This can end up in a lot of places, quite a few of them not good at all. So my personal challenge problem is to build a communications bridge between the status quo and “healthy teal” or whatever the best name for that new frame of reference might be.
Just one more clarification - the group I am working in is faculty-led. It’s all peer-to-peer. On a values level, also there is no conflict with the administration at all (about this anyway). The entire organization is liberal/progressive on every level, as far as I can tell. So this is not a culture wars thing at all. This is about how does blue state culture evolve to realize its progressive vision.
Almost. There is nothing “covert” going on here. Everyone involved wants to save the planet: faculty-students-admins. The only one who might try to impose “integral” is me, because I’m likely the only one in the process who is even aware of what Integral Theory is.
My process is this:
identify problems
explore alternative solutions
anticipate consequences of alternative solutions
recommend an assortment of alternatives that seem likely to succeed.
I’m hanging out here to work on steps 2) through 4). I really doubt that “covert integral brainwashing” or anything like that is going to make the short list for step 4).
Ok, I guess we need to again decide on what a word actually means.
Hope to the way I understand the word has a definite projections to the future, as in “Things suck now but in the future may be better.”
I don’t know if the Dictionary definition is wrong or if we are just taking words that sound good and trying to force them into a new meaning so that we can use the good-sounding word in a new way.
Dictionary definition of Hope: a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.
From common usage through my life and also the dictionary definition, I interpret hope to imply a dissatisfaction with the present, perhaps even “suffering” in the now, and hoping it will get better.
Corey also stated it as:
Which implies that things are not good now.
On Suffering:
Suffering is completely unnecessary and honestly I see it as a 1st tier experience - and even unnecessary going all the way down to Archaic. Things like pain, sadness, fear, anger and death are all universal life experiences - but it’s completely unnecessary to suffer from these. With minimal training anyone can be taught to step into their fear, pain sadness or anger and feel empowered through accepting it. With more advanced training at 2nd tier it’s possible to welcome death, the ultimate end, in a state of bliss or ecstasy and peace with open arms. There are even what I would judge 1st tier methods to do this through violence and anger, such as Vikings accepting death in a state of bliss, knowing they were fighting to a valiant death and would arrive in Valhalla. Such a death is not “suffering” as I understand the word.
Suffering can only happen when beliefs allow it to happen and the individual rejects that it is possible to be any other way. Or, as I have seen when the mind deteriorates to the point that the person cannot remember those things at the moment of death. For example, when a person dies in a state of dementia they may randomly leave in a state of suffering or bliss because they can swing so extremely back and forth.
All of this can be shown through scientific study. It’s just that few corporations want to fund studies to show you have all the tools you need to end your suffering now. They want studies to show you have to purchase products to end suffering. Also I guess Universities need to tap into this desire to purchase education to satisfy their need for Hope in their future.
Sorry if this is going to sound a bit to blunt, but here it is:
The difficulty I see here is taking a 1984 Duckspeak phrase like “climate justice” and then applying the same 1984 Duckspeak principles to “hope” and trying to create anything except goulash from the phrase “Hope in Climate Justice”.
But that’s why I turned my back on teaching in K-12 and University. So much of it is a self devouring Orobos
Believe me, I feel you! I was sort of holding my nose and choking back a gag reflex to get involved with team “Climate Justice”. But of course, the Integral thing to do is to engage with all perspectives, so I dove willing into waters more cautious souls would wisely avoid.
I’m taking you to a Gebserian place. By linear standards, you and the dictionary are of course correct. Gebser’s POV is that linear time will now be superseded by the atemporal. So my “hope in every breath” idea makes archaic, magical, and mythical sense. From a linear point of view, hope is for something that happens in the future. From the other perspectives, hope is more here, now, because “future” is not really a thing anyway.
I understand. On the one hand discussion has to include perspectives that are at a certain level where it will meet two separate target audiences (and their shadows) - the teachers / admins and the students, and there is a need to present to them at their level.
At the same it’s important to not allow those definitions and perspectives to limit the discussion.
