Totally agree. Ryan and I tried to supplement some of that in our most recent Inhabit episode, which will hopefully be posted soon! (The raw version is still up on our YouTube, I think.)
@corey-devos @LaWanna
Linking Babel with the concept of social media got me to thinking about a possible different interpretation of the story of Babel. Perhaps it wasn’t everyone who no longer understood each other - just the ruling elite who did not understand the masses anymore.
Let’s see - they built the tower to reach to the heavens and speak to God. We usually interpret this in our own absurd superiority to mean that they literally wanted to build high enough into the sky to touch the clouds where God lived in his castle. Haha, stupid people lived 5,000 years ago. We are so much smarter now.
What if, instead - it was a building to speak spiritually with God and reach God’s Kingdom not in a physical way, but emotionally and spiritually? And what if they succeeded - and of course then the ruling class and existing Literal Mythic religious leaders could no longer understand them? And, what if the Tower of Babel was not destroyed by the builders, but by some ancient version of Republicans and Democrats who were thrown into existential chaos by the ideas being brought forth by these people who had talked to God and reached God’s kingdom?
Now, back to the 21st century. People were stupid in the 20th century as well. This kind of “Our generation was smarter” is a pretty big problem - especially coming from baby Boomers, who screwed up the entire planet. (The Author was born in 1963, but his ideas in this area are more Boomer than Gen X. There is a split between those comfortable with tech and those uncomfortable with it. That division is maybe 50/50 in Gen X, but 100% of Boomers are uncomfortable with technology, which is the main theme of the article.)
The 1980’s were unbelievably stupid and that stupidity was only surpassed by the 1970’s.
So back to Babel - the people speaking this new language of enlightenment were not understood by the storytellers of the book of Genesis. Maybe the Babelites were discussing AQAL in 6,000 bc - who knows? But the only way the Genesis storytellers understood it was the Babelites were speaking gibberish and God did it to them. So the Genesis storytellers burned babel to the ground and said “God did it”.
Likewise, forward to 2021 - people do not understand the apparent Chaos of social media. They want to control what people say and how they say it - unless it’s them, then they want to say anything even if it’s dangerous or incites violence. So now they are lighting torches to burn down Zuckerberg’s servers and, of course as we look back 20 years from now from our cave just outside the nuclear fallout zone, we will spin the tale for our cute little mutant children of how the Evil Zuckerbergites were destroyed by God.
Another Language Translator survey. Yes, the Like button has enabled monetization of microsegmentation , thereby reinforcing differences.
Note that the Progressive Left are more fringe than any other group. Most island like in ideology, which seemingly fits with what many say about DNC being “Hijacked by radicals”.
Stark differences among typology groups on U.S. global standing. When asked whether the U.S. is superior to all other countries, it is among the greatest countries, or there are other countries that are better, there is relative agreement across six of nine typology groups: About half or more in this very ideologically mixed set of groups – including Establishment Liberals and Populist Right – say the U.S. is among the greatest countries in the world. Faith and Flag Conservatives are the only group in which a majority (69%) says the U.S. stands above all other countries. Conversely, Progressive Left (75%) and Outsider Left (63%) are the only typology groups in which majorities say there are other countries better than the U.S.
Haidt seems to disagree with your hypothesis, and offers what I think is a far more accurate and balanced assessment:
“The stupefying process plays out differently on the right and the left because their activist wings subscribe to different narratives with different sacred values. The “Hidden Tribes” study tells us that the “devoted conservatives” score highest on beliefs related to authoritarianism. They share a narrative in which America is eternally under threat from enemies outside and subversives within; they see life as a battle between patriots and traitors. According to the political scientist Karen Stenner, whose work the “Hidden Tribes” study drew upon, they are psychologically different from the larger group of “traditional conservatives” (19 percent of the population), who emphasize order, decorum, and slow rather than radical change.
Only within the devoted conservatives’ narratives do Donald Trump’s speeches make sense, from his campaign’s ominous opening diatribe about Mexican “rapists” to his warning on January 6, 2021: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The traditional punishment for treason is death, hence the battle cry on January 6: “Hang Mike Pence.” Right-wing death threats, many delivered by anonymous accounts, are proving effective in cowing traditional conservatives, for example in driving out local election officials who failed to “stop the steal.” The wave of threats delivered to dissenting Republican members of Congress has similarly pushed many of the remaining moderates to quit or go silent, giving us a party ever more divorced from the conservative tradition, constitutional responsibility, and reality. We now have a Republican Party that describes a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol as “legitimate political discourse,” supported—or at least not contradicted—by an array of right-wing think tanks and media organizations.
