Civilizations

The seven primary Archetypes of Psyche and Civilisation

This list is by no means definitive - there are doubtless many other archetypes - both in the past and of future possible civilisations.

Similar classifications

Spiral Dynamics proposes a more linear, psychological or psycho-social system of stages, which, especially in its current (Beck-Cowan Integralist) form is much more simplistic and less naunaced than either its original definition or the theme of spatial archetypes presented by Professor Lobell. There is even use made of visual diagrams (see e.g. this page), reminiscent of those presented here.

Rudolf Steiner presented a complex theosophical (more technically Anthroposophical) series of cycles and root races; the idea of these successive archetypes, as Steiner describes, would seem to be very similar to the material presented here, although this is veiled by his rather procrustean series of stages and strongly theosophical-occult language, the meaning of which is impentrable to anyone who doesn't have a gnostic perspective to make sense of it.

Jean Gebser independently presented a similar psycho-social developmental model, very similar to Steiner, but which only used five stages: Archaic, Magical, Mythic, Mental-Perspectival, and Integral-Aperspectival. (Pages and links to be added at some point...)

I'll avoid incorporating Steiner for now, and simply correlate Gebser, Lobell, and Beck & Cowan:

It doesn't really seem that Anders Sandberg's Transhumanist-inspired network/Infonaut is equivalent to either Gebserian or Beck-Cohen definitions of Integral. This is because once one goes beyond modernity, many possiblities open up; and to only assert one or the other is misleading. Indeed, evolution in general is often a tree-like branching process, as is involution. And what we are considering in the above table is a series of specific archetypes, which as the Traditionalists/Perennialists point out, and as gnosis informs, do not have to be aligned in a temporal or evolutionary sequence, although they can be.