Consciousness Is Our Oxygen Challenge

The development of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere as a metaphor for the development of consciousness in/as the human noosphere.

First, the literary approach:

And then, gradually,
a planetary disaster occurred

The composition of the atmosphere was changed, radically,
by their own actions

Countless billions died

Of those who survived,
a few channelled the new abundance of fuel in the atmosphere: oxygen

They thrived,
and built larger than their ancestors.

   (who continued on in their own way,
   and are the aliens with us today)

Some hundreds of millions of years ago, some single-celled life forms started cranking out enough oxygen to change the composition of the atmosphere. Oxygen is a chemically powerful substance, and it was poison to many life forms. Many died off. Other forms of life harnessed the power of oxygen, successfully meeting its challenge, and that is where all animals come from.

Some tens (hundreds?) of thousands of years ago, human beings started to think in a new and different way from other animals, enough to change our own physical and social/spiritual context. Our intelligence, or sentience, is analogous to oxygen: it is powerful, and can be poisonous or creative depending on what we do with it.

IMHO, the conversion of our individual and social consciousnesses from poison to Creativity is our challenge. To the extent we succeed, we will last longer as a species and enjoy ourselves more, and more fairly. Many believe that we will even transcend in some way (TheNextSingularity).

The consciousness/oxygen metaphor, or simile, came to me only last year (2000). I really got convinced of the importance of attention to process through (in order, from 1990-1992):

seeing unhappy dynamics at what i knew was a relatively good-atmosphere non-profit
waking up in the Gulf War to the world's issues and U.S. involvement
seeing (verbal/psychic) violence within the 'peace' movement, and in it's messages
seeing undemocratic dynamics in a non-profit about developing democratic skills

Since then, my life has been about responding to this challenge in my own practices, and seeking community in our collective effort.

This doesn't seem quite right, but it's a start:

And then one day,
we began looking up at the stars in a new way

"We could go there" we heard, we said

For the next tens of thousands of years,
in our confusion we argued,

"Is that voice God or the Devil?"

Eventually,
enough of us realized that the answer was yes.