My intent with the last few posts has been to try to put together a cosmology that fits me, one that sets the primitivist critique of civilization into a background that’s broader than the simple, “Civilization is sin, let’s chuck it.” I’ve tried to present, and find evidence for, human evolution as a primarily spiritual evolution, because that’s the way I see myself and that’s the way I think. I think I’ve succeeded in sketching out a developmental view that makes sense to me, and which tells me that there is a future to humanity that is useful and healthy and is not the same as primitivist paradise.

I think there is more to the world than nature or the “web of life.” There’s also more to the world than the rational mind or culture. The next stage of development is neither to continue our civilization’s rejection and domination of nature, nor to regress to a rejection of human-constructed culture, but to integrate these in a higher experience that transcends and includes these seemingly paradoxical forces. Spirit is neither only immanent nor only transcendent, but both at once. We have to develop a locus of self that is able to see and experience this, and to embrace a full human identity that encompasses all that we are.

That is my basic thesis of human evolution.

I don’t reject hunter-gatherer wisdom, but I don’t reject civilized wisdom either. Still, the past several posts have been more heavily weighted against primitivism because I’ve considered the general case against civilization overwhelmingly obvious and well-represented on many other websites (as well as far more thorough and elegantly discussed than I could manage). However, going on and on criticizing the primitivist viewpoint leaves me, in the end, feeling unbalanced. One of the dangers of trying to differentiate is that it risks the extreme of dissociation, and I think I’m beginning to sense an anti-primitivist strain in me, which is a sure sign to me that I’ve begun to get set in a dualistic frame of mind.

Moreover, having established a basic framework that includes the “primitive” and the “civilized” in a more balanced way, I think I should begin to explore more refined alternatives. I have, to a certain extent, achieved my goal of counterbalancing my primitivist conscience with a spirit of moderation and compromise, an appreciation for the grey areas, a broader understanding that all we are going through is karmically useful. At this point I think I should change course. It may be that continuing would put too much emphasis in the other direction, i.e. defending the status quo and trumpeting civilization, which I don’t want and don’t believe in anyway. It would be more useful to follow the developmental framework, to see what steps can be taken now to move generally forward: to resolve in whatever small way I can, or at least find balance with, the ills of civilization in my own life; to recapture the joys that were more obviously our birthright in the primitive life; but to find these things in a new synthesis that represents further self-development toward Divine consciousness.

At any rate, I’m going to try to descend from abstraction a bit. In a recent comment, someone asked me what it was in civilization that I thought should be saved, and I don’t think I can answer that question on the broad, abstract level from which I’ve been speaking. So now it’s time to start exploring more specifics.