For example, I “get” how Hope can just be bliss repackaged and most staff and admin would not bother to look deeper than the surface labelling - but in the actual presentation, is there going to be a understood bias that things are currently bad? I think that could present a problem and would not be an implementation of “hope” is here, now.
Similarly with suffering - is suffering being presented as a universal to generate a feeling of empathy with the target audience, or does the presenter believe suffering is universal and is as a result unable to themselves offer a “way out”?
To bring this down to earth a bit, in the 80’s I co-created a high school social studies course called “Exploring Solutions to World Problems”. Our insight was that “World Problems” is sort of a downer. So we wanted to focus on “Solutions”. The theory behind it was not much more than that. In a rather naive way, we engineered hope into the curriculum.
Here is my personal view on being a Climate Warrior - which is that action on climate change has nothing to do about doing something in the future, but is all about what we are doing now at this very moment. At this very second, a person is either consciously working towards reducing climate destruction - or they are not. It’s not about what kinds of things we can force other people to do in a remote future through legislation, but what at this moment we are taking responsibility for - or not.
That isn’t material for an audience of teens / young adults in the general population, though - but for anyone who identifies with such causes at the Green level or higher.
For a course that is being presented to the general population, I would create a kind of daily action and reflection task that forces participants think on a daily basis throughout the course about what they can do now and what they have or have not done every day to reduce climate destruction. If they don’t do the assignment, they get an F, lol.
“Hope is the feathered thing that perches in the soul.” Emily Dickinson
Deep problems like climate (in)justice require deep solutions, and a felt-sense of possibility. “Cognition is necessary, but not sufficient,” as the wise ones say.
Yeah. But that’s not the half of it. I’m actually strategizing a complete integral makeover of the US education system, and this is just proof of concept.
A little context. I’ve been an educational change agent for about 40 years. Not. First. Rodeo! So here’s something to ponder:
You’re right. Thoughts are things. Once you post those thoughts on Integral Life (or wherever) you instantiate them and translate them into artifacts. Systems take artifacts and run with them.
From the Technology Adoption Curve model, Integral Theory is in the Innovator part of the curve. (IT is a “technology” in so far it involves artifacts, procedures, techniques - stuff that can transmitted and taught). So as an Innovator - and proven change marketeer - I’m sniffing out target markets of Early Adopters.
My usual experience with this sort of thing is I start out sounding like John the Baptist and a couple years later everyone is looking at me like Doubting Thomas. When it all becomes everybody else’s idea, victory is achieved. Time to move on to the next thing …
I’ll point out that model isn’t just for technology, but also for pretty much any socio-political-economic “trend”. I first ran into the idea myself in Milan Kundera’s book “Farewell Party”. First there was a dog catcher absurdly trying to catch the stray alone, then a few people joined in (early adopters) then people started cheering and then everyone in the village was trying to catch the dog. His analogy was to how the general population took up communism.
In my life I’ve used this model in a wide variety of ways. Most recently what comes to mind is pushing back against MAGA and Trump “Early Adopters” so that movement did not get to “Late Majority”. That is a struggle still in progress. I also do my best to sway how a movement goes from Innovators to Early adopters - a lot of times corruption and mutation sets in during transitions in the phases. Actually almost every innovation gets transformed between innovation and “early majority” by the early adopters. Where I get my most bang for the buck personally is in small local communities where it’s possible to “kill” (not literally) or nurture “mutations” selectively by putting my energy toward it or against it.
Amen. It may strike many here as shockingly vulgar, but I’m just here doing my accustomed job of educational “solutions architect” looking for ways to improve the system though a new “technical” adoption. Some past chapters in that story: word processing, desktop publishing, internet, email, voice mail, web development, digital video production, IT security, cloud services. So why jump categories and involve anything as humanistic as Integral Theory? Because the next challenge is not AI. AI is already here. The next technical challenge is HI (Human Intelligence). I’m shopping for a platform and an operating system for that one.
Check out this supply chain. Started with this discussion thread. Added the Zoom call last week with Stephanie Lepp. Included a side talk with @EnlightenedWorldview. Resulted in this new assignment for my IT students:
For your group project this quarter, your group can make a small website on any topic you want. But if you need a place to begin your creative discussions, consider this question:
How can information technology help make the world a better place?
