Volume XIII - (2012)

Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 13, 2012 - Pages 73-112

Unificationists often refer to “headwing thought” when they talk about politics or political economy. Headwing is a term that was used frequently by Rev. Sun Myung Moon from 1986-1994 as the Soviet Union was in transition. When he used this term he was referring to a society guided by a “Godism” that was neither right-wing nor left-wing thought but something that transcended both.

Some Unificationists have taken the term headwing and used it in their writings on social topics, but little systematic development of the idea of headwing society has taken place. For example, the Unification Thought Institute has added the subtitle “The Head-Wing Thought” to its book New Essentials of Unification Thought, which is largely a philosophical system developed by Dr. Sang Hung Lee focused on explaining the ontological, epistemological, axiological, and ideological aspects of the Divine Principle. However, this work does not include a systematic analysis of modern concepts of politics or economics that are necessary for the systematic and practical application of “Godism” to social institutions.

This article provides a background for headwing thought through a review of Rev. Moon’s usage, and then develops some aspects of headwing thought that can both meet the scholarly requirements of the social sciences and show the implication of some key doctrines of the Divine Principle to these fields of study. In this way, it can be viewed as complementing the Lee’s work that was devoted to philosophical categories. Specifically, it emphasizes the emergence of three social spheres—political, cultural, and economic—and how they can interrelate in an Integral society.

Integralism is a worldview developed through the ideas of philosopher Ken Wilber, who is often regarded as the world’s most influential Integral thinker. It refers to a higher state of wholeness than is reflected in traditional religious society, modern scientific society, or post-modern critical philosophy. In the United States there are two primary centers for the study of integral thought. The first is the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, which was founded with the help Sri Aurobindo, the Indian spiritual philosopher who developed a practice called integral yoga.[1]  The second is the Integral Institute near Boulder, Colorado. [2] In this study, concepts developed by Wilber and others in the field of integral studies will be compared to ideas central to the Divine Principle as headwing thought is discussed.

Background of Headwing Thought

During the height of the Cold War at the “God Bless America Festival” in Washington D.C., on September 18, 1976, the anti-communist Rev. Moon publicly announced his “March to Moscow.” The first part of this march involved a strong defense of the free world against further advances of communism, an ideology that had enslaved and killed millions of people worldwide. In 1982 Rev. Moon founded the Washington Times to fight against the spread of communism. In Latin America, where communism was making inroads, he developed CAUSA, which held workshops for leaders based on Godism as an alternative to communism.[3]

Although Rev. Moon opposed communism, he never sought to destroy the people who believed in communism or lived under it. He taught that, like all other people, they were children of God, and loved by God. They also deserved the freedom to pursue happiness, he wanted to provide a superior worldview, one that would free them from oppression and enable them to live in freedom, peace, and prosperity.

As the Soviet Union began to collapse, in 1985 Rev. Moon sponsored a large international academic conference in Geneva titled “The Fall of the Soviet Empire: Prospects for Transition to a Post-Soviet World.” The primary aim of this conference was to better understand the Soviet system and how it could be transformed to a more peaceful and free society without causing a panicked Soviet leadership to engage in violence or nuclear war.[4]  Within four years of this conference, Poland had cast aside communism, the Berlin Wall had been torn down, and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev had announced glasnost and perestroika, opening the door for free thought, travel, and expression in the Soviet Union. This gave Rev. Moon the opportunity to complete his “march to Moscow.”

As advance teams of his followers travelled to the Soviet Union, and brought Soviet leaders to the United States and Korea for international meetings, Rev. Moon began using the term “headwing” to refer to a system of thought that would be able to unite the right-wing and left-wing worlds. One of his first recorded uses was in a sermon at Chong Padong Church in Seoul Korea on February 5, 1989.

Following a number of exchanges among Soviet leaders and Rev. Moon’s followers, a major World Media Conference, sponsored by the Washington Times, was held in Moscow in April 1990. This gave Rev. Moon the opportunity to personally meet with Mikhail Gorbachev and to present an outline of his worldview on Soviet television. Rev. Moon did not just say the Soviet Union needed headwing thought, he also said that the West was in trouble and needed headwing thought to avoid its own collapse.

Reverend Moon stated that the “right wing and left wing are both confused,”[6]  and “the free world is also going down, following the path of the demise of communism.”[7]  In the United States, “the House and the Senate fight each other, as do the Republicans and Democrats.”[8]  “God, America, and Russia need liberation.”[9]  Because he believed that human beings in both camps were disconnected from God, it followed that God also suffered and needed to be liberated.

Reverend Moon stated that headwing ideology is God-centered ideology, but he was not referring to the narrow view of God of many dogmatic religions. “Godism has room to encompass and embrace all religious doctrines,” he said. “Unificationism,” his thought outlined in the Divine Principle, “starts with the beginning of history, the creation.” “Here we clearly see from alpha to omega, from the creation all the way to the future.” From this viewpoint, “historical patterns are absolutely clear.” “This is the principle behind history.”[10]

Indeed, the people who have joined Rev. Moon’s movement have come from all cultural and religious backgrounds, evidence of the wide embrace of his teachings. Headwing thought is broad enough to allow for the historical and social analysis of society that applies to everyone.

In 1994, at the founding of the Youth Federation for World Peace, Rev. Moon outlined a post-Cold War course for his movement based on Godism and unselfish living:

Beyond Right and Left in the Contemporary World

The above description of headwing thought shows that Rev. Moon spoke about it in very general terms. It is a thought centered on a God of Love who created the world and human beings with a purpose to create joy and happiness. Achieving this goal includes learning from human history, and transcending of the exclusive doctrines of inherited religions, and the ideological divisions between left-wing and right-wing. The goal is love, peace, and harmony, not division, strife, and unhappiness.

Reverend Moon is not the only one who has talked about the need to transcend both right-wing and left-wing ideologies and movements rooted in their factional interests. In the mid-1970s, Herbert Gruhl, author of Ein Planet wird geplundert (The Planet Is Being Plundered) and a Christian Democrat in the German Bundestag, started a group called Green Action Future for which he created the slogan “We are neither left nor right; we are in front.” This group merged with others and became known as the Green Party after their constitutional convention in 1980. The slogan remains popular with Greens to this day.[12]

The Greens influenced the creation of a loosely-linked association of environmental movements around the world. Some of these are populist back-to-nature movements that want to end big government and big business, and the collusion between the two. E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered[13]  was a popular inspiration for this aspect of the green movement. Today, in California, Thom Hartmann and David C. Korten are producing literature that can trace its roots not only to the greens, but to a more Jeffersonian vision of small farms and businesses.[14]  These populist Greens promote economic democracy and personal responsibility.

At the other end of the environmental political spectrum are the international centralizers who want to force environmental change from the top down. Many are wealthy elites who showed up in limousines at the international conferences on the environment in Kyoto, Rio, and Copenhagen.[15]  There is a place for regulation of the global commons, and it can be done in ways that favor centralization or decentralization. However, centralizers promote legislation like “cap and trade” that taxes states or users, creating centralized pools of money that are not likely to be used wisely, whereas a more decentralized approach would be to prosecute polluters in the courts much the way people who violate traffic laws are prosecuted. One of Thomas Jefferson’s primary concerns was the corruption that can result from political and economic centralization. This is what had happened in the government of King George III.

In headwing thought, this misuse of power is called “reversal of dominion.” Reversal of dominion can occur when the leader in a position of social power, exploits individuals by forcing them to sacrifice their own happiness for the leaders’ selfish goal. It can also occur when the leader unselfishly, but ignorantly, attempts to lead in ways that violate principle, and the integrity of the system. This occurs, for example, by borrowing more money than can be paid back, causing unwitting bankruptcy and hardship for the citizens.

Headwing thought promotes development of social organization from the bottom-up, from simple to more complex, beginning with individuals centered on God who organize into families, tribes, and expand to nations. In the ontology chapter of Unification Thought, each level of existence is described as an “identity-maintaining quadruple base,”[16]  where groups of individuals at one level organize into a more complex entity that creates another quadruple base with its own identity. This more complex entity will collapse if it destroys the ability of the individuals to remain as viable quadruple bases. An analogy can be made to the human body in which the individual cells lose their integrity and die, causing the entire body to die.

