William E. Halal, PhD

One of the most striking challenges of our time is that climate change, autocrats, polarization, wars, and a morass of other threats have shattered our faith in the future. The UN warned, “Societal collapse is likely unless a major decline in carbon emissions is made soon” (UN, 2022) and a PEW poll finds only 17 percent of people in other nations see the US as a role model of democracy (Timsit, 2021). A global survey found that a majority thinks “humanity is doomed” (Galer, 2021).

Collective Intelligence Needed for a More Complex World

This article offers an antidote to the prevailing pessimism. I draw on academic research, journalism, and public media, as well as the TechCast Project. TechCast is a virtual think tank that forecasts technology breakthroughs and their social impacts using collective intelligence to pool the judgment of CEOs, scientists, futurists, and other thought leaders. We find that gathering knowledge from diverse sources increases clarity, understanding and agreement. It exemplifies the more powerful form of communal thinking needed for a more complex world. Three prominent scientists (Perlmutter, 2024), one a Nobel Laureate, put it this way:

Our collective challenge—possibly the grand challenge of our times—is to invent techniques for constructive, large-scale collective thinking… to build the foundation for a thriving planet… Indeed, we have no choice.

The goal of all this collective intelligence is to present a plausible vision for where the world is evolving, supported by a well-founded theory and abundant evidence. As we will see, a unified world seems the logical next stage in social evolution. Anything could happen, obviously, but simply thinking about some sort of mature civilization offers hope for a better future that is not only possible, but most likely. And it is happening now, despite raging crises.

First let’s clarify the meaning of the following key concepts:

Consciousness This article focuses on a pragmatic definition of human consciousness that can be studied scientifically: the behavior and content of the mind. Human consciousness forms an objective/subjective dichotomy. Perception, data, and knowledge are inherently the objective domain suited to AI and machines. Emotions, beliefs, purpose, and free will are subjective functions. They form the unique “human spirit” each person embodies. This “higher” consciousness is the source of humanity’s ability to act independently. To command the power of human agency over our lives. Consciousness is the stuff of our very identity.

Beyond Knowledge Because objective mental functions are being automated by AI, attention moves up into the subjective realm of “higher consciousness.” By the above definition, then, everything beyond knowledge is higher consciousness, often shortened to simply “consciousness.”

Age of Consciousness (AoC) As we will see, I estimate the world passed beyond the Knowledge Age about 2020 and is now entering an advanced stage in civilization built on intelligent digital systems wired into a conscious global community – an Age of Consciousness. The major challenge facing this new era requires building a collaborative Global Consciousness able to resolve the existential threats that block a sustainable world.

Global Consciousness (GC) GC is a consciousness that understands the world as a fragile, complex, and interdependent single system. Like ties to city and nation, GC would commit allegiance to safeguarding global order while also embracing freedom and diversity. A good way to grasp GC is to see it in terms of the overview effect that astronauts experience in space: a sense of awe at the interconnectedness of life. With more people taking space flights, this awareness of Earth as a home for humanity could soon help make GC the dominant mindset in an integrated planet.

One World One World is envisioned as a global system of independent nations and corporations collaborating on common problems, supported by international bodies like the UN, but retaining autonomy and freedom. Environmental threats, crime, conflict, poverty, and other disorders are minimized through a global order and by a culture that embraces diversity and celebrates together as a global community.

Social Evolution Is in Charge—Not Us

Beneath the surface of current disasters, long-term forces drive progressive change that surpasses short-term problems. Steven Pinker at Harvard (Pinker, 2018, p. 24) noted that the Industrial Revolution led to a “Great Escape from poverty, disease, hunger, and illiteracy.” Poverty, for instance, fell from 90 percent of the world population in 1820 to ten percent in 2020. He finds “spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being.”

In similar way, I have done pathbreaking studies of social evolution showing this same drive for progress is creating a technologically connected, unified world. (Halal, 2022) The figure below presents historic data charting the entire Life Cycle of Evolution (LCE). I have worked on this model for decades, and I consider it a breakthrough in understanding how civilization has evolved and where it is going. The interesting thing about the LCE is it shows that the rise of civilization follows a precise life cycle characteristic of all life forms, in this case, the life of civilization on planet Earth.

 

Like all life cycles, the LCE shows that the growth of civilization is marked by three common inflection points: take-off, pivot, and maturity. After thousands of years in an agricultural stage, civilization reached its take-off point when the world’s great religions took off during 500 BCE to 600 CE to begin the ascent into modernity. The second inflection point occurred about 1975 when the rate of population growth peaked, signaling the pivot from growth to stability. Since this is a model based on historic data, it can be projected to estimate the saturation point when the LCE begins to mature. As I explain below, there is strong evidence to think we entered the beginning of the maturity phase about 2020.

