Humanity’s Perennial Problem of Technology outpacing Wisdom (Ken Wilber Summary)

This is a summary on humanity’s perennial problem of technology outpacing wisdom according to Ken Wilber (Integral Theory).

This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction (content has been paraphrased and organized in my own way). Short summaries and quotes aren’t substitutes for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Ken Wilber’s books (Amazon).

I’ve personally read six of Wilber’s books so far, which have been used to synthesize the summary below:

• “Finding Radical Wholeness” (Book Summary)
• “The Integral Vision” (Book Summary)
• “Integral Psychology” (Book Summary)
• “Integral Spirituality” (Book Summary)
• “A Theory of Everything” (Book Summary)
• “A Brief History of Everything” (Book Summary) + 20 Tenets of Integral Theory

Humanity’s Perennial Problem of Technology outpacing Wisdom (Ken Wilber Summary)

Technology outpaces wisdom:

Humanity’s most primordial nightmare: the classic case of explosive growth in exterior technology not being met with equivalent growth in interior wisdom. The only real problem here is the grand disjuncture of Right-Hand exterior technology and artifact development racing so far ahead of the degree of Left-Hand interior consciousness and culture. It’s the lack of a similar degree of interior development that can keep up with technology and offer some sort of balance, wisdom, and sane judgment to oversee the technology and compassionate use of that technology.

How the perennial problem happens:

• The techno-economic base (LR quadrant) takes the lead first, fashioning the societies within which individuals develop: The technology usually spreads very rapidly, and then that technology slowly, over many generations, remakes the cultures arising within it. This happened with foraging, with horticultural, with agrarian, with industrial, and now it is happening with informational.

• Lower Left-Hand values/drives use the Right-Hand tech: One of the greatest problems and constant dangers faced by humanity is simply this: the Right-Hand quadrants are all material, and once a material entity has been produced, it can be used by individuals who are at virtually any level of interior development. All too often, as we have seen, development in the average Right-Hand runs far ahead of the average Left-Hand that is using it, and when that happens, much lower—and much less caring, less compassionate, less loving, and more domineering, more oppressive, and more exploitive—drives and values in the Left-Hand end up inhabiting and using those Right-Hand technologies.

• Left-Hand & Right-Hand imbalance may kill us all: Globally suicidal problems are due primarily to a strong imbalance between progress in the Right-Hand quadrants (which has reached at least an orange worldcentric level particularly in technology and artifacts) and progress in the Left-Hand quadrants (where some 60% have not reached a worldcentric level). Their exteriors (technology and artifacts) might be global, but their interiors (consciousness and culture) definitely are not. These 60-70% may be living in a global village, but they are not living in a global awareness. Because of this enormous imbalance between our exterior science, technology, and artifacts and our interior levels of consciousness, culture, and wisdom, our problems became globally suicidal. Our planet is being assaulted and crippled by people who have access to orange Right-Hand worldcentric technology and artifacts, but who themselves are at pre-worldcentric and pre-orange Left-Hand levels of development and either can’t see or don’t care about global realities. The global level of development brings with it the capacity to destroy humanity on an equally global level. This is killing all of us.

What do we need to solve the problem?

• A special effort has to be made to help the interiors of consciousness and culture keep pace with their exterior technology and artifacts: Only with correlative interior developments can healthy exterior developments be implemented and sustained. Unless we put as much attention on the Left-Hand development of consciousness as on the Right-Hand development of technology, we will simply extend the reach of our collective insanity. We have to be open to modes of consciousness that move beyond mere rationality, and embed them in modes of techno-economic structures that move beyond industrialization. In other words, a change of consciousness embedded in a change of institutions.

• Tracking of interior development: Even though science itself reached global, worldcentric levels of development, our interiors did not reach these same levels of global development because they weren’t even being tracked (or even considered to be real)—thus the path forward from ethnocentric bias to a more widely shared worldcentric fairness is barely known or understood. Usually these realities in the Left-Hand interiors are ignored when researchers examine planet-wide problems; nothing but Right-Hand exteriors are taken into account. We aren’t even tracking the Left-Hand interior evolution, so we have no idea that there is even a problem (let alone what to do about it). We have no idea that this arrested development is occurring because we don’t acknowledge this development in the first place. Humanity is not living up to its own profound interior potentials.

• The prime directive: The health of the entire spiral, and particularly its earlier waves, is the prime directive and major ethical demand. The prime directive asks us to honor and appreciate the necessary, vital, and unique contribution provided by each and every wave of consciousness unfolding, and thus act to protect and promote the health of the entire spiral (and not any one privileged domain). Foster the conditions (both interior and exterior) that will allow individuals and cultures to develop through the spiral at their own rate, in their own way—and thus each be allowed to make its own crucial contribution to the comprehensive health of the spiral.

1st-tier to 2nd-tier Development:

The general rule of development is the oft-repeated fact that you cannot solve a problem from the same level that created it. And thus none of the 1st-tier stages can solve the problems inherent in 1st-tier itself. They can be solved only by the ‘momentous leap’ to Integral 2nd-tier.

• 1st-tier stages of development account for 60-70% of population (archaic fusion, red magic, amber mythic, orange rational, and green postmodern): Involves moving from prepersonal to personal development; true but partial; none of them are capable of fully including the others; believe firmly that their truth and values are the only true and correct ones in existence (all the others are childish, confused, goofy, or just plain wrong); consciousness is considerably less than global.

• The momentous developmental leap from 1st-tier to 2nd-tier: A leap from fragmentation and alienation to wholeness and integration, from nihilism and irony to deep meaning and value. Starting with the leap to 2nd-tier—or the beginning of the truly integral levels—it is understood that all of the other values and stages are correct in their own ways, or are appropriate for their own levels.

• 2nd-tier stages of development account for 6-8% of population (turquoise global/inclusive-Integral): Involves integrated personal development (and the beginning of the ‘integral’ stages); the first truly holistic and inclusive stage in existence and a stunningly profound leap in evolution; makes room for all of the other values and begins to pull them all together and integrate them into larger tapestries of care and inclusivity; begins to integrate all stages and pull them into a genuine Wholeness (and thus it can wind down the massive conflicts and culture wars—the only real cure for the culture wars is the emergence of 2nd-tier Integral as the leading edge of cultural evolution); understands that all the previous stages are deeply significant (if nothing else, each of them is a stage in human growth and development, and so none of them can be deleted or skipped); the only ones that can actually start to solve some of the problems created by 1st-tier; more creatively helps with the solutions to pressing problems.

You May Also Enjoy:

• States vs Stages of Consciousness (Ken Wilber Summary)

• The Four Quadrants (AQAL) of Integral Theory (Ken Wilber Summary)

• What are holons and holarchy? (Ken Wilber Summary)

• “Finding Radical Wholeness” (Book Summary)

• “The Integral Vision” (Book Summary)

• “Integral Psychology” (Book Summary)

• “Integral Spirituality” (Book Summary)

• “A Theory of Everything” (Book Summary)

• “A Brief History of Everything” (Book Summary) + 20 Tenets of Integral Theory