Very interesting comments, Michelle. I would love to see a thorough Integral discussion about what is racism and what is not, given that unhealthy Green tends to blow racism out of proportion. As for your comments about transcendent Integralists opening back up to Green in regards to race, I think that sensitivity around race is a specific sub branch of Green, and not an intrinsic part of Green. For example, many Japanese Green types move to Hawaii, as they can’t cut it in the cutthroat Blue/Orange world of Japan. Most of them are a back to the land, new age type of Green who want to work on an organic farm, swim with dolphins, and attend massage school and hula dancing. The difference between Japanese Greens and American Greens is that the Japanese don’t have a prominent Green cultural movement, such as LGBTQ/social justice/identity politics; there is still plenty of racism and bigotry in Japan (especially towards the Koreans) and not a very large public effort to combat it (though times are changing there, finally!). So, many Green Japanese folks have no sensitivity/awareness around racial issues; they are not “woke” on cultural issues, since they don’t have any in homogenous Japan.
So I think as Integralists we need to have more conversations around race, and try to develop a very conscious and explicit Teal/2nd tier conversation around such a charged topic. My contention is that there are people who are not in an anti-green space (like the Japanese folks I mentioned) and still not be aware of the impact of racism. It sounds like you would like to bring some awareness to people around racial issues and traumas around racism – my question to you would be: how would you inspire/move forward with this discussion? I’m greatly interested in your answer on this topic, as this is something I am interested in instigating 
The first challenge is to look at what does “blowing racism out of proportion” mean. If we analyze the straw in isolation the only reasonable and rational conclusion is that something is terribly wrong with the camel. Is this the correct analysis or do we need to look at the whole pile? Sure, it’s just a t-shirt or it’s just a Halloween costume or sometimes the police make a mistake, their job is really hard. Straw by straw we can always find the perspective where we feel this is getting blown out of proportion. This is where green comes in. From this conscious space we look at the whole pile, the totality of the history and feel into it.
I would suggest people listen to the stories of oppressed people. Just listen, no input, no opinions, no feedback, just listen. One skill we need to learn is how to make autonomous space for the other. We need to relate but we also need to accept others autonomy without trying to convince them they are wrong when we don’t get it. Basically if a black student tells me it’s painful to walk past a mural that depicts black oppression, I say ok…There can be conversation, of course, but I don’t hear conversation, I don’t hear questions being asked, personally I hear people just “telling” minorities they are suffering from madness. I say thank you green for not backing down!
What does integral racial relation look like. First there is a healthy autonomous space for minority expression. This is what I see we are currently fighting for. Then, I think there is a shift in understanding the dynamics of development around race so it’s not so much “such and such people are bad” but this is the danger with ethnocentric thinking. I think this will be helpful for parts of the world, like Japan, that haven’t had to tussle as much with the challenges of racial integration.
I like to think of integral race as a spreading apart of the fabric so other voices can be woven in. This is how we move beyond consensus…we make space for the other while passionately committing to the first tier fight to define what’s unhealthy.
Thanks for your response, Michelle. To double down on your point, it has been difficult for me to share my personal stories with racism with certain folks, especially those with an “anti social justice warrior” mentality (some Integral, many not). I would be excoriated, and frankly smeared, as a victim, SJW, “overly Green” etc, even though I was being totally reasonable and just sharing a personal experience. Many seem so sick around the current conversation around race that they can’t even listen to a minority speak about their experience in society without some type of ideological backlash (however I have had some success in opening peoples minds).
I agree with you that it would be prudent to nail down what “blowing racism out of proportion means,” – even starting with a definition of racism that we can all agree on. I would like to invite you to a debate/discussion group called “Integral Crossfire” where we get together to discuss controversial topics, with the hope of coming to an Integral conclusion by the end of the call. We just had one on gender, I would love to have you (and anyone else) join us for one on race. Here is the one on gender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSnk4UzmQls&t=178s
Let me know if you are interested!
I’m sorry to hear about your experiences. My community has held listening sessions on race issues. They are truly transformational. I wish we would do it more often.
Shutting down these expressions is just such a loss. I think we are starting to see what “toxic teal” looks like. For me this is why focusing on overall developmental health along with more emphasis on horizontal development over vertical achievement is important. Someone may have green capacity but no horizontal development with it and I think we are seeing the problems this creates.
