If - warning: big assumption ahead - it is right that the business structures created by Orange had their roots in the social structures created by Blue, should Teal be looking to Green for the roots of the business structures it wishes to evolve/create? Are the difficulties we are seeing that Teal is having in creating new business structures caused by Teal trying too much to “go it alone”?
Is this what Robb Smith is alluding to when he refers to software being an answer?
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It seems that despite our integral aspirations, we still remain confined to anthoropocentric priorities. It seems that “knowing how to be” is missing from the narrative.
Christianity made a major impact on European cultures, and the European renaissance could never have occurred without it. What was it that Christianity provided? I’ve given this considerable thought, despite not being a believer. What Christianity provided was:
- Belief in the greater good. Christians expressed this as belief in God, but ultimately it manifests in practical terms as belief in the greater good. Irrespective of whether one believes in God or not, it is belief in the greater good that makes the difference, and ALL authentic religions can come on board with that;
- Standing up for what you believe in. Moral individualism (as distinct from selfish individualism). As an example of what this implies: Buddhism, in contrast to Christianity, prioritizes filial piety, and in this it is more inclined to a kind of moral authoritarianism as distinct from moral individualism;
- An implied contribution to the semiotic narrative… the choices we make shape what we become. Again, this is a notion that all authentic religions can come on board with [Semiotics, as the focus of my own work, has recently been formalized into a compelling synthesis of the theory of Charles Sanders Peirce with the biosemiotics of Jakob von Uexküll].
Belief in the greater good and moral individualism, with an intuitive (not formalized) semiotic awareness, lie at the heart of Christianity’s effectiveness.
These are the reasons, I believe, why Christianity has played such a central role in western cultures. But its man-made-in-god’s-image anthropocentrism is problematic. Anthropocentrism has been a major ball-and-chain that has blocked progress in the life sciences. Intelligent Design (ID), for a while, was on the right track, but then they went all Humans-R-Speshul with their human exceptionalism, and with that, I lost interest in ID. We are much more like the animals of nature than this Humans-R-Speshul anthropocentrism can bear. ID cannot appreciate the importance of knowing how to be.
The life sciences require something of a Copernican revolution. This is a living universe, it is vast, and the principle of “knowing how to be” is one that applies throughout. “Knowing how to be” places it all into perspective, because it is “knowing how to be” that extracts from infinite possibility that which works.
So… coming back to Robb’s interrogation to place it into practical terms. What’s missing from all the different factions that are dividing us is an appreciation of what it means to know how to be. Knowing how to be is not in the genes. It is experiential, and it is learned. And it is universe-wide. And placing it into this universal context, we can better imagine the possibilities, the importance of cultural values and the choices we make. And that calls for humility. This manner of thinking discourages the sorts of indulgent narratives (e.g., relativism, determinism) that have become so toxic to contemporary cultures.
If my explanation thus far seems woolly and terribly woo, my recent article (published in Cybernetics and Human Knowing) provides a more tangible outline:
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/chk/2020/00000027/00000003/art00003
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I second Moss’s complaint. Jesus, Robb, are you writing only for integral nerds?
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I agree that Robb’s complaint was difficult to unpack. He mentions Transformational Thesis, but he seems to be trapped in the same kind of determinism (cultural assumptions) that he seeks to correct in others. What, indeed, is it that transformation requires?
The transformation of which Robb speaks is not new. It has been a central concern of the world’s most authentic religions for millennia. Hence my reference to Christianity in my most recent post, earlier this week. As a non-believer (call me agnostic if you will), I cannot accept Christianity’s anthropocentrism, nor that a god was required for the creation of all things. But I do accept that Christianity, in synthesis with Buddhism/Hinduism and contemporary semiotic theory, might provide solid foundations for perhaps a new kind of religion that will be better placed to address Robb’s concerns.
In this context, for example, what Robb refers to as “the epistemology of goodness” falls into place naturally, when we factor in personal lifestyle choices with cultural context. What is it that makes a culture robust and healthy? Unhealthy cultures are divisive cultures that splinter in the face of toxic, self-indulgent interests, where virtue-signaling scolds, masquerading their moral high-ground, try to shame everyone else to their own interpretation of truth… Cancel Culture and all that.
