The virtuous roles of truth and justice in integral dialogue: Research, theory, and model practice of the evolution of collective consciousness

A conclusion of this inquiry is that not just truth but the meaning of truth matters in achieving healthy evolution of the collective psyche. The meaning of truth within evolution is described by three transcendent shifts in social system-organizing principles within the collective psyche and in human behavior - first the organizing principle of effectiveness, then efficiency, and now justice. Necessary factors of healthy evolution emerge as co-created pragmatic truth and co-created synergic justice, achieving a win-win balance of individual needs with the demands of a healthy collective psyche.; This inquiry has three objectives: to describe the five-year research and development, by an academic team, of a methodological model of the transformation of collective consciousness through use of synergic procedures; to establish a framework for comparing the resultant model, called Integral Dialogue, with selected contemporary practices with similar claims; and, within the context of Sociological Psychology, to build a theory of why such models and practices might work.; Working assumptions are explicated and rated on the basis of how much each is supported by the research and reasoning of social scientists and on other work relevant to evolutionary consciousness.; The findings of research and development indicate four major characteristics of the transformative model as connectedness, improved communication, fairness, and capacity to submit to a higher principle or virtue. These four characteristics plus the conditions of the synergic process translate to the variables of truth, justice, integrality, the nature of collective consciousness, and evolution, the concepts used in the theory building task of this inquiry.; An early step in theory building establishes evidence (Sorokin, 1941; Jung, 1969; Singer and Kimbles, 2004), that a collective psyche exists and is a researchable construct, a psyche consisting of an aware collective consciousness, a collective unconscious, and an ego. Integrality is established as holism plus synergy in using all three ways of knowing---sensate, cognitive, and intuitive. The issue of healthy versus unhealthy evolution of the collective psyche arises and is resolved in the identification of good health as what Benedict (1970) identified in high synergy societies and as a telos of integral evolution.