Integral Crisis Response Team

Town Square
63

You’re presenting this as a binary issue, @raybennett.

No one in this thread has said they are against providing free water for everyone, public toilets and public showers, comfortable benches and allowing people to camp, sleep and park where they want to. Everyone in this thread has been suggesting humane solutions, and providing free water for everyone, public toilets and public showers, comfortable benches and allowing people to camp, sleep and park where they want to are also humane solutions.

Ask people whether they agree with these additional solutions rather than assuming they don’t.

In the UK, we already have public toilets everywhere and free drinking water in many places, as well as comfortable places to sit and sleep. Sleeping in campervans is often an issue though.

I agree that of course there are many different homeless people and different solutions are needed for different people.

No one in this thread has said removing water and toilet facilities, and forcing people to move is a solution to helping homeless people; no one in this thread has said removing water and toilet facilities, and forcing people to move is a ‘solution’ of any kind, or that a ‘solution’ to homelessness is removing homeless people from the public eye.

No one in this thread has said they disagree with homeless people living outdoors/in public spaces if they want to.

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64

Another aspect, which is vital, is that safe accommodation is needed for homeless females and homeless trans people - e.g. if shared accommodation, separate accommodation for: the different sexes and gender identities; families; and people wanting to be in mixed accommodation.

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@MattMazz, you sure know how to start a thread!

So given the Borgen Project list (or the metacrisis … or the polycrisis … or however you wish to define many interlocking global problems), what to do? Here is my recommended short list:

  1. self-care. Basic food, clothing, shelter, etc. Whatever you need to feel nurtured and stable on a personal level.

  2. work on what is right in front of you.

  3. when you run into barriers, or treadmills, use systems thinking to figure out the root causes that are frustrating your efforts.

  4. redirect your efforts toward the root causes.

  5. cycle back through 2) though 4)

Quite a few cycles of this should lead you to a view of the world along the lines of AQAL and other Integral schemas. Your notions about root causes should be getting more refined along the way. Then you can work on what you can work on, trusting that results on that level will bear fruit on other issues down the road.

For me, education has become job #1. More precisely, education that helps people sort out extreme complexity. Threads like this are helpful for that.

68

Umm … I actually did ask questions and was asking for agree or disagree.

Your response is kind of mind boggling to the point I have no idea if you read what you quoted me as saying, because I clearly asked questions if people agree or disagree.

Thus the problem with “Integral”, or the idea of an “Integral Response Team” - getting back to @Sidra 's request we remain on topic.

There is a joke in here somewhere about “How many Integralists does it take to answer a simple question.”

My conclusion is that there is absolutely no way Integralists can even support a simple position without endlessly diverting into circular discussions.

So @MattMazz my conclusion is the idea that Integralists could actually solve problems in crisis situations seems to me absurd at this point.

Analysis paralysis seems to be the most likely result.

69

Yes … and … this problem exists beyond the bounds of integral also. The Big Theory world in general seems better at talk than action. That said, there are a few of us with action figure vibes who actually do things. (If anyone wants to hear about my personal project portfolio, please DM me.) OK, so why integral? Because at least integral respects the contours of what any global solution needs to look like. It has enough raw dimensions. Fleshing it all out … making it operational in specific situations … aligning it and informing it with contrasting perspectives … takes work. But it beats the hell out of Netflix, which is my only other serious alternative on this rainy December weekend.

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70

I’m not sure there is total “analysis paralysis” when it comes to governments helping the homeless. In addition to Houston’s efforts, whether those efforts are palatable to all of us or not, L.A. has taken some steps towards assisting its 46,000 unhoused people, most of whom were in encampments and are now in “interim housing.” Granted, while the motivation behind it may be partly or mostly political (to assuage the concerns of neighborhoods and businesses), we might also give humanitarian concerns as motivation a little benefit of the doubt–I don’t think we can write off every public official or every citizen as uncaring or inhumane or hateful towards the homeless. I tried to post the article from the L.A. Times here, but for some reason, (an embedded graphic, I believe), it wouldn’t post. But if you’re interested in reading it, it is titled: “Column: Is L.A. actually solving homelessness? The answer will start with perception, not reality.”

