text/Wilber-TheIntegralVision-OriginsAndApplications-Pt4.txt

I wanted to ask you how you translate when you write a book such as A Brief History of Everything.  Right.  Because it has an evident logical structure and it has lots of arguments that sustain in very rational points of view.  So I wanted to ask you if that was something like a difficult contradiction for you, or if you don't see it that way, what do you think about that?  Yes. What you tend to do in a book like A Brief History of Everything is, in a sense, attempt to speak to individuals on the three major higher stages,  which are the mythic, traditional, rational, modern, and post-rational, post-modern.  You attempt to speak to all three of those stages, sometimes by specifically using key words that resonate with those stages,  and that means the traditional, which is looking for very solid principles and foundations and certainty and absolutistic realities,  and then modernity, which is looking for logic and evidence.  It wants proof. It wants facts. It wants a logical argument.  And post-modernity, which wants to include interiors and wants to have subjectivity made the primary focus.  A reality.  And so you attempt to speak to all three of those levels, and you attempt not to use red flag terms or issues for each of these levels.  So you want to avoid for the traditional level, which is the level I'm least concerned with,  because it's just rare that individuals at the traditional level are interested in integral approaches.  Now, some of them are.  And let me just briefly put a little footnote in here by saying that one of the things we look at in an integral approach  is the fact that people have multiple intelligences.  And that is a term that Howard Gardner proposed,  and that simply means that people have different developmental lines, different capacities.  And there's probably about a dozen of these, including cognitive development and moral development,  and aesthetic development, and self-development.  But there are two important developmental lines, two important intelligences that are key.  And one is the cognitive line, or what a person can think, what their views are,  the number of perspectives they can take, the actual consciousness that they have.  And then their self line.  Their self is the actual center of gravity.  It's where they act from.  So the cognitive line is your talk, and the self line is your walk.  And the cognitive line is usually a stage or two or more ahead of the self line.  So people can sort of think something without actually inhabiting it yet.  And so the cognitive line is usually a stage or two ahead of the self line.  Now, this is important because most educated individuals,  in the Western world, the Eastern world as well, can think at an integral level.  But their center of gravity is at traditional or modern or postmodern.  And for some individuals, the 2% to 5% that we've been talking about,  their center of gravity is also at integral.  But many people have this sort of split cycle graph.  Where their cognitive capacity reaches an integral,  whereas their actual center of gravity, what they're actually going to believe and act on and move on,  is at traditional or modern or postmodern.  Now, that's important because a lot of people can hear an integral approach,  or can read one of my books or Gene Gebser's books or Robert Keegan's books and so on,  and understand it, they constantly get it, it makes sense to them.  And they'll actually sort of,  some of them get excited by it, and they'll describe what they're doing as integral.  Even though their center of gravity is at traditional level or modern level or postmodern level.  Now, what these individuals do is usually try to make their present level as integral as it can be.  And so, that usually means that they at least attempt to balance the quadrants.  And we talked about the four quadrants as being I, we, it, and its.  And the I, we, and it components are also the good, the true, and the beautiful, art, morals, and science.  And it's just, those are different dimensions that human beings have at every stage of development.  And so, when individuals read or think about the integral approach,  then they will attempt to integrate all four quadrants at whatever level they're at.  That's one of the first things that tends to happen.  And we actually have, there are actually people out there now that I work with  that are working on the traditional level  and are trying to help fundamentalists in their congregation  integrate I, we, and it at the traditional level.  And then there are people at the modern stage,  the rational and formal operational stage,  that also then attempt to integrate all four quadrants.  And they also,  they also think about the spiral of development or the spectrum of consciousness.  And in many cases, we'll start to incorporate that.  And then at green, individuals that are thinking at the integral level,  cognition at integral level, center of gravity at green,  actually tend to like parts of the integral approach very much.  They love integrating the quadrants.  And there are many, many approaches that are green that focus on integrating the quadrants.  