What does/will an integral level of war look like? Cyber attacks, drone combat, electoral interference, biological weapons?
It will look like the evolution of planetary governance structures that relegate organized mass killing to an archaic past. Warfare is a phase we will outgrow.
Are you saying suicide?
With the caveat that I am not yet at this level more than just a little bit and itâs mostly an intellectual understanding for me than a deep understanding âŚ
Though there have been a few instances where this lesson has been made very clear to me âŚ
At the Integral Level, to attack another is to in many ways harm oneself. Do establish another as an enemy is to create and ensure that truth.
This is not to say that one is to just stand passive and do nothing when one is attacked. That is a Green shadow. To passively oppose another is still to oppose them - but ineffectively and in a psychologically unhealthy way. Passively opposing someone in order to become a victim seems psychologically unhealthy to me.
Another way that I do not see described really anywhere, even in âIntegralâ. This is to take hostile action while at the same time realizing that this course of action is counterproductive. The enemy will come back even more vengeful and the negative cycle will perpetuate. Another way to end the perpetuation is to respond with such force as to overwhelm the opponent, but this produces negative collateral effects such as forming negative relations with outside observers.
We can see this in our geopolitical relations in the past few decades. In the 1990âs we gave billions to Russia without accountability and moved industry to China, again without accountability. This is much like giving your teenage children a million dollars or 15,000 per month without any stipulations or supervision. Then fast forward and of course Russia and China developed badly, just as our proverbial teenager would. When we then challenge them in a later decade with among other things moral rules and judgements, they react in fear as could be easily expected. With Russia the fear provokes physical violence and with China the fear provokes more passive aggressive actions.
All along the root of the issue was that the United States has essentially been a âbad parentâ. To now not recognize that first is harmful to the United States. We hide our own faults with calls to target our enemies, which were created by our own bad policy.
So sure, chemical weapons against everyone - and realize while we are doing it that we were the ones who created the problem. Like when Dr. Frankenstein had to choose the fate of his own creation.
Of course war is madness, utterly ridiculous and so destructive. Should not be present on the planet, especially with modern weapons of horrific suffering for humans and sentient beings. Certainly not in an integral world view, or any enlightened perspective.
But as KW points out, there will always be leaders and nation states culturally in earlier growth states. So enlightened humanity needs to develop warfare mitigation systems. To limit destruction and life suffering, that could even be and should be (and perhaps already is to some degree) a very conscious movement. Perhaps robot dispute resolution, such as no human involvement in weaponry. One of the problems with modern warfare is appalling lack of honor and honoring agreements such as attacking civilians.
So yes âwarfare mitigation systemsâ, another, perhaps extreme hacking expertise, in the service of humanity. And much more demand for honorable action in warfare, to break humanitarian agreements should evoke serious consequences for leadership, rather than the slap on the wrist hypocrisy of present time.
Another would be war mitigation diplomacy, a whole field of impartial world serving super smart (non-formal?) âdiplomatsâ ( not necessarily overt, could be incognito).
Another possibility is honorable âwar gamesâ (which could be performed in minimum harm technologies) in which the impartially declared victor would concede to a set of concessions already laid out.
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Suicide would be projecting the current anarchic nation state system into the infinite future while improving the destructiveness and accuracy of weapons technology year over year. That cannot end well.
Species survival will require evolving higher level governance systems to contain and redirect destructive energies. As a historical example, Germany and France used to invade each other on a fairly regular basis. They now participate in higher level governance structures that make the reciprocal invasions of the past a thing of the past.
âGreater violence in saner hands,â as Ken himself puts it.
The idea being, violence from lower altitudes almost always require âbiggerâ violence from higher altitudes. Of course, that âbigger violenceâ can mean many different things â it can mean bigger coalitions, or it can mean bigger/more destructive weapons, such as the moral calculus around dropping a nuke in order to prevent greater theoretical casualties in the future. Or it can mean replacing physical violence with, say, economic violence, moving violence from the physiosphere to the noosphere, which is largely where we are today. An improvement for sure, but still very much qualifies as âviolenceâ.
Hereâs a Ken quote that I often go back to, from The Deconstruction of the World Trade Center.
âThe one thing that worries me is that when green slips into its more, shall we say, platitudinous side, the hyper-sensitive, over-the-top caring side, a response that is already circulating Martin Luther Kingâs statement: âThe ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.â
But, you see, that statement is wrong on almost every count⌠in this case, I believe his heart was clouding his head. Real violence is almost always ended by stronger violence in saner hands. When you meet a Hitler in this world, the correct, noble, ethical, spiritual response is: get a gun and blow his brains out. We ended Auschwitz, not with love, caring dialogue, sensitivity training, and sweet thoughts, but with superior fire power, period. So it is with real violence in the real worldâmuch of it stems from red, and red can only be forcefully contained until it develops its own internal amber constraints. Civilization, for the most part, does not produce barbarism, but curbs it.
