The Conversation: What the Integral Movement Needs Next

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Humans, confined as we are by the “human condition”, are over-dependent on examples to inform us of what’s possible. It’s why imitation is so important in psychology and culture. Examples are vital to how we interpret the world.

The only examples that we have, with evidence that they work, are derived from earth-bound experiences and history. If we could only bear witness to the sorts of examples that have played out in other cultures, on other planets. Of course, we never ever will. The distances are too ridiculously unreachable.

First step is to radically revise our assumptions about the prevalence of life throughout the universe. If we persist with the parochial reductionism assuming that Planet Earth is among the rare exceptions in the universe into which an “advanced” civilization has stumbled, by fortuitous evolutionary dumb luck, then we will miss a most vital insight. We should reverse our assumptions, and make the living universe our null hypothesis (H0). As it is over here, so too, it is over there… the law of entropy requires it, it’s only logical and sensible to assume that this is a living universe. As for any eccentrics persisting with the myth that we are alone in the universe, the onus should be on them to prove the alternative hypothesis (H1).

So, given that the universe is abundant with life, anywhere where the conditions are right, with every manner of culture spanning the breadth of permutations across heaven and hell, then the possibilities that you might like to consider go well beyond “communities that do exactly what I want in the world”. Some of us are done with our Clown Cultures defining what constitutes acceptable conduct. Imitating examples from shithole culture can only ever provide us with more of the same.

Instead of looking to our broken, earthbound history for examples, we should be looking to invent our own. This is, ultimately, a spiritual objective. Instead of asking “whom should I imitate?”, we’d be better served to ask “what might I become?”

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I think to get out of the theoretical and into an actual concrete, real life practical exercise, imagine this scenario, which is by no means far fetched:

Imagine the election is close, and forget three states - let’s say just one State legislature declared 10,000 ballots for Biden invalid and that swings the election to Trump.

What would be an integral response at that point?
The article lists a few options, but it’s not looking at it from an integral community perspective.

What would be an integral response to a coup that would mark the beginning of the end of the American Democratic process that could well banish the Big Green Meme to Oblivion and move The US on a heading to move towards an Amber society? We saw in 2020 what this could look like. Unmarked federal vans with masked goons abducting citizens. Paramilitary militia vandalizing communities and blaming protesters, Law enforcement escalating violence and using every opportunity to brutalize its citizens - or alternatively just leaving an entire area to erupt into chaos after stoking the fires themselves. And all the time the political leaders and Right wing media pointing fingers at everyone except the one man in charge of it all.

Would having endless discussions and mapping everything out on AQAL be the Integral mode of operations? Or would it be more integral to keep discussions on the abstract level and tsk tsk tsk any discussions that do not bring love and light to all?
I think my own personal response would be decidedly nonIntegral - various kinds of pushing systems nonviolently and encouraging others to do so until they break down. I somewhat did this a bit in a very small microsphere in 2016. I could see myself escalating up to other forms of civil disobedience. Nothing to put me in the direct path of whatever New Gestapo would form, though.

Its a very interesting thought experiment - imagine in less than a Decade, the Government and society is no longer controlled by Green (Orange is long gone) and skips back to Amber and Red. How does one then live Integrally under a government and political elite that is predominantly Amber and Red?

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You’ve picked a not impossible but extremely unlikely scenario in classic Leftist “feed the people existential negativity”.
Instead of fixating on a fantastical apocalyptic cataclysm, would we be better served to look at the spectrum of scenarios? Perhaps from most likely to least probable, most cataclysmic to most beneficial?

Just as it seems cra-cra for someone to destroy their financial well being in order to prepper for nuclear war/global famine/energy shortages/mob rule/climate extinction/zombie Apocalypse, so it seems your fantasy scenario.

