Alan Kazlev continues his exploration of an alternative formulation of Integral Theory, and in the sixth part, he inquires whether there can be forms of Integral Practice which do not reflect a continuing narcissic concern with one own’s state of consciousness, to the detriment of a participatory social practice that engages with the Other.
Read his essay for an elaborate answer to this question.
However, he also makes a direct reference to the trend towards participatory and distributed spirituality, which I’m excerpting here:
Excerpt:
“A shift from centralised authoritarian hierarchies to a distributed, participatory society and spirituality The rise of global networking and the information society is the greatest threat that authoritarian centralised power structures and social hierarchies face today. In the past, and still to some extent now, power was and is controlled by the Ruler, the State, the Church, the Mass Media, the Commercial World, and so on. It is not so much democracy in the West (which is too often the choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum) but the sharing of information through the distributed network or “global brain” that is the Internet, that has made this possible.
The reason I include this tendency in the Integral phenomenon is because the Integral has to also include the contributions of society, and ultimately of all sentient beings. Here I am not talking intellectually about Wilber’s lower two quadrants, I mean the actual participation of all these elements. This strongly anti-authoritarian trend and participatory spirituality that is very different from the centralised, elitist, authoritarian nature of society in the past and still today, for example in Wilber’s Integral movement [5]. Hence we have the development of the participatory spirituality of John Heron and Jorge Ferrer, and the Peer-to-peer networking (using peer-to-peer internet technology) in all elements of society has been suggested by Michel Bauwens as a new emerging integral phenomenon. Bauwens was actually involved in Wilber’s Integral Institute, and is still included in the list of the Institute’s Founding Members [6] but was concerned about cultic elements and now is in important independent voice (post-Wilberian) in the Integral movement [7]. The alterglobalisation movement and activist reforming of current injustices are also elements involved in the necessary imbalance of the current situation. While not integral in themselves, (because they only constitute a particular point of view) they are a necessary balance and counterweight (antithesis to the centralised “patriarchal” status quo) if a holistic society is to emerge.
Interestingly, the Wilberian Integral Movement has a very different attitude to this sort of pluralism. Both Wilber and his co-worker Don Beck present the egalitarian, ecological, alternative lifestyle movement and New Age sensu lato [8] in terms of what they call the “Mean Green Meme”, essentially, an obstacle to higher evolution. Although according to Wilber it is only the green meme’s excesses that are an obstacle; not the green meme itself (which is a necessary evolutionary stage), in the process of criticising the extreme Green Meme, Wilber seems (even though this is obviously not his intention) to be attacking Green as a whole; for example his highly critical attitude to ecophilosophy and ecospirituality. With all the best intentions Wilber wrote his postmodern novel Boomeritis in the hope of defeating the “Baby Boomer” way of thinking. This was for the purpose of encouraging all those who still hold to the “lower tier” Green level to progress to his own position, defined as “Turquoise”.
Unfortunately, such green meme bashing unwittingly plays into the hands of reactionary conservatism [9], the very principles of religious fundamentalism and nationalistic empire building that Wilber correctly sees as detrimental an obsolete in today’s world. More troubling is the increasing tendency, within the Wilberian movement, of calling someone “Green” seems to be a blanket rebuke directed at anyone who criticises Wilber’s Integral theory, or provides an alternative vision [10]. This is part and parcel of the whole exclusivist cultic attitude that the Wilberian movement and Wilber himself display. Lately this exclusivism has become very public, as indicated by Wilber’s narcissistic “Wyatt Earp” blog posts and follow-ups, which constitute a sort of religious and absolute hierarchical approach within the orthodox Wilberian movement that Wilber in his earlier books would have abhored [11]. I cannot but help think that with all this authoritarianism, intolerance (to “green”) and inability to cope with criticism, the central Wilberian movement (Integral Institute etc) is even using its own spiral dynamics system of analysis, not so much “upper tier” (inclusive and multi-perspective) as “lower tier” (intolerant and one dimensional), and specifically “blue vMEME” (religious worship and fundamentalism), with traces of development to “orange vMEME” (science and secularism) represented by Wilber’s current leaning towards crypto-physicalism.”
