Dialectical Thinking as an Approach to Integration

The Development of Dialectical Thinking as an Approach to Integration

By Michael Basseches

This article offers a description of dialectical thinking as a psychological phenomenon that reflects adult intellectual development. While relating this psychological phenomenon to the various dialectical philosophical perspectives from which the description is derived, the article conceptualizes dialectical thinking as a form of organization of thought, various aspects of which can be identified in individual adults' approaches to conceptualizing a range of problems, rather than as one particular stream of intellectual history.

The article provides a range of examples of dialectical analyses, contrasting them with more formalistic analyses, in order to convey the power, adequacy, and significance of dialectical thinking for the sorts of challenges that this journal embraces. It suggests that events in all areas of life demand recognition of the limitations of closed-system approaches to analysis. Approaches based instead on the organizing principle of dialectic integrate dimensions of contradiction, change and system-transformation over time in a way that supports people's adaptation when structures under girding their sense of self/world coherence are challenged. Higher education and psychotherapy are considered as examples of potential contexts for adult intellectual development, and the conditions that foster such development in these contexts are discussed.

The article as a whole makes the case for consciously attempting to foster such development in all our work as an approach to integration.

Read the Entire Paper Here: Integral Review - Issue 1 (2005)

The Psychology of Spirituality

The Psychology of Spirituality

by Dr. Stephen Diamond

Christmas is once more upon us, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Chanukkah too has started, celebrating a miraculous event occurring centuries before Christ (who, as a Jew, presumably celebrated Chanukkah) was born. Both--despite their commercialism--are prominent religious holidays in the Judeo-Christian tradition. So perhaps this is an apropos time of year to reflect here on the psychology of spirituality and religion.

Psychologically speaking, religion is conceived, created and perpetuated by virtually every culture throughout history to provide meaning, comfort and succor in the face of the stark, disturbing, anxiety-provoking existential facts of life: suffering, misfortune, meaninglessness, isolation, insecurity, disease, evil, loss, and ultimately, death. The impressive longevity, ubiquity and tenacity of religion in human affairs attests to its relative efficacy in this regard. Religion may be further understood as a means of seeking to acknowledge, comprehend and honor the "numinous" aspects of existence: fate; destiny; mystery; wonder, beauty or awe; the irrepressible powers of nature; the perception of some intelligent and loving grand design in the universe; the organic interrelatedness of all things; the insignificance and impermanence of the personal ego and transcendent immensity of the cosmic, transpersonal or spiritual realm beyond both ego and material reality; and the ineffable yet transformative subjective experience of oneness with the cosmos and its creator. Religion traditionally provides a container, language, symbolism, and structure for such archetypal spiritual experiences.

Read More Here: Psychology Today

A Closer Look at Integral Theory

Adapted from the Drishti Centre for Integral Action website:

A Closer Look at Integral Theory

By Gail Hochachka

Integral is the farthest reach of inter-disciplinary to date. It links "divergent" disciplines (such as the natural sciences, economics, politics, culture, psychology, and spirituality), including both the exterior (objective) aspects of life with the interior invisible (subjective and inter-subjective) aspects of individuals and cultures. In doing so, the integral approach provides a more comprehensive framework for analyzing problems and for crafting elegant solutions that more appropriately reflect the complexity of life. This makes the integral approach useful for understanding, and working with, the current eco-social issues prevalent in communities throughout the world.

What follows is an overview of three key tenets of integral theory, with a final note on how these are brought together in an integral approach to social change and sustainable development.

The integral approach reveals the interior side of life

The integral approach weaves together the internal and external components of reality. Alongside an understanding of the nature and complexity of interconnected systems, there is also recognition of interior dynamics (psychological, cultural and spiritual) in the system. An integral approach, therefore, retains the existing practices that focus on the "exterior" components of life, such as biological systems, economic initiatives, social organizing, governance and sustainability, and also works with the interior components, such as worldviews, values, and awareness. These interior parts of society inform our opinions and decision-making, essentially guiding the ways we make meaning of our surroundings and interactions.

With an understanding of interiority, it becomes easier to identify the underlying values, needs, worldviews and motivations that arise when engaged in the work of social change. This enables a more effective working dynamic between and among individuals and communities, as well as more psychologically sophisticated way of collaborating with colleagues, staff, employees and project coordinators.

 

The integral approach recognizes and includes the individual and collective domains Integral theory recognizes both individual and the collective, interior and exterior domains of reality, or the four quadrants. These are depicted in diagram 3 and include:

• Behavior and physiology (individual, exterior, such as physical health, actions, land-use practices.
• Self and experience (individual, interior), such as awareness, values, and mental models.
• Systems (collective, exterior) like economic systems, political systems, judicial systems, and ecosystems; and
• Culture (collective, interior) like social norms, shared beliefs and worldviews, and traditions.

Why is this important? Well, firstly, each quadrant has its own methodologies, validity claims, and perspectives--all of which are important to understand and include in social change work. For example, the UL quadrant of self and experience has unique methodologies of reflection, phenomenology, and developmental psychology. The UR quadrant, on the other hand, has unique methodologies of the life sciences, like physics, chemistry, biology, as well as the behavioral sciences. The LR quadrant is where we find methodologies relating to the systems sciences, like ecology, political science, and economics. The LL quadrant we find methodologies relating to the socio-cultural domain, such as social psychology, cultural studies, anthropology, and participatory methodologies. Each of these domains influence the global issues we seek to address. Each cannot be reduced to the other, and each must be engaged based on their own particular validity claims and methodologies. (That is, we cannot be assessing the validity of systems in the LR quadrant with the validity claims from psychology, or vice versa.)

However, this does not mean everyone must become an interdisciplinary expert. Rather, that from whatever discipline we are most familiar and comfortable, we still need to factor in and acknowledge the influence of the other quadrants. Often, organizations create diverse teams to cover a broad expertise across all quadrants, while also maintaining a view of the whole picture.

The integral approach sees developmental stages

Working with environmental or social issues is working with the on-going process of change. Deep, fundamental shifts in our ways of thinking foster visible changes in society, such as new institutions, management plans, laws and economic systems.

But, new ways of viewing the world don't arise over night. Why and how do they arise? Integral Theory pulls together much of the developmental research that has studied that very question. What we find is that these emerging worldviews and values unfold in nested, developmental stages, moving towards the ability to hold multiple perspectives and thus a greater degree of care for others. Through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age, this self-development actualizes the human potential within.

While this is firmed based on extensive and empirical research in developmental psychology, we can simply look into our own experiences to explore this: if you think back to your own process of change, you can trace the inner shifts that have occurred throughout your life.