I agree that defining racism is important, I also think developing capacity for healthy racial autonomy while being in relation at the same time is very important. I think this is the skill I had to learn to have a multi-racial family. I just don’t have a full view on what it means to be black in America. Period. I don’t have a first person perspective on that, but I don’t use that as a reason to turn away from relating either, instead I learn to listen and I do what I can to make sure these perspectives are represented in community and cultural decision making positions.
This is just a lesson that dominant groups have a hard time learning because the roots of supremacy in all egocentric and ethnocentric culture is that ones first person is THEE first person. Denying or diminishing these first person experiences is then limiting us to only integrating a small potion of knowledge obtained from the human condition and there is just a wealth of wisdom in that first person that needs to be integrated into the whole of the system. We can not do this without green, deep healthy horizontally developed green.
Let me know when your next talk is. I would love to make it if I can swing it!
I am late to the party here. I attempted to read Peterson and couldn’t get into his book. I did see the interview with Ken when he spoke about him (Dark Web). I am just not sure what all the buzz is about. What is he bringing to the table that’s new? It seems he got a lot of attention when he fought back against the political correctness of how to use pronouns in academic writings.
I’m so sorry I forgot about this post - I said I was going to invite you to one of our debates. We will have another one and I will let you know for sure. If you want, I can add you to our email list to inform you about future sessions. Anyhow, here is our crossfire discussion on racism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYxLn9ejmME
I am a latecomer to this conversation also, but I have read through all the posts and have also watched the relevant videos. And I have found it interesting, fascinating – and also somewhat frustrating – to watch all these attempts by the members of the Integral community to get a firm handle on Jordan Peterson.
In trying to figure out where my feeling of frustration comes from, it suddenly dawned on me that all the efforts to fit Peterson’s ideas into the Integral framework remind me of the difficulty experienced by the Dutch merchant Francisco Pelsaert when his ship ran aground off the coast of Western Australia in 1629.and he became the first European to encounter a kangaroo. Peisart reported that:
“…there are large numbers of Cats, which are creatures of a miraculous form, as big as a hare; the head is similar to of a civet-cat, the fore-paws are very short, about a finger long. Whereon there are five small Nails or small fingers, as an ape’s fore-paw, and the two hind legs are at least half an ell long* [~35cm] *, they run on the flat of the joint of the leg, so that they are not quick in running. The tail is very long, the same as a Meerkat; if they are going to eat, they sit on the hind legs and take the food with the fore-paws, and eat exactly the same as the squirrels and apes do."
According to George Kelly’s Theory of Personal Constructs, when we encounter something for the first time we have no choice but to try and fit it into our existing way of seeing the world. But it seems to me that Peterson, like the kangaroo, is a person whose thinking has taken totally different evolutionary pathways to arrive at a spot tantalisingly parallel to—but strangely different from—the ones we are familiar with from Integral Theory.
We are all familiar with the satisfying ‘aha!’ we experience when something we encounter slots neatly into place in our existing framework, thereby extending it. Rather like fitting a nice long word into a Scrabble game. (I have been having those aha moments at regular intervals since I first came across Wilber’s ideas back in the early 1980s.) Which is probably why we find ourselves wishing that Peterson would bone up on Integral and get with the program. But is seems to me that if we are going to transcend and include his ideas we can only do it at a higher level of organization – one in which cats and kangaroos both fit neatly. Quite how to do that, I don’t know. I am still puzzling over it.
2019-06-16T14:57:00Z
Thank you for your comment. I like the idea you are developing and the reminder to all of us about how easily we forget our biases, our need to see everything within already existing frameworks, instead of allowing the possibility that there is something new involved.
This reminds me of our inability to realise that, at 9/11, there was a completely new technology involved. It was not known to the public then and that’s why almost everyone bought into the official story, just by the inability to imagine that things could be so completely different and not fitting in any familiar framework.
Welcome to the discussion Marian!
Thanks for your comment. Your story of the kangaroo really made me smile!
I totally agree that we sometimes do exaggerate in trying to put people in boxes which we already know, trying to fit them in. But sometimes some pieces hang over the edges, just don’t want to get into no matter how much you squeeze them.
Great conversation here on bridging Integral Theory and reality (M’s of subscribers, 100K’s of views per episode).
I ran across this cast linked below that looks perhaps at a fundamental difference between Individualism first/Collectivism secondary and Collectivism first/Individualism secondary ideologies.