For some background on this, check out this discussion. The Social Dilemma - How Can We Solve It? (Discussion behind a class login). Reference: https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/
Many think IT is starting to do more harm than good. Are they right? What do you think?
My point here is that the integral transformation will happen one class project at time. My hypothesis is that integrally-oriented content, if presented in the right way, will be more effective and motivational than other approaches. This will lead schools, as adaptive systems, to become more integral.
I am not in the climate justice / STEM course community, but I have a long history with AQAL and Integral. One feature of an Integral world view may be relevant here – as we move into second tier we become ever more keenly aware of the importance of context. However advanced and accurate our understanding of anything may be, there is almost certainly some larger context that we’re not yet aware of. That larger context may well challenge our model of how things are. We would be wise to always be looking for larger contexts that might lead us to better policies and actions.
Unpacking this a little: In the area of climate change, I especially recommend enlarging the context. Meaning, look at the history of climate on this planet on larger and larger time scales, not just the last few million years. In its 4.5 billion year history, our earth has gone through an amazing variety of climates, many of them far, far more extreme than anything we are facing in this century.
Basically, the climate has always been changing. Mostly it changes slowly, but there are those occasional abrupt, massive shifts. That’s always been the case. Yes, humanity is causing at least some of the current warming trend, but the planet has been through greater extremes of heat and of cold than anything Homo Sapiens has experienced. And the warmer the period, the more abundantly life has flourished. There have been hundreds of millions of years when there was no year-round ice anywhere, not even at the poles, with CO2 levels far higher than anything our most pessimistic modelers are forecasting. Green plants LOVE CO2. Fossil forests have been discovered in the Antarctic, no kidding.
Conclusion: our situation is serious, but much of the hysterical fears being expressed these days are groundless (sez me), and the policies on which they insist would harm not help.
That being said, “Hot House Earth”, “Ice House Earth”, and the post-Permian “Great Dying” are not the best looking model outcomes. Something closer to our current temperature range and sea levels, would be preferable from my POV.
Along with Geo Girl I also follow other YouTubers who are into colonizing planets and so forth. It may be the case, that we are on the verge of “terraforming” Earth 1) because we can or 2) because we need to. We may, essentially be learning how to practice horticulture on a planetary scale. Not sure which “altitude” can pull that off … but it’s an AQAL project for certain!
I’ll just point out that you paint anyone opposing your view in the extreme (“hysterical”), and then follow it up with your own extreme position (“groundless”), and then use a vague “they” to say some nameless group of people are causing harm.
I don’t see this position as anything close to “integral”.
I’ll also point out that every time the climate has shifted radically, there have been massive extinction events. Most of them scientists cannot prove what was the cause and what was the effect. It’s all speculation.
One thing that I DO know - and it is provable scientifically - is that quality of life is actually going DOWN since the 1970’s. Some of this is climate related and some of it isn’t. Some are highly suspicious correlations.
But back to not knowing what is cause and what is effect. Even if we give climate change critics that point - which is a generous concession. Regardless of if climate change is caused by human activity or not - humanity does not have a plan to handle climate change. We are still building cities in areas prone to increased natural disasters and we are still basing our food supply on farming system that is ill equipped to handle climate change.
Those who oppose the idea that humans have caused climate change seem to think that “being right” (and that is a very thin claim) will address the problems that climate change id bringing, and it just frankly won’t.
So let’s say we are in the midst of a massive natural climate swing. It won’t matter one slight bit who is right or wrong about the cause of it when the North American aquifer is drained and we have another dustbowl in the great plains and no wheat can be grown for 5 years. That’s just one example of a dozen I can list. What is the plan for cities that are facing rising sea levels - regardless of cause - sea levels are rising. What is the plan for increased hurricane and tornado severity? Keep bailing out stupid people who feel they have the right to live in flimsy dwellings in tornado alley and Florida? What about increased severity of flooding and increased building in flood zones that again require massive bailouts of stupid people.