A few key points regarding self-development that appear throughout the research are:

• That the process of growth involves emerging stages of development that transcend and include lower stages;
• That earlier stages are more fundamental and later stages more significant, yet all are important; and

Each emergent stage has greater complexity, awareness, and care than the former stage.  Integral theory explains how fostering health in this "unfolding of complexity" is what is important, rather than trying to speed up the process of change. In fact, the latter can only happen once there is health in the existing developmental stage. For instance, nurturing a healthy expression of existing value systems is more important that trying to change those value-systems. Assisting with this healthy, full translation of the existing stage, can lay the emergent conditions for transformation to the next stage. But in either case, one must start with where people are at, helping to form a developmental pathway between the existing way of being to the emerging one.

Thus, to truly engage in "awareness raising", which is a part of eco-social change work, one must be able to meet other people where they are, both in terms of their value-systems and their ways of making meaning. Communication with a developmental view is more connected and effective precisely because it can relate with where people are coming from, their worldview, values, and meaning making. This approach has immense implications in project design, community development, campaign messaging, as well as in fostering meaningful dialogue between sectors.

Putting It All Together

Growth and change occurs differently in each quadrant. For example, in the UR quadrant, we need to know how the body's physiology changes over time and when it will have certain nutritional requirements at particular ages. In the developing world, this is crucially important, to ensure children are well nourished while they are at critical stage of physical development. In the UL quadrant, personal growth follows certain patterns as well that can be studied and included in social change work. Researchers have found clear stages of psychological development--from ego-centric, to socio-centric, to world-centric, to kosmos-centric--that give rise to different worldviews and awareness. Clearly, these two domains of experience change in very different ways, and it is important that we consider the differences in how we approach social change.

Similarly, social change in the collective quadrants again is dramatically unique. Culture seems to change via predominant mode of discourse--what people are talking about and how they are communicating is essential to what the shared beliefs and worldviews will be. Historically, we have witnessed an unfolding of worldviews from animistic, to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to integral, woven into being via social discourse. Systems too have followed their own change process. The socio-economic systems, for example, can be looked at historically, moving from hunting/gathering, to horticultural, to agrarian, to nation-state, to industrial, and to informational systems.

The Integral Approach suggests that finding long-lasting solutions to global issues will involve a deeper understanding and engagement in change processes in all four quadrants.

By seeing individuals and the collective as distinct but inter-relating wholes, it becomes easier to identify the root causes and possible solutions for problems that arise within organizations, groups and communities. Examples include communication break-down, management dysfunction and clashes between differing worldviews.

Integral theory can be applied in various ways in social change and sustainable development. An understanding of interiority and developmental unfolding in individuals and the group provides for more comprehensive project design, strategic planning and problem solving. For more, continue with integral applications.

About Drishti:

Drishti was founded in February 2003, with a vision for transformational environmental and social change. As we founded Drishti, we looked at the constellation of global issues that humanity faces and poised our work to address them. We saw that the issues were not exclusively addressed in just one thematic area nor by using one angle of approach. Rather, the complexity of issues seemed to require a more comprehensive approach. We have sought to explore such comprehensive approaches, one prominent approach being the Integral Framework. At that time, Integral Theory remained mainly a theory, yet we saw its extraordinary potential in sustainable development. Drishti became a vehicle to explore that potential through research, writing and community conversations.


Since then, aspects of an Integral Approach has been applied in numerous fields, such as health care, business, psychotherapy, education, and notably in sustainable development. Some of the organizations that have used Integral Approach in development work include the United Nations Development Programme’s HIV/AIDS Group, various NGOs in Latin America, and community groups worldwide. Please see the Resources page as well as Links to read about Drishti’s and other organization’s applied work with the Integral Approach in fostering sustainable development.

More Here.

Visser on Wilber’s Views of Evolution

From Integral World:

The 'Spirit of Evolution' Reconsidered: Relating Ken Wilber's view of spiritual evolution to the current evolution debates

by Frank Visser

“In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious.” - John Stuart Mill

How should Ken Wilber's stance on evolutionary theory and neo-Darwinism be evaluated? Evolution is a central concept in Wilber's oeuvre as evidenced by expressions such as: "The Spirit of Evolution", "Evolution as Spirit-in-Action" and "Evolutionary Spirituality". For Wilber, evolution is a spiritual phenomenon, both guided by as well as heading towards Spirit. Yet, in mainstream evolutionary theory, the term "evolution" has quite different connotations. Does integral theory have a substantial contribution to make to the subject of evolutionary theory or is it merely producing metaphors that provide meaning and significance for those in search of an uplifting philosophy of life?

Read More: Here

Cultivating Postformal Adult Development

Cultivating Postformal Adult Development: Higher Stages and Contrasting Interventions

By William R. Torbert

As this chapter will discuss, the practice of action inquiry and the Vedic/TM method are the only two educational interventions that have empirically been shown to facilitate adult developmental transformation beyond formal operations. The primary concern of this chapter is to present experiential tastes, theoretical outlines, and empirical findings of the action inquiry approach to adult learning, adult development, and leadership.

The Vedic/TM approach and the empirical research relating to it is well discussed in Alexander's chapter in this volume and will be reviewed only briefly later in this chapter in order to compare its educational process and documented outcomes to the action inquiry approach.

The action inquiry approach to adult learning, development, and leadership is to integrate inquiry into action, rather than separating them into reflection, on the one hand, and action, on the other hand-into "ivory tower" vs. "real world." On a personal scale, this implies an attempt to widen and deepen one's awareness meditatively in the very midst of one's workaday action. On an interpersonal scale, integrating action and inquiry implies speaking in ways that simultaneously assert, illustrate, and inquire into others' responses.

On an organizational scale, integrating action with inquiry results in the creation and re-creation of liberating structures that simultaneously increase participants' awareness, empowerment, and productivity . On all three scales, the action inquiry approach is intended to invite reframing of assumptions and developmental transformation at appropriate moments.

Read More : Here

SOURCE: In Miller, M. & Cook-Greuter, S. (Ed.s), 1994. "Transcendence and Mature Thought in Adulthood", Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 181-203

DeLanda on Deleuze

Deleuze and the Open-ended Becoming of the World

by Manuel DeLanda

With the final mathematization of classical physics in the nineteenth century, a certain picture of the world emerged dominant, one in which clockwork determinism reigned supreme and time played no creative role, so that the future was effectively closed, completely given in the past. Although the set of equations with which Hamilton was able to unify all the different fields of classical physics (mechanics, optics, and the elementary theory of electromagnetism) did contain a variable for time, this variable played only an extrinsic role: once the equations were defined for a specific instant, both the past and the future were completely determined, and could be obtained mechanically by simply integrating the equations.

