Is it appropriate to use straw man arguments on this integral forum?

Community Development
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excecutive, thank you for so much praise! I am just a vessel for wherever these ideas come from, I am often amazed myself that I wrote them. I am glad the message got through to you.

I found your comment “as you’ve conceded to your shadows” also very much on the mark, the way I interpreted it. And you are the first person in 3 months that was able to give a detailed opinion on the debate, that also speaks for you.

If I currently had to guess what I am projecting on raybennett, it would be something involving fear. I am not very friendly with my fears. I learned to think you had to choose between love and fear. Yesterday I learned in an integral workshop by Winnie Winters titled “Shake your shadow” that that is a biased comparison, just like comparing caring and selfish. Because you compare the healthy version of one quality (love) with the distortion (exaggeration) of another quality like alertness. Or in the second case the healthy version of care for others with the distortion of selfcare. The idea is that you embrace both qualities and balance one of the pair with the other. Peace to you too.

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Drieske You are amazing and right on point I truly do “hear you” in a positive and connective way!

I’ll share my own riddle here for you. … “Fear is the doorway to mastery. The faster you open those scary doors the faster and farther you will travel along the path of wisdom … to overcoming all darkness and fear …because soon you will KNOW you are the source of light.” ~ Peace

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Thank you, that is excellent advice.
During the conference there was a workshop about the “heroes journey” and the “monsters journey”. As you all probably know, after slaying the monster, with some help, it is the heroes task to bring back the wisdom that he gained to his village.
Here is something I learned about recognizing strawmanning in the last part of the discussion. We saw raybennett (or if you want, this innocent blank screen I am projecting my shadows on), in order to try to justify his actions accusing others of strawmanning.

He was clearly only using the second definition of the three I mentioned: “The author attacks an argument which is different from, and usually weaker than, the opposition’s best argument.” because his argumentation is the following “The author (Alexis) attacked an argument (BLM and Antifa) which was different from the “opposition’s” best argument (that the causes of the insurrection are very complex and multifaceted with a very long history and are not equivocal to BLM)”

I leave it up to you to decide if this makes sense. I think that even amongst honest debaters, and people who use some effort to understand what the other person is saying, it can be unclear or subjective what the strongest arguments are. So I think that this second definition I gave taken on its own is only useful to evaluate your own arguments. And even then there are still many valid reasons why you could choose to respond to an argument that is not the strongest.

So on this topic I would prefer to use the definition from the page about titanium man.

“A distorted misrepresentation of one’s argument or position, which often involves oversimplifying it. When one attacks a strawman instead of one’s actual argument, this is called the “strawman fallacy.”

At this moment, of the 7 people who voted on the topic question 6 voted no and 1 yes. Here I propose one way to act on it that I think also respects the concern of the person who voted yes.

Imagine that you see that someone may have used a strawman argument on this forum and you find it important enough to bring attention to it. But you don’t want to discuss it (further) on that particular topic. You can post a link to that particular comment right here in this topic. If you do that there will also be a link automatically added under the post that you found concerning showing the title of this topic. The author can easily miss this so I would notice him privately.

I am curious how all this will evolve.

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Of the 7 voters, I seem to have been the solitary “yes” vote. As I stated earlier, my “yes” vote was against what I considered a very basic authoritarian policing request.
Now having said this, use of a Strawman Fallacy doesn’t have a place for high level share/listen discourse. But then likewise one person’s quest to understand or be understood might be seen as regressive and perhaps one of the egregious strawmen to someone else.

Being new to the community, my observation is that this is an extremely small community given the scope of the internet. Reality is that there just aren’t many people to get “Integral” with here. Are rules on how to be integral really “being” all that integral?

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I hear you, FermentedAgave. I respect that you stand for your ideas even if it seems a minority view. But perhaps there is not so much disagreement. I would argue anyone’s quest to understand or be understood might just as well work without straw manning (or lying, for that matter).

Here are some other thoughts that came up:

  • One reason it is a small community is perhaps that a lot of “integral people” don’t find a forum the most suitable medium to interact with other people. This occurred to me after having more “live” interactions the last couple of days, even if it was through zoom, I had more sense of connection amongst other things.

  • Maximizing freedom and rules (or guidelines) for how to behave are not contradictions is one of the lessons I learned. I am not saying that is exactly what you are saying. But you seem to be saying that less rules would make more people welcome?

  • While I focus here on the straw man arguments, these themselves were not really what started the discussion. It was because the way I saw it, these were being used to censor new members.

