Human social evolution follows a spiral form, recapitulating previous organization at higher levels. This is a useful model, even without the sci-fi overtones. Anthropology places our early social organization in a kind of group mind where the social unit works as a unified whole, with a matrilineal locus of survival lore: navigation routes, water sources, wild gardens, herbs and remedies. Elephants and gorillas, for example, have similar social groupings of wise old mother and aunts, with young and peripheral males. In humans, the matrilineal golden age was in the Bronze Age, on the island of Crete. Here, the arts flourished, in towns with running water and a paved road to the southern coast. Without the destruction and costs of warfare, a partnership type of social organization evolved.  Pottery from that time show graceful males fishing, or couples vaulting over the horns of a bull.

Iron Age technology brought an end to all this, with weapons and herdsmen warriors who rode in on horseback to pillage and conquer. The social order shifted to a top-down, hierarchical, authoritarian model, a culture of domination.  Tribal leaders became warrior kings, and by the 14^th century, the state and church were rigidly cast in hierarchies of authority in all of the western civilizations.

In the west, new global explorations and an explosion of knowledge in the 15^th century  led to a new kind of consciousness: the individual scientist, thinker, philosopher, artist, craftsman,  the self-knowing individual “I” of the Renaissance and the Reformation—culminating in the breathtaking audacity of the  American Declaration of Independence. Two hundred years later, the culture of the individual, shaped in the dominator paradigm, has culminated in an ego-driven, power-addicted, military-industrial economic engine.  Dominator culture, operating on a system of short-selling the future for short-term gain, has evolved to an endpoint that is destructive to itself and to the web of life. The ultimate symbol of this “Me” consumer culture is the legal construct of the corporation as an “individual”, with the same rights as a person, operating out of unfettered self-interest.

The events of Fall 2008 mark the decline and fall of dominator culture. The millennial generation—cynical, ironic, and carefully closed—made a breathtaking choice to open up to hope, to believe in a better way, and to shift the cultural momentum toward the value of the common good. The rising millennial generation, with its twittering, socially networked consciousness, its shared culture and web-driven interconnectedness, brings us back full spiral to the human We.  Facing down a perfect storm of economic, political, and biological catastrophe, the only way we are going to survive is by working together.  Once again, technology reshapes us with the new tools of interconnectivity, and maybe, just in time.

The question on the cusp of change: Who is the Individual that each of us brings to this next stage of human social organization? Have we evolved to become the “I” of Presence, or are we still stuck in the “Me” of the self-absorbed toddler? The meme and mood this November is one of being ready to step up, each of us, to focus this unleashed energy together on the massive challenges forward.  If we are wise, we will build upon the group wisdom of a partnership society that we once knew how to do so well.