The LCE reveals how the path of progress is not comprised of random events in a meaningless universe. We always retain our freedom, but the collective result of individual choices follows a well-ordered path of social evolution. It may not be obvious, but there is a precise direction to this evolutionary process. The LCE is moving inexorably from the most material stages (tilling the soil) to the most ethereal stages (knowledge and consciousness today).

The current crises may seem daunting, but from the overview of social evolution they’re mere blips in a well-ordered path toward global maturity. No, we can’t know what global maturity would look like in any precise way, but the LCE logic logically suggests that a mature civilization is the apex of a civilization’s power. A mature world would attain the heretofore unknown ability to govern the world as a unified whole … while enhancing autonomy and freedom. It would be the culmination of progress toward stability, understanding, and peace.

We should take comfort in knowing that all systems mature in time, and our world seems to be maturing now. We don’t usually think about it, but we are part of a large process that governs the ups and downs of life in a way we barely understand. Rather than torture ourselves over the angst of human failings, we should recognize that social evolution is in charge—not us.

The same evolutionary process can even be seen in our own lives. During a long career, I have witnessed profound change moving from the industrial work of the 1950s, to the service economy of white-collar jobs, and now to an era of abstract knowledge. This happened despite World War II, the Great Depression, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, nuclear weapons, Civil Rights riots, the stagflation crisis, the Arab oil embargo, Nixon’s Watergate crisis, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, all the while suffering occasional economic crises. If life can overcome those dangers so dramatically, the LCE suggests we can overcome the crises that seem insurmountable today.

The LCE Is Maturing into an Age of Consciousness

After moving through the Industrial Age in 100 years and the Service Economy in 50 years, the Knowledge Age is maturing into a new stage of development beyond knowledge. And, by definition, everything beyond knowledge is consciousness.

Like any scientific model, the LCE can be used to estimate the transition to consciousness as the next stage of evolution. The graph shows an accelerating trend: The Industrial Age lasted 100 years from 1850 to 1950, and the Service Age took 50 years to reach the Knowledge Age in 2000. Projecting this trend suggests the Age of Consciousness (AoC) would most likely arrive 20 to 30 years after 2000. That is precisely what we see happening today.

Recent political events suggest that 2020 marked this crucial transition point. Today’s wave of post-factual madness has been rising for decades, but its peak occurred when the US experienced its only political insurrection. The storming of the Capitol represented an attempt to block the outcome based on the false belief that the presidential election was “stolen.” One rioter said, “We weren’t there to do damage. We just want to overthrow the government.”⁹ It is difficult to be precise about historic turning points, but I feel confident in noting that when half of the nation believes in the “big lie,” we have entered subjective (higher) consciousness.

This remarkable display of mass delusion makes it clear that a new era is upon us in which emotions, values, beliefs, free will and other subjective thoughts supersede facts – an Age of Consciousness. Consciousness is not the same as “goodness,” as is often thought by New Age enthusiasts. Like knowledge, consciousness encompasses all in its domain, including hate, conflict, and delusion.

Many other scholars have also anticipated this nebulous frontier. Most notable is the Jesuit anthropologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (de Chardin, 1955), who long ago fascinated us with his vision that the world would evolve into a “noosphere,” a great web of consciousness enveloping the Earth. It seemed a lovely but distant ideal, yet the Digital Revolution has now made that dream a reality. The noosphere is here today, and it promises to transform our lives, our work, social institutions, the global order, and our very minds and souls.

We once relied on telephones and newspapers to communicate. Now, we use two billion PCs, 14 billion cell phones and laptops, and two billion TVs. Information flows through 30 million internet servers, 3,500 space satellites, and one million miles of undersea cables. This planetary layer of digital connections knits eight billion people into a living overlay of thought—the noosphere. The noosphere introduces the seventh stage in the LCE: the Age of Consciousness.

The Digital Revolution is automating knowledge, driving attention up the hierarchy of thought into the subjective realm of emotion, values, and beliefs that form higher consciousness. The obvious example is the way smartphones and social media allow anyone to broadcast whatever they wish, producing today’s notorious cacophony of “post-factual” noise. The resulting flood of random information forces people to make subjective choices based on what they like and believe, or even how they feel. As a result, subjective thought now constitutes a higher consciousness that supersedes facts.

