There is a fundamental shift underway in the world we live in - a shift in human consciousness birthing the newly emerging domain of Unidiversity. The domain of Unidiversity harmonizes diversity into coherent patterns of meaning and relationship to provide a new holistic field of expression and livingness for human potential to continue its journey of unfoldment.
 The shift underway can be seen not only by directly observing the world conditions we are currently experiencing, but the shift has also been foretold by Indigenous wisdom keepers and through prophetic writings preserved through the ages. This shift will dramatically alter the landscape of products, systems, and processes that are familiar to us today.
Our present opportunity lies in understanding these emerging patterns and aligning our efforts with the change.
In our Current Domain, we have created systems and processes that place primary value on:
Shortest time for task, most for the money, shortest distance between two points, technological advancement, efficiency, expediency, exclusiveness, invasiveness, competition, goals often in isolation from whole, people as consumers and products. Subjective experiences are often trivialized or ignored.
In the emerging domain of the Fifth World value is placed on:
The most worthwhile use of time, the most responsible and responsive use of money, the most honorable path, ethical considerations above technology, synthesis of beauty and practicality, win-win/integrated problem solving, harmony (cooperation), goals inclusive of whole, people as living souls. Subjective experiences are valued, encouraged, developed, shared, and supported.
The emerging Fifth World domain represents a return to wholeness and connection to life through the re-awakening and activating of latent human potential through coherent relationships.
In the emerging Fifth World domain we see fundamental shifts toward:
Sustainability, sovereignty, integrity, community, service, spiritual connection (meaning), sense of place, and re-connection with Nature. We may also see dramatic changes in money and money systems, the rise of local currencies, barter/trade, highly connected local business, the return of the artisan and craftsperson, and voluntary simplicity.
On the way out are:
Products/businesses whose primary purpose is to accentuate the ego, usury based fiat money systems, accumulation, ostentation, and products harmful to others or the environment.
In the same way that Nature demonstrates the caterpillar must dissolve it's form and return to a formless/chaotic state before metamorphically reforming in the pattern of the butterfly - so also must our civilization experience the dissolution, reformulation, and transformation of many of the systems in our current domain of understanding to harmonize and achieve coherence with the emerging domain of Unidiversity.
Change brings with it the opportunity for us to expand our horizons of understanding to embrace these newly emerging patterns of possibility.
"In times of great change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists". - Eric Hoffer.
Trajectory of Change - Illustrated by "The Century of the Self"
In the BBC Documentary entitled "Century of the Self" released in 2002, Adam Curtis showed how the advertising and public relations industries, building on the work of Sigmund Freud, have increasingly utilized techniques of mass psychology manipulation to influence consumer behavior and "engineer consent". In the video we hear testimony from those such as Edward Bernays, nephew of Freud who were directly involved in the development of these techniques.
These psychological techniques have been highly evolved and are fundamental in the corporate psyche and much of the advertising and PR industry today. (Documentary can be found on youtube as BBC Century of Self - parts 1-4)
In the documentary, we can observe evolution of human consciousness 'mashed up' with increasingly sophisticated techniques to subconsciously influence and engineer human behavior for self-serving materialistic and political ends. There are a great many ways to see the same patterns that are illustrated by this documentary elsewhere but the documentary serves as a good illustration of the trajectory of change of human consciousness that leads us to the doorstep of the domain of Unidiversity.
The series starts with the beginning of the Industrial age showing dense centers of humanity operating as a sort of hive mind with few material wants beyond necessities and exhibiting a general low level conformity.
Curtis illustrates how the repressed creativity of the hive mind can be manipulated, shaped and manifested as the dark energy atrocities of the first two World Wars demonstrate. The second war, brings women forward toward facing and balancing their own masculine energies as they enter the workplace bringing about the beginning of the end of subservience based on religion and class.
The manipulation of the war era hive mind then creates the charge and sets the stage for the age of individualism where the hive splinters into Ego selves beginning to search for meaning and expression in self. Service-to-self business (maximize shareholder wealth) steps forward to entrain the individual Ego through defining individual value as pocketbook purchases via PR and Advertising media influence.
The Series shows that the growing experience with materialism begins to awaken an individual's conscious understanding that separation induced by the system of materialism is lonely, painful, unsustainable and that enslavement to Ego expression keeps one in misery (consumers are constantly barraged with the messages of insufficiency and lack).
Conscious understanding that individualism must be replaced by true sovereignty dawns as people wake up to see they have been entangled in materialism. Voluntary Simplicity results. People begin to reclaim authenticity and their own sense of power leading to the opened door for the realization of balanced human potential and expression. This is a fundamental driver behind the movement toward sustainability, "green" and relocalization.
This trajectory of evolution illustrated well in the Century of Self series leads to a quantum shift in consciousness now underway...
