Massimo de Angelis report on the Yasuni’s struggle against petroleum extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon region, based and inspired by their “Mother Earth” related deity Pochamama, clearly discusses the same links we discuss in our section on neotraditional economics, and why these linkages between pre-industrial and post-industrial thinking and practices are important, see here for details.

Massimo De Angelis on the role of Pochama:

“Pochamama is the deity of Andean origin and refers to “mother earth”, not just as geological earth or nature but also as a set of relations, a deity of reproduction, a protective rather than creative deity or perhaps better, a deity for which human creation is just a moment of a reproduction cycle. In this sense, the discourse is quite distinct from Western environmentalism, that — a part from the gaya hypothesis — sees earth as simply the context of human activity. It seems to me that paradoxically, the insistence on Pachamana, as the sacred mother earth from which we depend on, is, quite amazingly, a materialist approach to nature. The idea that “mother earth” is a precondition of our existence echoes Marx’s notion that earth is the mother of value, that is the precondition for all human activity, an insight often left out in the compendia of Marxist thought. The deity of Pochamama is a deity of protection, but as all religions, is a reflection of a human cosmological vision that grounds action. It is man and women who must protect earth, if earth must deliver the means for human survival. Otherwise, “la Pachamama tiene hambre frecuente y si no se la nutre con las ofrendas o si casualmente se la ofende, ella provoca enfermedades.” (wikipedia) The story of climate change seems to fit quite well this narrative.

Thus, we have here a clash between two claims of ownership and the politics of “alliances” around these two claims. One, by the state and oil companies as “representative” of the ecuadorians, for which they administrate their oil resources while preserving the forest (sic — an impossibility). On the other by the Waorani as “representative” not only of ecuadorian, but of humanity as a whole, since the Waorani commoning on the Yasuni is the only way to sustain the Yasuni as planetary commons. To to put in another way we have the following points: 1) earth provides food, clothing and all we need — it cannot come from anywhere else! Hence to the community of the Yasuni, the preservation of the forest is of crucial importance. 2) therefore the indigenous claim common *ownership* to the part of earth that give them sustenance, the yasuni - to the jungle, the river, the bio-physical relations therein. 3) a claim of common ownership that almost naturally turns into a claim of autonomy in terms of the administration of the territory, since the *preservation* of the Waorani is one with the preservation of the Yasuni, and 4) pochamama and homo economicus reveal two distinct and clashing valuing and measuring rationalities upon which notion of ownership (use access + control) are built. Yet, Pochamama is not lack of recognition of pay offs. The indigenous commons ownership also translate in pay offs to the Ecuadorian people (preservation of water sources for the entire country) and the world (through preservation of Amazon sink), thus the Yasuni is also a commons to them, at a different scale, and with different modalities of use-access and control, yet a common nevertheless. Hence, the struggle here also provides a basic general framework within which to devise schemes of compensation and reparation through which not only the Yasuni stay without oil and trash, but also without poverty.”

Part of my ongoing investigation on neotraditional economics, updated regularly here:

Joe Hargrave:

” It is possible to combine regulated markets and even command economies with private property, and social forms of ownership with free markets. It is the latter model that is best aligned with both Catholic social teaching as well as sound economics.

What Leo recognizes as true for agriculture is also true for modern industries and services.”

Inteteresting commentary by John Hagel, who reviews two important books:

* Stuart Kauffman: “Reinventing the Sacred”

* Gordon Kaufman: “In the beginning . . . Creativity”

John Hagel on the Big Shift in Spirituality, towards “networked creation“:

“The Big Shift is not just about disruption and profits. It is also about identity, meaning and values that are changing in profound ways. More than ever before, if we just focus narrowly on commercial quests, we will find ourselves blindsided by much broader changes playing out on the global stage.

Embracing this new notion of the sacred will strengthen us in our quest to harness the forces of the Big Shift to create things never before imagined. Just as the Big Shift is changing our beliefs about ourselves, most certainly it will change our beliefs about the cosmos. Perhaps these new beliefs will provide a common ground where we can all come together – believers in a divine being and believers in a divine becoming – to heal the injuries that have separated us and helping all of us to more effectively achieve our potential.”

I also strongly recommend reading this other blog entry from John Hagel, in which he expertly distinguishes ‘passion’ (as in passionate peer production), from ‘obsession’. Read it here.