To be sure, this static, timeless picture of reality did not go unchallenged within science, since thermodynamics had already introduced an arrow of time which conflicted with the symmetric conception of classical mechanics, where the past and the future were interchangeable. Nevertheless, as the history of statistical mechanics makes it clear, much scientific effort has been spent in our century to reconcile time asymmetry at the level of large aggregates with the still accepted time symmetry at the level of individual interactions.

Thus, it would become the task of philosophers and social scientists to attempt to reconceptualize the world in order to give time and history a creative role, with the vision of an open future that this implies. Although there have been a variety of strategies to achieve this open future, here I would like to concentrate on two contrasting approaches. The first is perhaps best illustrated by the intellectual movement that is today known as "social constructivism", but which roots lie in linguistic and anthropological theories which go back to the turn of the century.

At the risk of oversimplifying, we may say that the core of this approach is a neo-Kantian theory of perception, in which individual experience is completely structured by the interplay of concepts and representations, but one in which Kant's transcendental concepts (of space and time) have been replaced by the conventional concepts of a given culture. The guiding image of this strategy may be said to be "each culture lives in its own world", an image central to many theoretical approaches in this century, from the cultural relativism of Margaret Mead and Franz Boas, to the linguistic relativism of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Worf, to the epistemological relativism of Thomas Khun's theory of scientific paradigms. Again, oversimplifying somewhat, the key idea in all these theories is one of "incommensurability" across worlds, each conceptual scheme constructing its own reality so that bridges between worlds are hard, if not impossible, to build.

More: Here

The Limit of Explanation

From Anthropoetics:

The Limit of Explanation: Following the "Why" to its Epistemological Terminus
By Marina Ludwigs

In this essay I will examine the theory and praxis of explanation and demonstrate the unsustainable character of its claims and underlying presuppositions. My involvement in this project stemmed originally from my interest in contributing to a development of a formal methodology in the humanities. The methodology of the sciences is well established today and is based on a set of accepted tenets that serve as guidelines in scientists’ pursuit of theories. As Michael Ruse puts it:

Surveying science and the history of science today, one thing stands out: science involves a search for order. More specifically, science looks for unbroken, blind, natural regularities (laws). Things in the world do not happen in just any old way. They follow set paths, and science tries to capture this fact. Bodies of science, therefore, known variously as ‘theories’ or ‘paradigms’ or ‘sets of models’ are collections of laws (PS 39).

Among the governing principles, scientists single out explanation, prediction, testability, and non-falsifiability as the most salient. Explanation usually comes first, as nearly all scientific quests start as attempts to explain physical phenomena. It has a symmetrical facet--that of prediction. In other words, to understand an empirical phenomenon from a scientific point of view means to have cognizance of a certain law-like physical regularity such that the phenomenon can both be explained and predicted. The distinction between the two activities bears the pragmatic character of what the questioner knows first: that the phenomenon has already occurred--and thus he has to furnish its explanation--or that necessary antecedent conditions obtain--in which case, he can deduce its occurrence. Thus the sight of a baseball flying in the direction of a window makes me anticipate the sound of shattered glass coming closely on its heels, while if I see and hear a window being broken, I immediately start looking for its human or natural source (my familiarity with this phenomenon would include the implicit knowledge of the law of the conservation of momentum and the low shock-resistance of glass).

Read More: Here

Integral Pluralisms and Cultural Pragmatics

I'm not sure if Dallmayr knows of Ken Wilber's work, but there seems to be no mention of the bald bastion of the Trans anywhere... It's truly hard to imagine he wouldn't have at least come accross mention of 'Integral Methodological Pluralism' somehwhere. Very suspicious indeed.

Integral Pluralism: Beyond Culture Wars

by Fred Dallmayr, Integral Pluralism: Beyond Culture Wars, University of Kentucky Press, 2010, 231pp., $40.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780813125718.

Reviewed by Kenneth W. Stikkers, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

In his most recent volume, Integral Pluralism: Beyond Culture Wars, Fred Dallmayr again demonstrates, as he has throughout his distinguished career, his passionate commitment to making ours a more just and peaceful world. His central concern in this work is that, with postmodernism's steady move toward pluralism and emphatic rejection of totalizing monisms of every sort, there is a danger of cosmic incoherence whereby "individual lives likewise become incoherent and unintelligible" (1) and rendered incapable of effective engagement in the world. Dallmayr warns us:

Pluralism harbors a danger that curiously approximates it again to the monistic temptation. Carried to the extreme of radical fragmentation or dispersal, pluralism -- despite its protestations -- shades over into an assembly of fixed and self-enclosed monadic units exhibiting the same monadic units exhibiting the same static quality as its counterpart (8-9).

Such fragmentation, he further suggests, is a major source for today's "culture wars."

As an antidote to radical, atomizing pluralism, and as a middle position between it and tyrannizing monism, Dallmayr offers "integral pluralism," which he finds well exemplified already by classical pragmatists such as John Dewey, but especially by William James in A Pluralistic Universe. Integral pluralism entails "mutual embroilment, interpenetration, and contestation . . . differential entwinement without fusion or segregation" (9). The universe is taken as incomplete, but its pieces maintain real, although sometimes antagonistic, relations to one another. Other, non-Western thinkers whom Dallmayr offers as exemplars of integral pluralism are the philosopher of religion, Raimon Panikkar, whom Dallmayr discusses throughout this volume (and with whom this reviewer was privileged to study), Mahatma Gandhi, who receives a full chapter (Chapter 7), and two other, recently deceased Indian thinkers, little known in the West, Daya Krishna and Ramchandra Gandhi (a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi), who are the central subjects of the concluding chapter (Chapter 8). This reviewer is very appreciative of being made aware of these last two thinkers, and Dallmayr's interesting account of them has prompted him to read them first-hand.

Moreover, each of the above figures, including Dewey, is used to demonstrate the importance of religion for integrative pluralism. The Indian thinkers are especially exemplary because they articulate religious sensibilities that are integrated with the secular, in contrast to Western tendencies toward dualism, and thus steer between the dangers stemming from such dualism, namely, the politicizing of religion on the one hand (e.g., America's religious right and Islamic and Zionist extremisms), and the privatizing of religion and withdrawal into the solitude of religious consciousness, on the other.

Read More @ Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Integral Theory Conference - Enacting an Integral Future

It seems William Harryman of the outstanding Integral Options Café blog is the official blogger for the 2nd biannual Integral Theory Conference that began tonight July 29, 2010 in Pleasant Hill, California. The theme of the conference is ‘Enacting an Integral Future’ and it will continue until August 1, 2010.

