The Evolution of Consciousness

  1. the youth dialectic
    [FONT=Garamond]An argument often used to shoot down the hopes of creating a better world is the argument of 'Human Nature':[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]"that human nature is fundamentally inspired by greed, and that a society of equality is thus impossible due to the contradictory strivings of individuals against the common good."[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Proof of the correctness of this argument relies on an understanding of what human nature is. Human nature is our perception of and interaction with reality. This is more correctly called consciousness.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]But what is consciousness? Where do Ideas come from? Where do Religions come from? Why do peoples morals change over time? Let us investigate the evolution of consciousness alongside the development of human civilization. We will see stages emerge in the evolution of consciousness: each stage represents a form, whose elements are the answers men give to explain natural phenomenon. Let us now proceed to investigate consciousness from its humble beginnings, existing in the minds of our primitive ancestors who emerged approximately 100,000 years ago… [/FONT]

    [FONT=Garamond]I[/FONT]

    [FONT=Garamond]We are a highly evolved Ape with an upright stance and specialized hands used for manipulatingnature to our advantage. It is our ability to manipulate nature which allows us to understand nature.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]As our ability to manipulate nature improves - as our technology advances - our understanding of nature becomes more accurate and profound.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]In our pre-history, we were only able to use wood, bones, fire, stones, etc. which means that our technology as well as our understanding of nature was very limited. All forces in nature; the weather, the sea, the flooding of rivers, the migration of herds, the seasons etc. were beyond our control and understanding.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Since the behaviour of forces in nature could not be explained, humans thought that forces behaved in their own particular way because they wanted to behave in that way, and it was thus believed that forces in nature were controlled by spirits who had minds of their own.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]A description of the stage in the evolution of consciousness, belonging to the humans of our pre-history, can be summarized as Spiritualism.[/FONT]





    [FONT=Garamond]II[/FONT]

    [FONT=Garamond]With the development of agriculture and the taming of wild animals, humans began to settle in communities where technology was then able to develop at a new rapidity. [/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]As humans began to control nature, they started to realize the connections between forces of nature: In the water cycle, water passes into and out of many forms. Cloud becomes rain, rain becomes snow, snow melts into rivers which flow into the sea, water then evaporates and forms clouds. Neither of these parts controls itself, each one of these parts is just playing its position in the unfolding of a process. The individual spirits with minds of their own thus become obsolete as the connections between forces in nature are discovered.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]In this case, spirits for rivers and spirits for clouds would become obsolete, and a spirit for the water cycle would be created to replace them.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Man's consciousness becomes more and more profound and accurate as the total number of understood relationships in nature increases.[/FONT]




    [FONT=Garamond]III[/FONT]

    [FONT=Garamond]With the development of technology, communities began to produce more than was needed to support all of their inhabitants. This led to the emergence of a section of the society who did not have to work, and lived off the labour of others. This minority then used their privileged position to further exploit the majority who supported them.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Before a surplus of means of subsistence (food, shelter, etc.) was produced, it was impossible for people to exploit one another, for how could someone survive, producing for another, being exploited by another, if all they could obtain by their labour was enough to feed themselves? This is why humans originally lived together in harmony in classless society. Maori society before European contact is an example of a classless society.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Classless society developed into class society, where sections of the population - elements within society- became opposed to one another.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]In class society, those who were enslaved would understand that they suffered because of the actions of other humans, but it was beyond their understanding as to why other people behaved in this way toward them.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Just like forces of nature which weren't understood were turned into spirits, the forces of society - human motives, which were not understood, were turned into spirits. All human behaviours such as greed, envy and love had a spirit attached to them. The Gods of Ancient Greek mythology are representatives of these types of spirits.[/FONT]



    [FONT=Garamond]IV[/FONT]

    [FONT=Garamond]All spirits eventually mutually exclude themselves, in the face of developing technology, and become one at a certain stage in the evolution of consciousness. This stage is represented by the religion of Christianity.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]The form of this consciousness is made up of three major elements, which were answers men gave to explain natural phenomenon, the first being The Father, The next being the Holy Spirit and the third the Son: Jesus Christ.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]By this time, technology was so advanced that man had instinctively realized that all forces in nature were somehow connected and this is why he didn't need to give each of them separate minds of their own. All he needed to explain reality was a spirit that created reality. God the Father is this spirit; he was called the creator of the universe who made everything the way it is. God the Father is also the creator of all humans. It was believed that God made us in his image, so his being is the reason behind all of mankind's emotions and actions and thus social behaviour and relationships. He is all the Greek Spirits rolled into one faceless abstraction of man. God the Father is finally the unconscious dream that man will one day become the all powerful lord of the universe and also thus be able to determine his own destiny.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]The Holy Spirit is another element of the Christian consciousness. We can, from our study thus far of the evolution of consciousness, recognize that man at this stage was unaware of what his consciousness was. He believed that he knew the truth about the world thus demonstrating his lack of knowledge of the concept of consciousness. However, he was aware that consciousness was something. Inevitably, he turned it into a spirit, to be sure, a spirit that he didn't understand. The immortal soul is the spirit of a man's consciousness; the Holy Spirit is the spirit of consciousness in general.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]The last element of the Christian consciousness is Jesus. Under the oppression of the Roman slave empire, life had become so unfair for some that the poor and the slaves began to believe in a factor that balanced things out. They believed that they, who suffered in life, would ascend to paradise in the afterlife, and that those who lived in luxury at their expense, would perish in hell.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]The Garden of Eden, which is part of the mythology of Christianity, is a memory of the classless society of ancient man. The factor of Jesus reconciles man with this perfection on a higher level in the kingdom of Heaven. In the consciousness of Christianity, Jesus was a man. Jesus is the unconscious dream that men of the future would one day be able to reconcile mankind with perfection.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]The consciousness of Christianity was originally specifically the consciousness of the poor. Its morality taught the poor to care for one another amidst their common suffering, and to condemn the rich for their acts of sin. In the same way that man discovers relationships between forces in nature, he also becomes aware of relationships between different members of his community. Consciousness in general is the reflection of the relationships that exist in the universe. Moral consciousness (morality) in particular is the reflection of the relationships that exist between people. Morality is specific to the observer.[/FONT]