The article hits upon, however briefly or shallowly, homelessness as a societal failure, a housing problem, a humanitarian concern, and a trash/fire/sanitation concern, while acknowledging people’s discomfort and impatience with the homeless, particularly their encampments, as well as the violence that is directed towards homeless individuals.

I will be the ‘meanie’ here who states that there is a legitimate public interest in the dispersal of some homeless encampments. For example, in the article reference was made to an ecological reserve, a fresh-water wetlands, that was decimated by an RV encampment, with everything from battery acid to trash to human waste in the marsh. (Yes, there is a need for public toilets. I spoke a few days ago to a local person where I live who has a dance studio on a main drag near the downtown, with a creek running by it. The person said each day, they clean up human feces from homeless people camping by the creek.)

As I have mentioned in prior posts here, I don’t believe all homeless people can or should have to live indoors. But I personally prefer the idea of acreage set aside for encampments, complete with water and sanitation facilities, security, and walking distance to shopping, and cooling/warming centers where needed.

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71

I think the trend on these issues is to make them binary: “encampments” are one thing. Sleeping overnight with a toilet facility nearby then moving on is another thing entirely.
The problem is the “solutions” are making situations worse. People get offended by people sleeping on the pavement, so they complain and the mayor eliminates public restrooms. This makes the situation worse because then there is poop all over the city. Similarly, cities as a “solution” make it illegal to exist basically anywhere overnight except in a home, so the homeless move to “encampments”. The costs of clearing out these encampments are in the hundreds of thousands each time it’s done.
The “meanie” part isn’t removal of homeless encampments - it would be the support of solutions that led to the encampments in the first place.
It’s also not a binary “hateful” and “meanie” on one side and “humanitarian” on the other. Often it’s the humanitarians who come up with the worst solutions. A call to the police out of humanitarian concern brings the same results as a call to police out of hateful concerns. Being compassionately locked up or told to move with the threat of harassment is the same as being locked up and harassed. The spiritual bypassing compassionate humanitarian who does not understand the problems drives people into homeless encampments or forces them into interim housing ghettos is only kicking the can down the road at a higher cost later.

The solution is not to fix homelessness. Homelessness is a symptom, or more accurately the cleanliness and health of homeless people is a symptom of the worst aspects of our society.
Honestly - again - what is missing from the discussion is trying to see any of this from the “the homeless” point of view. From this point of view we would see actual solutions to the problems human beings have rather than solutions to problems that polite society has seeing homeless people.
Some homeless people want a way to get back on their feet. Some just want society to not mess with them. Do they have the right to not live in a home and also have a place to shower and drink water? For some the deeper problem is addiction. The solutions for addicts are even more layers deeper and from there start to get to the roots of society’s problems that are being ignored. Give a homeless person interim housing and they have a clean place to sleep for a week. Solve their PTSD, depression or mental illness and you start to see how messed up the entirety of society is, and how is anyone not addicted to a thousand things in our spiritually dead culture. (Hint- everyone has addictions to life destroying things just some addictions are accepted while others are not)

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72

That’s fair. To generalize a bit, any complex social problem will typically feature multiple points of view, each of which comes from different life experiences, has different priorities and favors different courses of action. Sometimes these priorities and action plans clash with one another.

It’s not like there is one integral solution up in the sky that all right thinking people need to agree with. I see integral as more of a process for people (growing up, waking up, etc.) that needs to be practiced from whatever experiential base a given person has. For that reason, the discussion needs to be situated in personal perspectives.

My perspective is that of a relatively comfortable person, whose only risk of homelessness would involve disasters of apocalyptic proportions. However, in the course of navigating surrounding urban areas, I do encounter homeless people all the time. My main intervention on that is teaching job skills to low income people. Some of my students have lost housing in the middle of a quarter. I try to be flexible and compassionate. Some of the larger homeless population are behaviorally disordered in various ways. I’m not doing much about that at the moment, but I could visualize working on some sort of drugs/crime/mental health/housing task force at a future date. (Used to do that sort of thing before kids came into our lives). We do also donate to local food banks from time to time. None of that is taking credit for anything (or blame, for that matter), just creating context for a POV.