Because Bill is, to our minds, one of the best bloggers out there, please visit his site and follow along as he, no doubt, will provide regular and insightful dispatches from the goings-on in Pleasant Hill.

From Integral Options Café:

Have you ever been to a conference and had the feeling that everyone is so enthusiastic about the topic or the theory? There's a kind of celebratory atmosphere - that's what the opening ceremony tonight for the Integral Theory Conference generated in the attendees.

It's contagious. [Although not for me, I'm very tired - sleep is contagious for me, so I apologize for any typos or errors in this.]

But tonight's presentation was more than cheer-leading, or celebrating - both Mark and Sean described this as the "get to work" conference, while the 2008 iteration was the "get to know each other" conference.

To that end, Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Mark Forman, and David Zeitler (a core faculty member at JFKU), each spoke on the defining and differentiating of integral theory that has been occurring in the absence of new work from Ken Wilber (whose illness prevents him from finishing several books that are 2/3 complete).

Follow William’s Reports: HERE

Chalmers on The Singularity

The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis
By David J. Chalmers

What happens when machines become more intelligent than humans? One view is that this event will be followed by an explosion to ever-greater levels of intelligence, as each generation of machines creates more intelligent machines in turn. This intelligence explosion is now often known as the “singularity”.

The basic argument here was set out by the statistician I.J. Good in his 1965 article "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine”:

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion”, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.

The key idea is that a machine that is more intelligent than humans will be better than humans at designing machines. So it will be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than the most intelligent machine that humans can design. So if it is itself designed by humans, it will be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than itself. By similar reasoning, this next machine will also be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than itself. If every machine in turn does what it is capable of, we should expect a sequence of ever more intelligent machines.

This intelligence explosion is sometimes combined with another idea, which we might call the “speed explosion”. The argument for a speed explosion starts from the familiar observation that computer processing speed doubles at regular intervals. Suppose that speed doubles every two years and will do so indefinitely. Now suppose that we have human-level artificial intelligence designing new processors. Then faster processing will lead to faster designers and an ever-faster design cycle, leading to a limit point soon afterwards.

Read More (PDF): Here

Harryman is Warming to Slavoj Zizek…

From Integral Options Café:

Another festival of Slavoj Zizek articles appeared this weekend, all of it from Europe, where people actually read philosophy. Oh yeah, he's a Marxist, sort of - with a heavy dose of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian philosophy - so that explains why no one on this continent is paying any attention to him.

Apparently Zizek's 'the world's hippest philosopher,' as the Telegraph UK suggests - or as Der Spiegel claims, 'The Most Dangerous Philosopher in the West.' I get the sense that the person who wrote the Der Speigel article is not a fan…

So, from what I can tell (I really need to read some of his books/articles), Zizek is a social constructionist, and a constructivist - but the construction of self is an empty space, with identity always located somewhere else. And knowing this, as many postmodernists do, their deconstructions and "critiques" of capitalism and society are simply another commodity in the marketplace of ideas.

Anyway, all three articles are in support of Zizek's newest book, Living in the End Times.

Read/Watch the Entire Post: Here

Sperber and Hirschfeld on Culture, Cognition and Evolution

Culture, Cognition, and Evolution

By Dan Sperber & Lawrence Hirschfeld

Most work in the cognitive sciences focuses on the manner in which an individual device -- be it a mind, a brain, or a computer -- processes various kinds of information. Cognitive psychology in particular is primarily concerned with individual thought and behavior. Individuals however belong to populations. This is true in two quite different senses. Individual organisms are members of species and share a genome and most phenotypic traits with the other members of the same species. Organisms essentially have the cognitive capacities characteristic of their species, with relatively superficial individual variations. In social species, individuals are also members of groups. An important part of their cognitive activity is directed toward other members of the group with whom they cooperate and compete. Among humans in particular, social life is richly cultural. Sociality and culture are made possible by cognitive capacities, contribute to the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of these capacities, and provide specific inputs to cognitive processes.

Although population-level phenomena influence the development and implementation of cognition at the individual level, relevant research on these phenomena has not been systematically integrated within the cognitive sciences. In good part, this is due to the fact that these issues are approached by scholars from a wide range of disciplines, working within quite different research traditions. To the extent that researchers rely on methodological and theoretical practices that are sometimes difficult to harmonize (e.g., controlled laboratory versus naturalistic observations), the influence of these insights across disciplines and traditions of research is often unduly limited, even on scholars working on similar problems. Moreover, one of the basic notions that should bring together these researchers, the very notion of culture, is developed in radically different ways, and is, if anything, a source of profound disagreements.

Read More: Here

Reflections of an Integral Theory Student - Part 3

The “Crazy” Creative Ideas of an ONLINE Integral Theory Student at JFKU - Part 3 ©

By Giorgio Piacenza Cabrera

Accompanying my undertaking of Integral Theory courses online through JFK University, I experienced insights, questions, and variations on the usual themes touched in those courses. If you already are conversant with Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, you might find this collection of reflections intellectually provocative and productive.

On An Unrecognized But Crucial “SHADOW”…

For spiritual transformation, for becoming more Integral, its (validly I think) in vogue to work with our shadows, with repressed aspects from previous stages of individual development. Yet, by observing the modern and post modern biases within many in the Integral Community, I’ve come to see that there’s something wrong and forgotten in the theory of psychological developmentalism normally espoused. I call it the “Inter Stage ‘Content’ Shadow” (or ISCS for short).

Let’s see…It’s easier, less challenging to move from stage to stage holding on to 3rd person concepts than in 1st person experiential content. The content I’m writing about is also cultural-stage related. This content represents meaningful 1st person experiences and discoveries typical of each stage and, when moving to a higher or more inclusive stage, is quite often repressed, thus becoming a shadow, an “inter-stage content shadow.”

The negative or freedom limiting side of the conceptual framework of a previous stage is overcome and transcended in the higher, more conceptually inclusive stage but the specifics of the experiential content is quite often more easily dealt with by repressing it. The healthy transcendence and incorporation/inclusion of is easier first with 3rd person, more impersonal “it” concepts. Content is often included as a repressed shadow, a taboo, a no-no. In fact, this is why “psychical research” and related parapsychological, subtle. Alternative phenomena are suppressed within the scientific and post modern stages.