This post is not intended to inflame, but perhaps might give people something that might help their lives. About half of the US population clamors for “meaning in a meaningless life”, while half are somewhat dumbfounded at how many wonderfully imperfect traditions provide mental health well beyond seen-from-outside decomposition, even with all the imperfections.
I share Lion Lamb’s sentiment that Peterson doesn’t feel integral to him and that 2nd tier is supposed to shift from doing needs to being needs. (Erich Fromm defines it as the mode of having and the mode of being). I also agree with Lion Lamb that Peterson often come across as a martyr trying to save the western world from doom and how hard life is with all manner of struggle and suffering. Lion Lamb added that Peterson does not get green, both intellectually and emotionally in addition to his share of unresolved repressed feelings.
Your observations, Lion Lamb, tie it with renown physician Gabor Mate. Among many lectures and interviews he’s had, he has reasons to believe that Peterson carries a lot unresolved pent up anger. Bernard Schiff, who was a close friend and colleague of Peterson would most likely agree with Mate when Schiff said that
"Peterson exhibits a great range of emotional states, from anger and abusive speech to evangelical fierceness, ministerial solemnity and avuncular charm. It is misleading to come to quick conclusions about who he is, and potentially dangerous if you have seen only the good and thoughtful Jordan, and not seen the bad"
Pankaj Mishra experienced the bad as Peterson called him a sanctimonious prick, arrogant racist son of a bitch, and said he would slap Mishra if he was in the room, and rounded it up with a final fuck you for criticizing one of his books.
Aside from Mate’s claim that Peterson has unresolved anger issues, a coalition of mental health professionals wrote a book about Trump’s pathological mind yet Peterson conveniently ignores it. How is it possible that Peterson, who is a clinical psychologist, cannot see Trump for who he is: a bonafide toxic individual yet you will never hear Peterson attack Trump in the same measure he does to Liberals. The reason why Peterson says nothing about Trump is because many Trump’s followers are the very ones who follow Peterson.
In addition to the above, In David Long" Video RE: Ken Wilber on Jordan Peterson & Sam Harris David takes issue with Wilber’s claim that Peterson is Integral. At the 1:16 minute mark, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NweGsDNBaKc&t=2171s&ab_channel=IAM-DavidLong
David says
*"How is he (Wilber) coming to this conclusion that he (Peterson) an integral thinker? Ken Wilber loves to do this. Other people have been critical of this in the past.
Quoting Frank Visser
“I would love to see Wilber cut the socializing and the endless, “I call this celebrity and I call that celebrity and I talked them into integral and in the end we agree so much.Why disagree? That brings the flesh on the inside and also the qualification"
David continues:
Wilber never debates or argues with anybody within the community or it really deals with any of the criticisms in public or anything like that. Off on his own, he’ll be critical of somebody but not to their face and not in like a real debate kind of situation. If you check out integral life content what you’ll find is that Ken Wilber loves to have people on, say how much we agree about everything, and then convince them that they’re integral already. This is a good sales tactic but it’s not really honest and it’s also a great way for Ken Wilber to basically tell Jordan Peterson’s fans if you agree with Peterson that must mean that you agree with me and your probably integral so you should buy into this. This is the thing that he does a lot. He goes around and he tells people you’re already integral as a way to get them to buy into his philosophy. Part of this is kind of true because you want to appeal to people’s highest nature and it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So it’s not necessarily such a terrible thing to do except for it dumbs down the standards of the (Integral) community because people think they don’t have to do the work to actually learn the theory to really become Integral"
I believe that Jordan Peterson is a very troubled man and he’s unknowingly projecting his unresolved anger on others which prevents him from dealing with his unresolved past. When he cries about concerns that mean very much to him, he is using these concerns as vehicles to express his unresolved anger. As someone who studied Jung, Peterson should know what Jung meant when he said “all neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering” And does Peterson also know what Jung meant about the importance of being a “Wounded Healer”? I believe Deepak Chopra describes quite well the challenge we all face if we really want to be wounded healers i.e. grow up Integrally. Says he,
"Suffering is when you are attached to your pain. But pain needs to be witnessed (embraced). When you lock up your pain, it becomes anger; anger is nothing but remembered pain. What is anxiety and fear? It is anticipated pain. What is guilt? It is redirected pain (towards oneself). What is depression? It is the depletion of energy when you don’t know these things. These are the sorrows of our society, when we do not embrace our pain"
No doubt, Peterson’s has many legitimate concerns but as long as he remains as he is, it will continue to impair his capacity to see that there is more to our psychological and emotional development than he realizes.