The implications are historic, and it is impossible to understand life today without seeing this crucial new reality. An Age of Consciousness is here now, though it’s dominated by polarization, disinformation, and other threats that form a crisis of global maturity. Although one would think that consciousness implies “enlightenment” – we can now see that it includes everything beyond knowledge. The good, the bad, the ugly … everything. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump, almost all would concede that he is brilliant at mobilizing mass media to create alternative realities. He is a master at shaping consciousness.

The rise of Trumpmania, social media madness, the cryptocurrency craze, and other boondoggles that rely on sheer belief remind us that life has moved beyond knowledge. It also recalls the Joseph McCarthy witch-hunt, alcohol prohibition, and other flights of national insanity. As the Digital Revolution drives attention into the realm of subjectivity, the mass delusions that were once considered rare are now ever-present. We are now living beyond knowledge on a daily basis.

But there is good reason to expect a major shift in our global mindset. All stages of the LCE have been propelled by revolutions in thought: the Agrarian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Post-Industrial Revolution, and, most recently, the Digital Revolution. The Industrial Age, for instance, was driven by the Protestant ethic of hard work and the accumulation of wealth … and our continued focus on self-interest, money, and power is largely the cause of today’s mounting crises.

As the LCE graph illustrates, we are now in the throes of what I call a “Mental/Spiritual Revolution” to kick-start the Age of Consciousness. In short, it appears the world is heading toward some type of historic shift in Global Consciousness —a collective epiphany, a new mindset, a code of global ethics, or a spiritual transformation for a unified world.

The world saw a vivid sense of Global Consciousness when William Shatner (Star Trek’s Captain Kirk) flew into space on Blue Origin and experienced the famous overview effect of global awareness all astronauts report.⁷ Shatner was emotionally overcome and said, “Earth is… our only home… And [we have been]making it uninhabitable.” (Koren, 2022)

Driving Forces Are Resolving the Crisis of Global Maturity

Experiencing Global Consciousness may seem exotic, but my studies identify major trends in this direction. The Digital Revolution, booming green energy, the “democratization” of business, and the pressure of crisis itself are moving toward a largely cooperative globe. I know this may seem hopelessly optimistic, but it is where the evidence leads.

Although the climate situation is dire, scientist Hannah Ritchie (Ritchie, 2024, p. 19) has studied the evidence and found that gains in energy efficiency and solar and wind power are causing the world to reach peak carbon. CO2 emissions have declined roughly 20 percent in modern nations over the past decade, and China (the biggest emitter by far) is passing peak emissions now. She concludes, “No previous generation had the knowledge, technology, political systems … to build a sustainable world.”

A breakthrough is underway among corporations. These prevailing threats are forcing business and social interests to work together. The Business Roundtable adopted a new “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,” in which 181 CEOs committed to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders—customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders. (Business Roundtable, 2019) Business is the most powerful institution in the world, and corporations could lead the way toward a collaborative global order.

Autocrats may be threatening the global order, but demagogues have always been with us, and they usually collapse after a few decades. As power blinds dictatorships to truth, they fail to adapt and doom their regimes. Think of Pinochet in Chile, Berlusconi in Italy, and Chávez in Venezuela. Hitler and the axis powers passed in one horrible decade, and Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in Syria fell after two decades. We could be surprised to see the Cubans, Iranians, Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans liberate themselves in time.

Finally, today’s crises are themselves driving global integration. Teilhard called it “the forces of compression.” Global threats require global solutions, forcing nations and corporations to collaborate for their mutual survival. Without crises, little would change. For instance, CEOs know they must resolve these threats, and so 90 percent of corporations now practice a quasi-democratic form of governance that serves social and environmental interests as well as profits (McCallion, 2022).

Negative Forces, Uncertainty, and Risk Are Unprecedented

Although such powerful trends may be promising, it would be foolhardy to assume a unified world is inevitable. Just as the life cycles of all organisms can be cut short by disasters, the universe offers no guarantees. The LCE may have a precise trajectory, but it can be diverted by environmental collapse, nuclear war, raging pandemics, and a variety of other threats.

The current global conflict with Russia, for instance, could easily escalate into nuclear strikes, weapons fired from satellites, biological warfare, and more. It does not help that President Trump is enamored by strongmen like Putin. Journalist Evan Thomas (2024) warns:

War is the natural state of humankind …There is more armed conflict today than at any time since World War II … With Russia, China, Iran and North Korea forming an alliance against the West, there is talk of World war III.

In the progressive West, resistance to change is so great that the idea of a sustainable world seems near impossible. Oil companies are locked into the profits of fossil fuels, a fixation that could continue for decades. Almost all nations have pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions, but few are meeting their goals, and some remain intent on climate denial. The American GOP, for instance, advocates more of the same “drill, baby, drill,” while Trump has called the climate crisis a “hoax.” Apart from a leading edge of activists, apathy is everywhere.