Jeffersonian idealists and populist Greens both reflect a fear of moving to a more complex stage, because historically those who have commanded the power of the center have either been selfish or not restrained with the bounds of natural law or principle. Throughout history oppression has been the norm. The split that exists in the environmental movement between those promoting top-down and bottom-up solutions, applies to social consciousness generally. For example, among Republicans there are “big government” Republicans who that seek to redirect tax dollars to big businesses and a large military, and there are “limited government” Republicans given voice by the Tea Party, which is another populist movement based on self-reliance. The Occupy Wall Street movement is a reaction against “big business” supported by Democrats, but unlike the Jeffersonian Democrats it tends to demand top-down government solutions.

The attempt to seek social salvation through big government is ultimately an illusion, since any state requires productive citizens for its own existence. Government is nothing more than a creation of human society. It can enforce rule of law that punishes bad behavior, making societies more secure, but governments do not produce morality or wealth. A social consciousness that promotes this illusion will lead to social collapse. This happened in the Soviet Union, in Mao’s China, and today this illusion is causing an economic collapse in Western Europe and dysfunction in the United States.

During the 2008 election in the United States, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain both observed that “Washington is broken.” However, each candidate, backed by different economic interests that profited from this broken system, proposed faulty “solutions” that would enrich their own political backers. Neither leftwing nor rightwing political parties showed concern for the whole. Both political parties increasingly rely on government welfare, whether it is for individual voters, banks, unions, railroads, agriculture, energy, or pharmaceutical companies. Washington is increasingly engaged in “crony capitalism” to deliver this welfare to the highest bidders and, over the years, legislators have changed the rules the founders put in place to prevent such activities.

In his State of the Union Address in 2012, which followed a CBS exposé of both democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and republican leader John Boehner profiting from insider trading, Barack Obama stated he would immediately sign legislation that ended such corruption. The exposé was an example of how the leaders of both political parties favor their own interests above that of the citizens, and why populist movements, both rightwing and leftwing, have sprung up in reaction. These movements could profit from a headwing view of society that transcends their more limited left-wing and right-wing biases.

“Boomeritis” and Integral Thought

The influential integral philosopher Ken Wilber argues that the dominant social consciousness today is a pluralism that has transcended the tribal consciousness of religion and ethnicity of our past, and that it increasingly allows for increased recognition of the equal rights and dignity of all people. This stems from the Christian heritage that teaches all people are equal in the eyes of God, and this concept was enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Pluralism was a pragmatic necessity in getting thirteen states with different religious traditions to adopt a Constitution, and this consciousness was reawakened with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Unfortunately, although accepting pluralism is a headwing concept, when pluralism is the only common social principle and values like family, property, and freedom are discarded, the social consciousness is too shallow to support a functional society. This shallow social consciousness of the “baby boomers” in charge of social institutions in the US today is part of the reason for the increased dysfunction in government at all levels. Some inherited religious and constitutional principles necessary for the integrity of society have been thrown out.[17]  Wilber argues that this shallow consciousness leads to narcissism and selfishness in social institutions and government policies. The result is a disease he has named “boomeritis.”[18]  One of the symptoms of boomeritis is the inability to make collective social or political decisions because there are no common principles upon which to make social decisions or to organize society. The result is a system in which legislators push for specialized economic interests, unrelated to moral principles or the common good.

Headwing thought should accept both the value of pluralism, as did the US founders, and those inherited values that have proven necessary for underpinning an integral society. While inherited values cannot be blindly accepted simply because the previous generation did, or because sacred scriptures promote them, they should be accepted on faith unless they are fully understood and proven false. Non-rational values exist for reasons, and many values not proven by reason or science are still necessary. An individual’s brain has rational and non-rational sides, with the non-rational developing first by mimicking the behavior of others. Rationality develops later, but both are necessary for human beings to function. Similarly, social consciousness is primarily non-rational and inherited through culture, and modern reason has only been able to scratch the surface of it.

Headwing thought can accept both the value of inherited non-rational social consciousness and reason, by accepting what is given on faith but being willing to transcend what has been inherited when reason proves it false. This is the process advocated by philosopher Karl Popper, who put forth the idea that something is not false because it has not been proven, but it can only be considered false when it has been falsified.[19]  A dynamic social consciousness that is neither stuck in the past nor solely reliant on reason and new ideas can be the foundation of headwing thought. Wilber calls this integral consciousness.

Wilber’s appeal is wide because his spirituality is non-church, non-dogmatic, and non-doctrinal. His numerous writings reflect themes that resonate with themes in Divine Principle. For example, Wilber has written about internal and external, mind-body unity, masculine and feminine principles, and stages of growth. He has a concept of historical evolution of human society that contains some overlapping themes with what the Divine Principle calls “the providence of restoration.”

Wilber’s popularity is a sign that the world is ripe for a headwing social theory, if it can be sufficiently articulated to the consciousness of the post-modern world and embodied in successful social institutions.

Happiness

The foundational concept for any thought on which to base a major civilization is human happiness. Not all theories about how human happiness can be achieved have worked, and many social systems have vanished in the dustbin of history, but all major successful civilizations have made happiness the primary goal. The founders of all great civilizations taught about achieving happiness.

Aristotle, the founder of Western political science, wrote, “What do we take to be the end of politics?... It is happiness… But when it comes to in what happiness consists, opinions differ.”[20]  Divine Principle begins similarly, with its opening sentence: “Everyone, without exception, is struggling to gain happiness. The first step in attaining this goal is to overcome the present unhappiness.”[21]  Other seminal thinkers to have said happiness is the primary purpose of life include Buddha, Confucius, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Socrates, Epicurus, Augustine, al-Ghazali, Thomas Aquinas, and Locke. Popular modern philosophers and writers to echo this primacy of happiness include William James, Victor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, Marie Jahoda, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Martin Seligman, and Ed Diener.[22]  Jonathan Heidt has recently produced an excellent book on this topic titled The Happiness Hypothesis.[23]

While opinions differ about what makes happiness, there is a major distinction to be made about the issue of whether happiness is something to be given, or whether it is something to be pursued. Thomas Jefferson penned the right to “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. He was studying the writings of Epicurus at the time. Contrary to this is the idea that God or the state will bestow happiness in return for fidelity. This is the same dichotomy referred to above between the populist and big government approaches to solving problems.

The Divine Principle provides an integrated approach: God created the world, but provided human beings with an innate desire to pursue the three blessings—be fruitful, multiply, and have dominion. Achieving these blessings gives joy to God, and this requires fidelity to God’s principle of creation. Hence there is a transcendent source of human happiness; however, active individual striving and responsibility is required to realize this happiness.

Headwing thought can state that any viable social system must provide enough freedom to allow the individual pursuit of happiness, and that any social system that uses people for other human ends sets up a roadblock to happiness—and a roadblock to God. However, this freedom is not sufficient to guarantee that human beings will achieve the three blessings, since that requires their own portion of responsibility. Freedom is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for human happiness; and freedom is not the end of human society but a means to that end.

A Headwing Framework: A Theory of Everything

Headwing thought is more than a thought that merely transcends right-wing and left-wing as “Godism.” It is a thought that embraces everything. Headwing thought includes left and right, spiritual and physical, male and female, individual and social, local and global, and economics, politics, and culture. In short, headwing thought is related to “a theory of everything.”

In his book, A Theory of Everything,[24]  Wilber developed a system that is called “all quadrants and all levels” (AQAL). Wilber’s concepts are very compelling philosophically and are useful in explaining concepts discussed in the Divine Principle related to developing a headwing philosophy. Wilber’s concept of all quadrants and all levels has been expanded by Anderson’s concept of “all spheres.” This provides a framework called the Wilber-Anderson matrix, or “all quadrants, all levels, all spheres” (AQALAS). Headwing thought can use this framework in explaining how everything relates.