David Long has a lot to say about Peterson and how Wilber himself is not living up to his own Integral ideas. I was a bit disillusioned by Long’s critique of Wilber, but I believe he is right and I’m almost sure that Dr. Susan Cook Greuter would agree considerably with Long’s concerns. The very ones she warned the Integral community about years ago.
Very interesting analysis Mr. @gnosisman .
I agree with you that Peterson doesn’t “feel” integral. Peterson in my assessment is “counter Integral” if anything since he has an Individual First, Collective follows foundation as opposed to the Integral 2.0 “collectivism IS the theory”. Peterson looks to me as a Classical Western Judeo/Christian to the core if you will. He claims to be 100% interested in “what works in the real world” for humans. Note also where he’s coming from as a clinical psychologist. Peterson didn’t develop theories on humanity solely from literature reviews or solely on personal meditations. He’s had thousand of patients for tens of thousands of hours, across the spectrum from extremely well adjusted (likely everyone would agree as highly evolved) all the way down to criminally insane. He’s not trying to convince anyone that he’s developed a theory that the world should then fit.
I had to look up Peterson’s fuck you for Mr. Mishra - thanks for mentioning . I’m not quite sure what makes Pankaj Mishra qualified to critique Peterson. Oddly as “one of Asia’s major intellectual forces” Mishra doesn’t get many views. If even 5% of India tuned in, he’s be a really big deal. Doesn’t seem like they’re even in similar intellectual or philosophical altitudes.
Reality is that Peterson is massively productive across vast arrays of knowledge domains with world class thinkers on a weekly basis that few (including KW) can even come close to. Not surprisingly if you’re an intellectual philosopher/sociologist, one of the very best ways to create attention/hits/sales is to reference Peterson, collaborate with or better yet create an internet kerfuffle. LOL.
Your assessment of Wilber is also extremely accurate in my view. Ken simply doesn’t have the interactions (that we see) with world class thinkers across “multi systematic” domains that would facilitate continued development of Integral Theory as well as “get the message out”.
I am very optimistic with the very recent hints that the Integral Movement (or IL at least) might pivot from the “collectivism at any cost” theory. I’m assuming KW at least helps chart these types of pivots.
P.S. To clarify, Peterson is what I would consider as transcending IT and likely counter-IT by the IM. He’s shockingly highly integrated and one of the most multi-systematic people publicly available.
Here are just 2 MONTHS of his podcasts on his Youtube channel:
- Diversity Inclusion Equity must Die
- Free Speech and Cambridge
- Talking with Russians
- It’s Time to Live
- Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life w/ Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying
- Fortitude - American Resilience w/ Rep Dan Crenshaw
- Jordan Peterson, God and Christiantiy with Word on Fire (Catholic)
- Voice of the Canadian West - Preston Manning
- Why I Love Great Britain
- Islam and the Possibility of Peace w/ Mohammed Hijab
- Fix This: Infrastructure & Environment w/ Gregg Hurwitz
- The Uniting Power of Story w/ Angus Fletcher
- Meaning, Awe and the Conceptualization of God - Compilation
- The 4 Horseman of Meaning - Bishop Barron, John Vervaeke, Johnathan Pageau
- The Symbolic World - w/ Jonathan Pageau
- Immaculate Conception: Bitcoin vs Fiat Standard w/ Dr. Saifedean Ammous
- Islam, Christ, and liberty w/ Mustafa Akyol
- The Actor
- A Wing and a Prayer
- Faith, Meaning, and the Power of the Invisible World w/ Clay Routledge
- Are All White People Racist w/ Africa Brooke
- Enlightenment and the Righteous Mind - Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt
You keep repeating this straw man, but every time I’ve asked you for examples of how “collectivism is integral theory”, you decline to answer.
Is it because integral says incredibly controversial things like “individual rights come with social responsibilities” that used to pass as common sense? Is it because integralists tend to think that things like “socialized fire departments and libraries” do not necessarily represent the end of Western individualism as we know it? Is it because we dare to notice that there are healthy versions of capitalism, and less healthy forms that could use a bit of regulation? Is it because we recognize that social holons exist and exert their own “nexus agency” among its members? Or is it simply because we do not constrain ourselves to a single anti-progressive ideology in terms of how we make sense of the world?
