Gleaning Context and Complexity

From Integral Options Café:

Geneticists Confront Integral Reality

David Brooks can be pretty interesting sometimes. In his column from Tuesday, he stumbles upon a deeper truth about reality that informs all of integral thinking -- we cannot separate the It from the I and the We and the Its…

Brooks uses the word "multivariate" in mentioning poverty -- and this word applies to any understanding of human experience. We must look at all the information -- the I, We, Its, and It. This applies to poverty, the energy crisis, racism, "the war on
terror," and everything else.

There is much to be learned in studying genetics, but we will never find the answers to who we really are in the genome, or in neurotransmitters, or in our minds and experiences, or in our cultures and religions, or in the societies we create -- but we will find the answers, someday, in how all of these interact.

Read More: Here

Consciousness, Qualia, Power and Self

It is our mission to create blog posts that are both research oriented and provide accessible information on the way to more integral kinds of thinking and doing. And central to any comprehensive (integrative) inquiry are questions about consciousness and selfhood. The following three videos address some of the most fundamental issues in the science, philosophy and exploration of human consciousness:

First up is Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UCSD, discusses consciousness, qualia, and self:

Then, an interview with David Chalmers discussing his theory of consciousness, the hard problem, and the explanatory gap:

Finally, this is part two of a BBC documentary called The Century of Self. This part is called 'Engineering Consent', and it tells the tale of how power elites used psychoanalytic theories to try and control human populations in an age of mass democracy and global capitalism:

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The Academic Emergence of Integral Theory

Reflections on and Clarifications of the 1st Biennial Integral Theory Conference

By Mark D. Forman, Ph.D. and Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Ph.D.

As founders and organizers of the 1st Integral Theory Conference we feel moved to respond to Frank Visser's latest posting (“Assessing Integral Theory”). We do this in the spirit of dialogue and out of a sense that his characterization of our event was misleading and inaccurate in important ways.

To be fair, Visser's article is less about the conference and more about what constitutes theory building and the checking of its validity. His main focus is on how Wilber has failed to build theory and have it validated in a scientific or academic fashion. We would like to raise several points relevant to this.

Read More: Here

Friends Without Borders

In this public service announcement, Friends Without Borders explains how they offer solutions to the global tensions existing in our world today: they seek to connect children with one another, heart-to-heart, on a global scale. This new generation might then, quite possibly, help grow the world into a warmer, friendlier home for us all.

From the website:

All across India, tens of thousands of children have begun writing heartfelt letters to the students in Pakistan. All across Pakistan, tens of thousands of children are replying with heartfelt letters back. New connections are being made. New friendships are being formed.

Imagine if all the schools from both nations were to participate? What will happen when this generation grows up?

At Friends Without Borders, we are making this possible, and invite you and your school to take part in this historic heart-to-heart experiment.

Children have a natural instinct toward friendship and will jump to reach out and create new friends, when given the opportunity. The simple act of writing a letter leaves deep and lasting impressions that help to humanize 'the other.' These are the seeds that promise to mature into a safer, friendlier world.

Welcome to our campaign... so simple, it just might work!

Maybe, just maybe…

Three Broad Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition

A Precis of Origins of the Modern Mind

By Merlin Donald

Origins of the Modern Mind (1991) was an attempt to synthesize various sources of information--neurobiological, psychological, archeological and anthropological, among others--about our cognitive origins, in the belief that the human mind co-evolved in close interaction with both brain and culture… This precis focuses on my core theory and disregards most of the background material reviewed at length in the book itself.

My central hypothesis is that there were three major cognitive transformations by which the modern human mind emerged over several million years, starting with a complex of skills presumably resembling those of the chimpanzee. These transformations left, on the one hand, three new, uniquely human systems of memory representation, and on the other, three interwoven layers of human culture, each supported by its corresponding set of representations.

I agree with multilevel evolutionary theorists like Plotkin who believe that selection pressures at this stage of human evolution were ultimately expressed and tested on the sociocultural level; hence I have described the evolutionary scenario as a series of cultural adaptations, even though individual cognition was really where the main event was taking place, since it provides the linkage between physical and cultural evolution.

Read More (PDF): Here

On Free Will and Human Nature

From SEED Magazine:

Tom Wolfe & Michael Gazzaniga in Conversation

Tom Wolfe, who calls himself “the social secretary of neuroscience,” often turns to current research to inform his stories and cultural commentary. His 1996 essay, “Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died,” raised questions about personal responsibility in the age of genetic predeterminism. Similar concerns led Michael Gazzaniga to found the Law and Neuroscience Project. When Gazzaniga, who just published Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique, was last in New York, Seed incited a discussion: on status, free will, and the human condition.

