The American integral theorist Ken Wilber uses the term worldcentric to describe an advanced stage of ethical development. This involves a broadening of the spiritual horizon through the formulation of a transpersonal ethic in which we do not only desire the best for all people but for all living beings.[1]
It is this aspect where worldcentrism is viewed as an expansion of sociocentrism where one focuses beyond self-needs to also extend care about the group, community, and society.[2] The idea is that worldcentrism situates the positive aspects of egocentrism and sociocentrism in a larger context of concern so that consideration does not only include one's self or one's people but all peoples and all beings.[2] Synonyms of worldcentric include global and planetary.
There are also worldcentrists who maintain that living beings engage in autopoiesis (self-making, self-producing, and self-repairing), which renders these beings as ends-in-themselves and of equal ground value, in addition to whatever extrinsic or intrinsic value they possess.[3]
Wilber also sometimes refers to an ethical stage that is beyond the worldcentric, which he calls kosmocentric.[4] In a kosmocentric awareness, one experiences a release of attachments of the gross realm and a radical recognition of evolutionary processes so that an individual is compassionately called to action and becomes capable of letting the gravity of outcomes go.[2] Wilber used to associate these advanced ethical stages with mystical states,[5] but since 2002 he has associated these advanced ethical stages with the development of complexity in the self-related lines of identity, studied by Susanne Cook-Greuter.[6] By 2021 he had identified several levels of consciousness, with worldcentrism being at the fifth level.[7][8]