Jordan Peterson - an integral thinker

Reflections
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I just listened to an interview by Rebel Wisdom with Ken, talking about Jordan Peterson.

After 2 1/2 years I was talking about Peterson as an Integral thinker - and most people considered him orange or even blue - I am glad that finally Ken confirmes what I thought right from the beginning when I first heard him speak in September 2016 and from there watched literally hundreds of his videos.
I just wrote a short blogpost with all the links (also to my previous posts to Jeff Salzman https://the-wisdom-factory.com/jordan-peterson-integral-and-not-only-for-young-men

I would like to hear your considerations on the teachings and the “showing-up” (which Ken admires) of Peterson

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Hi Heidi,

I’m happy to see you started this thread, as I was going to start a similar one.

Here are my preliminary questions:

  1. What are the boxes one would have to check in order to qualify as an Integral thinker? Also, how would one be disqualified as an Integral thinker?
  2. How do different lines of development come into play when calibrating one’s center of gravity?

For example, when I was 17, I went on a Ken Wilber reading binge and studied everything Integral. But, I was at the same time a very troubled youth, with aspects of my moral/values/ego development at Red or even lower. So while my intellectual line of development was spiking into 2nd tier, the rest of my self was seriously lagging behind (the last 10 years of my life has been trying to close this gap). How do all of these lines of development average out and influence one’s COG?

So in other words, what does it truly mean to be “Integral?” And is there a difference between being an Integral thinker and being Integral in multiple of lines of development? By “integral thinker,” do you mean specifically an Integral intellectual line of development (like when I was 17), or an overall Integral center of gravity?

I’ll start here and add more about Peterson specifically a little later :slight_smile:

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I’m glad people saw that interview it was awesome, felt a bit like having Ken injected in to the popular Zeitgeist. I don’t think it’s that surprising that Ken thinks Peterson thinks integrally - the man’s clearly wrestled trying to make sense of hugely disparate fields - psychology, religion, science with a plethora of sociological statistics at his disposal. I can hear this juggling of blue, orange, and green relentlessly all up in the air with equal parts clarity and confusion.

I think it’s debateable though center of gravity, and I have a suspicion that Ken didn’t say that, and can see more benefit to seeing commonality with Peterson than pointing out a possible gravity difference. I see alot of the ‘dark web’ intellectual figures as a kind of a muddle of being on their way to integral, wrestling with green, trying to integrate orange but bouncing back and forth between things, and plenty fondness of traditional. Also as flowery as it sounds, Peterson doesn’t feel integral to me. 2nd tier is supposed to shift from doing needs to being needs, and with it an ample drop in fear. Certainly worth a debate but I tend to see integral folks as generally, existentially pretty optimistic, seeing this vast picture of history which is rife with suffering, but bigger strides in improvement and overall more positive than negative. Whenever I watch Peterson he often seems to come across as a martyr trying to save the western world from doom, talking alot about how hard life is, full of suffering, and how much struggle there has been. Also I can understand the thing people question of him not getting green, both intellectually and emotionally. He often seems repressed to me, being a psychologist doesn’t make you at green, and sometimes outbursts of emotion while otherwise being tightly wound doesn’t either. And at times it can be hard to tell if someone’s anger at political correctness and the ills of green are justified, or they are out of proportion based on not seeing them in their place.

As Ryan said, it really is interesting about different levels, lines of development, does that all converge somehow in to a center of gravity? Or is it alot more varied within an individual.

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Really loved the post Paul – you brought up a lot of good points, much of which I agree with.

I’m not an expert on JP’s work, as I haven’t watched a whole lot of his stuff (only bits here and there, and all of his debates with Sam Harris). But exploring this topic is helpful for me to understand what it truly means to be “Integral.”

