a positive vision of the future, born of someone who obviously has great faith in the possibility and promise of the human endeavor. Yet Elgin knows that if our optimism is to prevail in the world of tomorrow, the price that we must all pay today is realism. And for over twenty-five years, he has been taking a realistic look at the human condition and trying to awaken our slumbering species to the truth of our situation so that we can begin to consciously evolve.

We have to open our imagination and experience as far as we can to grasp what is happening at every moment of our seemingly “ordinary” lives. Science now views the universe emerged from “nothing” roughly 14 billion years ago and is being sustained, moment by moment, through time, as it grows from an incredibly small seed smaller than an atom, to now contain an estimated 2 trillion(!)n galaxies, each with an average 100-billion-star systems like our own sun and Earth. Our birth from nothing visible points to an unutterably powerful, generative ground. This infinitely dep and powerful source is called the “Meta-Universe” by science and the “Mother Universe” by many wisdom traditions. I speak of the “Mother Universe” as the “Mother Aliveness”’ but these words only point the infinitely deep and subtle reality in which we are fully immersed. The Mother Aliveness is so close to us and within us that she is easy to take for granted and overlook. Ito bring this vital “original wisdom” into my life, I have developed a simple practice that is described below. 

The Sun Magazine, August 2002

“Simplify, simplify.” When Henry David Thoreau made this plea 150 years ago, he was reacting to the increasing complexity of life around him. Today we find ourselves in a far more complex world, one in which increasing numbers of us are beginning to see the wisdom in Thoreau’s appeal. Duane Elgin helped define this trend back in 1981 with his first book, Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich (Morrow). In that now-classic text, updated and reprinted in 1993, Elgin encouraged us not just to cut back on consumption and ease our busy schedules, but to live a life with purpose, in which every action is the result of a conscious choice.

Since bringing voluntary simplicity to the attention of the larger culture, Elgin has focused on how humanity can survive on a planet whose natural resources are stretched to their limits. The ultimate test, he believes, will be in how we respond to the challenges of the coming years, when he predicts that environmental problems will reach a breaking point. His latest book, Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity’s Future (Morrow), paints a chilling picture of the cultural and ecological dangers we will face, yet offers an optimistic view of the possibility for humankind’s survival and evolution into a more mature species.

by Duane Elgin with Robert A. Bushnell
THE FUTURIST, December 1977

Social systems tend to decline in performance as they become bigger, more complex, and increasingly incomprehensible. They also become less amenable to democratic control, and more vulnerable to disruption at key points. There now appears to be evidence that we may be pressing against the relative limits of our ability to manage large bureaucracies.

Abstract: The universe is creating self-organizing and self-referencing systems at every scale. In accord with this dynamic, the human family is working to become consciously self-organizing at progressively larger scales. We have evolved from awakening hunter-gatherers to a species that has created a wired world whose actions are changing the face of the planet. Because the impact of humanity is now global, that is the scale at which we are challenged to become reflective if we are to be choiceful about our common future. We are challenged to no longer “run on automatic,” but to pay attention to how we pay attention as entire civilizations. The vehicle of collective attention at a civilizational scale is the mass media—particularly broadcast television. If civilizations are to realize their potential for full reflective consciousness and become self-guiding in their evolution, then it is vital for the public to mobilize the public’s airwaves on behalf of the public interest.

1) RUINOUS COLLAPSE
2) AUTHORITARIAN CONTROL WITH AI
3) LEAP FORWARD WITH EIGHT UPLIFTS

Adapted from the book Choosing Earth
by Duane Elgin
2024

OUR TIME OF COLLECTIVE CHOICE
We stand at a threshold unlike any in the past 100,000 years of human history. The decisions we make in the next few decades will cascade through millennia. Three distinct pathways are already emerging—each represents not just a possible future, but a choice we are actively making through our actions or inactions today. The window for choosing is rapidly closing.