Wednesday, November 5, 2008

How Did You Vote? And Why?

Your Political Consciousness is Showing!

The motivation for the way a person votes says a lot about their level of social and moral consciousness or development. Ken Wilber has written a book called The Integral Vision where he lays out a comprehensive “map of consciousness" which enables you to see for yourself at just what stage or level of consciousness you are presently residing in the various aspects of your life. By looking at your political leanings, for instance, and applying this map you can learn heaps about yourself and others.

In his book, he uses a very simple model possessing three stages or levels of consciousness: Egocentric (me), Ethnocentric (us), and World-centric (all of us). The egocentric is the first stage of consciousness in this model. Looking at a person's social and moral development at the egocentric (me) stage, we see a person who is primarily concerned with his or her own survival needs. A self-absorbed person would also fall into this category. An ethnocentric (us) would be someone who has expanded out enough to be concerned with his tribe, group, clan or nation. At this stage we are concerned with our relationships, shared values, mutual interests, common ideals, and shared dreams. We can put ourselves in the roles or shoes of others and feel what it might be like to be them. Our identity expands from me to us, a move from egocentric to ethnocentric. With a further expansion in consciousness, we begin to care for all peoples, regardless of race, color, sex, creed or country and we open to a worldcentric (all of us) stage. At this stage, our own desires are tempered by the welfare and well-being of all others.

Locating where we fit within this model is a valuable exercise. This model not only shows us where we are in any aspect of life we may apply it to, but it also gives us an idea of our next stage and exercises to help us evolve to that level.

While listening to people talk about their political ideas and beliefs, it becomes clear, quite quickly, where their beliefs fit in this model. If you care mainly for your pocketbook, for example, you voted to keep your taxes low, or you are self-absorbed and don’t care particularly one way or another about the election, then you might want to check out ways of expanding your social and moral consciousness into the second level. If you think your "party" is the right one, no matter what, and you are voting party lines, or you think the color of a candidate's skin or their gender indicates inferiority, then you might want to think about expanding into the third level. If you are ecstatically in the third level or world-centric and know that this was perhaps the most important election in the history of our country, indicating a giant leap in conscious for the nation and possibly for the planet, then you are probably already working on expanding your consciousness to attain the next stage as an Integrated Being.

Sidebar: Please do note that your consciousness can be high in one aspect of your life and low in another. This "map" is just a tool to help you locate which areas need a little lift.