Lets go point for point on some of the things he said that I would question:

  1. My friend, who is a huge fan of JP, calls him “Integral 1.5” – almost there, but not quite Integral, because he says Peterson doesn’t see postmodernism as something to be integrated. Thoughts on this? How do we properly Integrate postmodernism, or Green values/perspectives in general? And how do we know when one has sufficiently integrated Green? What would that look like? There is a Youtuber named Cuck Philosophy who specializes in postmodernism. He made a video called “Jordan Peterson doesn’t understand postmodernism.” Might be interesting to take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU1LhcEh8Ms&t=445s
    Others say he is entrance Yellow and thus (like many folks) has an allergy to Green. How can we differentiate an unintegrated stage vs. an allergy? I mean, I could say Trump is Integral (which is obviously not true), and he just has an allergy to Green. Would love to hear thoughts.
  2. Some of his takes on religion seem biased towards Judeo-Christian Amber/Blue. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but in his debate with Matt Dillahunty, he says something to the effect that atheists would be murderers if they didn’t secretly/unknowingly believe in God (and I think there was a running joke about throwing Sam Harris off the stage, because without God, morality wouldn’t exist). This strikes me as some kind of Amber/Blue religious bias coming forth. A Youtuber named Rationality Rules does a breakdown on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmrpiCsuv6w
    He also said “atheists like Sam Harris are Judeo-Christian TO THE CORE!! They just don’t understand it” (gotta love the passion!). He seems to not understand secular forms of morality, which come online Orange on up (which seems to be pretty core to Integral, IMO). I really don’t understand this – does that mean that Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, etc… are secretly Judeo-Christian to the core, even before Christianity existed? It seems like he stretches Judeo-Christian religion too far, and gives it too much credit, which seems to be a quality of Amber folks. Again, Rationality Rules does a breakdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkbzIWmeI-E
    He also gives strange answers to literal religious questions. When asked if Jesus literally rose from the dead, he says “That would take me 40 hours to answer.” He also seems to weasel around a direct answer when pressed on certain religious passages, like “Moses’s laws of war,” and resorts to the hermeneutic circle (saying he is afraid of sounding like a postmodernist) as a way to salvage the validity of premodern/tribal passages from the Old testament. As Sam Harris said, his concern is why Peterson would do that and not be honest and answer the question directly. Unless Peterson is trying to justify some of his secret mythic literal beliefs (I mean, why not just say that the passages are allegorical, and that there is always going to be some crazy stuff in there to discard, as it was written from a very different stage of development thousands of years ago. That would be the integral view, no?)
  3. In talking to another friend who is a huge JP fan, he says Peterson talks of a “Hell to run from, and a Heaven to run to.” Again, this sounds pretty Amber to me (at least at first glance), as it seems very dualistic black/white. Also the emphasis on a hell to run from – something terrible to get away from. Thoughts?
  4. Another Amber bias? He is very hesitant on gay marriage, saying it his concern is that it would “undermine traditional modes of being,” explicitly saying “traditional.” He is also concerned that it is supported by “cultural marxists,” which has nothing to do with whether one would support gay marriage or not (as was pointed out by the viewers – its a non sequitur). Maybe this is a valid concern? I don’t think so, but i’m open to changing my mind. What is a traditional mode of being, and why would maintaining that (in the context of marriage) be important? He explains it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jef2C4T1_A
  5. His first podcast with Sam Harris was truly exasperating as everyone knows. The main argument was about the definition of truth. JP’s position is: facts (3rd person “it” truth) are nested in morality (LL quadrant “we”), while Harris believes the opposite (which is the crux of his “Moral Landscape”). As Integralists, we all know that the big 3 were differentiated in Orange modernity with Kant’s 3 critiques, as well as Hume’s fact/value distinction. Both Harris and Peterson’s definition of truth violate the fact/value distinction, and are partial claims on truth, given that they both haven’t integrated the big 3 evenly (Subjective, objective, intersubjective) if one truth is fully nested in another. If you claim that 3rd person “it” facts (facts as we typically understand) are nested in 2nd person “we facts,” then the independent world of objective “truth” is cancelled out – the world of “it” is swallowed up by the world of “we,” which as Sam Harris pointed out, is very problematic when answering basic yes/no truth claims (is the earth round? yes or no? Isn’t the fact that it is dependent on the world of 3rd person truth?). So epistemologically, I wouldn’t say this is an Integral position, as some aspects of the big 3 clearly take precedence over others; they aren’t given their due respect, as one aspect is favored over the other (JP favoring moral facts/values over facts).