All Quadrants

After his wife passed away, Wilber went into isolation for three years, seeking to make sense of everything. In a cottage in Colorado, he took all of the concepts he could find and discovered that every one of them fit into one of four quadrants. These quadrants can be labeled individual internal (UL), individual external (UR), collective internal (LL), and collective external (LR). They are diagrammed in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Four Quadrants

A central feature of the Divine Principle is that “anything in existence has both an external form and an internal character.”[25]  This internal and external aspect refers to both individuals and groups. The Divine Principle did not invent this view, but it does advocate promoting the concept of internal and external as a core universal principle. In Asian religions, this duality often refers to the individual mind and body. Practices like yoga were specifically developed to promote the unity of the mind and body. These practices refer to the relationship of the upper two quadrants in Wilber’s system.

Traditional religions primarily teach about the behavior of individuals and the way people should treat one another. The Ten Commandments of the Old Testament, the Five Relationships of Confucianism, and the Golden Rule of the New Testament are aimed at individual behavior and consciousness in the upper two quadrants. Headwing theory should go beyond these relationships to include the concepts related to the internal and external aspect of groups or collectives, Wilber’s lower two quadrants. There is not only a mind and body for individuals, but a “mind” and “body,” or internal and external aspect, of society as well. Large states made of complex social institutions form a collective system in which individual human beings are the cells.

The internal aspect of a society is the social consciousness and the exterior is made of social institutions. Governments, churches, schools, newspapers, banks, factories, and all other social institutions fall into the lower right quadrant. Scientific knowledge, religious beliefs, emotions, desires, moral rules, virtues, and principles are examples of things that make up social consciousness. This internal aspect of society includes both nonrational concepts and the rational principles discovered through science. These two aspects or modes of social consciousness are both situated on the lower left quadrant, just as the individual mind contains more analogical concepts associated with the right half of the brain, and a logical processing aspect associated with the left half; but they are all part of one mind.

All Levels

Wilber observes that levels of consciousness develop parallel to developments of human society. He calls these levels holons and he also refers to a state of consciousness as a meme. For example, the mythic order meme associated with traditional church teachings is transcended by the scientific-rational meme associated with the Enlightenment, and that is transcended by the pluralistic meme of many baby boomers. Holons are represented by the concentric circles that radiate outward from the center in Figure 2 below.[26]

The innermost circles refer to the most elemental aspects of human life. We could think, for example of a very basic society that knows little and acts primarily on instinct. As individuals and societies develop, this instinctual basis of action gets transcended by larger and more complex holons. More evolved societies contain many levels of development, with each level transcending and including the previous. 

Figure 2: All Quadrants All Levels [AQAL Matrix]

Unification Thought discusses this general development of conscious¬ness in its chapter on ontology. The chart on the structure of sungsang (internal) and hyungsang (external) in existing beings is shown for comparison as Figure 3.[27]

Figure 3: Structure of Sungsang and Hyungsang

In the Unification Thought diagram, while there are not as many levels as on Wilber’s diagram, there is still a progression—from material processes, to instinct, to rational, and higher spiritual planes—with each stage transcending and including the previous stages.

In his AQAL Matrix, Wilber associates survival clans with archaic consciousness in holon 1, ethnic tribes with animistic-magical conscious¬ness in holon 2, and shows development all the way out to a holonic level 8 that has not yet been realized. Current Western Civilization would be situated in the scientific-rational and pluralistic consciousness of holons 5 and 6.

Social institutions in the lower right quadrant cannot be more advanced than the levels of consciousness of the individuals and societies that create them. For example, a group of toddlers governed by instinctual conscious¬ness could not draft a Constitution for a state or build an automobile. Such external developments require a corresponding consciousness. Headwing thought has the challenge of moving society beyond present holons and into levels 7, 8, and beyond on Wilber’s diagram. This will be a society that transcends right-wing and left-wing with a higher spiritual and social consciousness. Wilber calls this ego-transcending consciousness “second-tier consciousness.” In the Divine Principle it is the stage of “direct dominion.”[28]

Wilber and many of his followers have talked and written about integral politics, integral business, integral science, integral economics, or integral spirituality using his AQAL diagram. However, this two-dimensional diagram does not explain the complex relations among sets of social institutions in social system. As a result, integral politics, for example, gets discussed in terms of relating contemporary political theories to the four quadrants of various levels, but, this approach does not address the relationships of the social institutions to one another in a particular society. Such an analysis can be more fully developed by adding a social depth dimension to Wilber’s AQAL diagram.

I have developed this depth dimension for my course on Integral Society.[29]  Figure 4, below, is a diagram that displays this depth dimension for the lower two quadrants, the collective interior and collective exterior.

Figure 4

Imagine the center of this chart as being the center of the diagram on Figure 2 above. The arrows on the bottom radiate outward from simple societies to more complex societies. The right half of the diagram shows social institutions that appear at different levels of development, while the left side of the diagram displays the social consciousness required for the development of these institutions as a mirror image. For example, a bank, an institution that appears at Wilber’s holon level 4, “early nations,” requires a social consciousness that includes the economic virtue of honesty, the skills of accounting, and the principles of borrowing and saving. This social consciousness is present beginning with the “mythic order” level in Wilber’s AQAL theory, but banks can continue to exist at higher levels.

This diagram shows that all social institutions fall into one of three “spheres,” cultural institutions, political institutions, and economic institu¬tions. In the example of the bank used above, we can see that the main purpose of a bank is economic. However, a bank needs governance, and banking requires individuals with the appropriate levels of consciousness to do banking. This individual consciousness would be in the upper left quadrant, but the social consciousness that allows collectives to have banks is in the lower left quadrant. Just as Wilber argues that all things can fit into four quadrants, we can argue that all social institutions fit into three spheres. This gives an outline of the Wilber-Anderson matrix than can be called all quadrants, all levels, all spheres (AQALAS).

On Figure 4 there is another feature related to levels. In the lower right quadrant, as levels become more complex, they move from personal, to interpersonal, to impersonal, and transpersonal. More complex institutions, necessary for the maintenance of larger societies, have components that are less personal than simple societies. There is a corresponding development in social consciousness. As societies move from levels 1 to 8, social consciousness moves from instinct, to commandments, to virtues, to principles, to integral, and beyond.

In the left half of Figure 4, as social development occurs, internal social consciousness moves away from a totally self-focused ego to increased ability to grasp the consciousness of larger wholes. The progression of social norms moves from obedience to commands, to virtuous actions, and to the articulation of principles that can maintain large-scale impersonal social institutions.

These stages of development of social consciousness can be compared to the stages of growth in individuals,[30]  and to the providence of restoration[31]  in the Divine Principle, and to “versions” of society developed in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 (LLPH). These stages are compared in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Stages of Society

Version 0.0 describes what Thomas Hobbes called “the State of Nature.” At this stage people are guided by biological instincts, including mating, plunder, and “fight or flight.” The formation of clans follows from mating, and the first societies that develop are like Wilber’s survival clans in holon level 1.

Society Version 1.0 is based on imposition of the leader’s rules; these are often promulgated after a military conquest. Such laws can be good if their purpose is for the happiness of the people, and bad if they exploit the people for the sake of the ruler. Hammurabi’s code, from which the Ten Commandments can be derived,[32]  is an example of a law code that allowed conquered people to pursue life, liberty, and happiness under the protection of the king. This level would correspond to “feudal empires,” or holon 3 in Wilber’s AQAL system. The social consciousness required in this Old Tes¬tament stage is knowledge of, and obedience to, commands. Unfortunately, those in power at this stage of development were more likely to abuse that poser for personal gain than to live for the sake of the citizens.

Society Version 2.0 is based on a social contract. This system is organized and agreed upon collectively by members of a society. The classic example is the Twelve Tables of Rome, adopted jointly by the Patricians (the ruling class) and the Plebians (the working class) after the plebians went on a prolonged republic-wide work stoppage. The new system provided life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for those who were party to the social contract. This type of system requires more than blind obedience to laws; it requires citizens to act virtuously in their personal initiatives. Confucianism is another system in which norms of virtue were independently developed. The classical Chinese Empire and Roman Republic share a common stage of social consciousness. However, at this stage the consciousness of these cultural spheres is not based on the same principles and, when such separately developed civilizations meet, they can experience what Samuel Huntington has called a “Clash of Civilizations.”[33]

Society Version 3.0 is based on rational and scientific principles that govern the flow of power and create a constitutional rule of law to provide maximum freedom for people. This stage is required to transcend the different tribal and national cultures present in a large state or empire. Some of the principles instituted at the US founding include representation, checks and balances on power, and limited federal power. The US founders would not have gotten people from various religious backgrounds to sign the Constitution unless it allowed those religions to retain their identity in the federal system. The motto e plurbis unum refers to the arrangement where the many can live together as one. The recent conflict between the Catholic Church and the federal government over forced federal health mandates on cultural groups is an example of why the violation of this constitutional principle causes social division and culture wars.