Being a participant in certain modern-post modern cultures that still hold on to pre modern traditions may assist (even conceptual and ethical Second Tier individuals) in including some of the actual experiential contents of pre-modern stages. An Integral individual that has a pervasive bias or distaste for the value of genuine spirit communication (characteristic of pre modern stages) may not be sufficiently Integral in 1st person terms. An individual that characterizes all miraculous phenomena of the Mythic-Amber stage as only serving a useful social function is not choosing to be as impartial and objective as a modern thinker ought to be because there simply are occasional phenomena that a prosaic scientific explanation cannot deal with. These individuals hold shadows and as long as they do, their Integral life projects will be incomplete (and maybe even dangerously so). By pretending to be the forefront guiding force in cultural stage development they could also perpetuate a form of forgetfulness of all of the creative manifestations of Spirit, a forgetfulness as evil in the long run as the political and human abuses committed by the Churches in times past. For instance we know that Amber churches burned spirit communicants at the stake.

Nonetheless, in spite of the errors, abuse, mistakes and other blindness of the Amber cultural stage, is there room in Integral Theory to recognize Second or Third Tier knowledge encoded by the highest intuitive Intellect in First Tier Myths and dogmas?

The same goes for Post Modern thinkers who –as Wilber rightly points out- are engaged in a reductionist, monological, flattening war against the ideals of order and wisdom of the Orange-Modern and the Amber stages. Maybe this kind of inter stage shadow, having lived so long, having been revived for so long under different kinds of prejudices, is a really serious problem that humanity needs to become aware of heal and transcend if there’s ever any hope of fulfilling the most Integral and loving human potential in the –hopefully- emerging “Integral Age” or thereafter.

As individuals entering the Integral Stage of understanding it would be indolence to pick and choose what we want to include of the experiential wisdom disclosed in previous stages, if we deny any genuine, firsthand experience of the specific contents. To be a truly healing force in the world (and also in the long run) we need to put an end to the bias against first person spiritual experiences of pre modern stages. We shouldn’t limit the Integral Vision to become accepted as soon as possible into the academic, political, scientific world by perpetuating a denial of vital aspects of the Cosmos’ ontological Exterior and Interior meaningful expressions that aren’t not just (as simplistically said) eternally pre-given ‘out there’ but in actual dynamic evolutionary and involutionary relation even with what Post Metaphysical Pluralism considers as ‘creating grooves’ in the emerging, evolutionary process (as with partialness seen from the bottom up and from the exteriors-inwards). The whole situation is far more complex and beautiful and vital for all sentients than the pathetic over simplifications orthodoxically generated in regards to the significant inter-realm relations that our elegant (and otherwise truly promising) “Integral Theory” accommodated in its structure.

On The “Three Eyes” of Knowledge…

Can the "Three Eyes of knowledge" be used to disclose knowledge objectively manifesting in the gross and subtle worlds? Can we use the “cogitatio Eye” (the eye of the flesh) in an expanded sense (not just as an “eye” of the physical body but as an “eye” of the exterior, objective quadratic aspects of the Subtle Body, its exterior envelope-body-vehicle of energy)? Can we use the Subtle Cogitatio Eye for disclosing the objective aspects of the Subtle Realm (even with Integral Methodological Pluralism)?

Quite often it seems that the Subtle World has been diminished or reduced to its interior emotional aspects in the general discussions. There’s a lot of truth to it since through feeling we also sense subtle energies (and proportionally more because a higher ontological realm possesses a greater degree of Interiority than Exteriority than a Gross Realm which is further “away” from the Source in a relative, apparent and contingent sense). Nevertheless, there’s also an objective (albeit more adaptable or less strictly patterned) exteriority in the Subtle ontological realm and this needs to be integrally acknowledged and even scientifically explored.

Also, since the “Meditatio” Eye (the Eye of the Mind) can be used to disclose the mathematical and lawful patterns behind the Gross Realm it can be used to better understand in an intelligible way the Subtle Realm and the Causal Realm. Then again, the “Contemplatio” Eye (the Eye of Contemplation) can be used to experience in a spiritual way the beauty and sweetness, the unity, love and wonder immanent and transcending each Realm.

As INTEGRAL experiencers, intellects; as individuals with (several) bodies, (several levels of) minds and one spirit, we must incorporate San Bonaventure’s traditional view into a more inclusive and higher integrated view to embrace all the levels of reality open to the possibility of functioning with our “three eyes” throughout the Kosmic spectrum. Not doing so is remaining in the shadows in spite of our intellectual and technological achievements and, in spite of the great theoretical and practical promises of Integral Theory as it stands now.

On Wilber 5...

Is “Wilber 5” a stage previous to a higher integration that once again will include more of the essential teachings behind the almost abandoned project of remembering the forgotten knowledge and bringing the Sophia Perennis/Perennial Philosophy back to humanity? Do certain (now “post Metaphysically” disdained) realities exist in actuality at their own ontological level but only potentially for us until we disclose them, while the way we disclose them and interpret them at a specific altitude then becomes a unique co-creation (perhaps a more Integral middle ground position between the suppositions behind a strict Post Metaphysical Myth of the Given Constructivism and absolutely independent pre-existence)? Again, what is not disclosed interpretatively under human methodology and within an altitude does it exist in actuality at its own level but only in a potential way for us?

Moreover, in a holonic Kosmos in which the polarity of part and whole interplays, we can deduce that other ontological levels are required if there are Interior-Exterior-Single and Plural aspects in every occasion or manifestation. Whether they are understood as static or dynamic, as 'eternally pre-given' or as evolving is another matter. There's also potentiality and explicitness between the interior and the exterior the single and the plural, thus involution and evolution can interplay.

What does exist if it is not disclosed by human methodology? How can Wilber 5 and AQAL integrate the experimentally and methodologically and collectively shared disclosures that –for instance- genuine Instrumental Transcommunication seems to elicit in relation to specifics about life conditions in the sub divisions within the Subtle Realm ?

I think that Ken Wilber has not been careful enough in his –otherwise- wholesome writings in relation to the highly important, emotionally charged, feared, avoided fanaticized-over and unavoidably integrally fundamental concept of “Metaphysics.” There’s a confusion between "Metaphysics" (as Aristotle's writings placed AFTER his writings on physics), "Metaphysics" (as related to experientiable contingent realms of existence that transcend the physical realm), “Metaphysics” as wild speculation about otherworldly things, and "Metaphysics" (as the study of ultimate rational causes and the study of the essential nature of things).

On States As Vehicles for Actualization…

Perhaps States also bring with them the possibility of knowing the wider relationships that exist between realms and can assist us in using the “three eyes of knowledge” more completely in order to disclose and simultaneously actualize into our concrete Gross experience and exterior patterns the Interior reality of more outwardly expressive, inclusive or subtler realms (regardless of the realm where our particular exterior or objective body is operating). States may also be Integral to the way in which the degree of ontological reality and the degree of externalized structures in these realities relate to each other across levels, or, in other words, how the fabric of creation is woven together… but this is a serious matter for further discussion later on.