Fernando Ibarra and Elifarley Cruz recommended the following article, by Riane Eisler:

* Roadmap to a New Economics: Beyond Capitalism and Socialism

It’s a call for a Caring Economics.

Just a few excerpts to give you an idea of the scope and tonality of her contribution, we recommend reading the whole article.

See especially the last section setting out her foundational principles.

Introduction:

“When thinking of a new economics, let’s not think of stocks, bonds, derivatives, or other financial instruments. Let’s think of children. Let’s ask what kind of economic policies and practices are good for children. Let’s ask what’s needed so all children are healthy, get a good education, and are prepared to live good lives. More fundamentally, let’s ask what kind of economic system helps, or prevents, children from realizing their great potentials for consciousness, empathy, caring, and creativity — the capacities that make us fully human.

The move to this comprehensive economic model in turn requires understanding something else ignored in conventional economic discussions. This is that economic systems don’t arise in a vacuum: they are influenced by, and in turn influence, the larger cultural system in which they are embedded.”

The need for new measurement tools:

“To effectively address our growing economic, social, and environmental problems, we need a new economics. We need a system that leaves behind the dominator elements of capitalism and socialism, preserves their partnership elements, and is governed by economic structures, policies, and practices that give visibility and real value to caring for ourselves, others, and our Mother Earth.

This is not logical. It’s pathological. But to understand, and change, this distorted system of values — and to effectively address seemingly intractable problems such as poverty and hunger — we again have to look at matters that are only visible once we recognize the configurations of the partnership system and the domination system.”

Conclusions:

“The mix of high technology and an ethos of domination is not sustainable. Therein lies the danger. But the upheavals and dislocations of our time also offer an opportunity for a fundamental social and economic shift.

We can all be leaders in building a social and economic system that really meets human needs — not only our material ones but also our emotional and spiritual ones. The sidebar next to this article describes the six foundations needed for a truly new economic system. If we join together, we can build these foundations and create a future in which all children can realize their great potentials for consciousness, empathy, caring, and creativity — the capacities that make us fully human.”

Foundational Principles for a Caring Economics:

“Progress in building any one of these foundations will set in motion progress in all the others in an interactive dynamic of change.

Foundation 6: An Evolving Economic Theory of Partnerism. This economic theory incorporates the partnership elements of both capitalism and socialism, but goes beyond them to recognize the essential economic value of caring for ourselves, others, and nature.”

Source: The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, by Riane Eisler. Berrett-Koehler, 2007.

There are exactly two ways to do things: one, and many

Spurred by William Tozier’s meditation above, which is an argument for generalist practice and knowledge as against hyper-specialisation, our friend Paul Hartzog wrote some interesting observations in the comment field.

Paul Hartzog writes:

“The classical opposition to the One was always the Many.

3. PostPostModernism (or Pre- Panarchy): reject the binary opposition constituted by 1 and 2 and embrace the Many (Spinoza’s Multitude).”

In other words:

“During Modernism we are told that there is only one way. The universalism is imposed.

Under panarchy, the entire notion that we must choose between an oppressive universalism vs. a nihilistic particularity is rejected. There is a whole world of third way possibilities when we come together to share and build them…”

Additional commentary by Sam Rose, more directly related to William Tozier’s argument:

“One of the things that I thought about while reading your excellent, post above is that, for more and more of us to effectively do *this*, it turns out that we need each other, more than anything else.

This is what I am interested in. Part of what I am concentrating on these days. *It’s up to us to plant thesseds and grow this dynamic societal infrastructure for generalists.* If we can make a better choice, people will likely choose it. People need generalist-centric alternative ways to solve their basic survival problems. We need new ways to “bank”, new ways to grow food, make the things we want and need, research and develop new things, better insights on how to work together as generalists.”

I asked the distributist author John C. Médaille to explain how he sees the connection between the p2p approach and distributism.

This is an excellent and easy to read introduction:

John C. Médaille:

“The most salient point about a peer-to-peer network is that it is a network of peers. That is, at each node, there is an entity that is, in some sense, the equal of all the others. The participants on the net will be, of course, of vastly different sizes and abilities, but in relation to each other, there is a kind of equality. However, if some nodes contain critical code, information, or resources that others must use, and this use can be restricted, then the peer network becomes, in actual fact, a hierarchical one.

The viability of a peer-based economy is not a theoretical construct, but a functioning reality. Indeed, distributism goes from success to success, while capitalism goes from bailout to bailout.”