Society Version 4.0 is based on an integral view of a complex society in which commands, virtues, and principles lie behind a variety of political, economic, and cultural institutions that are an interrelated organic system. It looks forward to social evolution that goes beyond the holonic level 6 on Wilber’s AQAL diagram. The CIG in the column under Divine Principle stands for “Cheon Il Guk,” a Korean term used by Rev. Moon and variously translated as “Ideal Heavenly Kingdom of Eternal Peace,” “Nation of Cosmic Unity,” or the “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.” In a speech on June 13, 2006, Rev. Moon declared the establishment of Chung Il Guk.[34]  On February 19, 2010 he talked about January 13, 2013 being the starting day of the “substantial Cheon Il Guk.”[35]

The Emergence of Three Social Spheres

In simple societies, and even in large empires under the control of a single ruler, all three spheres—culture, economy, and government—are subject to the commands of the ruler. These laws might be consistent with God’s principles, but historically they often reflect the personal whims and limitations of the ruler and are imposed by force. Such societies tend to end when the ruler dies, and there can be great social upheaval when a new ruler takes the throne.

However, in large-scale modern societies the political systems, social institutions, and bureaucracies can maintain continuity when leadership changes. The role of the leader is restricted to the administration of an office based on the definitions of that office defined by the constitution and the legal system. Such bureaucratic systems can allow more people to live together in relative security, freedom, and prosperity than when people are subject to the more personal and arbitrary rule of a king. Modern social institutions can also transcend the limited knowledge and skills of one ruler by assigning divisions of labor that enable several people to develop particular skills for leadership of different social institutions. This is a characteristic of the modern bureaucratic state, a rather recent occurrence in human history. In Figure 4, this phenomenon is not just related to the political institutions of the state, but to cultural and economic institutions as well. Large corporations and large churches can have several departments with each responsible for specific functions related to the purpose of the whole.

In the section on “the Last 400 Years,” the Divine Principle refers to the breakdown of single-person rule in all three spheres as a preparation for the ideal society. However, the analysis of these social spheres is very minimal; Divine Principle only states that recent developments in these spheres were to remove dictatorial or monopolistic control. It does not explain the nature of the institutions that will follow:

• Religion: “Christian democracy came in order to tear down the dictatorial sovereignty of the Pope.”[36]
• Government: “The purpose of democracy is to break down Satanic dictatorship and set up a new political system.”[37]
• Economy: “Likewise the Heavenly side is trying… to break down the imperialistic system of economy in which the state property is monopolized by a certain individual or class, and to establish a system of economy in which all people may equally enjoy the wealth….”[38]

The Divine Principle does not develop the actual principles of a mature political or economic system in detail, as it is primarily an exposition of religious principles. Similarly, the efforts of the late Dr. Sang Hung Lee and the Unification Thought Institute tend to provide critiques of existing practices, like communism, and develop a philosophical exposition of the Divine Principle that contains more scientific or logical explanations for the religious principles it contains. However, economic and political principles and the nature of economic and political institutions are not well developed in headwing writings.

Building on the idea that the purpose of headwing society is to enable the attainment of human happiness, the next step is to discover how each social sphere, freed from human dictatorships, can best help society achieve this goal. The relationships among the social spheres, all parts of one society, should be understood as a system. The Divine Principle recognizes the systemic nature of society and makes comparisons of social institutions to the organs of the human body, which is also a system. The following is an example of the discussion of the political sphere:

Then, in the following section on the economic sphere, the Divine Principle, again makes the statement that

The main point of this discussion of an ideal society is that its parts have a systemic relationship with one another and that this entire system should center on God. Because over half of the pages in the Divine Principle are devoted to the 6,000 year history over which these three spheres emerged, there is not enough space in this article to cover that history in detail.

Nevertheless, Figure 6, below, describes the ideal relationship between these spheres in an integral society. It shows social spheres that each have their own purposes and principles, in a relationship of interdependence. Culture—the sphere in which love is a primary principle—should be in the subject position. This ideal relationship has not existed in human history. The next section of this article further discusses the primary role of each sphere, and how the institutions of each sphere can have an organic relationship with one another as illustrated in the diagram below.

Figure 6: Ideal Relationship of Social Spheres

Culture Is an Expression of Social Consciousness

Culture is more than religion; it is the bearer of collective social consciousness. Culture is the collective “thought” of society containing ideas and knowledge. It includes non-rational modes of thought expressed in religion, mottos, and sayings and it contains logical and rational constructs that can be taught by science. These two modes of thought parallel the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Non-rational modes of thought convey syntheses of very complex reality, somewhat like analog television, while rational modes of thought, like digital forms of transmission, are more exact.

The majority of culture, especially in the early stages of a person’s development, is transmitted to people in non-rational modes: through imitation of the behavior of others, through stories and movies, and through music and art. Rational processes generally develop after children enter their teens. When parents and teachers appear to be happy, children willingly seek to learn from them because of their own innate desire to be happy. Conversely, people do not generally seek to learn from people who appear to be unhappy or unsuccessful.

Culture is transmitted and reflected in all social institutions because social institutions are human creations. On Figure 4, churches, temples, art, newspapers, television, the internet, sports, schools, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are all listed as cultural institutions. These are social institutions that primarily convey human ideas and consciousness, and in so doing they all contribute to the nature of collective consciousness. The Divine Principle states, “Just as we can sense an author’s character through his works, so we can perceive God’s deity by observing His creation.”[41]

Similarly, social consciousness can be understood through observing the social institutions it creates. This includes families, schools, churches, newspapers, government agencies, sports leagues, and even the commercial advertising for products like IPads. Dysfunctional social institutions reflect a dysfunctional social consciousness.

A social institution like a church is a created entity, and not the consciousness behind its creation. So, the consciousness of religion would be its internal aspect and a church (membership, organization, and buildings) would be its external form. It is not only churches or religions that have an internal aspect. Social institutions in other spheres, like banks, or armies, also require an internal consciousness of the organizing principles that are reflected in their external structure. For example, the social institution of home mortgage lending requires a consciousness that understands the principles that make home loans work. This includes principles like the ability of the borrower to pay, and the value of the property and how it can be liquidated, in case the borrower defaults.

Culture can thus be compared to society’s “mind” and social institutions to its “body.” On an individual level, religious practices such as prayer, yoga, and meditation can help create the mind-body unity necessary for self-governance. But human beings live in societies, not as isolated islands. Therefore, these individual practices, while being important for individuals, are not adequate for modern societies that embrace millions of individuals. Headwing society is a society that practices social yoga, a disciplined practice of unity of the “social mind” and the “social body.”

The transmission of knowledge and values by families, schools, and other institutions aid in the development of social consciousness. Unguided by such social consciousness, social institutions serve themselves, and become vehicles of wealth or power for those employed by them.

An integral social consciousness cannot be limited to earlier forms, because society continues to develop new social institutions and technologies that require new understandings. Thus, the principles canon¬ized in the doctrines and sacred texts of earlier societies are always going to be inadequate for later ones. This does not mean that inherited rules like the Ten Commandments are wrong, only that they are not sufficient for more complex forms of society. Even though the moral norms promoted by inherited scriptures are not sufficient and may appear culturally relative, causing cultural clashes, they should be given the benefit of the doubt if they have not been falsified because they enabled society to develop to a certain level. “Boomeritis” is an example of a consciousness that accepts the pluralism of holon 7, but fails to accept the values of holons 1-6 that holon 7 needs for its continued existence.

The collision of cultures has always been uncomfortable. The collision of cultures forces the rethinking of social values. Reactionaries defend their tradition against any change; revolutionaries revolt against their traditions. However, integral personalities articulate the common principles for the wider cultural group. Urban and cosmopolitan areas that are cultural melting pots stimulate the development of more universal social norms.