Here are a few scenarios ranked in order of likelihood (based on what we know today) with guesstimated reactions:
2022

  • Republicans win majority positions in House and Senate - High Probability
    • Vector 1: Woke/CRT/Racial Division continues. Momentum of Race-based policies stalls.
    • Vector 2: Legislation is passed at State levels to clarify that government sponsored Racist-based policy and government funded Racism is illegal.
    • Vector 3: Anti-Racism legislation passes the House and Senate to be vetoed by Biden (or whomever assumes the Presidency after 25A is invoked or impeached) setting up continued Anti-Racist momentum going into 2024 election cycle
  • States continue to defining States vs Federal powers and backed by SCOTUS - High Probability
  • Democrats maintain a majority in either the House or Senate - Legislative deadlock ensues - Low Probability

2024

  • Republicans win Presidency - High Probability
  • Republicans maintain majority positions in House and Senate - High Probability
    • Constitutional Originalist Legislation passes House, Senate and signed into Law
    • Federal Government sponsored and funded Racism is eradicated - Medium Probability
  • Democrats win Presidency - Low Probability
    • Neither Drools nor Missing in Action can likely win the DNC nomination, much less Presidency
    • New candidates win nomination (Michelle+?)

Armed Insurrection by the Right ensues - Low Probability

  • They already have most of the guns already and haven’t done it so far.

Violent Insurrection by Left is reignited in eoy 2022, 2024 - High Probability

  • Federal government leaves policing to states - Blue cities burn, exodus continues - High probability
  • Red states start fire hosing any unlawful “mostly peaceful protests” and prosecute organized terrorism

How are these Integral? Personally I find it hard to see how any “Integral Development” can happen as physical safety is eroding. We don’t have to “go Amber”, but can just look at Maslow’s work.

Question I would have is voting for Democrats in order to erode Rule of Law (Orange?) more Integral to voting for a different ideology?

Is there any positive Integral perspective on maintaining our Liberal Democracy or is it so f’ed up that it needs radical change?

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@FermentedAgave
Typical - again you try to derail yet another topic with irrelevant hot air.

The topic isn’t “who will win the election”
Nor is it anything to do with prepping.

Could you actually address the topic “What the integral movement needs next”? Either by describing an integral response to the scenario I presented or use your own brain to thing up another way to discuss it?

Otherwise kindly fuck off and stop trying to derail every single post into your bullshit anti liberal fetish?

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Oh yes, as a side note. The raw land I bought for $9k in 2017 is now worth over$50k. And that’s after a nearby volcanic eruption that destroyed half a neighborhood 20 miles away in 2018.

So quite the contrary to “financial ruin” - hoping for the best while preparing for the worst is a great way to build financial security.

It’s also a core conservative principle, and I would say it’s a very integral way to approach life.

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Just looking at Scenarios and likelihood. Like you investing in a vacation/bugout home addresses many scenarios from likely with minimal change to catastrophic apocalyptic. That’s smart thinking if not so melodramatic.

The scenario you described is so unlikely to be of as much interest as the next episode of Twilight.

We have a thread linked below that a quick review might give some ideas that the Integral Elite might ponder. Just some thoughts.

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@FermentedAgave
I notice - again - you have nothing useful to add and nothing that adds anything new to the discussion.

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You’re funny. What’s “new” is to honor and appreciate living in the most egalitarian prosperous free unencumbered society that humanity has ever developed (in reality, not in someone’s noggin). Which I know is counter to the let’s trash what we have so a bunch of geeks can rehash innocuous sounding ideologies that have in every previous attempt resulted in horrific genocide and suffering for 100M’s.

You think promoting “Collectivism” is innovative, but what you typed alluded to anarchism if you don’t get what you want.

What Integral Needs Next is to embrace and refine what’s created the environment for these very Integralists to develop cool theories. Just a thought.

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You mean it’s a society lost in the throes of two opposing “Mass Formation Psychoses”?

I don’t know how you figure I’m into collectivism. That’s just part of you not being able to see anything except tropes. I’ve never suggested anything along the lines of collectivism. Some degree of Anarchism is coming, regardless of if you or I or Trump promote it or not. So it’s not whether I “like” anarchy - it’s being able to adjust to Anarchy or Totalitarianism or anything in between.