In the face of a harsh world muddled by uncertainty, confusion and risk, we should not rely on bold leadership, a clamoring for change, or a bolt of inspiration. Instead, the LCE offers the steady advance through ever more powerful stages of development that exert their own inexorable force. The powers of evolution are so beyond mere mortals that they eclipse us; they exert subterranean movements as relentless as tectonic plates. We are not likely to witness a groundswell for global order, then, but more of a slouching toward redemption.

Global Consciousness Is Likely About 2033

In summary, the world is entering a great drama where revolutionary changes in technology, business, and society are reaching a critical point that threatens civilization—at the very time we are gaining the vast powers of knowledge, intelligence, and consciousness. An AoC is being forged in the crucible of a crisis of global maturity, or what I call the Global MegaCrisis.

An impending AoC is a bold claim, but that is roughly how the shift to a world of knowledge looked when the Information Revolution began a few decades ago. Back when computers filled entire rooms, I told people that we would soon enter a Knowledge Age of personal computers (Halal, 1993). The typical response was, “Why would anyone want a personal computer?”

Yet, by 2000, PCs were everywhere. Books about knowledge became rife, and most jobs involved managing knowledge. This illustrates how difficult it is to understand these profound shifts to a new stage of social evolution. An AoC is emerging today, and we simply do not yet understand this intriguing new frontier. All life cycles eventually reach a stage of maturity, and the LCE suggests that social evolution is now approaching its culmination in global maturity.

After reviewing the above background data and more, the TechCast experts estimate that some form of Global Consciousness is likely to emerge about 2033, give or take a few years, although at a modest 65 percent probability. If this forecast proves reasonably valid, a mature civilization is likely to follow in a decade or two. Not a perfect world, but one that works.

This conclusion can be thought of as a story explaining the rise of civilization as a superorganism. Based on this evidence, I think it’s accurate to envision our world evolving through its own life cycle toward a higher state of Global Consciousness and, in time, One World.

References

Business Roundtable. (2019) An Economy That Serves All Americans. Business Roundtable.

De Chardin, P. T. (1955) The Phenomenon of Man. Harper Collins

Galer, S. (2021) People Think Humanity is Doomed. Vice https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.vice.com/en/article/fifty-six-percent-of-young-people-think-humanity-is-doomed/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1767887166112152&usg=AOvVaw33R7NFUDS4NG4P7cRiUwLT

Halal, W. (1993) The Information Technology Revolution. Technological Forecasting & Social Change44( 1).

Halal, W. (2022) Beyond Knowledge: How Technology is Driving an Age of Consciousness. Foresight Books.

Koren, M. (2022) Seeing Earth From Space Will Change You. The Atlantic. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/astronauts-visiting-space-overview-effect-spacex-blue-origin/672226/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1767887166113932&usg=AOvVaw1WlevrIwQFG2xFbksyFBNm

McCallion, A. (2022) Ninety Percent of Companies are Developing an ESG Strategy. Morningstar

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.morningstar.com/sustainable-investing/90-companies-are-developing-an-esg-strategy&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1767887166114494&usg=AOvVaw0AvJ5vzqiNN9E-B4UdyG7I

Perlmutter, S., Campbell, J, MacCoun, R. (2024) Third Millennium Thinking. Little Brown.

Pinker, S. (2018) Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Viking.

Ritchie, H. (2024) Not the End of the World: How We Can Be The First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet. Little Brown.

Thomas, E. (2024, November 11) Wars Over There, But Not Over Here. Washington Post.

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/11/war-allies-china-russia-ukraine/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1767887166112635&usg=AOvVaw3kpXeRxmUvJwMekjupcUEX

Timsit, A. (2021, November 2) ‘Very Few’ Believe U.S. Democracy sets a Good Example. Washington Post

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/02/pew-us-democracy-poll/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1767887166113013&usg=AOvVaw3ZDveOV7zWSWq4q-hWU6X0

United Nations (2023) Climate Change 2033: Synthesis Report, International Panel on Climate Change

https://www.unep.org/resources/report/climate-change-2023-synthesis-report#:~:text=20%20March%202023,focuses%20on%20climate%20resilient%20development.

Affiliation

William E. Halal, PhD
George Washington University and The TechCast Project

William Halal is professor emeritus and author of the forthcoming book, One World: The Digital Revolution and the Rise of Global Consciousness (Amplify, 2026)