Karl Jaspers described how this process occurred in major ways during a period from 4-6 centuries B.C.E., when many tribal peoples were incorporated into larger trans-tribal societies. In this period, Buddha in India, Confucius in China, and Socrates in Greece all helped to articulate more universal values that shaped the social consciousness of the major civilizations that followed. He called this period “The Axial Age.”42]

Today the major civilizations are colliding with the rise of technology and the appearance of global society through global travel, communication, and trade. The United Nations’ attempt to articulate universal human rights is an example of an effort to help shape a value matrix for an ever-more global society. Many scholars have called this era a Second Axial Age,[43]  and they pinpoint its start with the Enlightenment, which began the transcendence of particular and dogmatically espoused values and the articulation of rational universal values.

The process of cultural collision and new identity formation that occurs in “Axial Ages” occurs for individuals at the personal level. Each person can be said to reach their own “axial age” in the period we generally associate with high school. Peer groups are extremely important in the for¬mation of a child’s personality as a young adult seeks to become indepen¬dent of his or her parents. In public schools, students from all different kinds of family and cultural backgrounds are mixed together and their inherited values collide. These students must learn to transcend the limitations of their backgrounds in order to work together with values related to a common future. To the extent students can include and trans¬cend their inherited life, they will be able to develop and improve on what they received from their families and their views will become mature and integral.

Intercultural understanding and the search for common principles amidst our diversity is a major task of headwing thought. Which values inherited from the different cultural spheres are universal and which ones are particular? In 1980, Rev. Moon gave major support for intercultural understanding by funding a series of major international conferences on the topic of God. These were followed by two major assemblies of world religions. Invitations were sent to people from all the cultures of the world. These conferences did not require a belief in a particular concept or image of God, but were meant to be a forum where all concepts could be discussed in a search for ultimate reality, universal principles, and a common future for the world. Many of those attending were thrilled and enriched by these conferences, which were recorded in fifteen volumes. Headwing thought can include the crystallization of such universal values that emerge during this second axial age.

A mature social consciousness also involves the integration of both the non-rational principles that have evolved in human cultural history, and often appear morally relative, as well as those rational principles of logic and science that can be readily understood by people of all cultural backgrounds and are more easily accepted as universal. In the Divine Principle, these two modes of knowledge are considered to be internal and external truth. A mature social consciousness should involve a social yoga that understands the nature of the entire society and how its internal and external parts fit together.

Universal values can also be discovered through science and social science. This is the method of knowledge acquisition taught in modern universities. Rev. Moon also gave major support for the advancement of the relationship between science and values through the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS). Nobel laureates and distinguished scientists attended these conferences and a number of them continue their work today in the schools promoting integral studies.

On receiving the ICUS Founder’s Prize from Rev. Moon in 1985, F.A. Hayek made the following observation related to non-rational and rational modes of knowledge:

In this speech, Hayek, who could be called an integral political economist, argued that the concepts of “family” and “private property” are two principles not developed by reason that have enabled societies to experience the ability to support larger numbers of people. He noted that not all religions or ideologies believe in these principles, but that those who practice them are those that have survived.

Such arguments might bolster headwing theory when encountering narrow rationalists who reject non-rational values as anachronisms of the past. Many religious principles and axioms that have heretofore escaped human reason and logic might eventually be reformulated in modern ways that need not just be taken on faith but proven by studies of human nature and society. The Ten Commandments were presented as commands from God to a people who lived in a time when commands were the way that knowledge was transmitted to social consciousness. Today, reasons for such rules can be developed using scientific and historical methods.

Each time there is a social failure, headwing thought should add the lessons learned from it to an ever-expanding collective consciousness. In this way our new thought always transcends and includes that which has not been proven false. We can again refer to philosopher Karl Popper’s view that an inherited solution to a past problem cannot be considered untrue simply because it has not been proven by contemporary scientists. Rather, it cannot be considered untrue unless it has been falsified.[45]

The ongoing expansion and complexity of social consciousness can be compared to the evolution of software code, based on individual bits and bytes that are organized in highly complex ways to serve specific purposes, such as word processing, spreadsheets, or the navigation system on a vehicle sent to Mars. Such software modules only work when connected to a central operating system that integrates all of the “organs” of a computer to work together to perform these purposes. Like the evolution of software code, collective social consciousness continually develops using previous code as a platform for future code.

A functioning central operating system for human societies, like the US Constitution, has to fall within the parameters of all existence given by the nature of the universe. When social institutions do not adhere to the parameters of existence they cannot function.

The collective social consciousness of a headwing society needs to convey both the principles common to all individuals and those that govern the specific social institutions that only those workers employed by them need to grasp fully. Social yoga might be viewed like the collective equivalent of the Serenity Prayer:[46]

This “Social Serenity Prayer” points to an important task for headwing thought. Today institutions in the political sphere try to do things that markets can do better. Economic institutions improperly influence legislation that rewards those who are already wealthy at the expense of the poor. This misallocation of social institutions can be compared to using a brain, rather than an arm, to lift a weight. Alfred North Whitehead called such organizational mistakes “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.”[47]

A limitation of present social consciousness is that it developed for smaller societies built on personal face-to-face relationships, and not the larger more impersonal institutions that make up modern complex societies. Our inherited consciousness might contain commandments like “Thou shall not kill” that were designed for relationships between individual people in tribal societies. But, how can they apply in a world of social institutions? Should they apply? Is the commandment “Thou shall not kill” applicable to the relationship between businesses in the economic sphere? Today we witness buyouts and hostile takeovers that literally destroy the jobs of thousands of people pursing happiness. The goal of such takeovers is often to consolidate wealth into the hands of a few and eliminate competition so that a monopoly can be achieved, enabling the consolidated industry to exploit the masses of consumers (who need jobs to be consumers). When the US was founded, there were no such corporations, and the founders did not create laws to govern them. This is part of the task of headwing thought.

Headwing thought also should include the consciousness of economic principles and how they can be used to promote happiness of the whole society. Today, a few large financial institutions control much of the global wealth. Recently the world witnessed banks “too big to fail” getting even bigger after a government bailout, while thousands of smaller banks were allowed to fail. As stated earlier, the Divine Principle argues that “the Heavenly side is trying… to break down the imperialistic system of economy in which the state property is monopolized by a certain individual or class, and to establish a system of economy in which all people may equally enjoy the wealth.” Thus, from a headwing standpoint, if there was to be a bailout, the government should have bailed out the smaller banks and allowed the large ones to fail, distributing their assets more widely. The rule of law that governs economic institutions can be devised to distribute wealth more equitably.

The process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, the evolutionary social epistemology of F.A. Hayek, the integral vision of Ken Wilber, the developmental psychology of James Fowler, and the general systems theory of Ervin Lazlo all provide insights that can contribute to headwing thought. Perhaps that is why these scholars and/or their disciples participated in the God conferences and the ICUS conferences that Rev. Moon organized to bring together an understanding of science and values appropriate for our present world. While the unification movement could not continue to organize large ICUS conferences after 1989, headwing theorists would do well to appropriate some of the fruits of these efforts.

Government Maintains the Rule of Law (Social Operating System)

Government bureaucracies are human creations like other machines, even though people employed by them are human beings. Bureaucracies, like machines, consist of various parts that work together to perform a particular function. In fact, many political scientists refer to government institutions as “the machinery of government.” As machines, government institutions should be servants of the people, not their masters, which is a reversal of dominion.

The main purpose of a government is to implement and maintain the rule of law. The rule of law is like the central nervous system in the human body, or the central operating system in a computer. It governs the operation of all the parts of society. In an integral society with three distinct spheres, government does not create the rule of law. The law comes from the social consciousness through the lawmakers and framers of govern¬ment. Good government does not attempt to pursue happiness for itself, but it exists so that the citizens who create it can pursue happiness and give glory to God.