Are you referring to Green Postmodernism here? Or do you think that we got to where we are today with 1950’s conservativism? You understand much of the Information Technology revolution was enabled by LSD, don’t you? And the only people taking LSD in the 1970’s were liberals - which is why to this day the IT sector still has a more liberal population. Liberals built it. In IT you have to understand a form of “Anarchy” has a place. Actually fractals, though - which looks like Anarchy to a mind trained to think in Hierarchy. The 1950’s conservative hierarchy based mind struggles to grasp the order within the chaos of information technology.
So again, I suspect you are experiencing a bit of mass formation psychosis here by trying to believe Conservativism brought us our current prosperity and comfort in the information age. If it was up to conservatives the internet literally would have been banned in the 1990’s. Are you old enough to remember Newt Gingrich trying to legislate regulation of the internet?

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Yes I’m old enough. :slight_smile: You’re also doing some serious multi-decade time shifting here. I’ve seen your repeated invocations of Liberal History. I’ll just point out that in our Liberal Society we have INCLUDED this into who we are today.

You do realize the “Right” are the “Liberals” now? The Left are perhaps the most Illiberal Authoritarian Collectivists we’ve ever seen in the US. And sorry for being confused, but you are very adamant about supporting the Illiberal Leftist establishment. Perhaps your “Liberals” have shifted so far Left, so Authoritarian Collectivist that they might not be the best vehicle for you to see a Libertarian society that might best fit your personal ideology? Just a thought.

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Well, yes - I’ve been the one explaining this to you for months. It’s interesting to see you’ve accepted your own Liberalness.

Who are “my liberals”? LOL I don’t think you have any idea who “my Liberals” are.
You are all over the place and the thoughts you are expressing are incoherent.
Never, ever, ever have I supported any kind of “establishment” in any way, shape or form. That’s kind of funny. How does me accepting and embracing chaos (not causing it - just accepting it as part of a natural cycle) support authoritarianism?

The problem is you are confused within yourself but refuse to look at that. Are you liberal or conservative? Or neither? Instead of figuring out where your own internal philosophies are inconsistent, you instead make all kinds of nonsensical assumptions and accusations about others.

Since you have absolutely no kind of idea about the kinds of people I associate with (and apparently can’t even imagine or comprehend such people exist), well … your thoughts are pretty much worth the paper they are written on. (hint - they aren’t on paper) I don’t even know anyone who is part of a collective, and I don’t know any “left” oriented intentional community that decides things through authoritarianism. Again, again, again - you have some kind of simplistic image in your mind that is based on tropes and disinformation and rather than deal with your own psychosis you are trying to project it outwards.

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“the most egalitarian prosperous free unencumbered society that humanity has ever developed (in reality, not in someone’s noggin)”

You keep making this claim repeatedly in these threads. I know it is often the conservative frame — we already have the most perfect union in the history of history, and it’s unpatriotic to criticize it or try to fix something that ain’t broke!

But the problem is, it IS broken in many fundamental ways. It reminds me of Jeff Daniel’s famous speech in The Newsroom:

“There are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world.

  • We’re seventh in literacy,
  • twenty-seventh in math,
  • twenty-second in science,
  • forty-ninth in life expectancy,
  • 178th in infant mortality,
  • third in median household income,
  • number four in labor force,
  • and number four in exports.

We lead the world in only three categories:

  • number of incarcerated citizens per capita,
  • number of adults who believe angels are real,
  • and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty-six countries combined, twenty-five of whom are allies.”

Now, simply acknowledging that we have by far the most incarcerated civilians than any other county shows that we are in fact not the “most free unencumbered society that humanity has ever developed”. Actually, we are one of the most incarcerated societies that humanity has ever developed.

We are probably the most egalitarian though, that part is true. A result of the American melting pot, and progressive strides over history. Progressives gave women the vote, progressives abolished slavery, progressives enacted civil rights, progressives enacted gay marriage, all of which created a more egalitarian society, step by step.

See, I am very much a patriot. Not because I believe we live in the most perfect society under the sun, but because I know what makes this country great is the fact that we have the constitutional mechanisms of enfoldment in place to create a more perfect union over time (which is the very definition of progressivism). At least until those mechanisms become captured by oligarchs and plutocrats.

To me, being a patriot means knowing that we will never achieve perfection, but that the long arc of the nation reaches ever closer from generation to generation. And when we see many other nations who objectively rank higher in many of the metrics we use to measure America’s greatness, it’s clear that our moral arc still has some ways to go before we achieve anything like “perfection”, or even being “the most egalitarian prosperous free unencumbered society that humanity has ever developed”.