I guess I view this matter through the lens of say, a local city council member, who would need to integrate all the different perspectives and align policies accordingly. Clean, safe, attractive neighborhoods are a top priority in that world. Due to recent state action, high density zoning is now the norm, and more high density housing is coming in. We recently added to the police force. There is a state mental hospital near us that treats criminal suspects pre-trial. It is overloaded and underfunded, so mentally ill are housed in jails pre-trial, against court orders, resulting in fines against the state. If I could pull on one thread to unravel the situation, it would be increasing capacity in the residential mental health system to unclog the criminal justice and treatment pipelines. Till then, we get people throwing rocks off overpasses, shootings in camps, needles in the street, and fires under the freeway. None of that puts the public in the mood for improved sanitation or camping facilities.

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74

I think the scope of the “crisis” has to be more clearly defined.
Is antisemitism, in fact a “crisis”?
This is related to the homeless problem: It’s probably more important to define what exactly the problem is before looking for solutions.

  • Why is the crisis “antisemitism” rather than “racism”
  • Are we referring to the global antisemitism or only in the USA? In either case, why antisemitism rather than racism
  • Are we only talking about overt acts of violence, or people saying things and thinking things? Is there a hate crime against Jewish people that is not being investigated, as there are against people of other races and religions?
  • Are Jewish people underprivileged in our society and lack wealth or power? Is there a systemic bias in American business or politics that exclude Jews?

It reminds me of the old saying that “if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail”

75

I guess so, I can barely keep up with it. I think there are the pieces for something impactful here and this discussion so far has been very helpful for me. I am still orienting myself according to this stage of development so talking through it in various ways crystallizes it more and more.

Sounds good, thanks!

76

I think you hit a nerve. I’m starting to sense that people in general are starting to want to get beyond theory debate and onto things that are more actionable.

On the homeless part of this discussion, here is some local politics for me, but it nicely illustrates the complexity level of addressing homelessness: https://medium.com/wagovernor/investing-in-washingtons-people-and-communities-inslee-budget-prioritizes-urgent-needs-in-b6a361acb741

This is all straight from the governor’s office. Check your favorite news feed for articles and commentary much more critical about any of this. What is the integral approach to all this? Good question!

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77

Here is some background on “antisemitism”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism

This is a key phrase from that article: “Pseudoscientific theories concerning race, civilization, and ‘progress’ had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century,”

An irony of all this is that the word “semitic” derives from comparative linguistics. Both Hebrew and Arabic are members of the Semitic language group. So in the current Middle East crisis, all sides are Semitic. (Except for Iran, which is Indo-European or Indo-Germanic or Indo-Aryan, depending which label one might prefer).

The idea of “Judaism” as a religion dates from Christian thinking of the Roman times. Modern Zionism (reclaiming the Levant as a Jewish homeland) is a 19th century idea, rising roughly parallel to the idea of antisemitism. It is perfectly possible for practicing Jews to not be Zionists and to not support particular actions of the state of Israel. All of that is lost on our current generation, of course, which leads to things like painting anti-Israeli graffiti on synagogues.

The crisis I see here is the US education system is pathetic and needs an overhaul ASAP.

79

Well, yes, that could be one of the crises that contributes to antisemitism.
Although my point would be that the word crisis seems to be thrown around quite casually and in the 21st century this happens so much that words no longer mean anything.
I think a summary of my point with antisemitism is two things. First that the Jewish people have more than enough economic and political power to prevent it from ever being a “crisis”. Second related is “my people’s genocide is more significant than your people’s genocide”. With various peoples in the world actually being ethnically cleansed now at this moment I don’t see why the crisis would be Antisemitism and not any one of a dozen other projects of ethnic cleansing or even the plight ethnic and religious minorities in the USA who are worse off than the Jewish people.
I can even elevate the plight of these other minorities to actual “crisis” status in the real meaning of the word because if Trump becomes president this time around there will be no stopping religious bans, deportation of legal migrants and activation of military forces against ethnic minority neighborhoods. The Jews will be OK, but every other minority will not.

80

Tend to agree. I use the word “metacrisis” mostly because a lot of people want to focus on that, but compared to say. for example, the era spanning WWI and WWII, our current “crisis” does not really measure up. That said, there is a historical cycle of tensions building up during periods of relative calm, and would it not be fair to say that tensions are building up?