The Shift: A growing awareness that personal fulfillment and meaning is found through a return to sovereignty and authenticity and that it is through uniting in service-to-others that the individual is actually well served with the whole becoming more than the sum of the parts (Coherence). A deliberate and conscious unification of diverse Sovereigns, coherent with Enformy(Appendix A), results in (the Fifth World).
Technology Mash Up in the Evolution of Consciousness
If we look at the progression of human development as characterized in the "Century of Self" we see that technology mirrors and interrelates with the shifts in consciousness and in some ways acts as scaffolding and a catalyst for its unfoldment.
- The invention of industrial machinery led to high concentrations of humanity in cities and a shift in personal artisanship toward a hive machine operator concept and strengthening the concept of uniformity and hive mind and providing the ability for a great acceleration in materialistic activities.
- The invention of mass transportation (e.g. automobile and airplane) accelerated this growing dislocation/relocation and hive mind mentality and provided the framework for extension of power in war. The growing centralization of humanity in industrialized cities gave rise to large corporations with corresponding shifts away from personal sovereignty.
- Invention of mass communication (e.g. radio, television) together with large corporation gave rise to the mass advertising and PR industries. The improvement in industrial machinery leading to customization and the invention of the computer mashed up with the era of Ego and materialistic individualism.
- The personal computer and the invention of wireless communication combined with the shift toward re-socialization of the individual Ego selves.
- The rise of the Internet issued in an acceleration of re-socialization (e.g. social networks) and introduced the shift toward personal sovereignty.
Technology at our doorsteps will strengthen sovereignty (e.g. free energy, local currencies) and begin to introduce re-localization in a distributed global environment along with the restoration of relationships, artisanship, craftsmanship, and meaning in everyday living. This is the opportunity for Designers in the age of the Fifth World. We can see modern day examples of this in the product design work of the likes of William McDonough (see his book Cradle to Cradle).
A fundamental aspect of the domain of the Fifth World is the next stage of unfoldment of true human potential. We see this beginning to occur in our modern sciences with quantum physics suggesting to us that the act of observation affects the observed, with scientific studies of meditation and precognition, with scientific protocols of remote viewing being released to the public, with mass consciousness experiments like those at Princeton (EGG), with precognition experiments by the linguistic time monks at Half Past Human and so on.
Aboriginal wisdom keepers tell us of ancestral cultural systems of highly developed human consciousness exceeding our imagination that has been forgotten or ignored in our current materialistic paradigm. Interestingly enough we can see that in our domain of experience we are attempting to re-create these lost capabilities through technology.
For example: the computing devices invented by Hewlett-Packard could be seen to correlate with the pattern and intelligence processing of the human brain while the hyperlinked pattern traversing technology of the browser of Netscape Communications represents the actions of Mind thinking. America Online brings us a form of social connection and content meaning such as would be found in natural social telepathic connection and eBay brings an exchange of energy/pattern such as would be found in intentionally focused mental process. Google represents a reconnection to a universal library of knowledge and experience similar to the Akashic records found in esoteric teachings utilized by prophets and forecasters used to see patterns of probable futures and events of the past.
It's likely that this technology of our current domain provides us with a map or scaffolding for the next generation of exploration of human consciousness that we see beginning to take place in our modern sciences yet we are reminded that the map is not the territory. The domain of the Fifth World will bring with it a reconnection to those ancestral capabilities of human consciousness lost in time yet at a turn of the spiral of awareness and meaning. An emergence into the domain of Unidiversity will give us a fuller understanding of the words of T.S. Elliot:
"We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring,
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
Coherence as the Basis for the Domain of the Fifth World
Coherence in the domain of the Fifth World is the relating of more to more, more effectively and more appropriately - it's an increase in the quality of livingness. In physics it could be referred to as harmonic resonance or system gain. Buckminster Fuller called it Synergy. It's that unique quality that occurs when the unification of diversity becomes more than the sum of the diverse parts with the whole taking on a quality of livingness all it's own. Nature demonstrates this with Sacred Geometry with evolving complexity in form and relationship moving from the cube to the octahedron to the dodecahedron providing enriched possibility and diversity while retaining a primal beauty and elegant simplicity where each form stacks within it's predecessor touching at all points with each side equidistant and each angle equilateral.
We all recognize coherence and we seek it. Anyone experiencing a music or dance performance where the entire audience becomes one with the performer and the music - or a family moment where the relationship is suddenly elevated into a unified feeling of warmth and belonging knows what coherence is. Our strongest positive memories are comprised of events where we experienced coherence.
Subconsciously we seek coherence because we are not separate from the world around us regardless of our attempts to create illusions otherwise. If we look at our makeup we see that we are made up of cells and our cells are made up of molecules and atoms which are made up of vibrating packets of energy that are part and parcel of the quantum sea of constantly exchanging pattern and information comprising our reality. Coherent experiences connect us with Life and let us experience livingness in a more conscious form.