On A New Kind of Lattice…

With a similar pattern as the one in the Wilber-Combs Lattice, I’m proposing a “lattice” for knowledge:

The 3 “eyes of knowledge” X 3 basic expressions of reality (Gross, Subtle and Causal) = 9 basic ways of acquiring knowledge about reality. This means that the “cogito” or the eye once limited to “the flesh” could be used for Gross exteriority, Subtle Exteriority and Causal Exteriority. This also means that the “meditatio” or “eye of the mind” could be used for understanding the information patterns associated with the Gross, the Subtle and the Causal. Finally, the “contemplatio” or “eye of Spirit” could be used to experience in first person the immanence of Spirit in the Gross (for instance as in nature mysticism), the Subtle and the Causal. Then, a complete non-dual integration in understanding would be possible by experiencing all “eyes” as elements of one Spirit, our highest Self that would simultaneously transcend every possible object of knowledge beyond the Causally-defined, Subtly-defined and Grossly-defined parameters of contingency.

Reflections of an Integral Theory Student - Part 2

Reflections of an Integral Theory Student - Part 2

By Giorgio Piacenza Cabrera

Accompanying my undertaking of Integral Theory courses online through JFK University, I experienced insights, questions, and variations on the usual themes touched in those courses. If you already are conversant with Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, you might find this collection of reflections intellectually provocative and productive.

On Involution…

Evolutionary “grooves” refer to the formation of exterior patterns. These exist even in the outside of interiorities as, for instance, as the objects of the mind. Nonetheless, they are more clearly visible in what AQAL visualizes as the UR and LR quadratic expressions. But as the AQAL Model and Ken Wilber almost teach, there isn’t just Interiority, there’s also Interiority without patterns or “grooves.” It’s likely in the inside of Interiors. It’s the felt experience, the root of the “hard problem.” So, in an Evolutionary sense, patterns or groove making matters but –perhaps- in an Involutionary sense, the transmission of pattern-less interiorities also matter in a complementary and unavoidable way that AQAL (as an “Integral” theory) should consider.

What if the “amount” of exteriority refers to how contingent or illusion-based reality can be; more or less as the traditional Metaphysics of neo-platonic, medieval Christian and Muslim mystical theology and the Sophia Perennis (of Fritjoff Schuon and others) generally speaking agree upon?

The priority of Interior awareness (deriving from the priority of essence over form, of the unconditioned over the conditioned and of intrinsic meaning over pattern) may direct its exterior patterns (perhaps causally) into lower realms in a simultaneous interface with the generation of external grooves in the lower realms. The greater degree of freedom embedded in the exteriority of the subtler realm may constitute like a probable future to yet unformed exterior grooves in the grosser realm. In general, the grosser realm may hold the greater potential for becoming while the subtler realm may express the greatest actuality and freedom as it is associated with less exteriority.

Perhaps Involution coincides with Evolution in this inter realm exchange between exteriorities and interiorities. Thus, even subtler realm exteriorities in the Great Chain of Being should be seen as changing and not as fixed, eternal, pre-givens ‘out there’ waiting to come down into the Gross. Being exteriorities, they are contingent, they can be patterns and evolving. Exteriorities change in the Inter-Realm conjunction.

Perhaps the higher or freer Interiority, the one that expresses more as act or is closer to Absolute Being as ‘Pure Act’, seeks to bring concreteness into more complexity to allow the manifestation of greater Interiority also in the Grosser realms. Perhaps the lower Interiority seeks or has a drive to become more inclusive and needs to receive seed patterns from subtler realms in order to evolve its corresponding exterior patterns and complexities. This idea partially coincides with Ken Wilber’s “Excerpt G” in which greater complexity of exterior patterns is seen as necessary to manifest greater Interiority.

On The Buddha Mind…A Bit More

For the self (understood as coordinating a self-system): It's not fixed, it's not a process. It is not being as structure, nor being as becoming. It is not definable and, even these 'not' definitions, are not -all the way- applicable. Nevertheless, all holonic and describable phenomena, all ontological and epistemic phenomena (phenomena described by reason/logos) are empty, except for the Essence of self, also called in Buddhist circles "Buddha Mind." (refer to the once suppressed "Maha Madhyamaka" not to better known versions of Madhyamaka). Thus, form is emptiness and emptiness is form, but I think that the Essence of self, is neither. As Maha Madhyamaka teaching states: The Buddha Mind is not empty of itself.

Well, I think that that can be validly said (in the limits of thought, at the frontiers between objectifying reason and non dual state-understanding) as a pointer toward self and also to what is Real. Also note that this kind of less known (Maha Madhyamaka) Buddhism is more compatible and “Integral” with Western mysticism and with Indian Vedanta. This is important to bring Buddhist understanding away from its accusations as a nihilistic philosophy. Also as a major proposal of Medieval philosophy states: Essence and existence coincide in this self, this Absolute Being, this God, which, under this view is not unlike... "BuddhaMind."

On Types And Systems In Every Quadrant…

I think that our relation to Types is not absolutely necessary (or necessary in an absolute sense) and that, therefore, in principle, the relation can change. I think that Types are patterns and that patterns can change. They can be erased and re-written. Some Types may be more established than others but -in principle- they are not eternal or absolute. Perhaps the most essential patterns originate in the Causal Realm that may be related to the Turiya state but also contain some very very subtle exterior forms. It may be related to the awareness of formlessness because the very very subtle forms cannot be distinguished from the Formless Ground.

In the AQAL framework, (and this is a question) there are suppose to be types of cultures, types of social economic systems, types of personalities, types of forests, types of specimens, types of every manifested holon-occasion-thing. Right? These are variations on larger categories. There are also suppose to be systems in every quadrant...and, moreover, I think that every quadrant can be understood as inside or immanent to every other quadrant. This is because quadrants express holons and holons express duality or the dialectics of polar relations, as can be visualized in the Yin/Yan symbol. Even if systems are associations of exterior objects, they are in every quadrant and being in every quadrant they also depend on their own immanent Interior intelligence.

Refashioning the Discourse about Development in the Integral Community

Myth Busting & Metric Making: Refashioning the Discourse about Development in the Integral Community 
By Zachary Stein

Last month [2008] I presented a couple papers at the first Biannual Integral Theory Conference. They were well received. However, as much as I flapped my lips to whoever would listen, I felt that I returned to the Northeast with a great deal left unsaid. Human development is one of the key foci in the discourse we are building. But over the years I've come to see a real need for the refashioning of this focal point. Roughly speaking, we are not as developed as we should be in our thinking about development.