  • The guy who was doing it fears that the forum will be taken over by “red” or “amber”. I think, based on experience, that if any color is taking over this forum it is most likely the unhealthy version of green

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For fuck’s sake, this is getting really tedious.
Enough of trying to guess my motivations and using that as a reason for anyone to do anything.

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If I am referred to 3 times I magically appear.

lol

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Let’s talk about fear then. Fear of Red. Or Green. Or even fear of Teal.
Let’s spend a few minutes at Cape Fear, lol.
Is a person afraid of Red if they casually face it head on and dismiss it with a few words?
Is a person afraid of Red if they can call it up within themselves as needed, and dismiss it with equal ease?
Is a person afraid of Red if they’ve had jobs where they encounter it daily, and yet at the same time had compassion for those who display it or those he had to act it out upon?
Listen - A recent job I had was one where I worked on the floor with people deemed by a judge to be both incapable of understanding their crimes and at the same time of being a threat to the community. Murderers, rapists, sex offenders, as well as their victims turned to crime - and also just plain old drug addicts who physically destroyed their brains. I can think of a dozen real life stories that would make most people very uncomfortable.
I actually loved the job but it pays $10 / hour less than my primary occupation.
Every day several times a day any one of 20-30 of them might turn aggressive or violent - but under the limited Orange / Amber Legal System of our culture, there is no better solution than forcibly restraining them and administering a drug to them against their will. Then after an hour or two I might be chatting and joking with them as if nothing happened. In my experience it is possible to commit a Red action without malice, fear or anger.
That job is just one of about 50 examples I could give regarding my relationship to Red.

Am I afraid that Red will take over this forum? lol, No.

The question I keep asking and keeps being avoided and redirected is quite simply:
“What is an integral solution when presented with Red?”
Whether it’s the insurgency, BLM, Antifa, Q-anon, Islamic Terrorists, or Green Cancel Culture Tribalists - Show me a better way than the example I presented in the Insurrection discussion.
I’ve seen over the past 30 years that just ignoring the proto-Qanon messaging without challenge has mostly emboldened it. 30 Years of Uncle and Aunty Boomer ranting at every Thanksgiving and the 4th of July and everyone just not wanting to confront it has led us directly to where we are now.

I propose the fear is within the people who do not speak up or stand in the face of Red, including the dog whistles.
Not recognizing or avoiding that fear, it’s shadow is easily transferred onto Green or anything else that gets in the way.
Perhaps it’s a fear that there is a gaping wide chasm between integral theory and leading an integral life in the Real World. That is a concern I have, but since I’m not heavily invested in Integral, it’s not anywhere near the level of fear for me. Maybe those more invested in Integral are more fearful about this? It’s a theory.
Perhaps some fear they may be misunderstood and dragged into someone else’s absurd fantasy. Again, that’s a concern I have that I might be wasting my time in this, but it’s not a fear. There is no real threat to myself if some guy on the internet says something that’s completely wrong. Worst case for me is wasted time.
Most humorously, fear is probably strongest in those who try to assign that motivation to others.
Also humorous is the very high probability that my main motivation for posting in this forum is most likely to procrastinate doing other work, lol. Avoidance of another task.

Another humorous idea is that part of my brain might just want to latch onto something out of habit so as to avoid doing something productive or generative like creating a course of my own, starting a meetup group or something else like starting an exercise routine. The fear there has nothing to do with anything here, lol. This is the distraction from fear - if it’s anything beyond absurdity at this point.

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@Drieske
My assessment/amateur opinion is that it’s a small group because it’s just not too appealing of a discourse platform.

Rules, freedom, guidelines- I actually think this discussion has been very beneficial for everyone involved. I know it has for me. Perhaps it is even the PERFECT conversation for us to have together (?). And I think the discussion is more valuable than some sort of “outcome”.

Red, Amber, psychotic Green, or a heavy swatch of Orange might not really be much different from each other. Holier than Thou Green is by far the least attractive and in my opinion the most Egocentric. But when you’ve got Woke IQ points to out to work, the Ego can really do some clever jujitsu moves.

I liken discourse as similar to (oh crap, hope this isn’t seen as a strawman) say a pick up basketball game. Some people play gentle, some bump & rub, some arseholes & elbows, and some pull a knife cut the opponent.

What I see is mostly gentle, some healthy bump&rub, maybe the rare elbow but that’s as far as it goes. But then I’m OK with some bump&rub and think it’s necessary to have thought provoking dialog. Now lest the gentle game sound like nirvana, what would we have if everyone just nods in unison.

