This post is a response to Ken Wilber’s video clip titled ‘Is an Integral World Federation Possible?’  You can watch the clip here.

Ken Wilber

As Ken mentions, much of the Integral community’s discussion on the concept of a 2nd Tier world federation has been grounded in a postmodern (or Green in Spiral Dynamics terms) mindset. The concept discussed by Ken is consequently not that much different to our current concept of government, except it has three houses (instead of two).

The research of Dr Clare W Graves clearly documents the drivers and the change dynamics involved in the transition from 1st to 2nd Tier. It can help us understand the problems created by postmodern approaches and can inform our speculation about a truly 2nd Tier world federation style system.

From Graves’ research we know that the postmodern mindset brings awareness to the problems created by living life the modern way. Our focus is redirected to issues such as resource imbalances, sustainability and social justice. We know that in time, a dominant postmodern mindset will become stuck amid the complexity of conflicting opinions, and that its attempts to solve problems by rebalancing things will not address the root causes of those imbalances. A classic example is sending food aid to Africa, which despite many years of effort hasn’t alleviated the root causes of famine there. So we can predict that a world federation that’s designed from a postmodern mindset will, in the normal course of events, behave in a similar way.

From Graves’ research we also know that the problems created by living at one stage of development become the fuel that drives the transition to the next stage. In the world right now the problems created by living life the modern way (such as the financial crisis, resource shortages, time shortages, climate issues etc) are becoming the fuel for our transition to a critical mass of postmodern consciousness. So we can also predict that the problems that emerge out of the postmodern way of living will in time become the fuel for the emergence of a critical mass of 2nd Tier consciousness. This is a natural pattern of change.

Importantly, Graves predicted that humanity would transit through the postmodern stage of development (and into 2nd Tier) faster than any other transition in recorded history. This is deduced from the ever shortening time between the first emergence and the transcendence of sequential stages, throughout human history.

As each new stage of human development emerges, it does so not because a bunch of people think it’s a good idea, but because something deep in our subconscious is triggered by our life conditions to develop a new and more complex way of coping. The new stage then emerges in an Integral fashion, impacting all domains of our existence. The people who designed the US Constitution as a modern (Orange) document did so because they’d already made the transition to that stage themselves. Most likely they hoped that everyone else would start living life according to modern values as well. This inbuilt ‘you should be like me’ perspective is a known bias that shows up in all of the 1st Tier stages.

The transition into 2nd Tier consciousness (I hesitate to call it Integral consciousness because much of what’s put forward as Integral consciousness at present is more likely postmodern) brings a resurgence of the survival theme found in the archaic or Beige system of the 1st Tier. The context this time though is the survival of our species. When Graves first documented this stage of development it was during the cold war, when some people were concerned at the prospect of our species being destroyed by a nuclear war. If we look at the emerging global issues today it’s easy to imagine how, sometime in the near future, a critical mass of people might start to think that the survival of our species is at risk (eg from climate change, social systems failure, influenza pandemics, food shortages plus the overlapping effects of these problems; or maybe a solar storm).

So the creation of a truly 2nd Tier world federation is likely to be driven by a perceived necessity to cope with urgent global threats to our survival. Therefore, we can say that the primary driver is not likely to be global standardization or efficiency or social justice, although all these will all play a role due to the transcend and include nature of development. We can also say that the change from our current systems of coordination to any new 2nd Tier system will be a true paradigm shift, not a tweak of what we already have. If something new does emerge that’s a tweak of our currents systems, it’s likely to be postmodern stepping stone.

Imagine for a moment that our communications technology allows a global minority of 2nd Tier thinkers to connect and actively collaborate as never before. As the number of of 2nd Tier thinkers increases, they start to pop up inside our current institutions and they plug themselves into this dedicated (and exclusive) 2nd Tier network. In Graves’ own words, the change brought about by this new way of coping is ‘the most dramatic change in human behaviour that has yet occurred in all of man’s history.’ Our capacity to cope with complexity increases by the power of 10. The leverage created by a dedicated 2nd Tier problem solving network should not be underestimated, particularly as the presence of 2nd Tier consciousness within our existing institutions grows naturally.

The 2nd Tier coping capacity brings the potential to do for consciousness what genetic engineering might do for biology. That is, we can see (clearly, for the first time) and understand the layers, patterns and dynamics of human development; predict problems simply by the observation of what is; and make meaningful interventions with the intention of avoiding known problems before they have a chance to occur.

It’s quite possible that the emergence of a global structure with this purpose could occur entirely outside of the political domain. It may simply be based on solving critical problems by doing ‘what works’ in times of urgent need. Due to the nature of the 2nd Tier mindset, it’s likely to avoid or minimise bureaucracy. Not tied down by the protocols of conventional government, it would have the potential to act very quickly and, just like the agents in The Matrix movies, it could pop up and act anywhere that a suitable host is present.

We’re now opening up a very different conversation to the one on the video and I don’t think the label of ‘world federation’ really fits the bill any more. We’re talking about the emergence of an extremely sophisticated consciousness, albeit at the first stage of the 2nd Tier. In 2nd Tier terms, we’re only just learning to walk. I’m talking here about the Yellow coping system, in Spiral Dynamics language.

Dr Clare W Graves (1914-1986)

When Graves (pictured above) gathered his data back in the 1950s he found a small number of people, around six out of 1,065 people, who had developed the capacity to cope the postintegral (Turquoise) way.  Given the trend of expanding consciousness, we can safely predict that a greater percentage of people are at that level of development by now.  So as Ken indicates, we’re not limited to applying Yellow consciousness to this issue.

While Ken talks about the upper house of an Integral world federation being the ‘house of wisdom’, in the design he describes I doubt that it would be sufficiently supported by the life conditions in the lower houses.  However if we take the same house of wisdom concept, populate it with Turquoise capacity (or beyond) and provide the resources needed to design from scratch and then govern a global problem solving network based in Yellow consciousness, the possibilities are enormous.

We could expect the general acceptance by a Yellow audience of an organisation based around a hierarchy of consciousness (if we were dealing with anything less than Yellow we could safely predict a rejection of this design).  The inherent 2nd Tier potential to solve complex problems, while at the same time aligning the needs and motivations of different people at different (especially lower) stages of development, would be critical to success.  Credibility with the 1st Tier population would follow on from demonstrated successes, perhaps only small at first.

The process I’ve described above has the potential to transcend and include our current ways and institutions, while at the same time operating with sufficient autonomy to remain clear of 1st Tier baggage.  The design of a global network for Yellow but governed by Turquoise would be a massive multiplier of capacity, bringing longer term stability to what would otherwise be a survival based game if governed by Yellow alone.

The technology we need to do this already exists.  The consciousness we need is already accessible, given the appropriate life conditions to nourish it.  In my view the emergence of a system like this is simply a matter of time.  As mentioned earlier, the key motivator is likely to be a perceived threat to our survival, requiring urgent global action.

Our first global governance system may not resemble a government at all, but rather a kind of global brain that provides problem solving and large scale coordination for the good of the overall organism (ie the planet).

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PS. The global probem solving network I’ve described above is the subject of a funding bid I’ve submitted to Google under Project 10 to the 100.  Sadly (sigh) Google are sorting through the 150,000 electronic bids they received manually, so their selection process is running well behind schedule.