Our world religions carry much baggage from the past; not just Christianity but also, for example, Hinduism with its caste system, or Buddhism with its own anthropocentric biases. With contemporary insights, we might relieve them of their baggage and transform our contemporary mess into something new and more sustainable.
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Epistemological Calculus
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It seems unnecessary, slightly disturbing even, that anyone would want to create a type of blueprint or template for how a particular stage of human development should manifest. I would link the Zen parable of the Chinese farmer to this - perhaps you are already, but perhaps you mean it more in relation to the best way to help people develop to a certain stage (and this I see no problem with.)
It’s never really going to happen anyway that everyone at teal will fit into a few people’s preconceived ideas of how this stage should be, and I don’t see why anyone would want it to unless they want to create a tribe, have influence over people, or create a world in their image. What about diversity? The most beautiful thing is surely everyone growing into their unique individual selves and expressions within each stage of their own development.
I’m aware it’s something Ken Wilber speaks of, that people paving new ground in evolution will create the basis of how that structure will play out for people reaching that structure in the future. But I disagree. I think this only happens for people who have a strong amber shadow, or who are at the amber stage in certain lines (or anyone whose developmental histories have created a conformist mindset, to put this in everyday terms), who feel a need to fit into other people’s preconceived ideas.
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Beautifully articulated.
I would add from my vantage that this self appointed illuminati approach in definition of THE Teal Noosphere very much comes across as fundamentalist zealotry. I will assume everyone’s motivations are sincere but simply do not see breadth and depth of multidomain-multisystematic knowledge in the IT community that would have me bet that ITers could come up with a better culture, religion, economic, and/or governance models than what we have today.
My previous comment on humility and appreciation was a soft attempt to point this zeal out.
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An analogy: Is it better to work towards enlightenment and use the tools that arise from that endeavour towards helping the world, or is it better to help the world and accept the emergent enlightenment. Similarly, is it better to clarify what Teal behaviour is and use it to deal with Green’s issues, or is it better to work at dealing with Green’s issues and accept any emergence into Teal that such behaviour provides.
It may be that we are getting too hung up on “Teal” and seeking to create it from the top down, rather than allowing it to emerge from the bottom up.
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This is profound. Thank you for the clarity.
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As 2021 ends, in my eyes it seems that the “Integral Movement” needs to still learn one essential thing:
You cannot have a beautiful garden without getting manure under your fingernails.
It doesn’t work to sit on a bare spot of land and just think flowery and beautiful thoughts.
It’s all well and good to have discussions about how that garden should look, what plants to put where for optimal results, and so forth.
But without manure nothing will grow. The first requirement in having a thriving garden is to accept manure as a necessity without which flowers and food cannot grow.
When your plants do grow, weeds and pests will find your garden and again you have to get your hands in there in the manure and dig the weeds out by the root. Cutting them above the roots will allow them to grow deeper.
Substitutes for this can be used for a time. You can keep your hands clean by using a commercial fertilizers, roundup, and pesticides. For a time this will work and your garden might grow. But we now know how that works out - modern technological innovations poison and destroy the soil over time.
I don’t see very much interest in “deep soil” work (Ken calls this “Cleaning up”). 3-2-1 is a good beginning, but it’s far from the totality of cleaning up. Cleaning up by definition requires handling filth. If the neighbor lets his dog crap in your yard - you have to deal with it one way or the other - or just learn to enjoy the fragrance of dog poop in your life 24/7.
In 2021 the analogy would be a large portion of the population decided to just let their dogs poop in everyone else’s yards.
From what I observe, the “Integral Movement” is mostly very clean and academic and do not want to get their hands dirty. I see a reluctance to deal with the “vulgar”. A certain academic, ivory tower fragility that paralyzes any ability to address the profane. Yes, yes, yes - I completely understand the concept of allowing someone to smack both your cheeks to create a transformation in him. I understand how Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and many other movements were effective. However, what I also know is that these strategies are only effective when the other party is operating at a certain level of development. If Ghandi had tried the same thing against Hitler in Nazi Germany, for example - , he would have died in an oven with 5 million Jews.
From my observations, the Integral Movement absolutely loves, loves, loves Growing Up topics and endlessly forming an intellectual body of knowledge and analysis, but tends to avoid the controversies of waking up, and I guess everyone just hopes everyone will 3-2-1 themselves.
IDK, maybe at other meetings other things happen. This is just my observations of the public space.
