JR Barch — … On Raising the Level of Collective Consciousness [I]

There are three major fields of thought or areas, before our consciousness, present in the mind:

1. Science – including education

2. Philosophy – great conditioning ideas

3. Psychology – what is man essentially, and how does he function?

The first two deal with the proper use of the mind and intellectual faculty – the power of discrimination – so that correct knowledge arises from correct perception, correct deduction, and correct witness (accurate evidence). Governments around the world commit a grave crime against humanity by LYING in order to sustain their particular ideology. So does the advertising and entertainment industries. No parent would LIE to their children if they wanted their kids to grow up with a clear mind and right habitual use of the mental faculties; and to be in touch, inside of themselves, with a sense of integrity, dignity and self-respect, extending to others. People forget that it is our behaviour towards one another, based on the inclusivity and universality of the sense of self, that determines what happens in the world; the ideologies are not necessarily compelling. It depends upon whether or not we are willing to be slaves, to whatever mind says. Or to put it in other words, whether or not our relations with ourselves and others come from a deeper place, free of all ideologies, because they are centred in the greater reality of being.…

Inspecting the foundation. If a foundation rests on granite, an edifice built on it can be strong. If  foundation is set in sand, any edifice built on it will not only be weak but also dangerous.

heteconomist
… On Raising the Level of Collective Consciousness [I]
JR Barch

Jürgen Habermas on Richard Rorty

One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title 'Wild Orchids and Trotsky.' In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky's dream of justice on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the "holy", the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: "My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law."

Richard Rorty

quoted by Jürgen Habermas, in "Philosopher, poet and friend," Sound and Sight

http://www.signandsight.com/features/1386.html

The article originally appeared in German in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on June 11, 2007.

A true Lover doesn't follow any one religion,
be sure of that.
Since in the religion of Love,
there is no irreverence or faith.
When in Love,
body, mind, heart and soul don't even exist.
Become this,
fall in Love,
and you will not be separated again.

Jalaluddin Rumi
Rumi Odes & Quatrains translated by Shahram Shiva
http://www.rumi.net/rumi_poems_main.htm

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Matthew 22:36-40 (NRSV)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

Matthew 5:43-45 NRSV

I belong to no religion. My religion is Love.

Meher Baba
http://www.theawakenermagazine.org/avol08/av08n02/av08n02p05.htm

Love is the sum and substance of all religions, and the only essential of all creeds. Leave the rigmarole alone.

Meher Baba
in Bhau Kalahari, Lord Meher, revised online edition, p. 904
http://www.lordmeher.org/rev/index.jsp?pageBase=page.jsp&nextPage=904

"Many are the means described for the attainment of the highest good, such as love, performance of duty, self-control, truthfulness, sacrifices, gifts, austerity, charity, vows, observances of moral precepts. I could name more. But of all I could name, verily love is the highest: love and devotion that make one forgetful of everything, love that unites the lover with me. What indescribable joys does one find through love of me, the blissful Self!"

Krishna
Srimad Bhagavatam
Translated and edited by Swami Prabhavananda
Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1972, pp. 240-241

"Only if one knows the truth of love, which is the real nature of Self, will the strong entangled knot of life be untied. Only if one attains the height of love will liberation be attained. Such is the heart of all religions. The experience of Self is only love, which is seeing only love, hearing only love, feeling only love, tasting only love and smelling only love, which is bliss."

Sri Ramana Maharshi
in David Godman
Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi

http://bhagavan-ramana.org/bhakti.html

"Once, as Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was coming forth from Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed after him and beheld the Temple in ruins. 'Woe unto us," Rabbi Joshua cried, "that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned for, is laid waste!'

"'My son,' Rabbi Yohanan said to him, 'be not grieved. We have another atonement as effective as this. And what is it? It is acts of loving-kindness, kindness, as it is said, For I desire mercy and not sacrifice [Hosea 6.6].'"

Talmud, Abot de Rabbi Nathan 6

"Basically, there is only one precept -- not being selfish.
If people are selfish, they will violate the precepts.
If people are not selfish, they will not violate the precepts."

Venerable Master Hsuan Hua
_Spring Sun, Lotus Flower:
Quotes form the teachings of Vernable Master Hsaun Hua_
Burlingame, CA: Buddhist test Translation Society, 2004, p. 10

"When loving devotion is at its highest, nothing remains of the individual self for it becomes universalized and all-pervading."

