Question: The course of evolution of human egoism can be studied through the example of the four phases of the development of nature. Should we study other subjects in this evolutional context?

Answer: No, from the point of view of the development of egoism, evolution and history are historical forms that gradually accumulate and change thanks to egoism, and do so suddenly, by a leap. Any kind of social activity, interrelationships, engineering, or technology is replaced within a few years or decades by another kind since one obliges the other.

Social relationships change, and thus the post, telegraph, telephone, notaries, parliamentary interaction, and so on emerge. That is, everything changes on the entire level, on the entire dimension of human interrelationships.

We are not simply studying history, but social, political, economic, public, and technological development, as well as instruments of work and production, and agriculture. It is because agriculture determines migration, which determines demography, which determines something else. All in all, everything is so interconnected!

Also linked to this are the glacial age, the minor glacial age, the period of vegetation, and so on. We connect ecology with it, including the climate. We see that all of this is one, whole system.

Question: Why do we need to feel these phases?

Answer: If one does not know what happened yesterday, tomorrow he cannot think correctly. One must see the entire huge system that has always been moving and has brought us to our state today. Although it continues to move our still, vegetative, and animate states, it leaves to us the fourth level of development as free will, because we must complete it ourselves.

It turns out that one can make some approximations already and see that we will be moving forward. However, if one does not add his personal participation by exercising his free will, interacting with others correctly, and voluntary restructuring himself and society in advance, before receiving blows from behind, then his still, vegetative, and animate components push him forward harshly and summon corresponding actions within him. These may be terrible diseases, earthquakes, upheavals of revolution, and so on.

We do not have a clear view of this process as the necessary empirical material has not yet accumulated. However, we can make an approximation as to what kinds of blows we will be experiencing that will push us from behind, “toward happiness by the stick,” so to speak, if we do not forestall it through our unification, with mutual participation and aspiration toward harmony and unity.

This is why it is very important to study the past.
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From a “Talk on Integral Upbringing” #12, 12/16/11

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Farewell To The Animate Level Of Development
The Theory Of Internal Contact Between People
The Beginning Of Enlightenment

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