Structure of the Book

The book is written in four sections.

The first section examines the basic urge to unity, to become one with other people on the one hand and the urge to be individual, to separate from others on the other. We move towards being one with others , but as we do we lose our individuality. As we move towards our individuality we lose our unity. We are forever caught between he two. 

We humans are also caught between the urge to create and live and the urge to avoid death, decay and destruction. Ken Wilber sees these two as major driving forces in the creation of civilisation as we know it today. We create to fulfil our urge to express the life within us. We also create so we can feel like we are in control of life and death. By building the pyramids, the Pharoahs were trying to take on the same feeling of eternity we see in those massive stones that still stand thousands of years after they were put in place.

The first section also investigates the way individual urges blend to form social systems of behaviour. In societies that have not developed basic linguistic and other communication skills there is a need to find means that quickly engender co-operative behaviour amongst its members. If they do not find a strategy to get members to comply, they will survive in the jungle or on the open savannah. Violence is one, and perhaps the only strategy, that will keep such groups alive. 

We can easily understand how a societal structure based on the strongest male dominating the rest of the group would form. This is a habitual behaviour pattern we have lived for a hundred thousand years or more. Habits like this do not disappear quickly and they certainly do not disappear because we think it would be a good idea if they did.

The second section looks at different models and theories to describe social development that can give us a deeper understanding of the underlying dynamics that produce violence. First is Ken Wilber's levels of development from the archaic to mythic to rational to trascendant. Each stage has its own world view, understandings and pathologies. Each new stage emerges from the previous stage. We see why different societies formed the social structures that they did. 

Spiral dynamics has much in common with Ken Wilber's ideas and in fact they have collaborated a great deal. Spiral dynamics describes very similar stages of development. The concept of 'memes' formed by Richard Dawkins. A meme is an idea or concept that can spread through a population, perhaps through books, television or word of mouth. The name is based on the word 'gene' which works similarly on a pyhsical level. Memes often come together in clusters that somehow fit together, just as when we go to the movies we find ice creams and popcorn.  The clusters were called vMemes, or memes clustered around a set of values Clare Graves, who first developed spiral dynamics found the memes clustered into developmental groups that correspond very closely with Ken Wilber's levels.

There are theories of cyclical patterns in politics, social behaviour and economics. We should not dwell on the length of time the cycles last; they will inveitably clash from theory to theory. There is, however, a large correspondence between the patterns within the cycles. Time and time again we see a four stage cycle. There is a crisis which leads to the establishment of a new regime with new values and imperatives. The members of the society are close and supportive. There is new hope for the future. It is a very idealistic time, The economy is strong.

In the next stage doubts begin to emerge about the new values. The economy looses some of its vibrancy, innovation is not supported as it was before. This often leads to a crisis of values, an internal crisis. The third stage shows a move towards individualism and social cohesion lessens. The economy picks up as the situation settles.

In the final stage individualism becomes even stronger. People have largely forgotten the previous crisis and become more willing to push situations to the limit. The economy becomes stronger but social cohesion decreases until the society enters a new crisis.

Chaos Theory and Complexity, I believe, will be seen to be far more important than it is at present. Life is neither completely random nor completely orderly. It is chaotic. Chaos can be surprising orderly and order can suddenly turn to chaos. While we cannot predict the behaviour of chaotic systems, we can still learn much about then. Nature dispalys chaotic and complex behaviour almost everywhere. We find it in weather patterns, the growth of plants, sun spots, soil erosion, earthquakes and volcanoes. We also find it in traffic flows, election behaviour, human migration patterns and oil prices. 

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter displays self organising critical behaviour. Jupiter does not have a solid surface and the spot is made of gas. Above it and below it are gaseos winds travelling at hundreds of kilometers per hour, while the spot has remained stable for hundreds of years at least travelling at a few metres per second. There is a constant flow of gas into the spot, matched perfectly by the gas leaving. The spot is table and predictable. One day, however, the balance will change and it only needs to be by a very small amount, there will be more gas entering or leaving and it will suddenly turn into a turbulent swirl. It is always on the edge of catastrophe just as a person running if frozen in any position is unstable and would fall, but rather moves from unstable state to unstable state creating a new emergent stability. That does not mean that they may not land on a small pebble and come a cropper. Per Bak in his book, How Nature Works, suggests that this self organised critical state is in fact the most effective state and as such natural systems (including human systems) are attracted to that state.

Chaotic systems move towards attractors, or preferred states. Often they will form limit cycles. Imagine a lake with a weed that grows that would strangle life in the river if it were to continue to grow. There is a small fish in the lake that eats the weed, but it is in tern eaten by a larger fish. When the larger fish eat too many smaller fish the weed grows and the larger fish start to die. The smaller fish begin to prosper again and the weed is eaten increasing the population of the larger fish again. The population of the small fish, the large fish and the weed exist in a dynamic equilibrium called a limit cycle. The system could tumble into catastrophe at any point if another predator entered, or perhaps extra sunlight makes the weed grow faster. As a chaotic system it would then begin to move to a new atractor, with a new balance point

Perhaps the seemingly regular and predicatble social, political and economic cycles are actually self organising critical maintained within complex limit cycles. Just as the ecology of the lake could easily tip into catastrophe, so can our social systems as we observe.
It would explain the seemingly stable but ultimately unpredictable cycles we observe. If there is an underlying attractor in our universe drawing us to a state of unity with all that is, we can see Ken Wilber's developmental levels, spiral dynamics and our progression through the levels to more and more whole states of being as being drawn through emergent levels of attractors to increasing wholeness. This links all our theories and models into an overview of societal structures and development that gives a deep understanding of the underlying principles explaining why we continue to live such violent lives.

The third section of the book is a journey through history, examining various key societies that have made present day civilisation what it is. We see how all our models and theories elucidate and illuminate the our journey of development. We move from our first distant ancestors and on to small tribal groups, to the Sumerians, Greeks, Egyptians and similar people. We investigate the Hebrews are how crucial they have been to the story of who we are. Following them are the Christians and the Catholic Church. Then we reach the times of the renaissance, reformation and the enlightenment. Fianlly we move to more modern times with the industrial revolution and the technological and knowledge based societies of the twentieth century until we reach today and the electronic revolution.

In the final section, we examine our heritage and see where it is taking us. We look at what and how we need to develop to move forwards in our development to the higher states of being that ken Wilber describes. Then and only then will we have evolved from our violent past into a compassionate future.