A headwing political scientist should be unconcerned about rhetoric and maneuvering to obtain the goals of special interests, and think instead like a mechanical engineer who understands how the pieces of an automobile fit together for the purpose of providing personal transportation, or how a computer software engineer understands how modules of software code fit together for the purpose of word processing. In a headwing society, the collective social consciousness must include a thorough knowledge of the social institutions designed to perform specific tasks and how they best relate to one another. Headwing thought should nourish this consciousness so the entire social system allows the individuals in it to achieve happiness and to bring joy to God.

A central nervous system does not lift a weight, but lifting a weight would not be possible without a central nervous system that relays instructions from the mind to the arm. Likewise, a central operating system in a computer does not do word processing, but word processing cannot be done without a central operating system that tells all the parts of a computer how to interact. The role of government is similar, it cannot provide people with food. It cannot produce goods for enjoyment. It cannot produce or raise children. But these things cannot easily be done without a social structure that protects production and trade and protects the homes where children are raised. Without rule of law, the strongest people would steal goods if someone produced them, taking away the incentive to produce. Or they would kill and enslave, preventing people from having their own families. It is a serious problem when society asks government to provide food and money and raise children, and neglects the enforcement of principled rule of law. Such a society is incapable of self-rule.

The main principle of government is force. Governments enforce laws through police, courts, and various bureaucracies. The collective force of government is a greater force than individuals and gangs that might arbitrarily steal, rape, and kill without rule of law. The most important role of government is to use such force to keep order and protect people from harm, so that they are free to pursue happiness.

The role of government is much like a referee in a game, a referee allows people to play freely within the rules of the game. If players violate the rules, they can be penalized, their team can be penalized, or they can be removed from play. A referee is impartial and neutral; a referee does not help one player or team win. This would be unjust.The US Constitution was established to enable every citizen to be a player on equal legal footing, to provide every citizen equal protection and equal rights (although the players did not include women and slaves). However, even before slavery ended and civil rights legislation was passed to make African-Americans full players, the “referees” were siding with some players, helping some to win at the expense of the others.

Because governments are based on force, selfish people are strongly motivated to use that force for personal advantage. Thus many players seek to bribe officials to bend the rules in their favor. In the US today, contributions to political parties are used to “purchase” legislation that is unjust, and many lobbyists in Washington, D.C. are professionals in getting laws passed that bias the legal system in favor of their clients.

The institutionalized corruption that the US founders attempted to prevent through checks and balances on power, and the separation of powers, has largely taken over the government today. In the two hundred years since the founding, many of the checks have been circumvented and ignored and some Constitutional Amendments, like the 16th and 17th Amendments, explicitly eliminate checks and balances on federal power by the states, and have changed the system from a federal union of states to a federal state, with the states functioning more like the provinces in Canada do. In the original arrangement, the states were the primary check on federal power, and the flow of power was from the bottom up. What we have now is a broken and unjust system of government, where the power flows from the top down and caters to those with the money and power to influence legislation and regulatory policies. It is not a fair and impartial system of governance that protects and supports every citizen’s pursuit of happiness.[48]

The dysfunction of the present system is a reflection of dysfunctional social consciousness in American culture. Ken Wilber has described that dysfunctional consciousness as “boomeritis,” a shallow moral system that ejected traditional values in the 1960s in the name of pluralism. But, as Wilber has shown, pluralism is an advance over the bigotry and slavery that preceded it. The problem is not the Civil Rights legislation that was an improvement on the original system, but the elimination of basic checks and balances that emerged in earlier stages of development. Losing these checks and balances makes all Americans less free.

To create an integral government, society needs an integral social consciousness, one that promotes the political structures that enable human beings to pursue happiness based on all the lessons of all stages of civilization. The Greeks learned from the Babylonians; the Romans from the Greeks; the British from the Romans; and, the US founders fashioned a “more perfect government” by incorporating the lessons from all of them. The US founders often quoted Greek documents; they debated the pros and cons of previous machineries of government, checks and balances, and institutional arrangements. They worked hard to address new challenges of economics by reading Adam Smith, and new concepts of a democratic republic by reading Montesquieu. The US founders heavily engaged in “social yoga.” They were “integral thinkers.”[49]  The type of work they did, in designing the machinery of the US government, is the type of work headwing thinkers must do today.

The US Constitution was a magnificent document that enabled the development of society by separating the power of government from religion and the economy. However, this document is inadequate to serve all the institutions of present society. It is a product of its time and place, as was the teaching of Moses, or Jesus, or Mohammed. All of these documents contain wisdom that applies to all human societies, but none of them are sufficient for the constitution of a society at holon level 8 or 9. To consider any of these ancient teachings as the final word is to substitute them for God, to make them false idols, for there is much yet to be revealed.

No system of government is by itself adequate for a society. It is only one social sphere. Governments need both economic resources and people with a high-enough social consciousness to create and maintain them. The US founders recognized that there were mutual obligations of the cultural and political spheres to one another, and many of their predictions of government dysfunction have come true because they understood the important role of culture in creating virtuous and principled citizens. They knew government could not do this.

There is an oft-cited story of a woman interviewing Benjamin Franklin as he walked out at the end of the constitutional convention. “What have you given us?” she reportedly asked. “A Republic, Ma’am, if you can keep it,” he is said to have replied.

Another example of this understanding comes from the writings of John Adams:

A democratic government requires a social consciousness in which the citizens understand the key principles and willingly live by them. If all people want to rape, plunder, kill, lobby, or use government force to get their happiness by taking it from others, then the system will fail. The ability for self-governance comes from the cultural sphere, where families, religions, and other institutions promote necessary virtues and principles. In the First Amendment, the founders never intended an absolute separation of culture and state; they opposed official state religion and the takeover of the government by a single religion.

An Economy Provides Material Goods and Services

An economy is a set of relationships related to the production and exchange of goods and services. Some items, like food and shelter, are considered necessities for human life. Other items, like air-conditioning, are not necessary but make life easier. Still other items, like jewelry, reflect human creativity or express love in the form of a gift. All of these items contribute to happiness.

In a self-contained economy, individuals or families may hunt or fish, graze sheep, plant crops, build their own house, and craft their own jewelry. This is how many simple societies have functioned, and it is largely how Thomas Jefferson viewed agrarian democracy. However, in the complex societies of industrial corporations and states, the type of economy Alexander Hamilton sought to fashion, it is important to understand the nature of human economic behavior and the principles that will lead to both the sufficient production of goods and services and to the maximum natural distribution of wealth.

Throughout history those who controlled military power often controlled the wealth and economy. However, new wealth is not created through conquest, but through production. One challenge of an economy is to encourage production, and this requires a secure environment where producers can sell their products and make a living without fear their property will be taken by force, either as a result of anarchy from lack of govern¬ment or by government appropriation through excessive taxation or corrup¬tion. Those with power are tempted to use it to take property, so the power of a central government to confiscate private property must be checked.

The Divine Principle acknowledges this problem and argues,

Yet, headwing thought goes beyond the destruction of imperialism to develop an understanding of the economic principles and economic institu¬tions that enable the economy to perform its function of production of goods and distribution of wealth. Both production and distribution are important. Capitalists, whose goal is to make money, tend to concentrate wealth through the acquisition of monopoly. They do not desire the mass distribution of wealth. Socialists, who seek economic equality, tend to argue for the redistribution of wealth through government force. No one wants to produce anything in such socialist societies and the result is equal distribution of poverty. Both theories are half-truths, and neither leads to a good economy.

The recent history of the Soviet Union and China shows the failure of economies directed by government force. The Chinese have learned much from their experiments with collective farms. They discovered that the more people that were on a farm, the greater percentage of shirkers would exist, because their own effort had less impact on what they would receive. Inevitably, collective farms made of more than ten families, groups with strong emotional affect for one another, would fail. People are willing to work if their small face-to-face group can keep the fruits of their labor, but not if they are working for an abstract whole, or for the perceived benefit of an elite group. This is one reason the Chinese have swung to the opposite end of the economic spectrum and currently support free markets and economic decentralization.