The healthy ego is one that can come to terms with its own shadows, biases, pathologies, and other faults, and strive to overcome them. The healthy nation is one that can do the same. Simply repeating the phrase “we’re number one!” over and over again feels to me something like ego-centric selfishness that is unable or unwilling to look at its own faults.

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Sure, except for that whole “let’s try to overthrow our electoral system from the top down, have Pence throw state totals out the window, and declare Trump the winner even though he clearly lost” thing that happened last year, while using the big lie about the 2020 election to implement some of the greatest voting restrictions in generations. Which isn’t authoritarian at all! :blush:

What baffles me though, is that you came into another thread to accuse me and Keith of being “divisive” by using a phrase like “extractive capitalism”, and then launching into another series of anti-left comments, with continued unwillingness to criticize the right whatsoever. Who is being divisive here?

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Corey - We’ve talked through this. You very elaborately defined Extractive Capitalism. I replied that Witt didn’t seem to be using with your definition, so I acknowledged that his “you’re either growth hierarchy or extractive capitalism” phrasing might not have been spot on. But since you bring it up, you didn’t correct him then or now that defining as either “growth camp” or “Extractive Capitalist” is naive and divisive. You also glossed over my example on the plumber. Is the plumber that charges $300 to clear your toilet on New Years Eve a “extractive capitalist” or someone in the “growth camp”? What if she charges $500? Or does it for free?

Perfect? When did I ever say perfect? Have I not outlined how we live in the most adaptive Liberal Democracy in the world? We’re continually getting better as we both agree. Just as our politicians are looking to claim credit for the economy, Covid dissipating, the sun rising in the east every morning me thinks Progressives miss how adaptive and Liberal our society really is. Are Progressives wrapped up in an identity of “look at me, I know where we should be going”, which just happens to be our current trajectory regardless?

Of all of your rank order metrics, how do we rank with major nations/economies? I use a nice round number of 100M population to sort out the nations dealing with society at scale vs smaller nations which are usually much less diverse in every way. Singapore kicks our ass in many metrics and is equivalent to Manhattan NY. Our benchmark Scandinavian swimming in natural resource exports have mono-cultures the size of some of our larger cities (Sweden=Chicago, Norway-Houston).

Hell Corey, we have 40M foreign born people in the US - that’s more than most of your “benchmark” countries. Why isn’t that metric on your list of all the ways the US is screwed up? And of course you’re comparing a singular nation against the very best individual metrics globally.

But let’s set aside all of the “data”. I ask seriously - why haven’t you emigrated to one of the multitude of “better” countries? Free health care, centralized planning, climate awareness, and every other “existential threat” is being handled. Seriously, why not move to one of these “not so imperfect” nations that’s getting so much more right than the US?
And let’s say you can’t move because your child’s grandparents live within driving distance. I get that. If that weren’t the case, where would be your first choice?

I’ll throw out my first choices based on having a couple of passports full of stamps. And I’ve considered somewhat seriously moving overseas several times - Canada, NZ, Belize, Argentina, Norway, UK, Italy, UAE, Malaysia, Taiwan. First factor is quality of life, so options my $'s enable, healthcare, rule of law, safety, weather are key contributors. From what little research I’ve done, my first two choices are Portugal and Spain.
So what are your top 2 or 3 non-US destinations and why?

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Honestly if language, Visa and professional credentials were all universally transferrable, there are at least 20 to 40 Countries I’d prefer to live in due to their overall better quality of life.

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I didn’t gloss over it, I said “The plumbers you mention are not ‘extracting’ value, they are generating value based on a fair exchange of services for capital.”

Unless of course the plumbers are the ones clogging the drains in the first place, and then charging money to have them unclogged. That would be extractive. Or if MegaPlumber Corporation temporarily lowers their prices in order to drive all local plumbers out of business, and then hiking their fees again. That would be extractive. Or if plumbers were reworking our plumbing so that waste flows into our rivers instead of treatment facilities, in order to make a quick buck. That would be extractive. But otherwise, generating value is not the same as extracting value.

But let’s set aside all of the “data”. I ask seriously - why haven’t you emigrated to one of the multitude of “better” countries?