    [FONT=Garamond]V[/FONT]

    [FONT=Garamond]The next stage of society to be considered is today's society: the age of capitalism. The consciousness of capitalism assumes that everybody can chose between a set of morals to live their life by, make sensible choices and reap the material rewards. It is believed that everybody has a mind of their own, free from being determined by spirits, or Gods, or the commandments of Moses, free for our selves to determine.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]But consciousness is the reflection of the relationships that exist in the universe. The relationship between a person and society is not freely chosen. You can either be a capitalist who owns immense wealth, or a worker who owns practically nothing. The relationship between a person and the rest of society is completely determined by which role they were born into, and this role was handed to the present by the forces of history (class struggle - read dialectics article above) which are beyond our control. If you live as a worker, then your relationship with society is wage-slavery. Your personal reflection of this may make you hate it – and that would be your consciousness. The capitalist has a different relationship with society, he is the overlord, his reflection of this relationship makes him very happy, and his consciousness makes him force the government into increasing the GST. The Capitalists genuinely believe that it is good to hurt the majority of the people for their exclusive rights to extreme riches.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]The idea that people chose their morals and their own consciousness is a remnant of primitive spiritualism: When forces in nature had not been connected with the forces that determine them, they were given minds of their own - consciousness is given a mind of its own under capitalism.[/FONT]


    [FONT=Garamond]VI[/FONT]

    [FONT=Garamond]The theory of human nature presumes to say that since humans are naturally greedy, we live in a greedy society. Rather than actually explaining the origin of ideas, ideas are conveniently presumed to have been there before they could even be thought, then imprinted on our brains at birth, determining the nature of all human's and all of our social relationships, which are also regarded as 'natural'.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Consciousness evolves - every stage in its line of development, alongside the development of society, represents the sum total of the perceptions of reality interacting together amidst a class war. The development of society is caused by the struggle between the classes, the relationships between classes change over time as some classes rise to prominence, and others fall.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Individuals within each class will have their own particular relationship with the other classes and thus a perception of reality and morality specific to their social being. The consciousness of the ruling class, in any given period, will be the most influential, and its prejudices will be taken for granted as truth for long periods of time.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]But prejudices, which are personal reflections of social relationships, do not last forever, for the class struggle will eventually cause social relationships to break. Although the ruling class of today wish to believe that it is our opinions that determine society, the prejudiced opinions of the oppressors do not cause the world to stand still![/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]The theory of 'human nature' is a useful lie used by the capitalists to demoralize the working class by dampening their aspirations for Communism.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]The idea that human nature is fundamentally inspired by greed, is the specific morality of the capitalist class, who are fundamentally inspired by greed. The idea that a society of equality is impossible due to the contradictory strivings of individuals against the[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]common good, is the prejudice of the capitalists class, whose individual strivings for profits are leading to the common ruin of society and to the destruction of the environment.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Class society is but one stage in the development of human culture. Communism will arrive in our lifetime if we fight for it. Man will become free from class divisions and will thus become his own master, free to become really human, without having his personality determined by class relationships. I wonder what we will become. It has been dreamt of for centuries in the concept of God, but truly, it is beyond the limits of imagination. We will be able to see this dream come to life in the personalities of the children who grow up under Communism. All we have to do to see this, is become like Jesus and fight against all injustice for perfection.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]Jamie Mathews, June 14th[/FONT]

    [FONT=Garamond]Summary of the Evolution of Consciousness[/FONT]

    [FONT=Garamond]Dialectics shows us how the form of society has evolved through the class struggle, consciousness is determined by and evolves alongside the class struggle. from investigating this development we can say:[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]i. Consciousness is the reflection of the relationships that exist in the universe[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]ii. The overall consciousness of an epoch represents the total knowledge of understood relationships.[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]iii. Moral consciousness is the reflection of the relationships that exist between people[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]iv. Social relationships are determined by the relationship between roles in production[/FONT]
    [FONT=Garamond]v. The overall moral consciousness of an epoch represents the sum of, and unity of the opposing reflections of social relationships. For long periods, the most dominant reflection is the one belonging to the ruling class of the epoch. In periods of revolution, the consciousness of society changes as the oppressed class becomes aware of its ability to reconstruct the social relationship that enslaves it.[/FONT]