So from what little I know, my current contention is that JP has an Integral intellect, but some other lines of development are not totally there (some lines still at Amber, but is expressed through a 2nd tier intellectual line). Does this mean he is Integral? And again, how do we go about determining this? Do we make a list of all of his integral moments/views/thinking and contrast it with all of the ones we think are not, then add up the qualifiers vs. disqualifiers?

I’m not a direct fan of JP, but I hugely appreciate his work and what he has done for people and for the public conversation. Again, most of this post is from conversations with friends, and I haven’t watched any of his actual lectures, so my perspective is very limited. But I am excited to see what comes out of this conversation, which I think is very important in many ways, and if nothing else, would give us a better sense of what it truly mean to be Integral.

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Hi PAul
I don’t like to write about these things. Let us come together and talk about it.
To me it seems also somehow inappropriate to speculate on what level people ARE. We have no right to putting them into a box, neither the “red ones”, nor the green or even second tier ones.

In my opinion what you say about the optimism of integral folks is seeming to be true. Sometimes it seems to me like ignoring the real dangers and the lessons of history, sort of a remains of healthy green (or not so healthy?) believing to change the world with only positive thinking.

As to Peterson, Ken says at a certain point that he thinks that P has integrated green. Our possible error in judging Peterson is the fact that he addresses the mean green meme, while he doen’t speak a lot about healthy green. And he doesn’t see Green as a level in development - which btw, Ken didn’t either for a long time, until he realised it. (I don’t remember who pointed that out to me, but someone who knows Ken’s writings to the bottom). So not realising that green is the 6th level of development doesn’t mean that you cannot have gone through it.

For putting Peterson in a box: for me he is teal, without knowing it and without being aware of the integral map which could help him a lot to sort things out which still are a little unclear in his message.

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Ryan, I appreciate your post, but I won’t write here, let’s talk. Too many points to address.
As to the amber component: it was too much thrown out with the bathwater and needed to be retaken into our being. As to marriage: It is a psychological fact that children grow better when they have both parents closely available in the first 2 decades of their lives. Marriage is the ideal thing for that as it doesn’t easily allow the partners to leave the next day just because of a temporal whim.

And there is a contradiction: On one hand people are against marriage as a “amber relict”, and then on the other hand gay marriage seems to be the highest achievement in the liberal progression.

So is marriage to denigrate or to appreciate? It doesn’t make it different as an institution if the partners are hetero or homo, in my opinion. Another green confusion of values and childlike rebellion against rules.

BTW: the psychological lectures are fundamental to listen to if you want to put Peterson in a box, because only then you understand the underlying reasons for what he is saying and doing.

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Totally up for talking about it, Peterson is a complex character with lots going on where it’s easy to crudely box him in. That said I thought the ‘integral’ box was the whole debate? Is he, isn’t he, does it even matter in terms of engaging with him or the public interest.

I agree with you there Heidi I think that is one of the shadows of integral, sticking to the higher levels and or straying from some of the real problems in the world, map them out sure but get in the trenches and fight less so. I just tend to think problems are more parts at 2nd tier rather than at the lower levels where they have this all encompassing evil to be fought in the world. Is very hard to box Peterson in that he genuinely seems to thin kin systems and be a muddle of all sorts of stages. But then aren’t we all?

My hunch says if he would be open to Wilber, it might like the rest of us give him that epiphany, a huge drop in anxiety and a rest in a map that is more cohesive and less contradictory than his current one. And some of his messy lower levels might be cleaned up some, allowed to exist in their current place.

Also I think you are right about the psychological lectures, one of the most potent things from Peterson is showing the profound lineage of Christianity, all this latent semi-conscious wisdom in the bible that’s there like any stage of development is, or that the past in some ways becomes new with each higher stage you perceive it through. Thin kthat is a lesson for us integrals that there is always mroe riches to be found in the lower levels.

Ryan -

Agree with so much of this. 1. definitely. Green is quite the thing to integrate, there is so much that is annoying about in at yellow. I actually think culture is on the way to integral simply because the zeitgeist these days seems to be the arse end of green.