But they leave out levels.  They leave out the hierarchy of development  because green is against hierarchies of any kind.  Green meaning the pluralistic level.  It's against hierarchies of any kind.  Mostly because it makes a confusion between growth hierarchies and dominator hierarchies.  Growth hierarchies are good.  They're things that move from egocentric to ethnocentric to world-centric.  And then dominator hierarchies are like the caste system,  are like what supposedly capitalist, colonialist approaches,  do, those are all dominator hierarchies.  And pluralistic stage is so eager to get rid of oppression  that it throws out the baby with the bathwater.  It throws out growth hierarchies.  It's like atoms to molecules to cells to organisms  or egocentric to ethnocentric to world-centric.  It throws those out with the bad guys.  But green, when it reads integral, loves the quadrants.  And there are many, many approaches out there now that are green  and that are integral.  And there are many, many approaches out there now that are green and that are integral.  So in a sense, all of that is good and is a way that helps individuals  get as holistic or comprehensive or non-fragmented as they can  within the limits of their own level, whatever level they're at.  So that's something to also sort of keep in mind in terms of actually reaching out  and having an impact and seeing the more integral approach  get out to the world at large.  Do you think that the development and evolution of the different societies  have to necessarily go through the path that is well described by the Western history  that is most the path you use normally to describe it?  Do you understand the question?  Yes, I do.  Cultures or social holons do not go through necessarily...  necessary stages of development.  Individual holons do.  And so what happens then is that individual holons go from archaic to magic to mythic  to rational to pluralistic to integral and then higher,  not out of some platonic forms or not out of pre-given patterns,  but simply the result of social learning and cultural evolution.  So we started out as social...  sort of super apes at the archaic stage  and then it was a series of partly free choices  that early humans made that produced the magic structure.  And then as more and more humans produced the magic structure,  it became what I call a cosmic habit or a cosmic memory.  It simply became structured into part of what being a human was.  And the more it got repeated, the more sort of firmly established the magic structure became.  And then starting around 10,000 BC,  certain combinations in all four quadrants,  including the lower right quadrant,  which means the exterior or systems,  the actual techno-economic structures,  in places that required tribes coming together into larger social units,  the 12 tribes of Israel, for example,  coming together as one nation,  required switching from bloodline...  lineage, which magic was,  to lineage where different blood lineages could become one.  And that could happen only if they had an ancestor that was mythic or was a god,  because then everybody could be descended from that same god.  And so what we see around the world is various forms of theism arise  and the mythic structure arose.  And this was in large part a series of relatively free choices.  This is made by humans around the world.  But the more the mythic structure was used,  then the more it became laid down,  the firmer its structure became and the more it became a cosmic habit.  And that developed up until around the time of the modern Western Enlightenment,  where rational choices started to be made out of concrete operational choices,  out of traditional values.  And as more and more people used the rational approach,  then it became a structure itself.  And we saw the rise of the pluralistic structure around the world in the 1960s, actually.  And it's still, in a sense, kind of forming, because it's relatively new.  Whereas the magic structure now is so set  that individuals that are born go through that magic period around ages one to three,  around the age of 20, around the age of 30, around the age of 40, around the age of 50, around the age of 50, around the age of 60.  And these have been, these cognitive structures have been tested  all the way through concrete operational in everything from Aborigines to Rainforest Tribes  to Turkey, Germany, Mexico, India.  And there are universal structures in individuals.  So what happens with cultures is that when groups get together,  well, Whitehead said that individuals had what he called a dominant monad.  The dominant monad simply means that single center of will or awareness.  But social holons don't have a dominant monad.  A we, unlike an I, does not have a single source of intentionality.  Right now, the three of us are forming a we.  But the we is not a super I.  There's not some singular entity.  It's causing all of us to act in the way that that singular entity wishes.  Whereas if my dog decides to get up and move across the room,  100% of its atoms, molecules, and cells get up and move across the room.  That's a dominant monad.  But groups have a dominant mode of discourse.  