This video presents the key ideas of Raj Patel’s new book, The Value of Nothing, and says, ‘the opposite of consumption is not thrift, but generosity’:

It is also in connection with this widespread push toward reflection that we have to view the progressive disintegration of traditional, popular piety. Two specifically modern forms of religious consciousness emerged from this: on the one hand, a fundamentalism that either withdraws from the modern world or turns aggressively toward it; on the other, a reflective faith that relates itself to other religions and respects the fallible insights of the institutionalized sciences as well as human rights. This faith is still anchored in the life of a congregation and should not be confused with the new, deinstitutionalized forms of a fickle religiosity that has withdrawn entirely into the subjective.

Pat Kane alerted me to a remarkable, lengthy interview by Jurgen Habermas, one of my favourite philosophers, about the topic of religion and how he has gradually changed his view, from a secular to a post-secular point of view. I feel very aligned with his insights, but as the above quote show, especially the last sentence, Jurgen Habermas does seem to miss the new religious forms which are neither anchored in a congregation, but also not the fickle new age narcissism of supermarket spirituality. Indeed, the fact that modern individuals may wish to expose themselves to various traditions, and exercise continuous experimentation, personal reflection, intersubjective dialogue and even formal peer to peer cooperative inquiry into it, seems to have escaped his observations.

Here’s what he means by post-secular, but please, do read the whole interview, it’s worth your time.

Jurgen Habermas:

The expression “postsecular” is not a genealogical but a sociological predicate. I use this expression to describe modern societies that have to reckon with the continuing existence of religious groups and the continuing relevance of the different religious traditions, even if the societies themselves are largely secularized. Insofar as I describe as “postsecular,” not society itself, but a corresponding change of consciousness in it, the predicate can also be used to refer to an altered self-understanding of the largely secularized societies of Western Europe, Canada, or Australia.

Despite my little critique above, it is clear that Habermas gets it (if I may allow to say this from my own so much more limited intellectual and philosophical understanding), in terms of the necessity of a productive dialogue with the world’s spiritual traditions:

“For philosophy, there are empirical indications that religion has remained a contemporary configuration of spirit [Gestalt des Geistes]. In addition, philosophy also finds internal reasons for this, reasons in its own history. The long process of translating essential, religious contents into the language of philosophy began in late antiquity; we only need to think of concepts like person and individuality, freedom and justice, solidarity and community, emancipation, history, and crisis. We cannot know whether this process of appropriating semantic potentials from a discourse that in its core remains inaccessible has exhausted itself, or if it can be continued. The conceptual labor of religious writers and authors such as the young Bloch, Benjamin, Levinas, or Derrida speaks in favor of the continuing productivity of such a philosophical effort. And this suggests a change of attitude in favor of a dialogical relationship, open to learning, with all religious traditions, and a reflection on the position of postmetaphysical thinking between the sciences and religion.

Just as nature is under assault, so a promising countermovement has emerged based on renewed totemic kinship with animals.

This is a wonderful book that I strongly recommend to anybody:

Book: A Reenchanted World: The Quest For A New Kinship With Nature by James William Gibson. Metropolitan Books, 2009

(you can purchase it directly here)

In the first excerpt, the author Bill Gibson explains how it relates to the P2P ethos as well as his personal motivation. The second excerpt is from chapter 2 and reviews the revival on the link between humanity and the animal kingdom, through ‘totemic identification’.

1. Why the author’s interest for the culture of enchantment?

James William Gibson:

“1, The culture of enchantment creates symbolic, totemic kinship ties with wild animals. It does not erases human-animal differences, but clearly links them in human-animal kinship ties.

The ideas that the Earth is sacred in a broad sense of the term and should be protected and wild animals respected as our totemic kin are now circulating at multiple levels, from theological treatises to Hollywood animated movies and nature documentaries. Newspapers now routinely run obituaries for wild animals–beached whales, bears shot by police, deer impaled on a spiked suburban fence. Funeral oratory articulates a culture’s fundamental values—our eulogies and public mourning for wild animals mean our sense of community has broadened. When the same themes begin to permeate a culture across vastly different domains it’s a sign of profound change. Cultural change in turn makes political change possible.”