  1. Yeah this seems to be my general vibe, on the one hand there seems to be an integral sensibility, on the other, actually being centered at blue, over estimating it’s influence, and actually being weasily around what he believes. I myself after watching his lectures felt a deeply blue appreciation of the bible, a literal relationship with an old school god, and it can be hard to parse an understanding of that, takes time, which I see Peterson doing. I think part of him does have one foot in believing literal bible miracles, while it clearly doesn’t fit with his orange or green pars. And It’s one thing to see that orange rests on blue, that orange believes in many ideals that sprout from blue without necessarily believing in a God. To be fair though, seems like quite an integral thing to embrace blue, really see it’s value which clearly Peterson does and bring that to a mass audience, quite something. My personal take is he’s both, he has his own blue gravity confusions, and the other parts of him that are orange, green and possibly integral. He just hasn’t made a clear map of it yet and clearly struggles deeply with it.
  2. Yep big time, his vicious vigilance to me just oozes a fear that Satan is waiting around every corner, or a blend of blue and orange which is marxism, totalitarianism etc. I actually every Sunday read traditional Christian views, much of which have a deep truth at Blue and feels exactly the same as Peterson.
  3. I reckon this is some general distaste for green that he could do with updating. Marriage has been massively devalued by green, to grate detriment of my generation certain, just after boomers. Huge divorce rates, instable family dynamics. Many key feminists for example teamed up with Marxism explixicitly to undermine the family, which they saw as slavery to women. As heidi says there is a big contradiction in Green. And I hear that also from Peterson, he could do with more baby and less bathwater.
  4. Yep, mind numbing to anyone that knows about AQAL lol. In some ways it’s amazing how profound integral is, in other ways amazing it takse that high up the spiral to grock that yes, it’s chicken AND egg. And appreciate your rigorousness with going through all his opinions.

I kind of feel like if I had not been exposed to Wilber I could well be like Peterson. Has so much profound to see, and worked so hard to solve problems, yet feels deeply and existentially confused also. I think it’s a valuable conversation though, and also perhaps more importantly that Peterson offers a huge crack in mainstream culture to get plenty integral voice in. I see loads of opportunities in his themes, integrating the beefs of feminism and male rights, left. vs right, traditional and religious heritage with psychology, therapy and more advanced mysticism. And his take on the bible in my view goes way below blue, one of the best stories he ever covered is the extremely short Able and Kane, which in my view is about as primal a story as you can get. His bible treatment in many ways is a spiral dynamics view without knowing it just lacking the last integral stage to see it all together.

The fact he is so popular should be a wake up call to the integral world. if I had to guess why some of that is, it’s the fact that he’s fought against pathology, in the trenches he’s a hero to many, bringing back meaning and purpose from the dragon of green nihilism and narcissistic indulgence. In the trenches, dealing with a terribly bias press, the worst of students and academia, and working his ass off doing interviews. Perhaps he’s a messy character, imperfect and lacking perspective,and yet at the same time a force to be reckoned with generally for good. And possibly doing more work on the lower levels than the typical integral thinker, even while he seems to lack the higher vantage point which would help him out, have to wonder if he might be more complacent, more content in the ‘beingness’ of 2nd tier.

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Dang Paul you just killed it right there lol. Beautifully written – some inspired stuff. Agree 100% with everything you said. You just articulated all of it far better than I could have.

As you said, what Peterson does so brilliantly is articulate the Blue stage of development from a perspective that is higher than Blue – he is “making conservatism sexy again,” which we all know is needed in the age of postmodern Green madness. He Integrates traditional Amber/Blue values with Jungian psychology, archetypes, and other types of psychology, which infuses depth and transformative potential into (what could be) antiquated ideas. He illuminates the inner world, while still staying true to a solid “12 Rules For Life” foundation. A true North American hero, if you ask me.

And as you said Paul – there is almost something special about taking Biblical stories literally – it provides a certain kind of magic or inspiration thats not provided by a purely symbolic view. To have a touch of that “true believer” may provide something that purely secular or symbolic forms of spirituality may not provide. I think that if he came outright and said that all religious stories are myths and metaphors, it may detract from the power of his message. This is one challenge I see with starting an Integral Christian church – how to get around the mythic literal issue without ruining it for people at that stage (who gain a lot from it).

