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    The Metrics of Human Consciousness
    The Metrics of Human Consciousness
    The Metrics of Human Consciousness
    Ebook117 pages2 hours

    The Metrics of Human Consciousness

    By Richard Barrett

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    “Richard Barrett offers us an exciting new direction for measuring consciousness. He has proven that the insights these measures bring can significantly improve our individual, organisational and societal performance. The work of the Barrett Values Centre stands as a testament to what can be achieved by seriously applying ourselves to the measurement of conscious.”
    Dr. Marc Gafni, Co-Founder and Director, Center for Integral Wisdom
    Dr. Zachary Stein, Academic Director, Center for Integral Wisdom
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu Publishing Services
    Release dateJan 20, 2015
    ISBN9781483423456
    The Metrics of Human Consciousness
    Author

    Richard Barrett

    Richard Barrett spent his working life as a professional marketer, but still found time for climbing, winter mountaineering and sea kayaking. He first visited the Harris hills as a teenager and became a regular visitor. He lived in North Harris for a number of years, where he and his wife ran a guest house and, although now a city-dweller, he still makes frequent forays to the Hebrides, reconnecting with the wilderness and catching up with old friends.

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      Book preview

      The Metrics of Human Consciousness - Richard Barrett

      BARRETT

      Copyright © 2015 Richard Barrett.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

      ISBN: 978-1-291-98796-6 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4834-2345-6 (e)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 01/02/2014

      CONTENTS

      Foreword

      1.   Background

      2.   Understanding Consciousness

      3.   Defining Consciousness

      4.   Measuring Personal Consciousness

      5.   Measuring Organizational Consciousness

      6.   Measuring National Consciousness

      Annex 1:   Overview of the Origins of the Seven Levels Model

      Annex 2:   World views and stages of psychological development

      Annex 3:   The Seven Stages of Psychological Development

      FIGURES AND TABLES

      Figures

      1.1: Stages of psychological development and levels of consciousness.

      1.2: My top ten values.

      1.3: Proportion of people choosing the value of friendship in different age ranges.

      4.1: Levels of consciousness of an individual with high personal entropy.

      4.2: Comparison of how a high-entropy individual sees himself and how he is seen by his assessors.

      4.3: Levels of consciousness of an individual with low personal entropy.

      4.4: Comparison of how an individual with low entropy sees herself and how she is seen by her assessors.

      5.1: Levels of consciousness of an organization with high cultural entropy.

      5.2: Comparison of current culture and desired culture.

      5.3: Comparison of personal consciousness with desired consciousness.

      5.4: Distribution of consciousness in a low cultural entropy, high alignment organization.

      5.5: Correlation between employee engagement and cultural entropy.

      6.1: Distribution of consciousness in the UK.

      6.2: Distribution of consciousness in Bhutan.

      Tables

      1.1: Motivations and value priorities at each stage of psychological development.

      2.1: Three universal stages of evolution.

      A1.1: From Maslow to Barrett.

      A2.1: Stages of psychological development and world views.

      The information contained in this book is drawn from my most recent publications: Evolutionary Coaching (2014), The Values-Driven Organization (2013), What My Soul Told Me (2012), Love, Fear and the Destiny of Nations (2011) and The New Leadership Paradigm (2010).

      Every noble work is at first impossible. – Thomas Carlyle

      FOREWORD

      The genesis of this book dates back to the time when Richard met Marc at a conference on Conscious Capitalism, held at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California in 2012. Richard was at the conference to present a paper on measuring the consciousness of leaders and organizations. Marc was at the conference to present a paper on the concept of the Unique Self. Very quickly, the conversation between the two of them turned to developing a metric for measuring the consciousness of the Unique Self.¹

      After the conference Marc broadened the conversation with Richard to involve Zak Stein, the Academic Director of the Center for Integral Wisdom, and Ken Wilber, one of the co-founders of the Center. After several conversations, we (Marc and Zak) asked Richard to begin to explore the possibility of constructing a Unique Self metric. Richard accepted the challenge and joined the board of the Center as senior scholar. This book represents the first output of this exercise.

      From the beginning, the nature of the task raised some important questions. How can something as intangible as the Unique Self, which is a structure of consciousness, be measured? The popular fallacy is that measurement relates only to the objective, tangible world of the physical sciences, not to the subjective, intangible world of consciousness. So why were we and the Center keen to pursue this line of inquiry?

      We believe history has shown us that the evolution of measurement is fundamental to the evolution of societies. Today, we take for granted the standardized systems of physical measurement in our daily lives, in the advancement of science, the functioning of industry and the management of the broader economy.

      When you go to the grocery store, you don’t give a second thought to the accuracy or reliability of the marked weight or volume of the goods that you buy. But next time you buy meat for your family or fuel for your car, notice that there is a government-backed certification of accuracy on the scale or pump. This certification assures you that the pound of meat you purchase is truly a pound and the gallon of fuel you buy is truly a gallon.

      These systems of measurement, which we now take for granted, took centuries to evolve and their widespread use involved a series of political revolutions, particularly regarding the institutionalization of the concepts of justice and equality. As one of the rallying cries for the French Revolution put it, one measure for all humanity for all time.

      Because of the long history of the abuse of measures (and the abuse of people through the misuse of measures), the standardization and legal institutionalization of objective measurement was understood to be a social justice issue and an essential component of democratic governance. It is not a coincidence that the universal figure of justice holds a set of scales in one hand to represent impartiality, and a sword in the other to symbolize power. The impartiality is emphasized by the blindfold that she is wearing.

      The profound importance of establishing a just measuring system is illustrated by the fact that several of the first Presidents of the United States mentioned the standardization of weights and measures in their State of the Union Addresses.

      Once established, issues concerning measurement did not reappear in presidential discourse for nearly two centuries. Only in the 1970s did most post-industrial societies become concerned with standardized educational testing; so called human capital metrics came to be considered just as essential to the progress of the nation and the economy in the twentieth century as physical measures of weight and volume were in the eighteenth century.

      So today, with measures of our scientific, economic and educational worlds firmly established, we are being challenged to seek out ways of measuring our psychological and social world. Consciousness has become the new raw material of the knowledge economy.

      Just as physical measurement became a social justice issue centuries ago, consciousness is becoming a social justice issue now, hence the growing importance of movements such as conscious capitalism, environmental sustainability and the increasing popular resistance to undemocratic regimes.

      As Einstein indicated, we cannot solve the problems we have created with the same level of consciousness that we created them. This is why we need to define more clearly what levels of consciousness we are operating from and what levels of consciousness we need to move to in order to resolve the current issues our global society is facing.

      What is true for the knowledge economy has also become true in the field of education.² From the increasing use of standardized tests at all levels of schooling, to the widespread use of the Myers-Briggs test and others like it in business and industry, the proliferation of psychological measurement systems has been exponential in recent decades.

      The modern catchphrase in industry, science, and increasingly in education is if it can’t be measured, then it doesn’t exist. This is why we

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