2. The history and revival of totemic kinship?

James William Gibson, from Chapter 2 (version without references):

“In the creation myths of many Native Americans and other hunter gatherer peoples, humans and animals once spoke the same language. Indeed, before the “fall,” when animals and humans went their separate ways, there was no rigid distinction between them. As the Inuit (Eskimo) woman Nalungiaq explained to ethnologist Knud Rasmussen nearly a century ago, “In the very earliest time when both people and animals lived on earth, a person could become an animal if he wanted to and an animal could become a human being. Sometimes they were people and sometimes animals and there was no difference.” Even after this golden age, many Indian tribes celebrated an intimate connection to par tic u lar species. When a Pawnee scout pulled a ceremonial wolf skin over his body, he was not putting on a costume, argues nature writer Barry Lopez. Rather, the wolf skin was “an outward sign to the man himself and others who might see him that he was calling on his wolf power. . . . What was actually present was an intimacy with the environment, a magic ‘going in and out,’ so that the line of distinction between a person and his animal helper was not always clear.”

Nature writer Dan O’Brien recalled a similarly transformative encounter in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Entranced by the Black Hills on a childhood visit, O’Brien returned to the region as an adult and bought the Broken Heart ranch. But his plan to raise cattle there proved far more difficult than he’d anticipated—cattle died in the harsh South Dakota winters and those that survived routinely overgrazed the prairie, forcing him to buy grain for them. By the late 1980s, the stress and threat of financial ruin had destroyed his marriage and his health. One afternoon O’Brien got in his truck and started driving aimlessly on backcountry roads. Somewhere near the Badlands National Monument he saw an enormous buffalo that had somehow escaped a nearby ranch known for its strong, high fences. O’Brien threw the truck into reverse, but before he could drive off, the buffalo raised his head and looked straight into O’Brien’s eyes. “Like the wedding guest caught in the stare of the Ancient Mariner,” he says, “I was frozen in place. We stared at each other for perhaps a minute, and for that minute all my business worries were dwarfed by this dose of reality lying in the road ahead…. I sensed that the buffalo signaled something profound.” The bull buffalo reminded O’Brien of the key role that buffalo hunts played in the American West, and of how “we, as humans, evolved eating wild meat, and our success as a species is, at least in part, a result of that evolution. Perhaps it is knowing that truth that consecrates such meat for me.” Within months of his vision O”Brien sold his cattle, began restoring the prairie grasses on his land, and started raising buffalo calves. A buffalo also appeared to Canadian peace activist Paul Watson back in 1973, when he served as a medic to the American Indian Movement volunteers occupying Wounded Knee. After the siege ended, Watson underwent honorary initiation as a Lakota Sioux in a sweat lodge ceremony conducted by Wallace Black Elk (grandson of the legendary medicine man interviewed by Neihardt) and Leonard Crow Dog, leader of the Sioux who had invited the activists to the Pine Ridge Reservation. Watson says that during the sweat, he had a vision in which spirit animals appeared and spoke to him. “I suddenly saw myself in a grassy, rolling field, gazing into the eyes of a wolf. The wolf looked at me, then into a pond, and walked away. When I told the Sioux what had happened, they gave me my Indian name, Gray Wolf/Clear Water. Then I went back into the vision, and saw a buffalo standing on a ridge. It began to speak to me, and as it told me that I must protect the buffalo of the sea, an arrow came and struck it in the back. Attached to the arrow was a cord, symbolic of a harpoon.” Not long thereafter, Watson joined with Robert Hunter to found Greenpeace, whose first mission was to protect whales. In June 1975, Watson and a colleague tried to stop a Soviet whaler in the North Pacific from harpooning sperm whales. Their plan was to steer their inflatable boat between the whales and the whaling ship, thinking the Soviets wouldn’t fire for fear of hitting them. But the scheme didn’t work. The whalers shot a female whale, and when a bull, enraged by her death, turned and tried to ram the whaling ship, the Soviets shot him, too. As the whale died, Watson says, “he rose slowly out of the water, a quarter of his bulk towering above us…. He looked at us. It was a gentle, knowing, forgiving gaze. What had I seen? Was it understanding?. . . I no longer try to understand what happened between that dying sperm bull and me, I know only that I felt a commitment.”

A republication from January 2006, which deals with hierarchy in spiritual movements and experience, and its particular pathologies. It engages in particular with the thought of Ken Wilber.

