“What is needed, rather, is a more integrative approach that works with our present historical actualities. A planetary culture will in effect have to deal with equitable material-economic distribution in the physiosphere (the enduring concern of Marx, even if we reject his particular solutions), and it will have to deal with sustainable ecological distribution in the biosphere (the enduring contribution of the Greens). But it will have to go much further and deal specifically and non-reductionistically with the noosphere and its distributions and distortions, and it will have to do so with something other than reductionistic web-of-life theories, if it is to freely engage the motivation of an entire globe. It will have to work toward specific theories of free noospheric exchange, including but transcending ecological concerns.
Social labor could unite world citizens to the extent, but only to the extent, that we all share matter in common. The Greens can unite world citizens to the extent, but only to the extent that we all share bodies in common. But it will take a vision-logic movement of tremendous integrative power (integral-aperspectival as universal-integral) in order to unite world citizens on the centauric basis that we all share matter and bodies and minds in common (not to mention a Spirit and a Self prior to all that). The Greens have produced a promising platform, but if it isn’t any more than that (and it isn’t so far, neglecting noospheric exchange), then it will be merely snapped up by egoic-rationality structures of capital production, and we will simply have McDonald’s selling burgers in recyclable bags, which is nowhere near anything deserving to be called a Planetary Transformation."
—Ken Wilber
Welcome back to The Ken Show! In this episode we continue our fascinating discussion about Integral epistemology, taking a look at the important but partial truths of Marxism, how we go about verifying and confirming spiritual experiences, and the involutionary/evolutionary nature of mathematics.
This is a continuation of the previous episode of The Ken Show, where we walked through a dozen major schools of epistemology and took note of their strengths, limitations, and how they fit into a more comprehensive and Integral method of sense-making. If you haven’t watched that episode already, we highly recommend you do so!
Why is this important? In an age where legacy media is on the decline and has being largely replaced by social media, we are currently experiencing a total epistemic collapse of historic proportions — resulting in a collective state of aperspectival madness that Ken has been warning us about for decades. The world is broken, and no one can quite agree how, which makes our most pressing social and planetary problems (particularly the truly wicked ones) almost impossible to solve.
But don’t worry, this could actually be good news. Our present epistemic breakdown is one of the central life conditions of our time, and Integral metatheory is uniquely positioned to help us piece our fragmented and fallen world back together. While things will almost certainly get worse before they get better, these are precisely the sort of conditions that call integral solutions forward, and these are the sorts of conversations where those solutions will eventually emerge.