Ken Wilber - Integral Politics
At the recent 5-day Integral Institute seminar on Integral Business Leadership,
Ken Wilber was asked, by a senior Zen teacher, "What do you think of the Republican convention?"
Ken responded by giving an overview of what a truly integral politics might look like, and used that to compare and contrast with the Democratic and Republican conventions, both of which are less-than-integral. We think that this twenty-minute summary is brilliant, insightful, deadly serious, and wickedly funny, all at once. But by all accounts it is an extraordinary account of why all politics today are considerably less-than-integral, along with certain features that almost certainly would have to be included in the future in any truly integral politics.
In this synopsis, Ken focuses on three items that all political theories have attempted to address but none have managed to fully integrate. These are the tension between (1) the individual and the collective; (2) the source of the cause of human suffering: is the individual primarily to blame or is the society primarily to blame?; and (3) the different levels of development that the different political parties tend to represent: any truly integral politics would include and represent all of them, and yet how on earth do you do that?
Due to time considerations, Ken did not discuss two other equally important ingredients in any integral politics. One. In representational democracies, people have a right to be at whatever stage of development they are at, and generally speaking, within free speech, a right to express the values of whatever stage they are at. Traditional-fundamentalist (blue) has a right to be traditional, modernist (orange) has a right to be modernist, postmodernist (green) has a right to be postmodernist, and so on. This is generally modified in practice, to the extent that the center of gravity of a culture will tend to impose its values on others, especially if they are first-tier (or less-than-integral) values. Nonetheless, in democratic societies, there's a general background understanding that people have a right to be, and a right to express, whatever stage they are or whatever belief system they possess.
Two. They do not, however, have a right to act on those beliefs. This is generally handled in representative democracies by a separation of public and private, and by a similar if more specific principle of the separation of church and state. This means that, for example, in the privacy of my blue-meme mind, I am free to believe that Jesus Christ is my personal savior and that nobody achieves salvation without a belief in Jesus. In public behavior, however, I am not allowed to burn at the stake somebody who disagrees with me. In terms of integral psychology, this means in the interior of an individual (i.e., the upper left), the person can believe whatever they like; but in their public behavior (i.e., the upper right), they must behave according to laws drawn from a worldcentric or higher level of development (lower left), or else they are charged with civil or criminal behavior and removed from society if necessary (lower right).
This separation of church and state, or more generally what Max Weber called the differentiation of the values spheres, is one of the great and enduring contributions of the Western enlightenment, a contribution almost entirely misunderstood by extreme postmodernists, who in fact are operating under its protection while bitterly condemning it.
(The most common version of this is the aggressive attempt to reduce "I" and "It" to "We,' or the attempt to reduce art and science to a social construction, which can therefore be deconstructed. As it turns out, this reductionism presumes precisely what it denies, but then, deconstructive postmodernism has been little without its performative contradictions.)
A truly integral politics exists nowhere on the planet at this time, principally because not enough individuals have emerged at the integral levels of consciousness, and hence no governments anywhere have integral representatives as members (except rarely and by accident). Its principal challenge is to create some form of governance that allows each stage to be itself within the constraints of not harming others (i.e., to let red be red, and blue be blue, and orange be orange, and green be green, etc—precisely because, as we saw, this is a right in virtually all free societies), and yet to govern from the highest, widest, deepest, and most encompassing levels of development emerged to date (starting at yellow). Most representative democracies do this anyway, except their center of gravity is not yet fully integral, and they do it implicitly, not explicitly.
Ken Wilber was asked, by a senior Zen teacher, "What do you think of the Republican convention?"
Ken responded by giving an overview of what a truly integral politics might look like, and used that to compare and contrast with the Democratic and Republican conventions, both of which are less-than-integral. We think that this twenty-minute summary is brilliant, insightful, deadly serious, and wickedly funny, all at once. But by all accounts it is an extraordinary account of why all politics today are considerably less-than-integral, along with certain features that almost certainly would have to be included in the future in any truly integral politics.
In this synopsis, Ken focuses on three items that all political theories have attempted to address but none have managed to fully integrate. These are the tension between (1) the individual and the collective; (2) the source of the cause of human suffering: is the individual primarily to blame or is the society primarily to blame?; and (3) the different levels of development that the different political parties tend to represent: any truly integral politics would include and represent all of them, and yet how on earth do you do that?
