The Conscious Individual

This article traces the evolutionary development of human consciousness and its increasingly complex and sophisticated organization as human personality from the instinctive behavior of the animal and the subconscious conformity characteristic of early forms of human civilization through progressive stages of transition from physical to social to mental levels of awareness and from the undifferentiated social consciousness of the member of the tribe to the emergence of independent thinking, creativity and uniqueness, which characterize the Conscious Individual. The individual and the collective evolve in tandem. The collective imparts its acquired capacities to its members. The emerging individual acts as a catalyst to spur further development of the collective. Each stage of the journey is the same in essence and structure at progressively higher levels of consciousness and organization. The higher the level achieved by the collective in terms of quality and complexity, the greater the knowledge and organization demanded of the individual. The article ends by cataloging crucial points at which modern society is mired in outmoded conceptions, superstitious beliefs, pre-modern values and archaic institutions that obstruct humanity’s further evolution from problems and limitations to ever-expanding opportunities. The conscious individual is the key to that process