The stupidity on the right is most visible in the many conspiracy theories spreading across right-wing media and now into Congress. “Pizzagate,” QAnon, the belief that vaccines contain microchips, the conviction that Donald Trump won reelection—it’s hard to imagine any of these ideas or belief systems reaching the levels that they have without Facebook and Twitter.
The Democrats have also been hit hard by structural stupidity, though in a different way. In the Democratic Party, the struggle between the progressive wing and the more moderate factions is open and ongoing, and often the moderates win. The problem is that the left controls the commanding heights of the culture: universities, news organizations, Hollywood, art museums, advertising, much of Silicon Valley, and the teachers’ unions and teaching colleges that shape K–12 education. And in many of those institutions, dissent has been stifled: When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.
Liberals in the late 20th century shared a belief that the sociologist Christian Smith called the “liberal progress” narrative, in which America used to be horrifically unjust and repressive, but, thanks to the struggles of activists and heroes, has made (and continues to make) progress toward realizing the noble promise of its founding. This story easily supports liberal patriotism, and it was the animating narrative of Barack Obama’s presidency. It is also the view of the “traditional liberals” in the “Hidden Tribes” study (11 percent of the population), who have strong humanitarian values, are older than average, and are largely the people leading America’s cultural and intellectual institutions.”
Just looking at the survey results scatter plot. Also agree usually with most of Haidt’s observations.
Over time we will reach clarity on using the term “Liberal”. By any classic definition the avant gard or Progressive Left is clearly anti-Liberal.
Thats a truckload of Haidt quoting… Do you consider Haidt a particularly Integral thinker?
All from the article I shared above, which I think was absolutely fantastic, and again, resonates so much with many of my own observations over the years.
Is he a “particularly integral thinker”? I don’t know, Ken seems to think he is, more or less. I’d say he is likely demonstrating teal cognition, yes, even though I’m not sure how familiar he is with any of Ken’s work (which is not a prerequisite for teal cognition, of course, it’s just the best map for that territory, in my view.) He appears to be capable of criticizing green from a post-green position, rather than from a pre-green position, which is always a good sign of integral thinking.
Ken does have some criticisms about some of Haidt’s popular work, however, such as his “moral foundations” including some facets of morality that are particularly important to the amber stage — which means that, ironically, scoring higher in these lines often signifies lower overall vertical moral development. Which isn’t to say that is a bad thing — I love me some healthy amber moral foundations! — but does skew many interpretations of the data. It appears to me that Haidt is enacting more of a “horizontal” model of morality, consisting of moral expressions that are each correlated with a particular stage, rather than a vertical/developmental model with lines that each grow through multiple stages.
So, while I think Ken’s work could probably uplevel some of Haidt’s thinking, his work is still tremendously valuable (especially if we do our own work to synthesize it with AQAL), and demonstrative of more people naturally finding their way into teal/turquoise territories, regardless of the maps they are using to navigate the space.
West’s War on the West
It’s like a fixation to take a spray can to Da Vinci’s Last Supper, paint remover to a Rothko, flame thrower to Notre Dame Cathedral, or converting a Stradivarius into a rap synth box.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/04/24/the_wests_war_on_the_west_147515.html
Do you actually believe this or is this just a Woke/Counter-Woke game?
Are you implying that this isn’t the case?
What’s your perception?
In our school all of this is very positive for the kids. In k-6 it was a lot of inclusion of histories and accomplishments of Black, Hispanic, Native American, women, as well as teaching of white men, no one hates them, most kids have them for dads. Just more was included. Starting in 6th grade there was more focus on injustices and LGBTQ issues, but from a how do we move forward stance, so here was the history including current issues, then projects around how to move forward with a more inclusive and fair-minded look. How do we do this better?
I really don’t get the hysteria around it. The results I see compared to when I was in school is the kids trust the school, they trust their teachers. Kids are not stupid. They are rebuilding faith in institutions. It just seems like a win-win. Not that there isn’t a discussion to be had on how to address “white-guilt” better, but I also see the much vilified SEL curriculums so helpful. I really don’t get what conservatives are so panicked about other than disinformation.
Do you think the progressives are working to implement their vision, their agendas within our State institutions?
Should we change our governing structures from having elected legislators (law makers) and elected administrators (president, governors) set direction and guidelines for our non-elected State/Federal institutions, with the Judiciary ruling on areas of ambiguity and contention?