There is much we can learn about the domain of the Fifth World by observing how Nature works. Nature produces no waste, automatically harmonizes and balances all of her systems and everything has a relationship of belonging and an interrelated mutual service to perform. It's no wonder, the Indigenous peoples counsel us to look to Nature for how to live in balance.
Nature demonstrates the principles of Coherence in the formation of Guilds. A guild is a self-sustaining, interrelated, interdependent assemblage of symbiotic life forms. If we observe a disturbed area of ground, we can see the intelligence of Nature at work in the formation of a Guild. First to move in to the disturbed areas are pioneer species with deep taproots and heartiness to create the environment for the guild to form (we often call these life forms weeds in our myopic view of their function and purpose). Once the Pioneer species have improved the quality of the ground the next succession of species appears and begins to grow. The Guild is entrained with the local environment and will dynamically adjust its combinations, pace of growth and pattern based on dynamic conditions. In the beginning, the Guild formation requires external support to take hold but at a certain point in the development of it's pattern of relationships, coherence is achieved and it achieves a quantum jump in quality and diversity of life and becomes not only self-sustaining but begins to nurture new life on it's own. This same pattern of coherence during growth has been found by city planners to occur in the formation of towns and cities and can be seen in other areas where similar patterns are at work.
Nature utilizes fractal geometry to implement her dynamic forms. Fractal forms have the unique quality of being self-similar regardless of scale. This is elegance, simplicity and re-usability at its finest. A fractal is informed by feedback from it's own internal transformation function which makes it sensitive not only to it's environment but also to it's own actions on it's environment.
Designers in the domain of the Fifth World will design utilizing the principles and patterns found in Nature's Guilds. This method of product development engages maximum diversity and usefulness with minimum inventory and creates a sustainable system that is in tune with the changing environment.
Economies in the Domain of the Fifth World
So what do the economies of the domain of the Fifth World look like? What opportunity might be found there? To consider this question we will want to look for patterns of sustainable living considering both our ancestral and modern knowledge.
A sustainable economy must be comprised of a coherent balanced relationship between Society, the Natural World, and the exchanges of energy and pattern between them (the Economy).
The EcoTrust network has produced a pattern map that is a good characterization of the relationships participating in the economies of the domain of the Fifth World. In the map we see a number of categories where products and services play a vital role in sustainability and affirmation of life. Products and services that are aligned with these categories represent business opportunities in the Fifth World domain.
- Community Support
- Ecological Land Use
- Ecosystem Services
- Green Business
- Household, Bioregional, and Local Economies
- Fundamental Needs
Coherence With Enformy as the Path to Inspired Development
All business is inherently social - people exchanging energy and pattern with people and with the Natural world. Management in the Fifth World domain begins with empathy and consideration of Life.
Empathy occurs when we become coherent on a heart-based level with others. Scientist Joseph Chilton Pearce has found that the human heart creates a torus shaped electromagnetic field that we can measure extending out to eight feet around us. Two people coming together within this field and having empathy toward each other will naturally synchronize their heartbeats.
The Institute of HeartMath in rigorous scientific studies has shown that our own heartbeat will become coherent (speeding up and slowing down in smooth sinusoidal rhythms) when we hold within us a feeling of gratitude toward another. Furthermore the HeartMath Institute has discovered that this state of heart coherence is the basis for balance in the body’s hormonal/endocrine systems (health) and appears to be the gateway to *inspiration* through the simultaneous activation of the cortical functions of the brain with intuitive insight. It's no wonder that the Hopi wisdom keepers wear an entwisted black/white cord in ceremony representing the balanced state of living that occurs when the head and heart are operating together coherently.
Empathy and insight into what is possible will continue to be the mode of operation in the domain of the Fifth World but it will be consciously cultivated utilizing emerging understandings in the fields of psychology and consciousness studies. Systems such as Appreciative Inquiry(tm), The Dynamic Coherence Process for Business(tm), and HeartMath(tm) protocols and technologies will be utilized to introduce the next generation of personal understanding, intuitive insight, and correlating design methods.
When considering what problem to solve with our design methods and what to solve it for, the emerging domain of the Fifth World will have us ask - "Why does the problem exist in the first place and what can the enforming domain and patterns of change give us in the way of guidance with regards to solutions to the problem?"
Albert Einstein pointed out that we cannot truly solve problems by utilizing the same level of consciousness that created them in the first place - rather we must seek to guidance from the enforming domain to solve the problem from an enlarged perspective. This type of contemplation will be characteristic of knowledge workers in the Fifth World domain. By aligning (entraining) development with the emerging domain we create products and systems that are supported by the larger flows of change which gives us the benefit of not only creating sustainable products and systems that are in demand but also acting as agents of beneficial change leaving a legacy we can be proud of for future generations.
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