And any group, including geese flying and wolves running in packs  and human beings interacting.  If basically the majority of people are at a traditional,  at a traditional level of development,  then the mode of discourse will be traditional values.  And the mode of discourse is part of what,  in the lower right and lower left quadrants,  in the exterior quadrants,  is part of what holds the group together.  Along with a techno-economic infrastructure  and various institutions and habitats,  customs and habits, and so on.  But often there's identified a dominant mode of discourse.  And that's why, in the long run, we can also look at cultures  as going from roughly archaic to roughly magic to roughly mythic  to roughly rational, then and now pluralistic.  And that doesn't mean that if we look at a culture and say,  oh, that's a traditional culture.  It doesn't mean everybody's at the traditional culture.  It just means it's the dominant mode of discourse.  There can be people that are at archaic and magic,  as well as people that are above it  and can be at rational or pluralistic.  So the evidence suggests very strongly  that those structures hold for individuals  in every culture that we've tested them in.  But that doesn't mean that the cultures themselves  have to go through development in exactly those levels.  The individuals will be going through it in those levels.  But the culture can have a dominant,  a dominant mode of discourse set up by any number of factors.  And particularly in the modern world,  we tend to take, there are structures in Africa, for example,  that the majority of people are at, say, a magical mode.  And they can import artifacts  that are produced by modern and postmodern modes.  And that includes everything from machine guns to computers.  So that becomes a very, very different kind of thing happening there.  But it is important to remember that the cultures themselves  don't necessarily go through a linear mode of development.  The quick example I give is we could have a poker game  with six people in it.  And they're all at, say, the egocentric level of development.  They're all just sort of power, narcissistic.  And we say red altitude.  And three of them could drop out.  And three people that are from the pluralistic mode.  Could step in.  And then it's half and half.  And so half the people would be talking in sort of power needs  and in egocentric, narcissistic modes.  And the other half would be talking in pluralistic mode.  Pluralistic, of course, would be able to understand narcissistic,  but not vice versa.  And then if another narcissistic person dropped out  and a fourth pluralistic person sat in,  then this group would have gone from,  a red or narcissistic or power level of discourse  to a pluralistic level of discourse.  And it would appear to have skipped three stages.  And so that's what can happen once a structure has emerged,  is that cultures can simply shift quite dramatically  depending on artifacts that are put into it  and depending on the actual structures of power.  And what modes of discourse they use.  The individuals still have to go through those stages.  And that's one of the real problems,  is that just as earlier we talked about Marxism  was an attempt to take pluralistic ideals  and graph them onto traditional agrarian cultures.  And that categorically doesn't work.  And we see the same kind of thing happening today,  today.  It's in the growth of non-Western cultures.  Because the Western influence is still so intense,  the whole globalization issue,  that the growth of these other cultures  are subjected to a lot of very unfortunate stresses.  And so their development is something that  you have to track very carefully using  quadrants and levels and lines and states and types.  But will they go through?  Will they go through development in this, you know,  linear, archaic dominant mode of discourse  to magic dominant mode, to mythic, to rational?  No, they won't.  Not necessarily.  But the individuals in those societies  are going through those stages.  But then should they have the West as a model or not?  No, probably not in terms of all ways of development.  And again, it's not an either-or.  It's kind of a both-and.  And there are things about,  you know, globalization that's very positive.  And there are things about it that are very negative.  And the things about it that are positive is that  to the extent that it lives up to  the actual modern scientific level of development,  then it introduces universal rights of humans.  And so there's an insistence, for example,  on educating girls in third-world countries.  And there's an insistence,  there's an insistence on working for  an equality of men and women.  And then the downside, of course,  is that there's a whole corporate structure  that gets carried with globalization.  And corporate structures, unfortunately,  is that they're artifacts.  And an artifact can have any level  of moral development driving it.  And if the moral level of development  of the modern,  stage is very high,  it's a world-centric morality,  the universal rights of humans,  regardless of race, color, sex, or creed.  