While I did what I could to remedy this by flapping my lips out in California, I've decided to start writing things down. With the help of the editors at Integral Review and Integral Leadership Review I'm working on a set of articles that will allow me to get some things off my chest. What I offer here is a kind of preamble to that project, which will unfold over the next 9 months or so.

[So] what do I mean when I say we are not as developed as we should be in our thinking about development?

If we look at college-educated adults, the first level is abstract mappings on our metric (roughly Orange in Wilber's colors). At this level, developmental levels are treated like simple stereotypes. Whole persons are classed as being at a level, which is typically understood in terms of a single developmental model (e.g. Spiral Dynamics). Development is understood as a kind of simple "growth to goodness", with ignorance at the bottom, science in the middle, and spirituality at the top. Particular levels gain more attention than others and function as more or less entrenched stereotypes, expressing preferences that are not necessarily developmental (e.g. "you are so green").

The next level is abstract systems (roughly Green in Wilber's colors). At this level, reasoning about levels involves giving some primacy to the construct of altitude, which frames and organizes a variety of developmental models. Persons are understood in terms of their relative development in various lines, which are identified with different developmental models and theorists. The concept of a center of gravityIntegral Theory becomes explicit; the relation between states and levels complicates the simple notion that spirituality is "at the top." Generally, there are elaborate ideas about how developmental levels are implicated in all kinds of issues (politics, religion, ecology, etc.) supplements this differentiated view and justifies whole person assessments. The relation between levels and other aspects of

Then there is reasoning at single principles (roughly Teal in Wilber's colors). At this level, reasoning about levels involves explicit ideas about the limits and affordances of different developmental methods and models, which are framed in terms of arguments about the conditions enabling their valid use (i.e. scoring systems, interview procedures, etc.). The idea of "growth to goodness" is problematized both by concerns over issues of horizontal health and intra-personal variability, and by concerns about the accuracy of different assessment methods. These complexities of method and application temper and complicate speculation on how developmental levels are implicated in a broad range of global problems.

The top of what we can accurately measure is principled mappings (roughly Turquoise in Wilber's colors). At this level, reasoning about levels involves the adoption of a post-metaphysical stance toward the task of evaluating people. The provisional, bounded, and multi-perspectival nature of all models and methods is admitted, and a set of meta-theoretical principles guides a recursive process of continually refining developmental models and methods in terms of both theory and practice. A broad and explicit philosophical discourse comes to supplement evaluative discussions concerning the notion of "growth to goodness," as the human potentials that characterize the highest levels and the future of civilization are seen as collective constructions for which we are responsible.

Read More: Here

Zachary Stein is currently a student of philosophy and cognitive development pursuing a doctorate at Harvard. He is also the Senior Analyst for the Developmental Testing Service where he has worked for years employing cognitive developmental models and metrics in a variety real world contexts.

Blended Stages of Development

Blended Cultural Stages in Today’s World and Individual Development
By Giorgio Piacenza

Ken Wilber usually states that every individual must go through stages of development one step at a time. I think that developmental psychologists have shown that this is generally true. Nonetheless, I also think that individuals are very much affected in the way they go through these stages by their cultures (which, among other things, offer support and challenge) and nowadays cultural codes are more mixed than ever before. Today's living cultures are not clearly distinguishable or definable anymore; they are blending and they are also blending stage-wise.

We can also quite evidently say that there are few isolated cultures not affected by modernity's “critical mindset.” Also, as the number of separate cultures diminish, all kinds of ideas, belief systems, myths, codes and paradigms circulate and the modern and globalized system -generally speaking- acts like a framework that supporting them all (as long as the ideas, values and codes of particular cultural groups are not extremely challenged by the modern system in which case an uncomfortable coexistence leads to suppression, oppression and aggression).

My thesis is that the way individuals go through their developmental stages is being modified by these globalized, culturally mixed conditions. For instance, predominantly Red stage, self centered individuals may be conversant with ecology, modern rational methods, local religious myths and so on. With a minimum level of cognition, he or she may adapt to a variety of cultural values, expectations and even demonstrate proficiency in some of the practices and ways of being not representative of Red stage of development. The same would apply for individuals that could be primarily defined as focused upon Amber, Orange and Green stage or ways of being in the world.

So what I am observing here is that the separation between the stages may not be as clear as suggested or apparently emphasized in the world as it is today. The concept of 'less intensely interiorized or lived' 'combined stages' may need to be taken into consideration more actively even in the ethical line of development or ethical mode of being in the world. If the lines of development related with self identity can also be more affected than previously supposed by the multi-stage cultural influences simultaneously present in the world today then the classification of who is primarily in what stage would need to be re-thought, revised, and remodeled carefully. What does it mean when the values associated with any stage are not taken too seriously anymore? Is the world producing 'light' individuals? Is the world producing individuals with less convictions but capable of adopting 'chameleon-like' any set of values adaptively?

Read More Here: Integral World

Non-dual Thinking and Aesthetic Theory

Beyond Beautiful and Ugly: Non-dual Thinking and Aesthetic Theory
By Jeffery A. Bell

“Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn’t reached its goal. A parable.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

The self-conscious reference of this essay’s title to Nietzsche’s book, Beyond Good and Evil, might seem misplaced to some since this title is then connected with the notion of non-dual thinking. Is not Nietzsche’s work replete with dualities – master and slave morality, life-denying and life-affirming, active and passive, etc.? This same point, however, could be made regarding an entirely different tradition: Zen Buddhism. Despite the frequent appeals in Zen literature to become free from thinking in terms of dualities,1 this very appeal brings in tow its own dualities – enlightenment and attachment, freedom and bondage, active and passive, etc.

To address this apparent inconsistency we propose, in the following essay, to argue that for Nietzsche non-dual thinking entails affirming ‘that’ which cannot be reduced to being one side of an either/or (e.g., mind or body, appearance or reality, good or evil, sacred or secular, etc.), but is ‘that’ which makes such either/or thinking possible. The ‘that’ which is thought and affirmed by non-dual thinking is not opposed to or other than the realities affirmed by either/or thinking. To state this would be simply to repeat either/or thinking. Nonetheless, there is, as Nietzsche repeatedly makes clear, a difference between master and slave morality, or between what we call non-dual and either/or thinking. Nietzsche’s efforts to understand this difference without resorting again to either/or thinking are best exemplified by the way in which he employs aesthetics and art in order to circumvent the inevitable either/ors that are the stock and trade of traditional metaphysics.

In Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy the importance of art as an alternative metaphysics is explicitly recognized: “I am convinced that art represents the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life…” In setting forth this interpretation of the role of aesthetic theory in Nietzsche, we shall then be able to sketch two important implications. First, we shall find a significant parallel between Nietzsche and Zen Buddhism, a parallel that has received little attention; and secondly we will begin to see how Nietzsche’s implicit aesthetic theory is both supportive and critical of other more traditional aesthetic theories.

Read More: Here

A (Partial) Defense of AQAL Contingency

A (Partial) Defense of AQAL Contingency
by Chris Dierkes

According to Wilber, when Western Europe entered into the rational-modern stage, what we term The Enlightenment (itself a contingent enterprise), The West (contingently) chose to deny Spirit as a truth procedure, thereby repressing Spirit and sending Spirit underground, only to have it re-surface in the truth procedure of Science, creating a spiritually-charged Science (now scientism as an ideology). According to Wilber, this modern spiritually- supercharged Science proceeded to take over (“colonize”) the realms of Arts and Morals, leaving what Wilber terms flatland (or really scientistic-land). The world became dominated by the ideology of the market (“The Science of Economics”).

Now that account undoubtedly has a heavy idealistic flair (again recalling idealism does not mean optimism here but causality via consciousness). As per Daniel Anderson's writings, one can reject idealism wholesale in favor of materialism. As such, one would therefore (like Daniel has) criticize Wilber's narrative philosophical reconstruction on historical materialist grounds against Wilber's more idealistic position. I'm not a historical materialist, but I appreciate the consistency of that criticism nonetheless.

In contrast I find the notion of Michael's critique of Wilber's view as having a teleological necessity to be ultimately unfair to Wilber's actual work, as shown above. Again one may not accept his presuppositions of levels, the quadrants (especially including consciousness as a fundamental dimension of existence), but contingency is radically built into his philosophy. Most especially so in his (so-called Wilber-5), post-metaphysical work.

Read More Here: Beams and Struts

The Power of Balance

The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society and Scientific Inquiry

By William R. Torbert

Since the dawn of the modern age, each intellectual and cultural arena has established its own criterion of success and has sought to maximize attainment of that ideal without reference to the other arenas of life. In politics, the ideal is power; in economics, utility; in art, beauty; in science, empirical truth. These ideals ignore one another, speak past one another, and sometimes clash. "Might makes right," "Profit maximization," "Art for art's sake," and "Knowledge for its own sake" or "pure science" are all slogans that are at once isolationist and imperialistic.

With such ideals, the different arenas of life may, at best, come into an accidental balance of power, or equilibrium, for a given person or culture at a given time or place. Such a balance of power is static, precarious, and necessarily temporary (if not altogether fictitious). As with the scales of justice, the slightest variation on any side can oscillate into radical imbalance.

By contrast, the ancients made the dynamic balance of the whole the ideal-whether the whole be the pantheon of gods, the whole person, or the city. Instead of a balance of power, these ancients sought the power of balance. Plato's Republic, for example, is about the search for the power of balance, both in the conduct of politics and in the education of leaders. Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian offers an intimate portrait of a Roman emperor seeking (and only occasionally discovering) the power of balance.

The power to create a whole without obliterating differences (whether that whole be a self, a family, a city, or a global community) and to balance wholes of different kinds is inherently integrative, mutual, inquiring, and ethical. The power by which parts seek to dominate other parts is inherently disintegrative, hierarchical, uninquiring, and corrupting.

Since Machiavelli and Hobbes and throughout the modem period, power has been treated, almost exclusively, as a necessary evil that restricts the freedom of those over whom it is exercised and that requires countervailing powers-a balance of powers-if it is not to become increasingly corrupt-perhaps absolutely evil-and squash all freedom.

By contrast, the theory of power presented in this book views such unilateral force as the lowest, least effective, and least legitimate form of power. Unilateral force is necessary in relation to those with whom we recognize no other type of power; and unilateral force can, if exercised with the artistry of the power of balance, set the stage for more effectual and more mutual power relations…

Read the More Here:

The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society and Scientific Inquiry (1991)

Integral Pluralism and Pattern Dynamics

Integral Pluralism and PatternDynamics™

By Tim Winton

I’ve just had an initial read of Sean Esbjörn-Hargens’s (2010) most recent article, “An Ontology of Climate Change”, due out in the next (Spring 2010) edition of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. I say initial read because I’m going to have to go over this more than a few times to take it all in. My blog post here is largely the process of unpacking Sean’s article, coming to terms with its implications for the field of Integral Theory and Praxis, and working through the relationship of my own work in Integral Theory and Integral Sustainability to the emergent space he has opened up.

There are some big theoretical moves enacted in this article- not the least of which is to bring the idea of “enactment” itself front and centre in integral discourse. To enact enactment, as it were. Sean also makes explicit, the hereto only weakly implied idea of Integral Ontological Pluralism (IOP) and connects it to the only slightly more strongly implied concept on Integral Epistemological Pluralism (IEP) through the only fully explicit pluralism currently widely articulated in Integral Theory, Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP). This is the familiar—at least to Integral Ecology geeks like me—who (epistemology) is enacting, how (methodology) are they enacting, and what (ontology) are they enacting format from Sean and Michael Zimmerman’s (2009) recent book, “Integral Ecology”.

Sean introduces this triad of pluralisms as explicitly included in “Integral Pluralism”, and with that signifier brings forth a meta-perspective on Integral itself. This is big move number one: in fact this is huge and, I think, hugely exciting— not just for its chutzpah (and I mean that in a most integral sense of the word)—but also for its practical usefulness in meeting the challenges of a complex world. Sean illustrates this through a chart showing how Integral Pluralism allows us to identify the multiple (but overlapping) objects called “climate change”.

Ontological pluralism brings to awareness the fact that when we are talking about climate change, we are not all of us talking about the same thing, even if we are not entirely talking about different things. That’s the “overlapping” bit- not just one thing, but not so many or so completely unrelated to an underlying “reality” that they are completely fragmented. I should say here that Sean does not limit Integral Pluralism to the above-mentioned three pluralisms, and this opens up a host of other possibilities for inclusion within the purview of an Integral meta-perspective. For instance, by the end of the article Sean has added Integral Theoretical Pluralism to the mix.

Now, along with multiple perspectives and multiple methodologies we recognize multiple ontologies, allowing us to multiply Integral comprehensiveness and inclusion by some number of factors. And, through that increased comprehensiveness, enact a more sophisticated view and response to the challenges we face. Sean uses some illuminating graphics to demonstrate Modern, Postmodern and Integral approaches to ontology that I found particularly interesting- especially in their relationship to my own graphically intense Integral offering called PatternDynamics™. (See Appendix 1) Before we get to that though, we need to check out big move number two, Integral Enactment Theory.

Read More: Here