In this presentation, Dr. Don Beck, an internationally known consultant and co-author of Spiral Dynamics, argues that we need a multileveled, multi-perspectival, integrated theory of human values to be able to understand the complexities of human societies. Dr. Beck also describes how spiral dynamics can facilitate communication and foster change at every level of human civilization.
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May 27, 2009
Spirituality Without Borders
From UTNE:
Faith Without BordersRead More: Hereby Jon Spayde
Here’s a familiar stumbling block for passionate but fair-minded God-seekers: Most faiths claim to be the One True Way. But if you dare to doubt that, say, Lutherans or Shiite Muslims are the only people on earth to whom God is listening, what do you do? Join a liberal sect?
Sure, there will be openness, but probably not much holy mystery. Conservative religion offers spiritual intensity, but also the very exclusiveness that makes many cringe. The New Age welcomes everything, but its mix-and-match attitude often feels less authentic than immersion in an established tradition.
Then there’s Perennialism, a lesser-known tendency in religious thinking that was set in motion by an idiosyncratic French writer named René Guénon (1886–1951), developed by Frithjof Schuon (1907–98), and is fostered today by a small group of writers, philosophers, and professors of comparative religion.
On the one hand, Perennialism rejects a modern world that has slipped off the rails. Yet it also embraces all variations of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish faith, as well as Asian religions and indigenous schools of thought. Perennialists believe that all religions are part of one great religion; that all wisdom makes up a great river of truth that all modern people should return to for what the Gospels call “living water.”
At first glance, this all-inclusive belief system—also known as Traditionalism—resembles the direst sort of reactionary elitism. Guénon, a prolific writer who began as an enthusiast of the occult and later converted to Islam and Sufism, hated the modern world, and contemporary Perennialists have been no happier with it. “It is as if the world were the scene of the development of a gigantic plot to turn man away from God,” wrote Lord Northbourne (1896–1982), a noted British Perennialist. Northbourne slams modernity, calling it “progressive, humanist, rationalist, materialist, experimental, individualist, egalitarian, free-thinking, and intensely
sentimental”—that is, thoroughly perverse and wrong.
The trouble with dismissing Northbourne as a right-wing crank is that he was also a pioneer in organic farming and a sensitive student of comparative religion whose books strongly influenced both sustainability pioneer E.F. Schumacher (Small Is
Beautiful) and spiritual giant Thomas Merton.
May 25, 2009
Gore on Climate Change
At TED2009, Al Gore presented updated slides from around the globe to make the case that worrying climate trends are even worse than scientists predicted - as well as to make clear his stance on "clean coal."
May 23, 2009
Life Is A Miracle
How to Think About ScienceLife Is A Miracle
Wendell Berry is known to the reading public mainly for his poems, essays and novels, not his commentaries on science. But in 2000 he published a surprising book called Life Is A Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition.
The superstition the book denounces is the belief that science will one day give us a complete account of things. Science is admirable, Wendell Berry says, but it can only be deployed wisely when we recognize the limits to our knowledge. Science must submit to the judgement of Nature.
In this episode, Wendell Berry unfolds this philosophy to Ideas producer David Cayley.
LISTEN HERE: Episode 8
May 20, 2009
Towards Post-Conventional Tribalism?
In this TED Talk, Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so.
May 19, 2009
An Integral Approach to Team Performance
From Integral Leadership Review: Integral Top Team AlignmentRead More: Here
By Pleuntje van Meer
It is possible to evolve top-teams for the twenty-first century, even in today’s turbulent and challenging times. Achieving high performance at the most senior executive level of company divisions and business units requires a team to engage in an alignment process that takes time, focus and personal commitment. The task is not an onerous one, though it does require a clear mindset and a sharpening of skills and capabilities that go beyond many executives’ previous individual business achievements.
We have conducted research with the executive management teams of some of the largest companies in Europe, Asia and the Americas over the last 7 years. Observing and working with global teams, we have identified three pre-requisites for achieving high-performance amongst these senior echelons of corporate divisions and business units:1. Authenticity—Individual congruence of thought, speech and action for each individual.This article describes top team development as reflected in three concentric circles, that represent stages towards optimal collaboration. These stages are not linear or independent, yet they are interdependent, impacting on the individual, the team and on the organisation.
2. Alignment—Working effectively as a group. Overcoming different agendas and investing in each other’s success.
3. Action—Contribution to the outside world. A strategic dialogue leading to a common agenda, support structure and collaborative actions.
PLEUNTJE VAN MEER is an economist and political scientist who entered the financial industry in 1993, working in Management Development and Change Management. She has worked as a facilitator of change and transformation for over a decade, and founded her own company in 2001.