As for me personally, I don’t like Jordan Peterson very much, and I am also not sure that he reaches integral levels of cognition or values. Ken thinks he does. That’s okay, it’s just a view, and I’ve been known to disagree with some of Ken’s views before. Which is allowed in a multi-perspectival space such as this.
As for how much more active Jordan is than Ken, I’d encourage people to notice that Ken has been doing this internet discussion thing for 20 years, and also writing books for many decades more. While Peterson only really came into the spotlight within the last 5-7 years or so. Peterson is also a good 15 years younger than Ken, and is not suffering from the same physical ailments that prevent Ken from being as active as he would like to be (though I know Peterson has his own demons that he is trying to reintegrate.) I often like to think what things would be like if the Ken from 20 years ago, with all the energy he had, was still as active today as he was then. But time is relentless, and I am just happy Ken is still as active and engaged as he is!
@corey-devos
Whenever we discuss how a Teal noosphere would happen its through increased government mission and authority. And this governmental “fixes everything” also requires pushing authority and administration further away from the individual. Am I wrong that you promote that many current state responsibilities, authorities and missions should be federalized, that many current national responsibilities, missions and authorities should be kicked yet another level further from the individual to transnational globalist governments, that many voluntary choices for individuals should be mandated, monitored and enforced by government agencies?
Is Teal not more collectivist, more Trans individual, more trans national, more globalist than what we have today? Moving influence and decision making away from the individual is, well, moving the individual further away from decision making.
Did I misunderstand your proposals and implementation concepts?
Just as you’re a 1A and 2A advocate, but want signicant structural changes that would fundamentally alter the individual /government relationship that we have today.
And its OK to disagree - IT promotes a more collectivistless individualist Teal noosphere. There are alternative “higher” altitudes that many many people see as better for humanity.
And to be clear, I’m not bagging on Ken. But I dont want a misconcieved slight on KW to in any way take away from Petersons work. By any measure Peterson operates at an extremely high level across many domains and extremely broad audiences, like it or no.
You’re wrong that this is the only place I want to see power concentrated. I think every layer of the social holon stack has important roles and responsibilities when it comes to governance. And I think that there need to be basic mechanisms of accountability between these layers in holarchy. Because we have different kinds of problems at different levels of scale, and those different levels of scale require different modes of self-organization and regulation.
So yes, I believe that we need a federal government. I do not subscribe to the “shrink the government until we can drown it in a bathtub” mentality. We need the FDA. We need the EPA. We need OSHA. We need something like civil rights to be protected in all 50 states through federal power. We need our social holon to function properly at this scale, and we need to create more guard rails to prevent it from becoming so easily corrupted and hijacked by regulatory capture.
And yes, there are certain things that I think should be moved into federal jurisdiction. Namely healthcare, for all the reasons I have stated before.
There are other things I want to move out of federal jurisdiction. Such as fully ending the drug war, making addiction a medical issue instead of a justice issue, and legalizing things like marijuana. Dismantling the Patriot Act. Abolishing the 1929 Reappointment Act so we can restore the House of Representatives to what our Founders intended – equal representation for all people. You will likely say this would make government “bigger” simply by adding more members to the house. I argue it makes government smaller by making it more closely representative of the people, and reducing the power of any individual member or political faction.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t need local solutions as well. We need healthy families. We need healthy communities and churches and clubs and parks and YMCAs. We need town and city governance, we need the “laboratories of democracy” of state governance. We need this holarchic chain of courts and jurisdictions. And we absolutely need healthy individualism — not the cult of regressive individualism that says “fuck you, no one gets to tell me what to do”, but a healthy individualism with a healthy shared ethic of individual voluntarism and civic responsibility. “The American Way”, as it used to be called.
Integral is not about concentrating power at any particular scale, but rather making all scales of the social holon healthy and accountable to each other. Integral is about enacting, situating, and harmonizing all four quadrants, at all stages of individual and social development.
“Did I misunderstand your proposals and implementation concepts?”
Yes, I think so, as I have said all of the above many times in the past, I am left with the impression that you are filtering my responses through your own ideology and not hearing anything that falls outside that ideology. You seem to have some critical misunderstandings or at least mischaracterizations of integral theory — which is okay, we are all learning together! But it gets a little bit frustrating when I’ve tried to engage with you on these issues many times in the past, and yet you don’t seem to want to hear me, and keep repeating the same inaccurate accusations about integral theory and integral thinkers.
