Clare Graves’s term for the threshold between First Tier and Second Tier consciousness: “the most difficult, but at the same time the most exciting transition the human race has faced to date.”
Extended Definition
Graves introduced the term in his 1974 paper “Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap” (The Futurist). The leap is the crossing of what Graves described as “a chasm of unbelievable depth of meaning”: the gap between deficiency motivation and growth motivation, between getting and giving, between destroying and constructing. Every previous developmental transition moved from one First Tier level to another, each still governed by the conviction that its worldview was the correct one. The Momentous Leap is the first transition that recognizes the legitimacy of all previous levels.
The BioConomy corpus identifies the Momentous Leap with the transition from Material Consciousness to Mycelial Consciousness and argues that it is the developmental threshold at which economic value creation itself transforms structurally. See The Momentous Leap for the full treatment.
Contrast with Adjacent Terms
The Momentous Leap is not one more step on a developmental ladder. It is a category shift. Graves described it as “not merely a transition to a new level of existence, but the start of a new movement in the symphony of human history.” All previous transitions were within the same movement (First Tier). This one begins a new movement (Second Tier).
Usage in Context
“Human society was approaching what he called ‘the most difficult, but at the same time the most exciting transition the human race has faced to date.’ Not merely a transition to a new level of existence, but ‘the start of a new movement in the symphony of human history.’” (Movement I: The Three Futures)