Not saying that anyone here does this, but I think it may be wise to be mindful of “Integral confirmation bias,” in which people try to rationalize their position (in this case, that so and so is Integral) by distorting all facts/interpretations to fit their procrustean view. For example, some Integral Trump supporters really believe that Trump is Integral, because he “has integrated every stage, including Green via a postmodern deconstruction of truth, and is simply manifesting lower stages to appropriately meet the life conditions of the time.” I think it can be dangerous to start rationalizing like lawyers, instead of reasoning like philosophers, and its important to be mindful of our intellectual shadows when analyzing more subjective truth claims, like the COG of individuals.

If I was interviewing him, I would focus on 2 things: 1. His views on religion, which we just touched on. 2. His views on race and issues like white privilege, which I would attempt to tackle from a Teal perspective. This is why we need more Integral voices in the mainstream, so that more common ground could be found, potentially nullifying any divisive differences born of 1st tier ideologies. Youtube is chalk full of “Jordan Peterson DESTROYS clueless feminist with FACTS and LOGIC,” or “Ben Shapiro SCHOOLS race baiting SJW” and so forth. I look forward to the day of “Ken Wilber INTEGRATES the opposing view into a coherent whole” or “Paul TRANSFORMS true but partial claim into 2nd tier WISDOM.” Lol.

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Some of you think JP is integral. So this entry is my opposition to such views. Please watch some critical commentaries on JP that cover a lot of ground quickly — where they illustrate his views relating to important topics such as race, privilege, inequality, social justice, politics, etc. Have you read his tweets and retweets? If JP is integral, then Trump is 3rd Tier. On a related note, Integral members can fall into a false integral trap it seems to me and it goes like this: “well if he’s hated by all, then this is a sign he must be integral”. Yes. I’m oversimplifying. But you get the point I’m sure. JP keeps his controversial positions vague enough so you can shape him into anything you wish him to be. He is a Rorschach Master, akin to a human ink blot upon which you impose your interpretations as you wish. We are over complicating this. He is in amber world or at times red world in my opinion though his intellect can sometimes rise above the noise of scientism which is rather impressive (before he quickly reverts to one dimensional thinking on most other topics.) Finally, I feel for JP as a human being. It pains me to see what his views/psychology are doing to him and others.

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Peter, this is absolutely not an integral evaluation, but strongly biased, probably based on a few snippets which you have heard which were taken out of context more often than not and you listened to them with a prejudiced ear.
Sorry. You better watch more and especially the lectures of Peterson. He is 95% of the time trying to see things from as many perspectives as possible - and then comes to his conclusions, which reflect his insights in how the human psyche works. And he gives you the reasons why he comes to the conclusions.

You do not give me valid reasons here for your conclusions, you sound more like Cathy Newman.

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To PAULand RYAN .
Thanks for your long write up. I basically agree with what you write, especially about the fact that Peterson, having Wilbers map, would even be more brilliant and especially: clear. Maybe he will come across it, sooner or later and have that deep AHA, which many of us had.

Ryan, yes, would be great to get an interview with him, but I guess unless we have some more followers to watch our stuff he wouldn’t come - which is really understandable. I do not think that he has any problem with race topic, as you seem to assume, neither with “white privilege”, only it is used in ideological ways.

What the hell does that mean, anyways? So many people have privileges, they do not depend on skin color Super rich people in future will be living in Asia, not so much anymore in Europe and US. (See the statistics in gapminder.com). For me it is useless to connect privilege or victim state with skin color. There are of both within people of the same color, in all countries and continents.

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Just to clarify, Heidi, what I meant about talking to him (not seriously, of course, but if I did have the opportunity to interview/sit down with him) about race/religious issues isn’t that his views are problematic; the views of others are – namely, extreme Green activists and Orange atheists gunning for his throat. My inspiration is to present him with an Integrally informed view of these topics that he normally as an aversion to, due to the way in which they have been presented to him. My hunch is that if these topics were presented and explicated in a higher light, the conversation would take a much different form.

