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

Community Development
, ,
41

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.

42

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

1 Like
43

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

44

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

45

@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?

46

@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?

47

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.

48

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?

49

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:

1 Like
50

@excecutive
Alright then