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I think that’s fair in terms of the public space, though I think we do emphasize much of this in our ongoing content releases (such as our Witt and Wisdom series, which definitely goes deep into some of these darker, more “vulgar” waters). I have often wondered why the online community tends to gravitate to the intellectual constructs more than the actual intrapersonal development, and in many ways I think that is a casualty of the platforms that we are using. Online text-only public spaces have few incentives for the sorts of authenticity and vulnerability and capacity for “rethinking” our most cherished ideas that are required for sincere shadow practice, and makes it so much easier to make objects out of each other’s subjects than it is to make objects out of our own subjects.
And of course these public spaces are populated by people with a wide range of familiarity with integral — many are just learning about it, others are capable of seeing it as an object but have not yet been able to fully internalize it, and of course there are a great many who are truly living an integral life from the inside out, but who don’t contribute to online discussions like these. These three groups — people who are just learning about the integral red pill, people who are holding the red pill, and people who have swallowed the red pill — enact the word “integral” in slightly different ways, and I’ve seen a lot of communication breakdown occur between these groups (and a lot of opportunities for new bridges!)
But yeah, I think the fact that integral has so far emerged within and alongside these flat social media platforms has placed some serious limits on just how authentically integral we can be together, and it requires a ton of care and mindfulness to overcome those limitations. Not to mention the overall polluting of the surrounding cultural waters, which have conditioned a great many of us to foreground our political identities and political views — aspects of our identity that we wrap around elements of reality we have the least control over — and reject identities and views that are unlike our own.
I think the more we can be mindful of this — and the more we can remember that other people have a hard time being mindful of this — the better it will be for all of us.
Just my own .02, thanks for stirring the pot Ray!
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This is funny. It reminds me of the “shopping cart” argument against anarchy — how can people believe an anarchic system would ever work, when people can’t even take enough personal responsibility to return their damn shopping carts after using them?
These last several years have seen such a massive regression that not only are we littering our carts all over the parking lot, but many have begun pushing their carts into traffic.
It’s that old Superman line — fighting for truth, Justice, and the “American way”. What did the “American way” mean at that time? Individual voluntarism. Being willing to use your individual freedoms in service of the larger society, rather than enacting “freedom” as “no one gets to tell me what to do”. An integration of the individual/collective polarity. Genuine worldcentric individualism with a moral core anchored in the universal, rather than the egocentric “fuck you, I got mine” individualism that is so pathologically rampant right now.
Those are the sorts of people who would actually return their damn shopping carts 
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Great clarity here @raybennett on dealing with multiple altitudes and health levels of society. Always going Meta, going Neo is a very sanitary modus operandi. Without the mess of reality, the actual real world testing the pristine theories in the real world you can always claim an intellectual/academic high ground devoid of the messy real world. And when the theories are tested and found wanting, insufficient, can the Theorists wrap their minds around these inputs of reality?
Great discussion. @corey-devos is it possible to even see this “Individual voluntarism” outside of State enforced hierarchies? Perhaps looking at those that do choose to volunteer without threat of coercion or punishment. Those that joyfully participate even when they might not agree completely. Would it even be possible to inventory contributions, both negative and positive, of all those “fuck you, I got mine” individuals and their traditional structures without gaslighting with pathological assignations?
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“is it possible to even see this “Individual voluntarism” outside of State enforced hierarchies?”
Of course it is. The problem, of course, is that as individual voluntarism declines, the need for top-down authority increases. As we see with things like vaccine and masking mandates. In an ideal world, these would not be necessary, because the majority of people would be willing to exert their free will in order to better serve the collective, and our collective wellbeing would then be factored into each of our individual risk/reward equations. There would be a recognition that, while our choices are our own, our immune systems are intrinsically and inseparably connected with each other. Alas, we do not live in that world at the moment.
Why did we leave that world in the first place? My theory is, 40+ years of Reagan/Thatcher economic and cultural neoliberalism which has conditioned the majority to be hyper-individualistic, hyper-competitive, placing extrinsic values over intrinsic values, etc. Add a layer of social media that keeps people locked into a custom-created matrix of worldviews and confirmation biases that cause us to be deeply suspicious of people unlike ourselves, and we see the death of bottom-up individual voluntarism, which in turn causes us to self-organize around the sorts of top-down hierarchies (political and plutocratic) we see today.