Thanks Corey for your generous reply to Fermented Agave. I find your candid sentiments meaningful and tells me more about you that I was not aware of.
So, not that I want to get on Ken Wilber’s case but when he said that Jordan Peterson is integral, he recently said the same thing to Thomas Sowell (in the video “What’s the problem with Progressivism”). Maybe I’m missing something here but it’s really hard to figure out why Ken would say that about Sowell. In this respect, I believe David Long’s comment below about Peterson not being Integral also apples to Sowell.
At the 48:11 mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NweGsDNBaKc&t=4573s&ab_channel=IAM-DavidLong Ken Wiber says,
"If I have some shadow material, it runs in the direction that Jordan Peterson does. The Postmodern theorists are very angry making for me. It really was infuriating…
Fuller: you share is anger.
Wilber: very much.
Long: Wilber is also very critical of Green. So it would make sense
that he would resonate with Peterson around a lot of that
criticism that he (Wilber) would be hearing. Oh, this is Integral.
Wilber: the things he he attached in Postmodernism are all the
extremist progressive, outrageous, idiotic, aspects of it but
he still uses some of its core ideas.
Fuller: but a lot of people say he (Peterson) doesn’t transcend and
include green… you think he does.
Wilber: I think he does, the part of green that he doesn’t like is the
extremists identity politics, Neo Marxist aspects.
*Long: He (Peterson) clearly doesn’t include the healthy deconstruction of green. Nor does he seem to have a healthy relationship with the progressive civil rights aspect of green. One might argue these are the most healthy and important parts of green: *
1 He hasn’t deconstructed his Christianity.
2 He hasn’t deconstructed society.
3 He hasn’t deconstructed the self or the ego and he came on the scene fighting against civil rights, pretending like it had something to do with freedom of speech.
Just ask yourself what are the healthiest parts of green and then ask yourself if Jordan Peterson is in touch with that and it seems like the answer is no.
Fuller: How can he (Peterson) be integral when he is so anti Green?
Long: Even this guy (Fuller) knows.
I believe Long’s observation that Peterson is not Integral is definitive and I also believe it applies to Sowell as well. If Wilber had said that Sowell and Peterson are integral in the sense that they can see the many fallacies within Green, fine, but that does make them Integral.
In reference to Peterson’s breath of knowledge, I’m reminded of what Lion Lamb said about doing needs vs being needs. Dr. Fromm said that we live in two modes of existence: that of having and that of being. Any person can have a lot of knowledge but no amount of it will have a transformational effect towards higher stages of development if it is not manifested into our being in the right way. As Dr. Fromm said in his book To Have or To be?
Our understanding of the quality of knowing in the being mode of existence can be enhanced by the insights of such thinkers as the Buddha, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, Master Eckhart, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx. In their view, knowing begins with the awareness of the deceptiveness of our common sense perceptions, in the sense that our picture of physical reality does not correspond to what is “really real” and, mainly, in the sense that most people are half-awake, half-dreaming, and are unaware that most of what they hold to be true and self-evident is illusion produced by the suggestive influence of the social world in which they live. Knowing, then, begins with the shattering of illusions, with disillusionment (Ent-täuschung). Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes; knowing means to “see” reality in its nakedness. Knowing does not mean to be in possession of the truth; it means to penetrate the surface and to strive critically and actively in order to approach truth ever more closely.
According to Marx, one needs to destroy illusions in order to create the conditions that make illusions unnecessary. Freud’s concept of self-knowledge is based on the idea of destroying illusions (“rationalizations”) in order to become aware of the unconscious reality. (The last of the Enlightenment thinkers, Freud can be called a revolutionary thinker in terms of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophy, not in terms of the twentieth century.) All these thinkers were concerned with human salvation; they were all critical of socially accepted thought patterns. To them the aim of knowing is not the certainty of “absolute truth,” something one can feel secure with, but the self-affirming process of human reason. Ignorance, for the one who knows, is as good as knowledge, since both are part of the process of knowing, even though ignorance of this kind is different from the ignorance of the unthinking. Optimum knowledge in the being mode is to know more deeply. In the having mode it is to have more knowledge.