Marxists promoted a dogma that communism would lead to the creation of a “new man.” In the Soviet Union, this “new man” never appeared. In fact, quite the opposite appeared. The first generation of idealists that supported the revolution often sacrificed themselves for their ideals by volunteering and taking low pay. This changed after the original idealists were replaced and the new bureaucrats viewed their positions as jobs. Like other human beings, these replacements sought to increase their income, and this could only occur by taking from the whole. Rather than a “new man” the Soviet Union created what Michael Voslensky called “the nomenklatura.”[52]  Max Weber, who understood this problem of bureau¬cracy, predicted the collapse of communism in 1919 in a speech titled “Politics as a Vocation.”[53]

Today the United States economy suffers from the problem of using government force to direct the economy. This problem is not the result of an original conquest by an invading army, but a result of internal conquest through legislation that expands government agencies to control segments of the economy. This problem was a concern of the US Founders who sought to create a political system that prevented factions and parties from effecting such legislation.[54]  However, their checks and balances have been sabotaged, and rules have been put into place enabling factions to direct economic outcomes.[55]  The US housing bubble in 2008 is an example of a result of such attempts by the US government to control the economy.[56]

The problem of the “1 percent” that outrages both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street is the result of the failure of the U.S. government to act as an impartial referee that promotes maximum competition. Rather, the government acts as both a player and a referee that throws the game in favor of the “1 percent.” Democratic and Republican administrations are guilty of this.

Government acts as a player when it attempts to set up a business that competes with a private business, or when it seeks to bypass the market with price controls on monopolies like power companies. In such cases, government force is used to prevent normal market competition and those who receive the profits, and how much they receive, are determined by government regulators. The economic law of pure competition leads to wide distribution of wealth and little concentration of profit. Government interventions that prevent pure competition are largely the reason for the existence of the “1 percent.”[57]

Government acts as a corrupt referee when it uses its force to “throw the game.” A good example is the home loan guarantees through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that caused the 2008 housing bubble to burst. In this case the US government tried to force the market to create more home loans than the market could sustain and to sell homes to people who could not afford them. Legislators did this because (1) construction lobbies wanted to build more houses, (2) bank lobbies wanted government to take all the financial risk and guarantee loans would be paid even when borrowers failed, and (3) legislators wanted to get votes from people by getting them into homes they could not normally afford. The result was the passage of laws that deliberately ignored the established loan principles of creditworthiness. This caused a bubble that inflated housing prices, fol¬lowed by a collapse of the housing market and foreclosures that put citizens on the street and many small banks out of business. Millions of people suffered as a result of government trying to pass laws inconsistent with basic economic principles. In the end, the top 1 percent were bailed out with taxpayer money under the argument that they were “too big to fail,” while it was government that failed its citizens by trying to be a player. It exerted its force, but force is a very poor economic incentive.

Headwing economic theory goes beyond both these left-wing and right-wing economic failures by incorporating the best principles of production and distribution with the government as an impartial referee and not a player. A clarification is in order on the Divine Principle statement: “to establish a system of economy in which all people may equally enjoy the wealth.” Some people may think that this means that each person, regardless of their effort, skills, or responsibility, should have equal wealth, and that government should take everything and divide it up. The failures of communism show this doesn’t work. The phrase “equally enjoy wealth” should be taken to mean enjoyment (happiness) is the primary modifier of “wealth” and “equally” is the modifier of “enjoy.”

Recent studies by the Pew Trust indicate that, at the current value of money, increased annual incomes up to about $150,000 per year per person correlates with increased happiness. This income is enough for people to obtain necessities and conveniences, including education for their children, and one annual vacation. Income above this amount is rather superfluous and does not correlate with happiness.[58]

Being able to enjoy the fruits of one’s own labor has proven to be an essential feature of a good economy. Marx’s dictum, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” might sound idyllic, but as the Chinese experience with communes proved, it only works in small families and close face-to-face groups, not at the level of an impersonal state economy. Many other experiences in history, including the failure of the first Jamestown colony, show that bureaucratic centralization creates large numbers of “free riders” and lowers economic output, to the point that people will eventually starve. At the height of China’s collectivization, people resorted to eating the bark off of trees.

In The Politics, Aristotle criticized Plato’s The Republic for supporting common ownership:

There is a major divide between the economic incentives within families and small communities and the economic incentives in larger impersonal bureaucracies. In the first instance, people are motivated by an emotional connection of heart that encourages sacrifice of oneself for other members of the family. In the second instance, people seek employment from a government bureaucracy that maximizes their personal income, and this can only come at the expense of the whole. This leads to demands for higher wages, increased taxes, and other measures that can increase personal happiness. The only way increased wealth can occur, without taking from the whole, is when a society increases economic production, and this occurs when the government provides an environment where people can keep the fruits of their labor and freely own and trade their property. The maximum distribution of wealth in impersonal societies occurs when governments promote maximum competition. The reason for this was well-argued by F.A. Hayek in his Road to Serfdom.[60]

Marx, and also many religious leaders, have confused the economic incentives at the personal and the impersonal levels. In part, this is because large social institutions that provide jobs in corporations or government bureaucracies are recent phenomena. The nature of impersonal and rational bureaucratic institutions is not in the consciousness of traditional cultures. For example, in Confucianism human behavior is taught in terms of personal relationships.[61]  Unification Thought by Dr. Sang Hun Lee simply states these principles should be transferred to the impersonal relationships of bureaucratic states. But we know from studies like Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society,[62]  that individuals behave differently than groups. Individuals can be taught to love, but social institutions, like the gear on a machine, perform the impersonal function for which they were created. The development of principles for the establishment of good social institutions is a major challenge for headwing thought.

Large bureaucracies and economic corporations are based on goals, and they are designed with structures aimed at reaching those goals. A stock market aims at profit; it does not aim at wealth distribution. The stock market aims at concentrating profit, while government should be a referee that encourages competition that distributes profit widely.

In large impersonal societies, markets operate regardless of ideals. Take for example a priest whose entire raison d’être is to serve others. When he takes his donations to the grocery store to buy food for those he wants to help, he will seek to purchase the highest quality and quantity of food at the lowest price. Government bureaucrats, with a known budget, will seek to spend that budget in order to have the most funds to pay their employees and make their offices as comfortable as possible.

Thus, cultures need to transmit knowledge of these economic principles and devise rules of law that provide maximum production and distribution on the basis of these principles, rather than trying to impose false economic principles. This is the way to devise an economy that functions integrally in society. In modern states, this means a semi-independent economic sphere whose principles are well formulated by the cultural sphere and properly refereed by the political sphere.

The emergence of the economic sphere is the most recent development in Western Civilization. It follows from industrialization that involves the coordination of large-scale economic institutions. But, this economic sphere, originally seen as a panacea for good, has more recently been viewed as a destroyer of human lives and the environment. Headwing thought should develop the principles that enable the economic sphere to best be put to the service of the entire society and the environment.

Conclusion

Headwing thought can perform a valuable service to the world by advancing social consciousness and promoting principles of social organization that can enable human society to advance toward an integral society. Such a society is consistent with the highest principles that have been adapted in earlier forms of human society, whether in the Old Testament Era, the New Testament Era, or the modern era. However, headwing thought both includes and transcends those lessons of history taught by the world’s great religions, philosophers, and scientists.

Much more elaboration and contemporary explanation of key principles that have been given as a form of revelation in the Divine Principle is in order. In this article the importance of the emergence of three social spheres has been the focus. However, the complementary relation of masculine and feminine aspects of social institutions was not developed in this article. This is another major concept that the modern world has struggled to understand. For example, in discussing political economy, masculine and feminine principles might be used to help explain the relationship between production and distribution.

This article has provided a macro view of the main outlines of a headwing society, with an emphasis on the role of the three spheres in society and their evolution to the present day. This theme is promoted in the section of the Divine Principle on the last 400 years as being a preparation for the emergence of an ideal society. This macro analysis explains the goal of human happiness and a broad overview of the development of social consciousness and the evolution of human society through formation, growth, and perfection stages.

