THE EVOLUTION OF THE FAMILY

A Conscious Tribe is a group of people who are responding to the current global civilisational ´megacrisis´ by co-creating a new kind of family in their local area.

The Conscious Tribe is a non-biological, extended family. Or, more accurately - because it might include biological brothers and sisters, for example, or parents and their children - the Conscious Tribe is an extended family not limited to biological bonds.

The Conscious Tribe is therefore larger than the modern, biological, ´nuclear´ family. And it has a purpose that most modern biological families do not have: the Conscious Tribe is committed to the path of individual consciousness, to conscious relating, and to conscious action.

II

What do I mean by "consciousness"? The closer we get to our experience (which is only ever of the present moment) - and which can only ever be felt (we can´t ´think our experience´) - the more aware we become that we are inside, and part of, A Great Mystery - a mystery beyond our intellectual and even spiritual comprehension - a mystery of which each of us only ever has their own, unique, subjective, limited knowing. This is what I mean by individual consciousness.

By ´conscious relating´ I mean the art of relating to each other in this awareness. We learn to relate to each other as unique expressions of The Great Mystery.

And by ´conscious action´ I mean the art of relating to our world, or worlds, consciously. The art of sensing the indefinable, sacred nature of the reality we inhabit, and therefore acting with appreciation and care.

This might all sound very lovely BUT, largely speaking, we have not been educated in individual consciousness, and nor are we practiced in conscious relating or action. And this is why I began by saying that a Conscious Tribe is committed to a shared path.

Together, the members of a Conscious Tribe learn to honour existence - without being confined in dogma (commitment to individual consciousness). They learn to honour our uniqueness and equality - without the need for imposed, external religious or secular authority (commitment to conscious relating). And their direction is naturally ecological, because they learn to align their daily lives with their love of the world (commitment to conscious action).

III

The Conscious Tribe is therefore: a non-biological, consciousness-committed extended family. It is the evolution of the family as we know it. Or, more accurately, it is one possible evolutionary trajectory - because at the moment it is not widely known, even conceptually.

The industrial era began the disruption of the extended family. By the end of the twentieth century the production-line, nuclear family was in tatters, and individualism enthroned. Today not only unconscious, but anti-conscious technocratic and transhumanist forces seek to dismember even the concept of the individual. The Conscious Tribe is a simple, profound and actionable alternative. It won´t stop wars. It won´t stop genetic modification or geoengineering. It isn´t an all-encompassing response to the megacrisis. Of course it isn´t! But, in my opinion, it is a beautiful, graceful, almost-obvious, overlooked, necessary component.

The family is perhaps the most fundamental social structure of any society. The Conscious Tribe is a new vision of the family - and therefore of society: because Conscious Tribes can join together to form conscious communities. And conscious communities can join together to form conscious societies.

Mark the Mystic Activist Spring 2023, Catalunya

www.markthemysticactivist.com

PS. Please excuse the repetition of some of the text from my previous post, "Conscious Tribes & Polyamory".