But the artifacts created by modernity,  from machine guns to gas ovens,  can be used by pre-modern individuals,  by individuals at narcissistic power  and ethnocentric modes.  And anybody can pick up a machine gun.  And that's the problem.  Modernity gets blamed  for a lot of things  that are actually modern artifacts  with pre-modern moral structures driving them.  Nazis were ethnocentric.  They were not modern.  They're ethnocentric in their core of being.  But they adopted modern technology  and modern artifacts  as part of their ends.  And that's one of the real problems  that we have.  And the same thing can happen with business.  It's that it's, in essence,  a product of modernity,  the artifact of business,  the structures of it,  the systems,  the creation of profit draws.  But many people inhabit business  not from the moral level of modernity,  which would be very moral.  And there are a lot of very moral people in business.  But there are a lot of very immoral people in business.  And a lot of people in business,  looking just for profits,  just for the bottom line,  not including interiors,  not including care,  not including concern and consciousness  and love, for that matter,  but running at a very power-driven level,  a red altitude, as we say.  And that red altitude,  that drive for power,  that egocentric drive,  inhabits too much of corporate life.  And that corporate life  inhabits too much of globalism.  So that's why it gets a little bit complex.  But you can analyze it using an integral framework  and track what's actually happening  because you can see these elements better  using an integral framework.  And so the West is not a model in all ways.  And so I think that's something  that we have to keep in mind.  Part of the things that are worth modeling  are aspects of the Constitution  guaranteeing human rights  and then aspects of,  the articles added to the Constitution  guaranteeing community rights.  So there's sort of a little balance  of agency and communion.  But the actual corporate structure  and the way the profit motive is structured,  I don't think that's necessarily worth modeling.  And third world cultures, of course,  are just going to be subjected  to an enormous amount of power structures  simply from the G8,  simply from those industrial nations  that have power.  And they're not going to freely relinquish it.  So that's just kind of an unfortunate situation  that's developing.  And the modes of resistance to it are limited.  And that's unfortunate.  And with what you just said,  of course, you mentioned  that it gets more and more complex.  But I wanted to ask you in a general view.  So you don't necessarily believe  that the evolution,  process,  the evident one,  takes also necessarily  a moral evolution?  Is there necessarily less violence  when we are more developed or not?  Well, the answer,  again, although it's complex,  to give a simple answer,  the answer is yes.  There is less violence  the more development there is.  And the reason for that  is these perspectives  that we talked about earlier.  Because as development increases,  you actually inhabit  the viewpoint  of the other person.  You actually feel it.  It's sort of part of yourself.  And the more you inhabit  another person's viewpoint,  the more you tend to understand them.  And the less there's an attempt  of violence,  an attempt to hurt them,  or an attempt to settle disputes  by simply killing them.  And so that's why  actual moral development,  even Carol Gilligan,  who is known for, you know,  saying that males and females  develop morally in a different voice.  With males, of course,  giving emphasis to justice,  rights, and autonomy.  And women giving emphasis  to relationships,  care, and responsibility.  So women, in other words,  focusing on communion.  And men focusing on agency.  But notice that Carol Gilligan  also said that both men and women  develop through the same  hierarchy of growth.  And which we've been calling  egocentric, ethnocentric,  world-centric, cosmocentric.  She called those four major stages  selfish, which is the egocentric  first-person perspective.  And then care,  and then universal care,  and then integrated.  And so selfish is just  a first-person perspective.  Care is a second-person perspective.  I now care about you.  I care about my family.  I care about my tribe.  I care about my nation.  And then universal care,  I care about all people,  regardless of race, color, sex, or creed.  And then integrated is  the stage at which the  feminine and the masculine voices  become integrated in the same person.  So the woman has  both the female  aspects of morality,  as well as the  masculine emphasis on  autonomy and rights and justice.  So in all of this,  in all of these stages of development,  whether it's Kohlberg's  or recent versions of  moral development  or Carol Gilligan's,  what's happening is that  you're expanding the perspectives  through which you actually  see the world and feel the world.  And that's why  when we draw the four quadrants,  you just put them as a  cross on a sheet of paper,  and then there's four boxes.  And the upper left is I,  the interior of the individual.  And the upper right is it,  the exterior of the individual.  