I won’t say much more here, as I know we would rather discuss these things live. But I’ll just leave everyone with a fun exercise: For whatever position we hold, what would we need to see in order to change our minds? So for those that do not think he is Integral – what exactly would we need to see from him (or not see from him) in order to shift our perspective, and same for those that do. Sometimes asking this question allows us to clarify our positions and allows us to envision things from different angles.

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This is a great exercise and can give answer to the questions you asked above: what boxes we need to check to be “integral”.

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Hi Heidi, well I disagree with your positions about my post. And I hope you’re ok that I disagree with your analysis. I also completely disagree with your thoughts on privilege. Also I won’t be commenting anymore on these forums.

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That was my sentiments to your last posts lol. Hopefully this isn’t just because we thoroughly agree but I feel like you bring to light things that are more unconscious for me. I get that experience on all the calls of late.

Conservatism sexy again, what an ironic zeitgeist but that’s bang on. And with a deeper view to conservatism, conservatism that runs right back to the garden of Eden and lobsters lol. And yes, he’s done what Jung did for tribal magic beliefs and psychology but to blue. Although I believe Jung also commented on Christianity, and times when it comes to spirit and insight, Peterson is a poor man’s Jung lol. Never hear Jung weasle word about god, always loved in an intervew when he said ‘I don’t believe in god, I know he exists.’

And yes there is something special about blue. Even in terms of archetypes, and the subtle body, we don’t know much about the actual reality or affect of this. And in my experience, going in to theta or dream states, belieiving that one one sees or experience’s is real, seems to be a mandatory part of going deeper. Like Santa isn’t literally real, and yet has there not been a subtle body and cultural groove made of centuries of the human psyche imagining and engaging in such ritual. It often seems a bit, maybe Heidi could comment on this I remember you saying about having an aversion to Buddhism in your interview with Ryan, great interview btw :).That there is this big bias to Buddhism. Integral has even done some stuff on Christianity, and yet it was Peterson that seriously turned me on to it. I went from being completely divorced from my thousand year old cultural/ religious roots to being able to feel the depth from every page of the bible. Also it was the relationship with the divine, specifically human that felt so much more potent to me personally, than Buddhism. Speaking more to emotional pain, a deeply earthly experience, and a stronger force for motivation and healing than meditating on the causal. Not to knock buddhism.

I’m not sure the mythic should be gotten around really. There is a literalness to truth that can be far more powerful and beautiful than getting nuanced. There is such a thing it seems to me as right and wrong, good and evil, earthly and spiritual, man and woman. The fact we are aware it gets very complex and needs to be endlessly debated doesn’t get away from that truth, and sometimes it can be more true. LIke green making everything wish washy when a dude just mugged a lady lol. I actually think, at times Trump uses this really well, course it depends if he’s right or in ego mode. But getting in to the nitty gritty watering away the facts, rather than simply pointing out bias media as simply as ‘fake news’, is kind of awesome. And

I agree with that, I have my own integral confirmation bias. Have noticed a shame/ pride about my own level of development. Shame of going lower, and arrogance and at other times shame about being higher. And when in the latter, I tend to make integral very cookie cutter, rather than having to wade in with the lower levels, lines, and complexity. I think the intent needs to be one of the focus. Do we box Peterson to feel superior? To keep our cosy integral community safe? Or to engage with him, include what he has to say, and his followers for that matter, and try to put it in it’s right place. Also you bring up wonderful examples. Integral trump, I’ve heard Ken even comment integral Obama and even Clinton! The latter, Bill or Hilary for the life of me cannot understand. Perhaps this is intellectual ivory tower also, that evidence about the clinton foundation, or serious sexual abuse is somehow limited to only Alex Jones types in conspiracy theory land is my hunch. Perhaps why the recent Salzman video on aliens feels refreshing.