When it comes to US higher education, the word “crisis” may not be all that much overblown. An ideology has taken hold to the effect that anyone white, rich, and powerful is the global bad guy, and all we need to do for a wonderful world is to flip white capitalist patriarchy on its head and celebrate everyone else. Although not that long ago, Jews were a despised minority in the US - not even admissible to Harvard - they have worked their way into “privilege” and now find themselves on team white capitalist patriarchy (in the eyes of the generally dualistic SJW crowd). So Israel must go, Hamas must be elevated, problem solved. The trouble with that is, a slight amount of digging into what Hamas believes and does reveals Hamas to be about the exact opposite of “woke”. So what to do with all that?

What we are witnessing right now is a paradigm going off the rails and things falling apart. To actually get at questions like “what is genocide?”, “what is happening all over the world”?, and “what is an effective politics to prevent Trumpian arbitrariness?” it would take discussions of some intellectual and spiritual breadth and depth. Pretty much the opposite of the opinion-driven pablum served up lately in our leading campuses.

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82

Prophet Jeremiah stuff there, @raybennett!

My own contribution to metatheory it seems is to infuse things like Integral or metamodernism with Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations thinking. Actually, ken Wilber gave me that idea from some statements he made on YouTube a few years back. I’m just much deeper in the weeds with it. In any case, quite a bit of what you say rings true from that POV.

I don’t see capitalism as such going anywhere anytime soon. But the roster of winners and losers is always in motion. No one gets to rest on their laurels for long. You are correct about Xi - he has painted himself into a Leninist corner. Actually, this recent essay by Ken Wilber is very pertinent: https://integrallife.com/revolutionary-social-transformation/

In there, Ken engages with classic Marxist materialism and updates it from an AQAL POV. That’s my main hope for China. The “contradictions” of a high tech manufacturing economy are going to force cracks in the one-man rule model. But in general, your pessimism may be just the leading edge of a new realism. Various efforts around the world to bring back some version of the “good old days” will likely remind us all that the good old days might not have actually been all that good in the first place. But it’s a two steps forward, one step back sort of thing. Maybe two or three steps back actually.

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83

Thanks for the link, I watched the first video in the search results between Aubrey Marcus and Paul Selig. I was just thinking about how a spiritual perspective could be applied to the specific topics presented thus far and the ICRT concept overall. Many ideas to explore there I think.

85

Well this came in my messaging.

This community has determined that it is offensive, abusive and and hateful conduct and has protected you.
Because, let’s all be honest - most of you need to be protected from ideas.
That’s a truth within irony.

It may also be that just one individual needs to be protected from ideas and having identified himself with a movement that is the antithesis of Integral, cannot stand any attacks against the TRUMPism. After all, it’s hateful to describe Trumpism as what it is - a despicable group of people that are the antithesis of Integral.

It could also be that I only subscribe when I see something useful I want to watch and that hasn’t been the case for about 6 months so if there isn’t content I want to watch I unsubscribe. But I rather think it is just a person who identifies with as a MAGA and got his little feelings hurt and needs to be protected and feel safe while he overthrows democracy.

Hello,

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Integral Crisis Response Team - #81

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86

My point is that the losers have been and will increasingly resort to open warfare or other atrocities or in the USA a Coup. This is the global crisis we are now entering.
“Capitalism” is a very broad term. What I would say is that the form of Capitalism that we have become reliant on is failing - specifically Consumption based trickle down Capitalism where innovation is blocked except to advance programmed obsolescence.
Also Democratic Capitalism is under serious threat because those that believe in it are too soft and too overintellectualized to defend it and they are in denial about the scale and frankly insanity of those who want to establish Dictators.
In order to move two steps forward from the step back, a certain strength will be required that I don’t see forming until it is too late.
As an example, the Iron curtain fell in 1968 and it took 30 years to finally take “two steps forward”. So in the grand scheme of history, you are probably right. But 30 years is a very long time to live through a global step backward.

87

I don’t follow, will you give me an example?

88

My main reference on this is Peter Turchin, End Times. The basic idea is when elite positions get scarce (take a look at recent US income distribution numbers to get an idea of what that means), elites and counter-elites line up to do battle with one another. That leads to a lot of rule breaking, and in some cases things like civil wars or revolutions. Turchin does not make firm forecasts about that sort thing. He just notes when certain tensions build, something as to give. I think it’s fair to say that tensions are building.

The most optimistic case is for new leadership to emerge with a more constructive, more inclusive vision. Supporting that sort of process is really why I like to hang out here.

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