Posted above is a link to John Anderson’s channel with a recommendation for his less than 10 minute discussion on Collectivism vs Liberty. In the simplest form, it’s about this simple.
- Left - Individuals are granted rights by the state
- Right - State is granted it’s power by individual citizenry
I don’t think attacking awesome curriculum that will help empower children to resist progressive nonsense is helping the cause. The lump A or lump B approach is dumb. It’s just exhausting, confusing and it tearing the country to shreds. Paranoia over right or left extremism is pointless.
Perhaps if we shared our specific paranoia’s. Would this enable perhaps enfolding views?
Collectivism vs Liberty. In the simplest form, it’s about this simple.
- Left - Individuals are granted rights by the state
- Right - State is granted it’s power by individual citizenry
I personally think this is a very low resolution take, and falls apart almost immediately after taking a closer look.
If we want to imagine a simple polarity between “liberty” and “collectivism”, we can clearly see that there are versions of this on both the right and the left. As Haidt says above, “the devoted conservatives score highest on beliefs related to authoritarianism”. In other words, there are both auth-right tribes, and lib-right tribes. Just as there are auth-left tribes, and lib-left tribes. Which gives rise to the infamous “political compass” memes that we see so often on the web.
But even that simple political compass doesn’t really hold up, because really we would need to establish a different compass for every stage of development, and stack all of those on top of each other. Which means that terms like “liberty” and “collectivism” look different from stage to stage. For example, auth-left can look like Stalin at the Amber stage, can look neoliberal or technocratic at the orange stage, and can look like environmentalism at the green level. (Which is why I think “individual and collective”, or maybe even “agency and communion”, are much better stage-neutral terms to use for this sort of compass, rather than “liberty vs. authoritarianism”.)
I can certainly notice how my compass changes from stage to stage. If I am playing poker with a group of red people, I am a dictator. If I am playing poker with a group of turquoise people, I am an anarchist.
And then there’s the question of scale — what level of governing are we talking about? Many conservatives, for example, are “lib-right” when it comes to the federal level, but “auth-right” when it comes to the state level. Which basically means they want states to have the freedom to be as authoritarian as they want to be. And many progressives are “lib-left” when it comes to the state level, but “auth-left” on the national level — meaning they want states to have the freedom to experiment within the “laboratory of democracy”, but want the federal government to craft policy that addresses issues that are beyond any individual state’s ability to solve (climate change, unsustainable wealth inequality, etc.)
And this can look different from quadrant to quadrant. For example, I often say that I want more healthy conservative guardrails when it comes to culture in the LL quadrant, and far more progressive policies when it comes to political and economic systems in the LR.
And of course, all of these are simply tendencies. Western society clearly exists within an ongoing creative tension between these kinds of polarities. I think it’s probably fairly obvious from an integral point of view that having an absolutistic preference for one pole over the other only brings our civilization further out of balance, whether it’s hyper-individualism vs. hyper-collectivism, hyper-interiorism vs. hyper-exteriorism, hyper-differentiation vs. hyper-integration, etc.
Again, we can look at civil rights, which did not exist until progressives reconfigured the state to expand and defend our extant notion of “rights” and “liberty”. Which then had to be implemented and enforced from a federal, “authoritarian”, top-down direction. (And it was decades of this top-down enforcement that allows us to say things today like “it’s a settled issue”, because as I’ve said, if “parents rights” were a thing in the 1950s and 60s, we never would have desegregated our schools across the country.)
So was civil rights “liberty” based, or “collectivism” based? Kinda both, really — it was a bottom-up expansion of liberty, which needs to be enforced from the top-down by the collective.
What about, say, environmentalism? Is that liberty-based, or collectivism-based? Once again, kinda both. I should have the liberty to enjoy clean air and water, healthy biodiversity, and a stable climate. But that liberty requires collective action, cooperation, and enforcement.
I think it can be helpful to think of the critical polarities in our politics, and how those polarities shift from one stage to the next, and at different scales of cooperative self-organization. But that’s all the more reason why I think it’s kind of silly for any integral-informed person to choose any single pole, and especially to wrap an entire political identity around it.
Echoing Haidt above, history has a direction — and that direction is toward increasing cooperation. I’d also add that it is simultaneously toward increasing agency. The hope is, we can incrementally shift our society toward more sustainable, more integral systems that can leverage both. Which is the entire premise behind something like the “social contract”, of course — that every right of the individual is accompanied by a critical responsibility to the collective.