The micro analysis of social institutions, using such analytical tools as cybernetics, is also necessary. Many principles are specific to different social institutions. From churches to banks to armies, human institutions are designed to carry out specific functions in aiding the quest for human happiness. Some of this micro analysis has already been done elsewhere, including by former ICUS participant Ervin Lazlo, who has written exten¬sively on general systems theory.[63]  I have elaborated five core principles of politics and how they can be implemented in reforms of the US government in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0.[64]

In Perpetual Peace, Immanuel Kant dreamed of a world in which people would organize society based on mutual need and voluntary cooperation.[65]  He believed in a “cunning of history” in which people and nations would ultimately come to recognize that cooperation is superior to war, and that a transcendent moral law should guide human law. The League of Nations and the United Nations were both inspired by this dream, but both arrangements were dominated by major political powers rather than higher cultural principles. This development parallels the domination of culture by empire in the days of Constantine, when transcendent social values also failed to guide social institutions.

Headwing thought can also work to bring a proper relationship of the three social spheres to bear on reforms of the United Nations. This impulse behind Rev. Moon’s desire for an “Abel UN”[66]  is a way in which he believes “Godism” can guide international social institutions.

There will be many other tasks for headwing thought as the entire social consciousness of today’s world requires reorientation from what Wilber calls “First Tier Consciousness” to a “Second Tier Conscious-ness.”[67]  The Divine Principle would refer to this shift as a move from “indirect dominion” to “direct dominion.”[68]  By whatever terminology, we are referring to the emergence of a world in which adult, integral human beings achieve an integral social consciousness that can create and sustain the social institutions required for peace, prosperity, and happiness.

Notes

[1]   In its mission statement, CIIS states, “Integral studies are a response to the growing need to synthesize the fragmentary aspects of contemporary thought and culture into a meaningful whole.” http://www.ciis.edu/About_CIIS/  CIIS_at_a_Glance/ Mission_Statement.html

[2]   The Integral Institute’s mission statement has more of a social component: “to awaken humanity to full self-awareness… by providing research, education and events that foster intentional, behavioral, cultural and social self-awareness, the Institute helps global leaders from all arenas to improve the human condition.” Mission Statement, http://www.integralinstitute.org/?q=node/ 1

[3]   For a detailed discussion and history of this “march,” see Thomas J. Ward, March to Moscow: The Role of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Bridgeport, CT : Research Institute for the Integration of World Thought, 2006.

[4]   Alexander Shtromas and Morton A. Kaplan, The Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future, 4 vols., (NY: Paragon House, 1989).

[5] Sun Myung Moon, "The Tribal Messiah", Chong Padong Church, Seoul Korea, February 5, 1989. 

[6]   Sun Myung Moon, “God’s Day Morning Address,” New York , January 1, 1992.

[7]   Sun Myung Moon, “Royal Family of True Love,” Tarrytown, NY , July 28, 1991.

[8]   Sun Myung Moon, Unification Church National Conference, New York , December 19, 1990.

[9]   Sun Myung Moon, “Proclamation of True Parents,” Tarrytown, NY , May 27, 1990.

[10]   Moon, “God’s Day Morning Address,” op. cit.

[11]   Sun Myung Moon, Inaugural ceremony at the founding of the Youth Federation for World Peace, Washington, DC, July 26, 1994.

[12]   Fritjof Capra and Charlene Spretnak, Green Politics: The Global Promise (NY: E.P. Dutton, 1984), p. 15.

[13]   Harper and Row, 1973.

[14] Cf. David C. Korten, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1999) and Thom Hartmann, Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights (Allentown, PA: Rodale Press, 2002).

[15]   “Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges,” The Telegraph, UK. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/ Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html.

[16] ;  Unification Thought (New York: Unification Thought Institute, 1973), pp. 22-23.

[17]   In addition to Wilber, this concept is presented in an excellent video produced by TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design): http://www.ted.com/talks/ jonathan_ haidt_on_the_moral_mind .html.

[18]]   Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision, for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality  (Boston: Shambhala, 2001), pp. 26ff.

[19] Karl Popper, Stanford Ecnyclopedia of Phisolophy,  http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/ popper/.

[20]   Aristotle, Ethics, 1, 4.

[21]   Divine Principle (New York, NY: HSA-UWC, 1973), p. 1.

[22]   http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/

[23]   Jonathan Heidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom  (NY: Basic Books, 2005).

[24]   Ibid., n. 15.

[25]   Divine Principle, p. 21.

[26]   Brad Reynolds, Where’s Wilber At?  Ken Wilber’s Integral Vision in the New Millennium (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2006), p. 178.

[27]   Unification Thought, p. 39.

[28]   Divine Principle, p. 137.

[29]   This diagram was developed for my course TSD 7149, Integral Society and Politics,  first taught at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, Summer 2011.

[30]   Divine Principle, pp. 51-57.

[31]   Divine Principle, see diagrams “The World of Creation and the Providence of Restoration Through the Substantial Development of the Word,”  p. 137; and, “Chart of the Development of History from the Standpoint of the Providence of Restoration,” p. 447.

[32]   W.W. Davies, The Codes of Hammurabi and Moses (Cincinnati, OH: Jennings and Bryan, 1905).

[33]   Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998).

[34]   Sun Myung Moon, “Chung Il Guk is the Ideal Heavenly Kingdom of Eternal Peace.”  http://www.unification.net/2006 /20060613_1.html.

[35]   “I declared January 13, 2013 as the day of ‘Wishing.’ It is the starting day of the substantial Cheon Il Guk and it will be the original day of its official start,” February 19, 2010 report by Dae Mo Nim,  http://www.tparents.org/library/  unification/talks/DaeMoNim-10/DaeMoNim-100219a.htm.

[36]   Divine Principle, VII.2.6.

[37]   Divine Principle, VII.2.6.

[38]   Divine Principle, VII.2.7.

[39]   Divine Principle, pp. 469-470.

[40]  Divine Principle, p. 472.

[41]   Divine Principle, p. 20.

[42] "The Axial Age" in New World Encyclopedia,  http://www.newworldency clopedia.org/entry/Axial_Age.

[43] E.g., "A New Axial Age", EnglightenNext, http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/ j31/armstrong.asp 

[44]   F.A. Hayek, “The Presumption of Reason,” International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, 1985.  http://blog.ganderson.us/2011/12/the-presumption-of-reason 

[45]   See note 16.

[46]   The Serenity Prayer was first written down in its present form  by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, but it has antecedents in ancient teachings.

[47]   Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978).

[48]   More detailed analyses of the nature of the problems in the United States and solutions to remedy them can be found in Gordon L. Anderson, Philosophy of the United States: Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (St. Paul: Paragon House, 2004); and, Gordon L. Anderson, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0 (St. Paul: Paragon House, 2009).

[49]   Wilber, A Theory of Everything, pp. 89-90.

[50]   John Adams, “Letter to Officers of the First Brigade of the  Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts,” October 11, 1798.

[51]   Op. cit, n. 35.

[52]   Michael Voslensky, Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class:  An Insider’s Report (New York: Doubleday, 1984).

[53]   http://www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/ weber/lecture/politics_vocation.html.

[54]   See for example, “Federalist No. 10,”  The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (NY: Bantam Books, 1982), pp. 42-49.

[55]   A detailed explanation of the undoing of these checks and balances can be found in Anderson, Philosophy of the United States.

[56]   Anderson, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0, pp. 113-115.

[57] Wayne Miller, Perfectly Competitive Markets,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZhphhNk1e8.

[58]   “Pew Research Center Surveys, 2002-2005” cited by Robert Whaples, Modern Economic Issues  (Chantily, VA: The Teaching Company, 2007), pp. 176-178.

[59]   Aristotle, Politics (Penguin Classics, 1972), p. 64.

[60] F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 46-48.

[61] “Filial Piety (Xiào, 孝),” in “Confucianism,” New World Encyclopedia  http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Confucianism#Filial_Piety_.28Xi.C3.A0o.2C_.E5.AD.9D.29.

[62]   Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (NY: Scribners, 1932).

[63]   Ervin Lazlo, “The Role of General Systems Theory in the Conceptual Synthesis of the Coming Age,” Modern Science and Moral Values (New York, International Cultural Foundation, 1973), pp. 141-154.

[64]   Anderson, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Version 4.0.

[65]   Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (Indinapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957).

[66] “Sun Myung Moon: Building Peace among Nations,” New World Encyclopedia, http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/ Sun_Myung_Moon#Building_ peace_among_nations.

[67]   Wilber, A Theory of Everything, pp. 6-16.

[68]   Divine Principle, pp. 55-57.