May 15, 2009
Fractal Dynamics of the Psyche
Without a doubt, researchers and mystics alike have discovered that human consciousness, both in structure and quality, exhibits an oscillating, fractal character. And since the advent of chaos and complexity science we are beginning to learn more about how this is so.Below are two papers that explore the complex dynamics of human sentience, asking fundamental questions about how experience, matter and energy combine to generate the emergent features of consciousness. Enjoy:
Fractal Dynamics of the Psyche
By Terry Marks-Tarlow
While invaluable for its early insights, I believe the notion of mind as mechanism has run its course. In this paper, I introduce a different guiding metaphor in order to conceptualize the psyche, one with particular significance to clinicians immersed in the complexity of human affairs. This new metaphor represents the pendulum swung full circle, from machine back to nature, where psychology started when it first diverged from philosophy during Renaissance times. Ironically a return to organic models occurs just as the computer plus related technology ascends takes an ever more central role in most our lives.
More than ever, the computer affords us rich tools for simulating nature’s complexity. Among the most powerful of these is fractal geometry. Because fractals provide a lexicon for nature’s outer complexity, it makes sense that this new geometry is equally as effective for describing the complex terrain characteristic of inner processes.
This paper introduces the significance of fractal geometry to the psyche. In the first section, I describe this new branch of mathematics plus how to render a fractal by computer. I then articulate the significance of fractals to the development of psychological identity. Next, I claim that self-similarity, the hallmark of fractals, is a useful lens for viewing personality organization and especially repetitive patterns of behavior. I also argue that related concepts of dimensionality and scaling help lend breadth to intraspychic analysis. I use the notion of fractal boundaries to illuminate paradoxes of subjectivity and interpersonal relationships. Finally, I assert that fractal boundaries are not just a source of endless confusion and deep psychopathology, but also a fount of novelty, creativity and endless mystery in us all.
Read More: Here
The Fractal Nature of Human Consciousness
By Carl Zdenek
Using chaos, consciousness and meme theories, developmental psychology and family systems theory, this paper explains the fractal structure of the human race and how, every human activity in each era, is influenced by a dominant set of attractors: environmental conditions + psychophysiological state = physical events.
Using these disciplines an analysis of the cultural evolution of the human race and a description of the driving forces of human history are presented. Following that will be a description of Metaparadigms.
Read More: Here
May 13, 2009
Tribes, Institutions, Markets and Networks
Tribes, Institutions, Markets and Network: A Framework About Societal EvolutionBy David Ronfeldt
A key proposition about the information revolution is that it favors and strengthens “network” forms of organization. This makes sense because the new information and communications technologies—e.g., fax machines, electronic mail (e-mail), and computer conferencing systems—enable dispersed, often small actors to connect, coordinate, and act jointly as never before. The proposition is increasingly validated by the rise of web-like networks among environmental, human-rights, and other activist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), among businesses that form strategic partnerships, and among interagency groups that operate at many levels of government around the world. In general, nonstate actors are ahead of state actors at using the new network designs.
Power and influence appear to be migrating to actors who are skilled at developing multiorganizational networks, and at operating in environments where networks are an appropriate, spreading form of organization. In many realms of society, they are gaining strength relative to other, especially hierarchical forms. Indeed, another key proposition about the information revolution is that it erodes and makes life difficult for traditional hierarchies.
This trend—the rise of network forms of organization—is still at an early stage, but it is already a very important topic for theoretical research and policy analysis. A lot of interesting work can be done just by focusing on this trend by itself. At the same time, the trend is so strong that, projected into the future, it augurs major transformations in how societies are organized—if not societies as a whole, then at least key parts of their governments, economies, and especially their civil societies.
Read More (PDF): Here
A key proposition about the information revolution is that it favors and strengthens “network” forms of organization. This makes sense because the new information and communications technologies—e.g., fax machines, electronic mail (e-mail), and computer conferencing systems—enable dispersed, often small actors to connect, coordinate, and act jointly as never before. The proposition is increasingly validated by the rise of web-like networks among environmental, human-rights, and other activist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), among businesses that form strategic partnerships, and among interagency groups that operate at many levels of government around the world. In general, nonstate actors are ahead of state actors at using the new network designs.
Power and influence appear to be migrating to actors who are skilled at developing multiorganizational networks, and at operating in environments where networks are an appropriate, spreading form of organization. In many realms of society, they are gaining strength relative to other, especially hierarchical forms. Indeed, another key proposition about the information revolution is that it erodes and makes life difficult for traditional hierarchies.
This trend—the rise of network forms of organization—is still at an early stage, but it is already a very important topic for theoretical research and policy analysis. A lot of interesting work can be done just by focusing on this trend by itself. At the same time, the trend is so strong that, projected into the future, it augurs major transformations in how societies are organized—if not societies as a whole, then at least key parts of their governments, economies, and especially their civil societies.
