There is continuous and remarkable movement at Frank Visser’s Integral World site, which hosts critical discussions on integral philosophy, as developed by Ken Wilber.

One of the essays which caught my attention recently, is an alternative attempt by Jim O’Connor. What is innovative in his approach is that he attempts to integrate into integral theory, the critiques of Wilber (such as the one by Andy Smith in particular), but, this is of interest for P2P Theory, the insights of scale-free network theory as well. Jim makes the strong claim, of which I’m not convinced at this moment, that the organic-integrative model is an alternative to the structural-hierarchical evolution model proposed by Wilber. In other words, that a non-repressive form of evolution is possible, and that this model does not follow many characteristics described by Wilber.

Here a short presentation of the ideas, and in a next posting, a copy of our email dialogue.

First, Jim summarizes the classic Wilberian view:

Individual psychological development can be characterised as a process of increasing psychic differentiation whereby cognition gradually learns to separate objects previously thought to be identical. At the archaic stage cognition is completely adual, and all objects exist in a state of fusion. At later primary-process stages many objects are still undifferentiated, with identification taking place according to the aforementioned predicate identity, contiguity and the part/whole relation. Development into the secondary process continues this trend of separating objects and so secondary-process cognition can be seen as a more finely differentiated version of the primary process.
Each stage of psychological development gives rise to a particular type of logic.

He then argues that there is a remarkable resonance between the characteristics of the integrated personality, the centaur, and the characteristics of distributed networks:

“The inner world of the centaur is organised as a network of aesthetic resonances in which A=B to the extent that the statement A=B is meaningful to a centauric individual. An artefact such as a communication, an artwork or a theory, is true to the same extent that it imparts meaning. Therefore, there is a direct relationship between truth, meaning and information.

The structure of the integral society mirrors the internal structure of the centaur and is not ordered hierarchically, but as either a pure or “weighted” heterarchy. From the work done on scale-free networks it follows that this corresponds to a society that is based around an equable distribution of power and resources (ie. nodes only) rather than one based around centralisation (ie. hubs and nodes).”

Please note this remarkable congruency between the peer to peer model, and how it is a vehicle for the self-expression, meaning-making, and sharing needs of the centauric personality type. I agree that this is precisely the psychological potential of peer to peer modes of human interaction and infrastructure.

Then he makes the strong claim I talked about; that there is another non-repressive path to development. A direct shortcut to the peer to peer mode?

“The Wilber/Beck model holds that development proceeds by a dynamic of “transcend and include” in which previous stages of development continue to exist as basic structures embedded within subsequent stages. Michael Washburn has termed this the “structural-hierarchical” model and has written extensively about the repression inherent within this type of development, the dynamic of which also forms the first half of his own model.

In contrast, I believe there exists another path of development that I will term the “organic-integrative” model, in which there is no repression. In an organic-integrative society individual development proceeds in a direct line from the endocept to the vision-image without introducing hierarchical psychological structures at any point. The endocept can be seen as a rudimentary form of the vision-image (see Arieti), which then undergoes progressive complexification, resulting eventually in its higher-order version.

In organic-integrative development there is no progression from body through emotion to cognition. The archaic stage is a rudimentary centaur, which therefore integrates all these in its own, lower-order, way. Development proceeds in an organic fashion through the progressive complexification of this structure until it reaches the mature centaur. At no point is there an id-ego-superego tripartite structure. As shown on diagram 1, each stage on the organic-integrative path is centauric, with later stages being more complex and differentiated than earlier ones. In Jungian terminology, each organic-integrative stage is structured as the Self. In terms of Andy Smith’s one-scale model, each organic-integrative stage is structured as an autonmous holon.”

What then are the consequences of this for political and social change?

” Each step further up the structural-hierarchical path puts a further layer of repression in place and renders a healing regression less likely to occur. The apotheosis of this process is the aperspectival stage (or Green vMeme in SD terminology). Aperspectival cognition is not “early vision-logic”, as Wilber terms it, but is more correctly termed “flatland vision-logic” and is the furthest away from the organic-integrative path that it is possible to be. Development along the structural-hierarchical path pushes awareness into increasingly more cognitively-biased, flatland versions of the true stages. In the model presented here the spiritual stages do not exist further along the structural-hierarchical path as they do in Wilber’s schema.

In parallel with the movement toward more flatland worldviews, development along the structural-hierarchical path also pushes the regulatory structures of any society into increasingly more externalised forms. This means that individuals become increasingly regulated by legislation, state machinery and governmental structures rather than being regulated internally by centauric responsibility as they are in organic-integrative societies.

The collective equivalent of the aperspectival stage is the world government structure. The emergence of a world government, therefore, would not be a step toward the integral, but a step further away. In this model the aperspectival stage is seen as being a developmental dead-end.

The healthy, organic-integrative version of each collective stage of development is a decentralised yet tightly integrated, self-regulating and participatory society, populated by more or less developed centaurs, all engaging in meaningful communication with one-another. In terms of the one-scale model this corresponds to a collective holon that has an autonomous structure, rather than the intermediate structure exhibited by structural-hierarchical societies.“My main problem with this approach, however interesting I find to be its formulation, is that I see no evidence of such organic-integrative path in contemporary society. But rather, centauric-stage personhood is a segment of contemporary sociology. But it is certainly their value system which has driven the design and adoption of peer to peer like human and technological systems.

I urge you to read this stimulating essay by yourself. The next posting is a copy of an email exchange I had with the author.