The lower left is we,  the interior of the relationships  that are part of your being  in the world.  And as that we goes from a first perspective  to a second perspective to a third  to a fourth, it's actually  part of what you feel  as yourself.  And therefore the less  drive there is to hurt  people that you consider part of the we,  that you actually are taking  their perspective.  And that's why violence drops off  as  development increases.  But the difficulty, of course,  is that there are just so many people  at so many different stages of development  that even in cultures  that have a legal center of gravity  at, let's say, universal care,  which most Western cultures  have their laws  drawn up from that level.  Everybody's still born at square one.  So you're still going to have people that are  pre-conventional that are  operating at selfish  or power narcissistic  modes and in cultures  that have artifacts that allow  them to do an enormous amount of damage.  You can only do so much damage with a bow  and an arrow.  You can do an enormous amount of damage  with sarin gas or a nuclear  bomb.  And that's one of the problems that modernity  is facing is  that everybody's born at square one  and there's three or four  major transformations  that individuals have to go through  before they get to universal perspectives,  to get to world-centric perspectives,  where they really treat others  as they would treat themselves.  So you say that, for example,  a leader of a first world country  has more elements to hurt more  when it doesn't have the interior development.  It just has the social development  of, for example,  a universal, more world-centric perspective.  That's right?  Yeah, if I understand you correctly,  that would be right,  that the majority of political leaders  in first world countries  have a moral development  that's at post-conventional  or world-centric or universal.  No, I mean that if a leader of a first world country  has a moral development that's at post-conventional or world-centric or universal.  No, I mean that if a leader of a first world country  that has a legal frame and a social frame  that has to do with a world-centric view  does not have an interior ethic  that has to do with a world-centric view,  it can do much more damage  than a leader of a country that has another legal frame.  Absolutely.  And that is, in part,  and I want to say this carefully,  that's in part the problem with President George Bush.  Is that he is the head of a country  that has essentially world-centric moral and legal standards,  come from either modern or post-modern stages of development.  And it is the remaining so-called superpower,  so it has enormous number of artifacts, of arms,  including nuclear arms,  and all sorts of capacity to cause damage  that were created by a modern level of cognition.  But if they're used by somebody  who's at a modern level of moral development,  then they won't be used at all.  They'll be used merely in self-defense  and used in a very ethical fashion.  And to say that's mostly includes not using them at all.  But if you get somebody  who has a center of gravity,  who's at traditional,  which George Bush's values are,  is a traditional fundamentalist believer,  and those individuals believe  that their view of reality,  that their God and their ethical system,  which is very ethnocentric,  should be part of the political structure of this country.  And they work to actually get laws changed,  to insert their ethnocentric morality  into this world-centric structure.  That's number one.  That's a problem at home.  The problem abroad is that this ethnocentric level,  this traditional level,  this mythic conformist level,  operates in a very, very unilateral way.  It doesn't try to build consensus  among, let's say, the European powers.  It simply says,  we're going to do it this way,  take it or leave it.  So it creates reaction.  Extreme reaction.  And I mean, our European allies  are just alarmed by George Bush,  just absolutely alarmed.  The only one that stood by him a bit  has been Tony Blair,  which is a very sort of heroic position.  I mean, I admire Blair hanging in there  and trying to keep George Bush  in the European conversation.  I mean, I think it's a very good thing  that he tried to do.  But of course, he got an enormous amount of criticism  because it appeared that he was just simply supporting  George Bush.  But that's the problem,  is this unilateral,  we've got it right,  you agree with us,  or that's it.  My way or the highway, as we say.  And that is just a really disastrous way,  particularly in a world  whose international mode of discourse,  is at the pluralistic level.  To go down two levels  and have the mode of discourse come out traditional  is just a truly,  well, it's just disastrous, basically.  And that's the real concern with George Bush.  I mean, even his father,  who is also Republican,  got a consensus of all European powers  before we got involved in supporting Kuwait,  the Kuwait war.  But George Bush Jr.,  it just doesn't even do that.  And it shows a real traditionalist-centered value structure.  And that is just extremely problematic.