Greenâs basic problem is that the injunction to not have violence in your heart is confused with not using violence in the real worldâat which point green begins to contribute to the problem, not the solution. This is yet another variation on the sad fact that greenâ and without doubt the MGM and boomeritisâhave been complicit in the rise of insurrectionist violence around the world. Of course we should not harbor hate in our hearts; and of course, when you meet Nazisâyou should kill them real hard.â
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I think itâs important to also at the same time acknowledge that Greenâs idea that violence also harms the one that commits the act is true on an individual level and also on a community, nation and pan-nation level.
On an individual level we have PTSD and even with that being managed, people cannot forget what they witness or what they have done. Communities and Nations thus far have swept this under the rug to fester into a rotting fetid spiritual stench.
Yes, if you somehow have a crystal ball and know for a certainty that in 5 or 10 years a Hitler will do what Hitler did - yes, blow his brains out. So does this mean we should euthanize mental health patients diagnosed with sociopathic tendencies? Does it not follow then that we should expand the death penalty? These are rhetorical questions, not what I actually advocate. My point being that Green kind of does have some good points that need to be heeded.
Committing violence or threatening to do so must be seen as a high cost that will harm the one committing it - even for a âjust causeâ and even to stop a greater evil. Using violence to prevent a greater evil is even more risky. Individuals and communities cannot un-do what is done and good intentions are not an excuse for taking bad irreversible actions.
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When we do moral calculus we tend to be inevitably wrong and completely unqualified to do such calculus. What I observe with such calculus is that the people solving for X have a Kindergarten level of moral math. An example is the economic weapons we wield and claim some righteous bs about why we exploit child labor in China, India or the USA or a million other things Greens are yelling about, justifiably I would say. Though also at the same time I know many a hypocritical man at Green who has exploited Thai or Philippine or other sex market, which perhaps gives fuel to the anger he can direct at corporations who placed the women in the state they exploited.
Itâs a terrible messy thing, this moral calculus. I actually donât think anyone on the planet is able to solve those equations and the wisest among us tell us not to attempt it.
Corey, that sounds very much like what is in play already, more weapons, bigger weapons, more sophisticated weapons, more of the same. Maybe Iâm too green, but there seems to be an error in that logic- - âif you meet a Nazi kill him hardâ how is that integral? Go the aikido, skillful means route, surely. Go the super smart and stealthy way, look at the archetypes, behind the scenes influencers. Not same stupidity, thatâs in play already, or at least move in that direction? You want âMarsâ well donât be a dumbass warrior, be a much smarter one. Go stealth technology and go after the money, the elite money, not the peoples money, weaken by vulnerable infrastructure also . I guess his quote from 9/11 was a heated moment. No lefty huh? 
One caveat, sometimes it is much better for the majority ( least suffering to the least people) to leave a despot in power, re Sadam Hussein, and others, as bad as they are, they tend to hold cohesion among war lords- unfortunately this may include, hate to say it, but Putin ishh!
Yeah. When I was proposing the evolution of higher level governance structures at the top of this thread, it wasnât about the whole world finding love in its heart. (That would be bonus). My notion of âhigher levelâ is softer than KWâs. Mine is just âlarger scaleâ. This follows historical trends. Nation states are a relatively recent structure. They were composed of smaller units. Complex military and trade alliances are starting to encroach on the national state. The technical basis of our current society, not to mention what is coming next, will force even very un-grown-up, un-woke-up, un-cleaned-up actors into larger alliance structures. At some point I imagine very self-interested global elites will realize that threatening each other with nukes is bad for business, and that will be beginnings of truly global governance.
I see personal development as impacting society more at a micro level beneath these global structures. People who can cope with complexity will feel more at home in the world and will find a constructive place within it. Violence wonât go away, it will just be more contained.
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Thanks! Your response clarifies some things for me and I will read the PDF you attached.
I have been interested in the concept of The Great Release that Robb Smith writes about and how it seems to parallel other concepts like Generation Theory and the 4th Turning. If we are going to see a nation or even world order restructuring conflict in the next few years, I wonder what that will look like. I think some systems we have in place now may be whatâs preventing a Civil War or truly global conflict (e.g. Russia-Ukraine) but the need for drastic change and built up energy must go somewhere it seems to me. Will the integral form really only be a war of diplomacy? Will we be conscripted into a cyber war? Or am I still going to eventually take up old fashioned arms? I understand that a higher level of moral, spiritual, cognitive intelligence may advise against any such action but I donât know how easy it will be to merely meditate and pray if Iâm being attacked in the physiosphere.