"The raising of consciousness is for the individual, the community and its institutions, and so, no, the individual is not forsaken, but rather the collective and the institutional are added into the mix. So when I'm talking about "human" I'm referring to these 3 main protagonists."
Hi Kam,
I think when you use the term "raising of consciousness", sometimes you are referring to increasing or adding to knowledge not consciousness.
Human consciousness is a property of Humans and so one could say that unless there is a sufficient mass of Humans actively working on refining and increasing their conscious awareness which is very closely related to real Conscience, together with understanding rather than just knowledge, societies and institutions will never rise above a certain level.
A society can have tremendous knowledge but lack the understanding and means to utilise it in a worthy and sensible manner. So one sees that it is used for both good and bad .. to coin a phrase. Our current civilisation is a good example.
Religions recognize the lack of this refinement of individual consciousness and contact with real Conscience in the broad mass of humanity, which is one of the chief reasons they attempt to replace it by exclusivity, "tribalism", rules, ritual, dogma, sticks and carrots, prescriptive faith, inspirational stories, miracles etc.
This forms a sort of "artificial conscience" which can give the appearance of real Conscience but is actually just an add-on, not authentic part of the person. One sees this when people ask or wonder how could a priest or scout master, politician etc act the way they do.
So, it is a very big question.
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