Read More (PDF): Here
May 11, 2009
Buddhism and Democracy
A New DemocracyBy Roshi Joan Halifax
About a thousand years ago in China, the interactions between Zen teachers and students began to be collected. These interactions were called koans which means ‘public case.’ As koans were being collected in China, Chaco Canyon was being constructed. It is interesting to be in a place where the structure of the buildings and the orientation of the buildings were an endeavor to create clarity and coherence in a universe that was perceived as being fundamentally indeterminate. Koans are very much in that same spirit. They are a means wherein people can contemplate an interaction from a thousand years ago that points to a quality within the human psyche, which has the capacity for deep discernment, for clarity. We’re in an indeterminate time when discernment and clarity are useful."My continuing passion is to part a curtain that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight." -- Eudora Welty
I think many of us yesterday morning sat in front of our television sets and our computers watching the historical inauguration, and here at Upaya were many people in the zendo sitting in front of a huge screen watching the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama. I was reminded that many of my friends on Facebook gave themselves the middle name of Hussein as a way of using an identity marker to peel away the associations with an identity that turns us against half of the world and thus ourselves. I thought it a wonderful joke and a skillful means.
The koan that I’d like to present this afternoon as we touch into this exploration of Buddhism, democracy and Obama is a simple one. It is from Basho, a 17th century monk-poet and teacher who ended up eschewing the so-called social life. He walked around the countryside in Northern Japan and composed many wonderful haiku that we continue to appreciate many years later.
A Monk once asked Basho: “What is the essence of your practice?”
Basho replied: “Whatever is needed.”
Read More: Here
May 9, 2009
Towards an Integral Sensibility in Education
From Ted.Com:
Mae Jemison is an astronaut, a doctor, an art collector, a dancer ... Telling stories from her own education and from her time in space, she calls on educators to teach both the arts and sciences, both intuition and logic, as one -- to create bold thinkers.
May 6, 2009
Conscious Machines and Human Culture
Machines as Part of Human Consciousness and CultureBy Timo Jarvilehto
It seems that the unprecedented progress in the study of the brain and consciousness combined with the development of behavioral robotics and the study of artificial intelligence has during the last years produced many press releases which inform the public that the scientists are close to creating truly intelligent and conscious machines who can talk with their user and even grasp his feelings. Several researchers maintain that they are close to building of an artificial mind, and that it will take only perhaps a few decades until we can witness the advent of the first autonomous humanoid robots.
As a matter of fact, at the present, there are three fields of research which seem to have greatly advanced during the last years, and which share the optimism of quick solutions to many ancient practical and theoretical problems. These are genetics, neuroscience, and new kind of robotics or artificial intelligence. Almost daily new shocking findings are reported in all these fields. The determination of human genome, the mapping of the psychological functions in the brain, and the development of intelligent machines are claimed to have profound impact on everyday-life of human beings in the future.
Read More: Here
TIMO JARVILEHTO is professor of psychology in the University of Oulu, and has done work on neural coding, psychophysiology, EEG potentials and psychophysics.
May 4, 2009
An Integral View on Money and Finance
An Integral View on Money and Financial CrashesBy Bernard Lietaer
There are many ways to approach as complex a topic as money or a financial crash. An integral view would require it to be approached from both the inner and the outer viewpoints. Such inner and outer dimensions of reality are synthetically summarized in Ken Wilber’s classical four quadrant analysis.
All fields of knowledge are classified by distinguishing between the Interior (the domains where the aim is the interpretation of meaning) vs. the Exterior dimensions (where the purpose is description of behavior). This approach is completed by distinguishing between the Individual vs. the Collective aspects.
Read More (PDF): Here
BERNARD LIETAER is an economist, author and college professor at Naropa University. His work on monetary systems and currency is recognized internationally. Bernard is the author of The Future of Money: Beyond Greed and Scarcity and cofounder of GaiaCorp - one of the largest and most successful currency management firms in the world. Business Week named him “the world’s top currency trader” in 1992. Lietaer currently lives in Boulder, Colorado.
May 2, 2009
From the New World Order to the Next Global Mesh
The Search For Cohesion In The Age Of Fragmentation: From the New World Order to the Next Global MeshBy Don Edward Beck, Ph. D.
At the beginning of Chapter 17 in our book Spiral Dynamics we noted:
“George Bush’s hundred hour war in the Persian Gulf and Caesar-like triumphal parading through Washington, D. C. in l991 became his twilight’s last gleaming. He never recovered from the victory. In his speech announcing Operation Desert Storm he had claimed: ‘We have before us the opportunity to forge, for ourselves and for future generations, a New World Order.’”
This quest for the Next Global Mesh is based on such a pax universalis, an initiative that seeks after a “shared understanding” of how we, as a people, emerge through levels of complexity. While “order” conveys the idea of closed systems and regimentation, the term “mesh” suggests a new form of social integration based on the weaving together of the rich textures of human differences and bindings of constant change. The concept of “mesh” carries with it the capacity to absorb the awesome complexities that now confront global people as we enter the next decade, century, and millennium.
Read More: Here
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