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Watch this Conversation: Here

Educating Generation Next

“Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' Others dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not?'” -- George Bernard Shaw

Once the center of a renaissance, Harlem, New York, has slowly declined, now symbolizing urban poverty and decay. But today, there's a new renaissance under way in Harlem, with the construction of new buildings, businesses and schools. One leader is Geoffrey Canada, whose vision, quite simply, is to save children, and he has amassed a staggering amount of private money -- more than $100,000,000 -- to realize his goal. His testing ground is a 60-block area in central Harlem that he calls "The Harlem Children's Zone," in which Harvard School of Education alumnus Canada has promised parents:

"If your child comes to this school, we will guarantee that we will get your child into college. We will be with you with your child from the moment they enter our school till the moment they graduate from college."

Watch Geoffery Canada on Oprah:

Learn More: Here

The Complexities of Social Change

In recent years, in has become increasingly clear that in order to accomplish effective social change we must stop looking at the discrete elements of our various social projects and start trying to understand the complex relationships between them.

The dynamic complexity of human social life requires a new kind of thinking and acting – ways of understanding and interacting in the world that both embrace diversity and innovation, as well as seek out deeper connections and integrities. Our greatest wisdoms are embedded in myriad of different structures and relationships – and illuminating and animating that knowledge can become a massively creative process.

This is exactly what Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton purpose in their new book Getting To Maybe: How The World Has Changed. The authors show how bringing together different knowledge sets to solve complex problems can radically alter projected outcomes.

In sum, Getting to Maybe recognizes the experiences of a wide range of people and organizations and applies the insights of complexity theory in an effort to lay out a brand new way of thinking about making change in communities, in business, and in the world. Getting to Maybe offers a practical guide to social innovation for others in the field, as well as for anyone who wants to make a difference but are unsure where to start.

Listen to this interview with Getting to Maybe author Frances Westley:
On Social Innovation, Complexity Thinking and Movements of Change

What Makes Us Unique

From my mind on books:

Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique
by Michael S. Gazzaniga

Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga (Ecco, 2008) has a June 24 release date according to Amazon.

From the publisher:

One of the world’s leading neuroscientists explores how best to understand the human condition by examining the biological, psychological, and highly social nature of our species within the social context of our lives.

What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his widely accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga looks to a broad range of studies to pinpoint the change that made us thinking, sentient humans, different from our predecessors.

Neuroscience has been fixated on the life of the psychological self for the past fifty years, focusing on the brain systems underlying language, memory, emotion, and perception. What it has not done is consider the stark reality that most of the time we humans are thinking about social processes, comparing ourselves to and estimating the intentions of others. In Human, Gazzaniga explores a number of related issues, including what makes human brains unique, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.

Michael Gazzaniga’s homepage at UCSB

Gazzaniga's page at Edge

Participatory Management

Ricardo Semler built a company that breaks all the rules. He encourages his employees to play hooky, tells them not to bother with growth plans. Workers choose their own salaries, set their own hours, and have no job titles. Ridiculous? Inefficient? A recipe for chaos? Perhaps.

But over the past six years, Semler's company has increased its revenue from $35 million to $212 million. And with over 3,000 employees, it has virtually no turnover!

Here is a recent interview with this maverick entrepreneur:

Between Science and Mysticism

Where Physics and Mysticism Don't Meet

By Adrian Stuart

Can you change your reality simply by thinking about it? A popular opinion held by many spiritual people is that modern physics has made discoveries which validate these beliefs. But is this really the case?

Science and spirituality are often seen as being incompatible with each other. Like a dog and cat living in the same bag, trouble seems almost inevitable, and conversational injuries can be suffered at the hands of people with the best of intentions. Our intention here is to clarify some muddy waters not to take sides.

The concept of the inter-connectedness of all things is one which has appeared in spiritual writings for thousands of years. Perhaps one of the oldest and most poetic expressions of this sentiment can be found in the Hindu texts known as the Upanishads a collection of spiritual tales. In the Chandogya Upanishad (c. 800-900BC) we are told, You Are That, meaning that the individual person, the soul (Atman) is of the same substance and nature as the physical universe (Brahman).

Some believe that if we are of the same substance and nature as the rest of the universe, then we may be able to influence it in some manner through sheer will and concentration. Others believe that human beings are able to focus an energy, force or power from within themselves, causing it to radiate out into the cosmos and produce a result. The Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer (1854-1941), writes about this type of belief appearing in many cultures. In his book, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Frazer called this belief magical thinking.”