John Heron:

The Guru Phenomenon

The traditional oriental guru represents a form of spiritual leadership in which so-called advanced spiritual states of being are transmitted from guru to disciple. This requires the disciple to be present with the guru, physically or psychically, to project onto the guru the disciple’s latent divine nature, to be obedient and devoted to the guru, and to practise the disciplines he prescribes. There is a hierarchical, charismatic relationship to affect the disciple’s shift from an ordinary to an extraordinary state of being “enlightened”. A favourite candidate for enlightenment is the so-called non-dual state, in which spirit and any kind of form are known to be not two.

There seem to have been four phases of the guru phenomenon in the West.

(1) In the late decades of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth century, there was just a small guru-invasion from the East with key players like Vivekananda and the spread of the Vedanta movement in the West.

(2) Then post-war from 1945 with the publication of Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy, there started a major guru-invasion from the East, including the dramatic spread through the 60s and the 70s of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism in the USA and Europe.

(3) In the third phase over the last thirty years or so, alongside the guru-invasion from the East there has been the growing phenomenon of homegrown Western gurus and spiritual teachers claiming the special status of ‘enlightenment’.

(4) The fourth phase is just getting under way. It seems to be distinguished by four features.

(a) The erosion of guru status as a result of a continuous stream of sexual and financial abuse and bullying scandals among both Eastern and homegrown Western gurus and spiritual teachers.

(b) The erosion of ‘enlightenment’ claims by the proliferation of the number of people, especially in the West, making the claim: the more people who make the claim, the more its narcissistic inflation stands revealed. For the ‘enlightenment’ claim is also an authority-claim to have followers, a recruiting drive to gather in spiritual projections. The more claims that are made, the stronger the competition among claimants in the market place for attention.

(c) A growing awareness that spiritual authority is within and that to project it outward onto teacher, tradition or text is an early, adolescent phase of spiritual development in the one projecting, and counter-spiritual manipulative abuse in any guru/teacher who seeks to elicit, to appropriate and to sustain the projection.

(d) The emergence of peer to peer spirituality, which democratises charismatic, enlightened leadership, and realizes that it is a role which different persons assume at different times, either in the initiation of a peer group or in the continuous unfolding of its process.

The Fallacy of Non-dual Individualism

Wilber has given an account of human spirituality in terms of lines and levels of development (Wilber: 2000a, 2000b, 2002). Theses lines and levels become an incoherent tangle because of an untenable status afforded to the non-dual and the path of individual meditation. Let me explain.

The lines are relatively independent kinds of human development, and the levels are stages of development through which the lines proceed. So the different lines all go through the same levels. Wilber defines spirituality in five different ways, but two of them are key ones in his system: spirituality as the highest levels of any line, and spirituality as a separate line itself. He thinks these two definitions are mutually compatible components of his integral psychology.

But in the way that he deploys them, they lead to very serious difficulties. Wilber needs spirituality as a separate line, to explain how it is that people can be spiritually lop-sided. The various human lines he mentions include psychosexuality, socio-emotional capacity, communicative competence, creativity and many more. The independent spiritual line is primarily contemplative/meditative. Wilber acknowledges that someone can be highly developed on this line, that is, competent at subtle, causal and non-dual awareness and still be spiritually undeveloped in other crucial lines of development, including psychosexual, emotional or interpersonal skills?. This imbalance he characterizes as One Taste sufficiency that leaves schmucks as it finds them? (2000b: 131) One Taste refers to the non-dual state.

Wilber evaluates the non-dual state as the highest estate imaginable (2000b: 130). Yet at the same time he believes it can co-exist with a complete absence of spirituality at the top end of the interpersonal line and of other lines absolutely central to human development. This admission immediately dethrones the non-dual state from the supremacy he claims for it, and makes it appear as dissociated and quasi-pathological.

This dethroning also means that the highest estate imaginable is really the integration of all the different facets of human spirituality to be found at the top end of all the relatively independent lines. Furthermore, it cannot be the business of just one of those independent lines to define in advance by what stages all the other lines will reach their top ends. But Wilber tries to promote just that kind of business.

In his system, the separate contemplative line, which can become so dissociated from the development of other lines, is at the same time the sole source for deriving the higher transpersonal levels (psychic, subtle, causal, non-dual) through which all the other lines must proceed. But how can a contemplative line, which by definition is independent of the other lines, be a valid source for categories that prescribe the higher levels of these lines in which it has no competence? Indeed the relative independence, or dissociation, of the contemplative line calls in question the validity of the levels it claims to establish and whether indeed the levels are spiritual when they are the product of such a non-integral, separate line. The claims this line makes improperly and prematurely assume that the nature of the spiritual can finally be determined by the exercise of the skills of separatist contemplation, when the potential for developing spiritual skills on other relatively independent lines has not so far been fully explored by the human race.