Kirpal Singh
_The Night is a Jungle_
Tilton: The Sant Bani Press, 1975, p. 259

Embracing Tao, you become embraced.
Supple, breathing gently, you become reborn.
Clearing your vision, you become clear.
Nurturing your beloved, you become impartial.
Opening your heart, you become accepted.
Accepting the World, you embrace Tao.

Bearing and nurturing,
Creating but not owning,
Giving without demanding,
Controlling without authority,
This is love.

Tao Te Ching 10
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v1.txt

“No other thing do I know, O monks, on account of which unarisen ill will does not arise and arisen ill will is abandoned so much as on account of this: the liberation of the heart by benevolence. For one who attends properly to the liberation of the heart by benevolence, unarisen ill will does not arise and arisen ill will is abandoned.”

Buddha

Anguttara Nikaya, 1.ii.7 (trans. Nyanaponika & Bodhi, 1999, p. 34


My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
As quoted in Tibet, a Guide to the Land of Fascination (1988) by Trilok Chandra Majupuria and Indra Majupuria
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tenzin_Gyatso,_14th_Dalai_Lama

Georgie Wingfield-Hayes — Facing up to the capitalist within

While the level of collective consciousness shifts one consciousness at a time, there is a a resonance effect, and it is conveyed by cultural narratives, for instance.

openDemocracy 
Facing up to the capitalist within
Georgie Wingfield-Hayes

Ira Chernu — If Only the Tea Party Crowd Knew Where Their Ideas Came from

It all began when I was re-reading Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution (trying to escape from obsessively tracking the DC rollercoaster.) As Wood observes, the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians divided over basically the same issue that plagues us now: How much of a role should government play in people's lives? (Though the clash back then was so fierce, and split American society so sharply, that it makes today's politics look rather mild by comparison.

But Wood takes us deeper into the substance of the issue. Jeffersonians were willing to limit government only because they assumed that there was "a principle of benevolence ... a moral instinct, a sense of sympathy, in each human being." They were founding an American nation upon the European Enlightenment's belief that "there was 'a natural principle of attraction in man towards man' [as Hume put it], and that these natural affinities were by themselves capable of holding the society together."

This was exactly the point that frightened Alexander Hamilton most. He summed up his opponents' view quite accurately: "As human nature shall refine and ameliorate by the operation of a more enlightened plan," based on common moral sense and the spread of affection and benevolence, government eventually "will become useless, and Society will subsist and flourish free from its shackles." Then Hamilton, the greatest conservative of his day, dismissed this vision of shrinking government as "a wild and fatal scheme."

The Republicans who now control the House obviously have a very different view of what it means to be a true conservative. But that doesn't mean they have become Jeffersonians. Not by any means. In many ways they would be closer to Hamilton, who scorned Jefferson's trust in human nature.

AlterNet
If Only the Tea Party Crowd Knew Where Their Ideas Came from
Ira Chernu

Lawrence Davidson — Why Americans Are So Ignorant -- It's Not Only Fox News, There Are Some Understandable Reasons for it

In 2008, Rick Shenkman, the Editor-in-Chief of the History News Network, published a book entitled Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth about the American Voter. In it he demonstrated, among other things, that most Americans were: (1) ignorant about major international events, (2) knew little about how their own government runs and who runs it, (3) were nonetheless willing to accept government positions and policies even though a moderate amount of critical thought suggested they were bad for the country, and (4) were readily swayed by stereotyping, simplistic solutions, irrational fears and public relations babble.

Shenkman spent 256 pages documenting these claims, using a great number of polls and surveys from very reputable sources. Indeed, in the end it is hard to argue with his data. So, what can we say about this?

One thing that can be said is that this is not an abnormal state of affairs. As has been suggested in prior analyses, ignorance of non-local affairs (often leading to inaccurate assumptions, passive acceptance of authority, and illogical actions) is, in fact, a default position for any population.

To put it another way, the majority of any population will pay little or no attention to news stories or government actions that do not appear to impact their lives or the lives of close associates. If something non-local happens that is brought to their attention by the media, they will passively accept government explanations and simplistic solutions.

AlterNet
Why Americans Are So Ignorant -- It's Not Only Fox News, There Are Some Understandable Reasons for it
Lawrence Davidson | Consortium News

Why we are so screwed. Ordinary people don't pay attention unless they perceive that something affects them directly. So the level of collective awareness of major issues is abysmally low.

David DeGraw — Occupy Evolver: Realize Your Potential

The global Occupy movement is much more than an economic or political movement. Occupy is a consciousness-expanding phenomenon.