I’d like to see you Ryan grill him on those issues lol. Both I think it would be fruitful, expand both your minds but to watch him not wiggle out of it. And yeah lol, perhaps you need to make that video ;). I think we should be less high and mighty though. Could probably do a good red youtube video. Perhaps tie him up, eyes peeled like in Clockwork orange and read him a few integral books, if there is no psychosomatic activation we can tell him he needs to clean his room more.

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Also I’m curious Heidi, whether you wanted to engage more on this thread?

How you see him as being integral?
Or perhaps my hunch is, the deep value you’ve gotten from him, and how that might inform us and the integral world? I actually find your putting him forward makes me reconsider his depth more. Partly for the man himself, and partly for the zeitgeist catalyst he seems to symbolise.

Reading some of your blog posts, they are uplifting reading. This part was one that stood out to me - ‘Looking back in my life, these two men [Wilber and Peterson] have had the biggest impact on me and my understanding of life on this planet.’ You know I think I’m with you there on that, or he’s certainly in the top 10 for me.

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So I just finished writing a long email to you and I log in and see this… here we go again lol.

About the conservatism sexy again – in many ways I feel that this is the crux of the IDW – at least dominating the internet zeitgeist. It’s almost like the internet has become the shadow of society – what can’t be said due to political correctness is relegated to some dark corners of the internet, where the flood gates can be fully opened.

I wanted to comment more on what you said about Buddhism, given that I grew up in a Zen buddhist temple in Hawaii (my mom is a minister). While of course, its very difficult to lump Buddhism into a box (there’s Mahayana, Theravada, Vajrayana, and thats not to mention even more specific sectarian denominations – Soto vs. Rinzai Zen, Japanese vs. Korean Zen, etc…), I do resonate with some of the generalizations you made. While I don’t know much about Christianity, I do resonate deeply with Christian existentialism – the Kierkegaards and Tillich’s of the world, as it provided something to me that Buddhism did not , which was the power of pure faith and love for God which at times, is all you got (especially in really rocky times like a personal crises). As Tillich describes in his book The Dynamics of Faith, surrendering to God completely can be brutal; an existentially grueling ordeal, and takes a tremendous “courage to be” and faith to completely surrender. While there are many forms of Buddhism that cultivate this kind of devotion (for example, Pure Land Buddhism is very similar to Amber forms of Christianity as we know it in the west), Western Buddhism largely eschews this type of devotional practice, instead favoring more psychological approaches to personal growth and healing (hence its common dovetailing with psychotherapy). I feel like this devotional aspect of Blue (and as you said Paul, the power of Pure belief) is something that is worth reviving and reintegrating, how that is done specifically, I’m not sure.

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I just listened to the next video of the interview with Ken where he talks about the “Intellectual dark web” as the event he has predicted - integral comes online in a broader way. He thinks that all those people, including Peterson, come from a second tier level.


Interesting also the discussion about the regression of people in green into blue fundamentalist, the development of half of conservatives and liberals into the next level which leads to the seeming paradox that now conservatives stand for liberal values.
Also interesting the discussion about spiritual communities and the danger of ending up in blue authoritarian, and “enlightenment” on all levels possible, which doesn’t really really help is not accompanied by growing up.

Enjoy
Heidi

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Paul, I would love to talk about it, not so much write. Writing takes too much time, and I would prefer to write for my blog instead which I am already neglecting quite a bit.
Maybe we can make an extra appointment on Zoom with Ryan and whoever is interested?

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HawaiianRyan- thanks for this thoughtful response which is rounding out my understanding of not only JP’s center of gravity but also how we might type others’ level of development.

Although I think we may may be able to make some ballpark estimations of a person’s LOD, I do feel a little wary of our doing so- this method is anecdotal and not grounded in the 3 Strands of Knowledge approach, such as the Cook-Greuter sentence completion test. It also doen’t account for lower Level Shadow elements of the personality, which could be substantial and lurking under the surface, unseen by viewers in media presentations.

That being said, I do notice a lack of implicit or explicit acceptance or appreciation of (or possibly a lack of awareness of), different LOD’s in Peterson, save for Upper Right or Left Orange psychology, which he obviously is highly educated in. He certainly doesn’t word or orient or frame his worldview in a primarily developmental way, which to me would be a hallmark of 2nd Tier.

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