References
[5] On Wilber’s own attitude of argument from his own personal authority, rather than encouraging questioning of ideas or independent inquiry, see Mathew Dallman’s blog comment “Wilber, Evolution, and Arguments from authority” (Friday, May 27, 2005) at http://www.matthewdallman.com/2005/05/wilber-evolution-and-arguments-from.html . For cultic tendencies within the Wilberian movement, see Michel Bauwens http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/Cult_of_Ken_Wilber.html . On comments by disillusioned insiders and ex-insiders (along with other, more worshipful comments) see Frank Visser’s Wilber Watch blog http://wilberwatch.blogspot.com/
[6] http://www.integralinstitute.org/public/static/abthistory.aspx
[7] Wikipedia biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Bauwens Criticism of Wilber and Integral Institute http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/Cult_of_Ken_Wilber.html and related essays and blog posts,
[8] Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture, ch.5, and 12
[9] See Ray Harris, Left, Right or just plain wrong? http://www.integralworld.net/harris14.html which includes a critique of the naivety of the current Integral Movement towards the political conservatism (Blue and Orange in Spiral Dynamic lingo) that currently dominates the world stage. This indicates the essentially reactionary nature inherent in current Integral thinking
[10] Thus one Wilberite dismisses Michel Bauwen’s essay P2P and Human Evolution as “a typical example of Green vMemetic view.” For the background, and a response to these and other claims, including a criticism of the Wilber and Beck Integral Spiral Dynamics, and their Mean Green Meme theme (try saying that really fast twenty times!) see Michel Bauwens, A Critique of Wilber and Beck’s SD-Integral, Pluralities/Integration no. 61: March 23, 2005 http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/SDi_critique.html And as Frank Visser observes
“How often does it not happen that critics are discredited, or, for whatever reason disqualified to comment on Wilber’s works? (“Misrepresentation” being the most common complaint. Being “green”, mean or not, ending as second best…)”
Talking Back To Wilber – A Call for Validation – http://www.integralworld.net/visser9.html
Wilber himself says about critic Jorge Ferrer that, although “Jorge is one of the nicest, dearest souls you could ever meet…the view he is representing is basically a green-meme view of psychology and spirituality.” Quoted by Daryl Paulson in “Daryl Paulson on Jorge Ferrer”. (book review of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory). http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/watch/ferrer/index.cfm/ Whereas Wilber is at least nice, Paulson on that page presents a very critical review of Ferrer’s work. Interestingly, several years later, Paulson would revise his opinion of Ferrer’s book. As he says in his Amazon review for the book, dated December 1, 2003
“When I first read this book I hated it, but I have read and studied it for 2 years and find it one of the best books ever written on transpersonal psychology…You may not agree with everything he states, but is a very significant book for those who question their own beliefs. A must read.”
More recently, Wilber has labelled Krishnamurti as Green, see discussion on Open Integral regarding this http://www.openintegral.net/blog/?p=71
[11] See quotes from Wilber’s earlier writings regarding cultism and narcissism at Chamberlain “Sorry, it’s just over your head – Wilber’s response to recent criticism” http://www.integralworld.net/overyourhead.html
A comment by Kris Roose on the full essay, not just referring to the above excerpts:
“As I understand (and I checked my interpretation with Max Wildiers, a friend of Teilhard and the supervisor of the Dutch translarions of Teilhard’s works. Wildiers was also professor of comparative theology at the University of Berkely) Teilhard’s theories, he discerns 9 levels in the kosmic evolution, which he groupoed in (1) lithosphere, the stage of dead matter, grouping levels 1 to 5, (2) biosphere, the stage of living matter with the exception of man, grouping levels 6 to 8, and (3) noosphere, the stage of conscious thinking, level 9, starting with man. This 9th stage is also called socialization.
So the particles, atoms and hydrosphere (whichever this is) belong to the lithosphere. On the other hand, the spiritual and the theological are the most important parts of the noosphere, as is the Omega Point.
In fact, Teilhard only described 6 levels, because at his time (around 1940-1950) levels 1,2 and 6 were not yet dicovered. He saw level 6 as part of level 7 (it is Margulis who discovered the eobionts), and included levels 1 (superstrings) and 2 (quarks) into level 3 (the particles). The addition of these three stages, by Wildiers, only confirms and completes Teilhard’s theories.
Furthermore, Teilhard included the spiritual and the divine in the noosphere. If one discerns 4 stages in human philosphical thinking, magic, mythic, rational and post-rational, concepts as spiritual and divine, supposing another substance than matter, are magic and mythic. In the postrational view, thoughts and cultural phenomena are considered as the software of intelligent hardware, not as a separate, second, immaterial substance. So I contest the Wilber-style scheme where one tries to coerce Teilhardian concepts into a mythical scheme.
I see another problem with Aurobindo’s supermind, analogous to Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and the Global Brain concept. These theories consider human mind as one of the stages in the development of consciousness and the noosphere, whereas Teilhard very explicitely insists on the fact that human individual intelligence has to be considered as the last stage. There will be a Global Mind, each of us thinking the same superior way, but no global brain, with our brains as a kind of braincells building up a superior brain. This is another reason not to put Teilhard in the Wilber-Lovelock scheme.”
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