Just to be clear, consciousness doesn’t evolve. It doesn’t need to. It is complete in and of itself. What does evolve through stages, however, is our capacity to recognize and embody an ever-expanding and evermore inclusive awareness of consciousness.
We recognize this easily when we look at children. We are aware that a child is complete and perfect as it is. A child’s worldview and perspective are perfectly appropriate for where it is developmentally. And, we also recognize that a child has a potential and capacity to evolve its worldview and perspective to be more inclusive, more empathic, and more compassionate. This evolution of capacity is reflected in the actual development of the adult brain.
We wouldn’t hold that a child is stupid because it has not yet evolved the consciousness that we have as adults or that it has the potential to. But, where we do get fooled is when we look at other adults and assume that they must share our level of consciousness simply because they look like us or even look older than us. Then, when they cannot seem to recognize the “facts” that seem so clear to us, we assume they are stupid or crazy or malevolent in intent. Most likely they are not. They are simply seeing the world through a set of filters defined by their particular worldview or ideology.
We also make a mistake when we assume that we can simply point out the facts, explain, embarrass, or ridicule someone into a more evolved worldview. It doesn’t work that way. Has that conversation with your more conservative family members at Thanksgiving ever ended with a “By golly, you’re right and I’ve been seeing it the wrong way all along?” Probably not. And it hasn’t ended that way because your relatives are stupid people or deliberately hurtful people. They’re just limited in terms of how much of the totality of consciousness they can embody at this time. Be patient. Try to understand how to speak their language while still holding to your values. That’s the best you can do.
Keep it in perspective, because as evolved as we may feel when arguing for basic human rights with our stubborn uncles, there are, undoubtedly, people who are more evolved than we are.