Five Areas of Activity Needed for a Movement to Advance the Conscious Evolution of Increasingly Conscious Social Systems

What is involved in this emerging movement we are noticing and catalyzing -- this "movement for the conscious evolution of increasingly conscious social systems"?  
What activities is it involved in?
What activities should it be involved in?
What should it focus on?  
What makes it unique and special?

Questions like these can help us clarify what is already happening in this nascent movement and how we -- those of us who see ourselves as part of it -- might help it evolve to its next forms as a vibrant and influential social phenomenon.

This is no easy task.  The fact is, when you are undertaking the thorough transformation of a civilization, virtually everything can and must be attended to.  

However, I suggest we are doing something that is both more and less than that.  

We intend to upgrade the capacity of our civilization to transform itself, as needed, in sensible and wise ways, forever.

What sorts of activities might we focus on, if that is our goal?  

Below is an initial exploration of this territory in which I offer five categories, five domains of activity to help us wrap our minds around this mega-project.  Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, by any means.  It is only one person's initial attempt to pull together and make sense of the many domains of evolutionary Work currently recognized as vital.  These domains of Work are more interrelated than distinct.  Other observers may see more, or other Work, or wish to mark out the territory in other ways.  I strongly encourage that.  May this list grow and change as our movement wakes up and comes to understand more about Who it is and what it is about.

Here are the realms of movement activity I currently see:

INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT AND ENGAGEMENT

Here we find efforts to expand people's individual consciousness, thinking, feeling, motivations, and behaviors to knowingly embrace the evolution and well-being of the whole.  These efforts include meditation, education, community programs, personal transformation, evolutionary religious forms, action support networks, and ways to inform and engage people in evolution as a meaningful story and enterprise that includes them as active participants. Much of the existing human potential movement works here, and provides resources for further evolution.  As an evolutionary movement, we particularly want to help people find their evolutionary calling.

COLLECTIVE CAPACITY

Here we find projects that release, increase, and empower collective consciousness, intelligence, wisdom, and capacity for healthy functioning and action.  These projects include ways for whole communities and societies to clearly see what's happening in and around them -- and their past, present, and future roles in those happenings -- and to move forward coherently and sensibly.  Keys to this include improved media and other storytelling, effective methods of inclusive collective reflection, holistic political and governance systems, and compelling evolutionary arts.  The more these approaches bring forth the whole picture of what's going on and focus on what is really at the heart of the matter, the more collective wisdom and wise action they can catalyze.

STRATEGIC CONVERSATIONS

Here we find activities that identify where conversation would make a powerful difference in our collective prospects for evolutionary development -- and that then creatively bring together diverse, relevant viewpoints or developmental threads so they can talk and evolve together into more consciously co-creative undertakings.  This includes networking individuals and groups, small focused dialogues, and various large-scale gatherings and conferences around topics, issues, possibilities, or open-ended evolutionary inquiries.  These can be done regularly or ad hoc to address the transformational inquiries of every sector of society.  Well-done conversational interventions are the acupuncture or homeopathy of evolutionary social creativity, creating self-organized healing and transformation with minimal effort.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST

Here we find laws and culture through which people and organizations experience for themselves the positive and negative impacts they cause on others and on the whole (e.g., the whole community, society, or world).  This includes anything that aligns the day-to-day self-interest of individual entities with the real and evolutionary interests of the whole, including economic incentives, regulatory and chartering constraints, and cultural celebrations, narratives, and taboos.  Cultural feedback loops that govern human behavior get reworked so they serve humanity's collective survival and healthy evolution without trampling diversity or human individuality.

RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND SUPPORT

All of the above evolutionary enterprises could use help:

(a) gathering, orienting and spreading existing know-how, stories, and resources;
(b) developing more powerful understandings and tools than currently exist to support their evolutionary work;
(c) developing means whereby they can observe themselves, learn lessons from their collective experience, and transform themselves; and
(d) creating forums whereby individuals, groups, communities, organizations, etc., can self-organize increasingly effective evolutionary research, development, and support systems of their own.

What else do we, as a movement, need to do to catalyze the conscious evolution of increasingly conscious social systems?