Lastly, I believe that what Corey said about the role in government is that there is a big difference between big government and better government. no doubt, Corey was referring to the latter. And what makes better government? It’s those IN government that make government what it is. Government is an idea, a good one provided those in it bring the idea of government to life with a being mode of existence that provides the deeper knowledge we are in dire need of in these troubled times.
Jordan Peterson’s extensive knowledge has merit but as long as he believes that more knowledge makes him wiser, he would be making, as Wilber would say, a categorical mistake. I really really believe that Peterson has a considerable degree of unresolved trauma which prevents him from experiencing his breath of knowledge more deeply i.e. in the being mode of existence.
I think one of the problems here is giving Ken so much power to sanction who is, or isn’t, an integral thinker. Which is not a sleight against Ken whatsoever — it’s often a power that is projected onto Ken, and not necessarily a power that Ken himself demands be given to him. I certainly listen to and take seriously Ken’s opinions about things like this, often to ask myself if maybe I am missing something in my own perceptions. But also see them as just that – opinions and views. Ken does not know Peterson personally, his judgment is based on watching many hours of his discussion.
From my conversations with him, my sense is that Ken does not believe Jordan is maintaining an integral-level view, but is capable of integral-level cognition. Ken sees patterns in his thinking which strike him as teal. Which, okay, I think that is actually probably more common than we think in the world. But I would agree that I don’t see much evidence for a stable post-green worldview in Peterson, despite some possible post-green cognitive capacities.
And let’s always remember, teal patterns in our cognition can always be used to reinforce other lower-stage lines! That said, I also don’t think “but Peterson is a Christian” is a valid metric to gauge someone’s interior development, and if a person is themselves anti-christian (or just anti-religious) they will enact anyone with any religious views as sub-integral. This is the problem – it is impossible to ever reconstruct someone else’s interiors with 100% accuracy, because our own biases and blind spots will always influence what we see.
I won’t respond in particular to DL’s comments, because he has conducted himself in such a poor and antagonistic fashion in the larger integral space, which makes me suspicious of his own views, morals, and motives. So I’m gonna let that one lie.
But I will say that I don’t think we should be overly concerned with who Ken says is or isn’t integral, unless he is working with them directly — and any views he shares about that should be seen as exactly that. Views, as seen from a particular rung in the ladder.
Ken has the power to sanction his own integral theory, and whether people are interpreting it right, but when it comes to the question “how integral is this person?”, our views are always going to limited to a certain degree.
Just my .02!
Great to hear. I think in the other threads - Progressives and Integral Needs Now - it will be good to see these non governmental changes.
Also of interest will be development of agency outside of increased government.
I think justifications for each change will also be interesting. Are all predicated by income inequity? Are all current hierarchies dens of power inequity run by people solely focused on power and capital concentration? Will be good to hear the actual plans.
Growing up
Waking up
Cleaning up
Showing up
Two things here:
1 - Thinking is only one aspect of being Integral. Does being able to discuss Integral concepts mean he is Integral? - No
Jordan Peterson has a tremendous amount of “cleaning up” to do.
@FermentedAgave
You cannot become Teal by killing Green. It doesn’t work that way. That is why it is a different “Tier”. You can advance all through 1st Tier by “Killing” the former level, but before leaving Tier 1 all that killing has to be reconciled. The word killing used here is metaphorical as an individual but more literal as nations, corporations and organizations.
Jordan Peterson is one of a number of public figures who have discovered that it is extremely profitable to feed off of the shadows of weak men with fragile egos and rather than fixing themselves, focus externally on attacking wokeness (then alternating with describing their victim status to legitimize their attacks). Yes, he is popular - and he also makes money by teaching mental gymnastics to avoid any real self improvement or self accountability - and instead drag them into a victim-persecutor dynamic.
2 - Ok, let’s say Jordan Peterson can “think Integrally”. Even being able to “think Integrally” is still only 1/3 of being Integral, so it’s kind of a “so what?” if Jordan Peterson can or cannot be an Integral Thinker. Discussing Integral concepts is like discussing any other thing. I can discuss Stoicism but that does not mean I am a Stoic. Christians can discuss Christianity but that does not mean they act like Christ.
For me the term “Integral Thinker” is pointless. It’s all just theory for them.
Over the past two yearns I’ve noticed something while sitting with people doing shadow work. The more they ramble on about “in their heads” - the less they are actually able to “clean up”. It’s almost as if the rambling intellect keeps them distracted from anything they might be feeing in the other spiritual centers of their body.