I appreciate all of you for playing, loving, fighting here on Integral Life. Thank you Corey for giving us the platform to enjoy!!

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@raybennett,
“Knowing about” and “living” Integral is the conundrum I face. I’m actually ok not being Woke or Compassionate or Hard Working or Nice enough. While I think Ken Wilber is the greatest living philosopher, Integral as I find it is simply not mature enough of a practice (and way too esoteric/academic) to make day in day out living as best as it can be. Regardless of the dissection of religion (and those kind of people) Integral is no replacement.
What Integral does for me is really let me open up my intellect on these types of intelligences.

Anyway, I’m tapped out. Sharing has had me fire some neurons that feel good to fire.

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In my own mind as an outsider looking in, it’s helpful for me to consider all the following separate and distinct:

  • Ken Wilbur
  • The personal Cult of Ken Wilbur
  • Integral as a Theory
  • Integral as a practice
  • Integral as a closed / gated community with gatekeepers
  • Integral life as an open Web Community
  • Integral and integral life as personal development and lecture businesses

Within the interaction of all these aspects, of course there are some that are useful, some that are neutral and some that could be detrimental.

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I would respond that there is not one integral practice, there is a multitude of them.

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@Dreiske Thoughts on why Integral as defined, verbalized and practiced by Integral practitioners hasn’t taken off more?

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Nice decomposition and well worth looking at either as individuals or as a community. You might posit as a Survey?? Just a thought.

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@FermentedAgave

I appreciate that you try to further the conversation by asking these directed questions. It is a good question but I am not in the mood or able to answer it. Perhaps there is another topic where there are people able to answer it, or you could start a new topic, as I did for the question about red.

I want to try to steer the discussion back to the main topic by asking you a question. Why did you wrote earlier “(oh crap, hope this isn’t seen as a strawman)”?

Do you think the distinction between what a straw man is and what not is not clear? Don’t you trust the other members to make the distinction correctly?

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@Drieske
Ii wanted to point out that a simple metaphor can potentially be taken as a regressive to the discussion.
Reader’s subjective reaction could potentially invoke the discussed “strawman process”.
Metaphors and cliches land differently “here” (me) and “over there” (you, they).
Strawman regressive arguments might be flag worthy, but why don’t we look at use of highly charged cliches and perhaps metaphors as well? Where do we stop?

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You are free where to stop and to start. The way I define strawmanning, it is a form of deception, similar to lying, than can easily pass unnoticed. Metaphors and cliches that you mention can also be very bad or even misleading, but it is always clear that they are metaphors.

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Note: unrelated to original post
Hello Drieske. I was just curious where your country is. I noticed the language you posted looked like Dutch or Afrikaans to me, so I wondered if that was it. If you don’t want to say though, that is understandable. If you don’t mind saying, do you have any interesting stories from your country that illustrate integral ideas?

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I think Integral starts and ends within you. The more data points of information the easier it is to achieve. When we refuse to accept another data point of information we are working against being integral. We are not advancing it within ourselves and we are not advancing toward love and connection.

Sorry to those of you who may find this repetitive. My Mom told me many times that what other people think about you is none of your business. I wonder what she meant? What do you think that might mean?

We can get stuck in our own heads debating what others think … but we would be creating a thought process based on inaccurate information. Since we cannot even understand our own perceptions, to see how everything is connected in a fullness of understanding, how will we ever know what’s happening in someone else’s head?

Too much energy is being put in this dark hole of disagreement … no one will get out of this darkness until they slay that dragon in their own head. You’re both right!! You’re both not being Integral!!! You both have some work to do and I would suggest ending this debate and just hugging each other’s point of view and trying to integrate it with your own.

Here is quote … ~ from https://the-spiritual-quest.com/the-spiritual-book/

"To get beyond our blockages with reference to the arguments of the day, or the historical patterns of the left and the right, the religious or the non-religious, we do well to embrace the duality of anything; while exercising extreme caution at not judging anything as good or bad within our spiritual comprehension.

Whenever there are two contrasting points of view, called the duality, there are always two sides, positive and negative, left and right, up and down, forward and backward. Nevertheless, both of these polarities have a stark similarity, which is the spiritual connection between the two points, this is the wholeness and the oneness that one discovers on their spiritual quest.

If you are finding these ideas overly simplistic or nervously unsettling, welcome to the spiritual quest. There are no answers here for you until you can discover your own questions and dare to dive deep into the contradictions, because the fact of the matter is that the truth is in the whole and the whole is in you." ~ Peace :slight_smile:

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@excecutive
Alright then