Thus Wilber tries to argue that the basic categories for integrating all the lines in higher unfoldment have been uncovered on a single line that has no experience whatsoever of such multi-line integration. The way out of this tangle is gently and radically to propose that the contemplative line is not a spirituality line, that spirituality is not about states, however remarkable and extraordinary, that people get into by a lifetime of individual meditation.

Relational spirituality

A more convincing account of spirituality is that it is about multi-line integral development explored by persons in relation. This is because many basic developmental lines, e.g. those to do with gender, psychosexuality, emotional and interpersonal skills, communicative competence, morality, to name but a few, unfold through engagement with other people. A person cannot develop these lines on their own, but through mutual co-inquiry. The spirituality that is the highest development of these lines can only be achieved through relational forms of practice that unveil the spirituality implicit in them (Heron 1998, 2005).

In short, the spirituality of persons is developed and revealed primarily in their relations with other persons. If you regard spirituality primarily as the fruit of individual meditative attainment, then you can have the gross anomaly of a spiritual person who is an interpersonal oppressor, and the possibility of spiritual traditions that are oppression-prone (Heron, 1998; Kramer and Alstad, 1993; Trimondi and Trimondi, 2003). If you regard spirituality as centrally about liberating relations between people, then a new era of participative religion opens up and calls for a radical restructuring and reappraisal of traditional spiritual maps and routes.

Certainly there are important individualistic developmental lines that do not necessarily directly involve engagement with other people, such as contemplative development, and physical fitness. But these are secondary and supportive of those that do and are in turn enhanced by co-inquiry with others.

On this overall view, spirituality is located in the interpersonal heart of the human condition where people co-operate to explore meaning, build relationship and manifest creativity through collaborative action inquiry into multi-line integration and consummation. I propose one possible model of such collegially applied spirituality with at least eight distinguishing characteristics.

(1) It is developmentally holistic, involving diverse major lines of human development; the holism is both within each line and as between the lines. Prime value is put on relational lines, such as gender, psychosexuality, emotional and interpersonal skills, communicative competence, peer communion, morality, human ecology, supported by the individualistic, such as contemplative competence, physical fitness.

(2) It is psychosomatically holistic, embracing a fully embodied and vitalized expression of spirit. Spirituality is found not just at the top end of a developmental line, but also in the ground, the living root of its embodied form, in the relational heart of its current level of unfolding, and in the transcendent awareness embracing it.

(3) It is epistemologically holistic, embracing many ways of knowing: knowing by presence with, by intuiting significant form and process, by conceptualizing, by practising. Such holistic knowing is intrinsically dialogic, action- and inquiry-oriented. It is fulfilled in peer-to-peer participative inquiry, and the participation is both epistemic and political.

(4) It is ontologically holistic, open to the manifest as nature, culture and the subtle, and to spirit as immanent life, the situational present, and transcendent mind. It sees our relational, social process in this present situation as the immediate locus of the unfolding integration of immanent and transcendent spirit (Heron, 1998, 2004, 2005).

(5) It is focussed on worthwhile practical purposes that promote a flourishing humanity-cum-ecosystem; that is, it is rooted in an extended doctrine of rights with regard to social and ecological liberation.

(6) It embraces peer-to-peer relations and participatory forms of decision-making. The latter in particular can be seen as a radical discipline in relational spirituality, burning up a lot of the privatized ego.

(7) It honours the gradual emergence and development of peer-to-peer forms of association and practice.

(8) It affirms the role of both initiating hierarchy, and spontaneously surfacing and rotating hierarchy among the peers, in such emergence. More on this later on.

Memes Without a Relational-Spirituality Warrant

It is notable that Wilber’s account of levels has no clear place for relational forms of spiritual practice. His account of the green meme bypasses the depths of the sacred realm of the Between and superficially reduces the relational self to the worldview of pluralistic relativism (Ferrer, 2002: 223-5). His description of the yellow and turquoise memes is strong on systemic and holistic rhetoric about the interweaving of multiple levels, but is curiously devoid of any sense of interpersonal or political reality (Wilber, 2000a: 52).