Due to time considerations, Ken did not discuss two other equally important ingredients in any integral politics. One. In representational democracies, people have a right to be at whatever stage of development they are at, and generally speaking, within free speech, a right to express the values of whatever stage they are at. Traditional-fundamentalist (blue) has a right to be traditional, modernist (orange) has a right to be modernist, postmodernist (green) has a right to be postmodernist, and so on. This is generally modified in practice, to the extent that the center of gravity of a culture will tend to impose its values on others, especially if they are first-tier (or less-than-integral) values. Nonetheless, in democratic societies, there's a general background understanding that people have a right to be, and a right to express, whatever stage they are or whatever belief system they possess.
Two. They do not, however, have a right to act on those beliefs. This is generally handled in representative democracies by a separation of public and private, and by a similar if more specific principle of the separation of church and state. This means that, for example, in the privacy of my blue-meme mind, I am free to believe that Jesus Christ is my personal savior and that nobody achieves salvation without a belief in Jesus. In public behavior, however, I am not allowed to burn at the stake somebody who disagrees with me. In terms of integral psychology, this means in the interior of an individual (i.e., the upper left), the person can believe whatever they like; but in their public behavior (i.e., the upper right), they must behave according to laws drawn from a worldcentric or higher level of development (lower left), or else they are charged with civil or criminal behavior and removed from society if necessary (lower right).
This separation of church and state, or more generally what Max Weber called the differentiation of the values spheres, is one of the great and enduring contributions of the Western enlightenment, a contribution almost entirely misunderstood by extreme postmodernists, who in fact are operating under its protection while bitterly condemning it.
(The most common version of this is the aggressive attempt to reduce "I" and "It" to "We,' or the attempt to reduce art and science to a social construction, which can therefore be deconstructed. As it turns out, this reductionism presumes precisely what it denies, but then, deconstructive postmodernism has been little without its performative contradictions.)
A truly integral politics exists nowhere on the planet at this time, principally because not enough individuals have emerged at the integral levels of consciousness, and hence no governments anywhere have integral representatives as members (except rarely and by accident). Its principal challenge is to create some form of governance that allows each stage to be itself within the constraints of not harming others (i.e., to let red be red, and blue be blue, and orange be orange, and green be green, etc—precisely because, as we saw, this is a right in virtually all free societies), and yet to govern from the highest, widest, deepest, and most encompassing levels of development emerged to date (starting at yellow). Most representative democracies do this anyway, except their center of gravity is not yet fully integral, and they do it implicitly, not explicitly.
But I mean some of those you'll never see on TV. From what I am getting to understand about their philosophy is that those whom they consider mere cattle self-select themselves by being easily manipulated. The Eye sees the cusp of human history coming, and the understanding is that not many are going to make it. Stupidity and not seeing the signs marks the cattle as death-bound.
Understanding the structure and the necessity of lower rungs on the ladder for you own rung does NOT imply respecting the individuals on the lower rungs. There's few points to be made here even regarding Wilber's own behavior.
2nd tier by no means means "unpathological".
special offers etc; same old shit - empereor = no clothes.
Wilber 'I'm not bragging but....' Wake up kids.
I can't remember whether "respect" was part of the definition of 2nd tier, "understand" would probably be sufficient since you can't even do that below 2nd.
Even if "respect" is in it, this would be the case only if the moral line would be on integral. You can be integral cognitively and morally in the stone age. Hence I spoke of pathological 2nd tier.
It troubles me that Ken Wilber actually seems to buy into the idea that 911 was enacted by pockets of reds "out there". Not doubt we have them out there, but I would assume that the real terrorism is enacted by people on very pathological branches of second tier who seem to think of themselves as beyond the concerns of those on 1st whom they consider like animals and try to consciously keep on 1st tier.
It is no accident that the US regressed 1-2 notches, rather that was the point !
"It troubles me that Ken Wilber actually seems to buy into the idea that 911 was enacted by pockets of reds "out there". "
It was certainly cognitively integral people. If it is their lopsidedness that's the problem, then still it isn't simply "reds".
What troubles me is that Wilber actually buys into the idea that 911 was done by those backward people and not by his very own customers, such as Bill Clinton and his likes.
"It troubles me that Ken Wilber actually seems to buy into the idea that 911 was enacted by pockets of reds "out there". "
It was certainly cognitively integral people. If it is their lopsidedness that's the problem, then still it isn't simply "reds".
What troubles me is that Wilber actually buys into the idea that 911 was done by those backward people and not by his very own customers, such as Bill Clinton and his likes.
Now watch a college language student reviewing a computer generated essay. He has no clue of its true origin.
/watch?v=jxQ7rONF5iE