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My most obvious point would be countries like Japan and Germany, where people just do things the “correct” way. No government needed to intervene. Police don’t have to shot people for them to behave like civilized human beings. Of more immediate relevance - Asians have been wearing masks to prevent the spread of disease for decades. Arabs and South Asians have masks as s cultural norm as well. I actually prefer a masked population - not just because of COVD - I don’t like people sneezing their cold or flu on me, either.
I notice 90% of men where I live in the USA now wash their hands before they leave public restrooms. Pre COVID it was less than 50%. I suppose maybe in some parts of the country it may well be a political statement to deliberately not mask up and not wash hands after taking a dump in a public restroom, then going out and shaking everyone’s hands? Or just being unsanitary?
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@corey-devos Why not emulate communities that already “walk the talk” with exactly what you want in the world ?
Perhaps Reagan and your Neo Cons were a reaction to the 60’s anarchy/socialism upswell in the US. Isn’t that when the seeds of collectivism took root? Really seeds of our current Wokeligion.
Divorce rates started rising. Single parent child rearing became common. The Me culture, your hyper-individualism was given the green light.
So here we are having a deficit of compassion, generosity, mental well being, in the very communities that hiss at all the traditions that provide exactly what they demand be provided to them. Usually wrapped in spiritual or academic bypassing.
If we review the results in the real world, would perhaps we modify our theories or perhaps question foundational hypotheses?
There are no communities that do exactly what I want in the world Which is why I am trying to help build a more integral community that maybe possibly can.
“Perhaps Reagan and your Neo Cons were a reaction to the 60’s anarchy/socialism upswell in the US. Isn’t that when the seeds of collectivism took root?”
It was more a reaction to post-New Deal Keynesian economics, which stalled out in the late 1970s, and which was itself a reaction to the laissez faire economics of the gilded age up to the second world war.
But yes, the pendulum tends to over-correct — especially when that pendulum is unable to swing naturally due to artificial plutocratic pressures, such as we see today. We are overdue for a new correction that brings us to a new economic paradigm. And surely 40 years from now we will see all the ways that we over-corrected.
“Divorce rates started rising. Single parent child rearing became common. The Me culture, your hyper-individualism was given the green light.”
Damn Boomers 
Other things that changed under “supply side” neoliberalism:
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Average purchasing power severely declined, along with wages relative to cost of living, while CEO salaries and corporate profits went through the roof. No longer could a family be supported by a single earner, as it could in the 1950s and 60s.
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Wealth inequality grew to historically unprecedented levels.
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The Drug War criminalized a medical issue and was often enforced in discriminatory ways, tearing hundreds of thousands of families (especially black families) apart.
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Medical debt and medical bankruptcies grew exponentially.
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Corporations learned to privatize their profits, while socializing their losses and various negative “externalities”.
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For-profit prison systems emerged and created insidious selection pressures within our justice system.
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Things like “prosperity gospel” emerged among wide factions of false prophets, perpetuating the destructive belief that rich people are more moral, and poor people are more immoral.
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Women continued to move en masse into the public sphere, while neoliberal pressures contributed to the total abandonment of the private sphere, which we can measure today in declining empathy and increased depression and suicide rates (a critical next step, I believe, is for men to begin moving into the private sphere just as women have moved into the public over the last century, so that together we can begin to recontact our sense of INTRINSIC value [our innate value as human beings] and bring it into more healthy balance with our extrinsic value [the value we create for other people].)
Ok so perhaps “not exactly” but are there communities you could steal from, mimic, or infect with the integral virus?
Does government fiat help or hinder societal growth and development? If Big Gov simply raises my taxes - a compassion and generosity tax if you will - how will this impact both the taxed (mandated generosity) and the recipients’ individual and cultural ascention to Integral altitudes? Will Big Brother actually administer these compassion tax expenditures more efficiently than my A+ rated charities that I currently donate to?
Is this State legislated and enforced compassion the conveyor belt to Integral altitudes?
Elon Musk might be an interesting test for us all regarding income and wealth inequality. He’s at forefront of Green Movement, literally making sci-fi available which many now want massive government oversight and control over. Hes also the richest human in the world set to pay more taxes this year than any other human on the planet. Is this good? Bad? Or not a good example?
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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