Once it is grasped that the spirituality of persons is developed and revealed primarily in the spirituality of their relations with other persons, that as such it is a form of participative peer-to-peer inquiry, and that all this is a new religious dawn, without historical precedent, then it is reasonable to suppose that any authentic development of human spirituality in the future can only emerge within the light of this dawn. In other words, if a form of spirituality is not co-created and co-authenticated by those who practise it, it involves some kind of indoctrination, and is therefore, in this day and age, of questionable worth.

On this account, the whole meme system collapses, with its claim to portray an evolutionary logic. The green meme description is superficial, and is itself green in the sense of callow, inexperienced and immature, because it cannot grasp the depths and the challenge of relational spirituality. The yellow and turquoise memes, as described, simply have no warrant or grounding in any kind of relational spirituality, and read like the conceits of self-appointed philosopher-kings. The edifice is doomed to an early demise, which is just as well, since, given its radical omissions and distortions, its use is bound to be counter-productive.

Spiritual Leadership Within an Extended Doctrine of Rights

I prefer to think of the spiritual development of human culture as rooted in degrees of relational, moral insight and not in an evolutionary logic. Evolution as a concept seems best left to natural processes. Otherwise intellectual bids to know what evolution is up to and what is coming next culturally rapidly convert into hegemonic arrogance and attempts at social and intellectual control. The developing of the human spirit in cultural forms is a different category and is very close in my view to the way in which our realization of an extended doctrine of rights, in theory and practice, unfolds.

There seem to be at least four degrees of such unfolding:

(1) Autocratic cultures which define rights in a limited and oppressive way and there are no rights of political participation.

(2) Narrow democratic cultures which practise political participation through representation, but have no or very limited participation of people in decision-making in all other realms, such as research, religion, education, industry, etc.

(3) Wider democratic cultures that practice both political participation and varying degrees of wider kinds of participation.

(4) Commons peer-to-peer cultures in a libertarian and abundance-oriented global network with equipotential rights of participation in decision-making of everyone in every field of human endeavour, in relation to nature, culture, the subtle and the spiritual.

These four degrees could be stated in terms of the relations between hierarchy, co-operation and autonomy (deciding for others, deciding with others, deciding by oneself).

(1) Hierarchy defines, controls and constrains co-operation and autonomy.

(2) Hierarchy empowers a measure of co-operation and autonomy in the political sphere only.

(3) Hierarchy empowers a measure of co-operation and autonomy in the political sphere and in varying degrees in other spheres.

(4) The sole role of hierarchy is in its spontaneous emergence in (a) the initiation, and (b) the continuous flowering, of autonomy-in-co-operation, of spirit-in-manifestation, in all spheres of human endeavour.

To elaborate this last point: those who launch and empower co-operative groups of autonomous people take creative leadership initiatives. Charismatic empowering leadership of this kind is fundamental. Once the groups are up and running, charisma devolves and rotates: developmental initiatives are taken spontaneously by different peers at different times, and with respect to varying issues, in order further to enhance the flourishing of autonomy and co-operation within the group, within networks of groups, within the parity of spirit (Heron, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2005).

References

Ferrer, J. N. (2002) Revisioning Transpersonal Psychology: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality, Albany: State University of New York Press.

Heron, J. (1997) ‘A Self-generating Practitioner Community’ in R. House and N. Totton (Eds,), Implausible Professions: Arguments for Pluralism and Autonomy in Psychotherapy and Counselling, Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.

Heron, J. (1998) Sacred Science: Person-centred Inquiry into the Spiritual and the Subtle, Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books.

Heron, J. (1999) The Complete Facilitator’s Handbook, London: Kogan Page.

Heron, J, (2004) A Revisionary Perspective on Human Spirituality, www.human-inquiry.com/thoughts.htm

Heron, J, (2005) Papers on the Inquiry Group, www.human-inquiry.com/igroup0.htm

Kramer, J. and Alstad, D. (1993) The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power, Berkeley: Frog Ltd.

Trimondi, V. and Trimondi, V. (2003) The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, http://www.trimondi.de

Wilber, K. (2000a) Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy, Boston: Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (2000b) One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality, Boston: Shambhala.

Wilber, K. (2002) An outline of integral psychology, Shambhala website.

John Heron can be reached at jnheron@ihug.co.nz