And I see this as one of our central problems — our contemporary notion of the “individual”, which first emerged within a shared perception of the world as a nearly infinite frontier with infinite resources to be extracted, really has not evolved a whole lot over the generations. How can we retain the dignities of individualism, while simultaneously recognizing that our planet is not an open system with infinite resources to be endlessly exploited, but a closed system with finite resources that requires cooperation at a massive scale in order to sustain? If we can figure that out — how to both empower the individual, while encouraging more sustainable self-organization on a massive scale, in order to bring the greatest depth to the greatest scale — we will have unlocked some critical wisdom for future generations.
And really, the “individual” is itself a bit of a mirage. As Ken likes to say, there is no individual anywhere in the kosmos that is not simultaneously part of a collective. And what appears to be an “individual” at one scale, is seen to be anything but at another scale. Even my own body — the very seat of my own sense of “being an individual”, is only 50% “me” from a genetic point of view. What I call my “individual self” is actually an entire cooperative eco-system of “me” and “not me”. Just another product of history’s relentless march toward greater cooperation at greater scales — a rich ecology of individual and collective action at every stage of evolutionary unfolding. The more we can base our political self-organization on the natural patterns of self-organization we see everywhere else, the better we will be, I think. And as far as I am concerned, integral does a better job of helping us recognize and identify those patterns than any other model.
I think the both the left and the right fear the other wants total control over everyone and everything. They just differ in what they want to control and are in denial about these same processes in themselves. Corey is better at articulating all the toxicity, it just exhausts me.
It’s like the article I commented on. It is such an exaggerated take on curriculums that focus on owning your mistakes, learning from them, and making better choices. My fear is these exaggerations prevent healthy dialogue, my paranoia is we will elect people believing and then acting from this exaggerated state and all progress will be reversed. I see this exaggeration in both right and left directions, but I fear the rights more…by a hair, because from what I know of people around me, the right believes these exaggerations more…by a hair.
You had me with “falls apart immediately”. 
But at least you’re consistent. Every argument you make is in support of:
So much for “enfolding” pretty much nothing at all you don’t already agree with.
I pulled the Civil Rights Act vote records to double check your “progressives rock” narrative. Yes, progressives rock!
You do realize the majority of No votes were Democrats?
You do realize the majority of Republicans were Yes votes? Should we consider Republicans as progressives?
And what on earth does this “why I say, back in the day…” have to do with anything today?
Is arguing for all the credit really the game for Far Left Progressives?
The whole problem with the Progressive / Conservative terminology is that these words describe groups in the 1960’s. Society has changed but unfortunately people still using these words either are not clever enough to come up with new words to describe our current society or just don’t care and just want to keep the same fight going from 50 years ago even though it is irrelevant today.
The problem with the idea that “the state is granted rights by the citizenry” is when elections are won through all these lies and exaggerations, right and left, the citizenry isn’t making choices based on what they want but from what they fear most. This is why, both right and left, they just get into office and make what they think their base wants happen. But, who the hell knows because the actual conversation never really happened, except at best, in a bubble.
“Republican and Democrat” =/= “progressive and conservative” 
“Should we consider Republicans as progressives?”
Of the time? Absolutely we should. Let’s take a look at a map of yes/no by state:
Interesting, it looks like the same states that are often associated with waving the confederate flag to this day, were also against civil rights back then. Shocking!
Progressives of the day won women the vote, progressives of another day won civil rights for minorities, progressives of another day won marriage rights for gays. Dems the facts!
And what on earth does this “why I say, back in the day…” have to do with anything today?
Well, just a few days ago, in this very thread, we were talking about “parents’ rights” as it pertains to prohibiting teachers from saying the word “gay”. And in this same thread, I mentioned that “parents’ rights” would have prevented desegregation of schools back then, and you said “that doesn’t matter, it’s a settled issue now.”
So basically, what I am saying, is that 50 years from now, the existence of gay people (and our right to acknowledge their existence in our schools!) will, with any hope, also be a “settled issue”. Sorta like an analogy.
But at least you’re consistent. Every argument you make is in support of: Left - Individuals are granted rights by the state
Wait, really? That’s all you got out of all those paragraphs?
What I actually did was a) disprove your statement that “the left is x, the right is y”, and then b) explain exactly why both directions are necessary in any thriving society. I mean, that’s the definition of enfoldment, isn’t it?
You offered a low resolution and binary “libs be like this, cons be like that” — which, yes, falls apart as soon as we apply that frame to the actual political tribes that are active in this country today.