Haha it’s seldom a good idea to set aside “data” :slight_smile: But I think I already answered your question — I have not had a desire to emigrate, because I am a patriot who loves his country. That’s why I am willing to admit her faults, both historic and contemporary, and push for better methods of social self-organization. Similar to how I love my daughter – it is because of my love for her, that I want her to constantly improve and be better, hopefully better than me one day (not that I claim a very high bar here, but I know I am a better parent than my parents were, largely because of the mistakes they made and I learned from. Same will be true for her, I assume).

I simply do not subscribe to the idea of “oh you want to improve things somewhat? Why don’t you go move somewhere better”. That to me is a tremendously un-patriotic sentiment.

But I always thought Iceland would be a cool place to live. A bit cold, but that might be a fair trade to get to hang out with all those faeries :slight_smile:

Portugal is an interesting choice. I love what they’ve done with their drug policy – taking it out of the justice system and into the medical system, decriminalizing al drugs, which has resulted in a massive decline of addiction rates. I wonder if that’s the sort of progressivism we could both get behind, as learning from this experiment would put a huge dent in America leading the world in the number of incarcerated citizens.

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More divisive than your constant “leftists suck” comments?

It is not naive whatsoever. There is an important distinction between “growth hierarchies” and “dominant hierarchies” (of which extractive capitalism is an example).

Again, the idea is not that all capitalism is extractive. In fact, capitalism is itself the product of growth hierarchies. But capitalism often takes the form of dominator hierarchies, such as – yes – extractive hierarchies, which tend to “privatize the gains, socialize the losses”.

Keith exchanges his services for money. He doesn’t work for free. He is clearly not saying that the exchange of value is itself extractive. He is instead describing the overall economic paradigm we live within, which is indeed based on extractive versions of capitalism. Particularly since Reagan and Thatcher ushered in the neoliberal “supply side” economic model that conservatives have been championing, and which the left and right have been operating under for decades — and which, when left unregulated, becomes exactly the sort of “vertically integrated” plutocracy that we have now, where local competitors are driven out of business by mega-corporations.

And just for the record, putting people like Scott Pruitt in charge of something like the EPA is 100% an example of extractive capitalism, which uses tactics of regulatory capture in order to prevent transnational corporations from being accountable to the laws of any given nation state.

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At some things, yes. Particularly in our culture, which is incrementally becoming more inclusive as we go. Thanks, progressives!

But at other things, we are getting worse. Declining economic mobility. Declining middle class. Declining wages relative to cost of living. Declining home ownership. Declining empathy levels. Declining quality of life. Declining happiness.

All things that could be improved, if we had two parties willing to enact policy in good faith. But when one of our major political social holons decides that 100% obstructionism is the best way forward, because we can never ever let the other side have a win that would make people feel like government can actually benefit their lives in some way. No, the right wing political goal has been explicitly stated to “starve the beast” — that is, to “make the government so small you can drown it in a bathtub” (Norquist), or to “bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment” (Bannon). It’s a tremendously cynical and nihilistic point of view, and this nihilism has captured the GOP at nearly all levels.

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As the father of a kid born with a chronic illness, I’d take just about any other developed nation when it comes to access to healthcare. But I am glad she received her actual liver transplant here. Thank God for the ACA, as lukewarm as it was, for eliminating pre-existing conditions and lifetime caps. It was a small but massively important step in the right direction, and is now a bare minimum for any further reforms in the future.

For some reason, conservatives have convinced half the country that America is simply “too big” to do something even remotely similar. Just more of that nihilistic and contradictory “this is hard so let’s not try, but oh by the way America is #1” attitude they’ve maintained among the GOP ranks for decades.

Again, we can’t have anything like a national healthcare system, because that would be a cardinal sin — thou shalt not make the people feel like the government can help them in any way whatsoever.

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Just to unpack that a bit more, it reminds me of a video that was making its rounds, where a hispanic dad is at a parent teacher conference and talks about how his son is being bullied. A conservative in the audience then says “then why don’t you go back to Mexico?”

A perfect example of this sort of deeply cynical false choice. “You should not want to improve things, because things are probably worse somewhere else. Go there if you think it’s so bad.”