The same people who mocked us before Occupy started, and said that there would never be a non-violent civil disobedience movement throughout the US, are now the same people saying that Occupy was a once in a lifetime or generational event. What these people fail to grasp or refuse to acknowledge is that Occupy was the first wave of a tsunami of transformation that has just begun to wash over the planet. It’s the first wave of evolution from a quickly maturing Internet generation. We are developing a highly sophisticated collective consciousness that transcends the conditioning of archaic shortsighted greed-addicted forces.

Every day more and more people are using the Internet to become more and more aware of the forces that limit human potential. And as their awareness grows, they are using the Internet to connect, communicate and organize with millions of other aware citizens on a scale unprecedented in human history. Occupy is the first cohesive expression of this evolution. It is the first ray of the new rising sun.

Occupy represents the new world evolving and transforming out of the old world. Occupy shifted mass consciousness and planted a flag in the global mental atmosphere. A critical mass of humanity is now awake and aware of the obsolete systems that limit our potential.

Occupy Evolver

Realize Your Potential

David DeGraw

I believe! Back to the Sixties, but at a higher level on an upward spiral. Reminiscent of Mario Savio on Sproul steps. Want some metaphors?

Read this wrt to Strauss & Howe's The Fourth Turning, and Ravi Batra, The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos.

Steven Rice — Group Intelligence Correlates With Social Aptitude, Not IQ

Considering the complexity and global nature of business today, work is nearly always a team activity, and often those teams are embedded in ever-shifting networks. A new field of study, collective intelligence, is measuring the ability of teams to solve problems. This research is yielding powerful insights into improving the performance of networks, teams, and other collective groups. One breakthrough finding shows that collective intelligence is variable and measurable and — most surprisingly — correlates more with the social abilities of the team members than with the team's aggregate individual IQ....

In large 21st century organizations, executives have recognized that networks and teams play a key role in organizational excellence and are a form of collective intelligence. It's true that networks foster innovation through informal collaboration and the exchange of expertise and ideas. Networks also move information quickly and freely and determine where work really happens and how. Whether we like it or not, hierarchies are more and more relics of the past while networks determine where value is created.

The Harvard Business Review | HBR Blog Network
Group Intelligence Correlates With Social Aptitude, Not IQ
Steven Rice

"Collective" means that "networks, teams, and other collective groups" are social systems comprised of elements and subsystems, together with relationships, usually rule-based and characterized as cultural or institutional. Cultural relationships are informal, based on tradition and convention, and they are implicit. Institutional arrangements are generally formal and explicit. A collective group is structurally and functionally different from an aggregate. Collective groups exhibit collective consciousness and coordinated behavior that is different from aggregates.

Fabius Maximus — Our choice of a leader reflects our true self. What does 2012 tell about America?

Leaders reflect the level of collective consciousness.

Fabius Maximus

Our choice of a leader reflects our true self. What does 2012 tell about America?

Is the US at the stage of the late Roman Republic, awaiting the man on the white horse?

Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It — and the implication for democracy

A growing body of psychology research shows that incompetence deprives people of the ability to recognize their own incompetence. To put it bluntly, dumb people are too dumb to know it. Similarly, unfunny people don't have a good enough sense of humor to tell.

This disconnect may be responsible for many of society's problems.

With more than a decade's worth of research, David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, has demonstrated that humans find it "intrinsically difficult to get a sense of what we don't know." Whether an individual lacks competence in logical reasoning, emotional intelligence, humor or even chess abilities, the person still tends to rate his or her skills in that area as being above average.

Read it at Life's Little Mysteries

Incompetent People Too Ignorant to Know It
by Natalie Wolchover | Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer

(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

This research suggests that the wisdom of crowds may be an urban legend and that the effectiveness of crowd sourcing is significantly diminished by the average level of competence of the crowd.

Along the same lines, people who aren't talented in a given area tend not to be able to recognize the talents or good ideas of others, from co-workers to politicians. This may impede the democratic process, which relies on citizens having the capacity to identify and support the best candidate or policy.

Since democracy is based on majority rule, the average level of competence is determinative. The question then become whether the average level, which could be called "collective consciousness, is high enough in complex societies operating in complex environments for the level of decision making required to survive and progress efficiently and effectively. To the degree that this is not the case, then collective consciousness is a drag on society. This argues in favor of the view that a high priority for a democracy is raising the general level of education

BTW, has anyone else noticed that the discussion is becoming more "philosophical," in the sense of being concerned with key fundamentals that deal with the whole of life and experience?