Read More: Here

The Tao of Democracy

Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All

by Tom Atlee

"Let us put our minds together and see what kind of life we can make for our children." -- Sitting Bull

'This book was written for all the people who want a better world than we have now. It is especially written for social change agents, community organizers, spiritually motivated activists, and the millions of people sociologist Paul Ray calls "cultural creatives" -- the co-creators of a new culture. If you happen to be someone who has left activism because it was too adversarial -- or if you feel called to be more active in response to the suffering, danger or tremendous possibilities you see in the world -- this book is for you, too. I wrote it as an invitation to everyone who is seeking to transform our human culture in conscious, collaborative, life-affirming ways.

Its purpose is two-fold. First, I want to introduce you to the co-intelligence perspective -- a vision of what intelligence might look like if we deeply understood wholeness, interconnectedness and co-creativity. Next, and most importantly, I want to explore how we might use the perspective of co-intel-ligence to transform our troubled democracy into a living system capable of creating a world that works for all, by generating the collective wisdom we need to creatively address our twenty-first century problems, opportunities and dreams.'

Read More: Here

Habitus, Change and Personality

From Psychology Today:

Second Nature

by Kathleen McGowan

Your personality isn't necessarily set in stone. With a little experimentation, the ornery and bleak can reshape their temperaments and inject pluck and passion into their lives.

Call it the cult of the ugly duckling. We devour stories of personal transformation: the uptight guy who learns to cut loose, the wallflower who becomes the life of the party. It's the staple of self-help books and romantic comedies—as well as the primary reason that people drag themselves to high-school reunions. ("Can you believe that guy who never talked is now a real estate mogul?")

But psychologists have long believed that major personality makeovers are impossible. In fact, the big themes of personality—whether you are shy or outgoing, relaxed or a worrywart—seem to be scripted at a very young age.

However, personality researchers have begun looking more closely at the smaller ways we can and do change. Positive psychologists, who investigate human talents, have identified 24 character strengths—familiar qualities we admire, such as integrity, loyalty, kindness, vitality—and are limning them to find out why these faculties come so naturally to some people. What they're discovering is that many of these qualities amount to habitual ways of responding to the world—habits that can be learned...

Read More: Here

On Cultural Evolution

From SEED Magazine:

Does Human Culture Evolve via Natural Selection?

By Paul Ehrlich

Biologists have a pretty good idea of both how flies become resistant to DDT and how humans and primates have diverged over time. That's because the mechanism underlying these processes is the same. Using evolution we can understand how organisms generally change their stores of genetic information (DNA and RNA), alter their observable characteristics, and diversify.

We do not understand how cultures evolve nearly so well. The majority of human evolution does not involve changes in our DNA, but rather alterations in the gigantic library of nongenetic information, the culture, that our species possesses. This library is orders of magnitude larger than that of our genetic information, and the elements on its diverse shelves usually have meaning only in connection with other elements.

Indeed, there has been a long, bitter debate about whether it is sensible even to use the term evolution to describe changes in culture. After all, culture is composed of overlapping phenomena from languages, religions, institutions, and socially transmitted power relationships to the information embodied in artifacts ranging from potsherds to jumbo jets. The study of cultural change encompasses not only the disciplines of biology and the social sciences, but areas of the humanities as well.

Despite the great difficulties of building a comprehensive theory of cultural change deserving of the label of "evolution," progress in that direction has begun. We are finally starting to understand the patterns of culture change and the role of natural selection in shaping them. And since everything from weapons of mass destruction to global heating are the results of changes in human culture over time, acquiring a fundamental understanding of cultural evolution just might be the key to saving civilization from itself.

Read More: Here

See Also: Towards a Scientific Theory of Cultural Evolution
And: The Human Adaptation for Culture

Stages of Social Development

The Cultural Dynamics that Spark Violence, Spread Prosperity, and Shape Globalization

By Don Beck

Debates over globalization are but the surface-level collisions of the deeper tectonic plate-like cultural fault lines that remain hidden from view. The failure to both understand and deal with these evolutionary core value systems result in needless clashes over worldviews, constant threats of "us" vs. "them" or class-based violence, and expensive, politicized solutions that are both inappropriate and ineffectual. The WTO debates and conflicts in Seattle exposed these fault-lines.

But where are the integral, cohesive principles and processes that can bridge over the great, global divides? Who can untie the global knot? How can the positive elements within both capitalistic thinking and socialistic goals be meshed for the common good? Consider the Twelve Postulates, an integral initiative based on an understanding of the complex dynamics that forge and transform human cultures, communities, and countries.

Read More (PDF): Here