Hey Cgnost I agree with you in your post, unfortunately I don't think he is gonna win. I am cynical of the American people I just don't think they are ready for him. Intellectuals all favor him but average Americans are not intellectuals, readers, or cable news viewers but I think thats how all cultures go, a few that think and change things and many that live local and simple lives. He has some obstacles, first his race and skin color, second his middle name, and third which is his biggest obstacle of all is his inexperience. He can't expect to beat Clinton because all he is selling to the American people is his worldview. He keeps telling people like he did in the last debate that he is running because he can take people of many different perspectives and find a common identity and purpose to solve these problems. Yet Americans are very mad at the Republicans and I think they want a fighter like Hillary, I am not a big fan of the Clintons personally but unlike the Republicans they are smart and I feel they are probably capable of actually solving the  problems we face, or maybe not. Obama is the way to go but I have more cynicism than I would like but I still have Hope.

---

Rocco

to rocco,

  Thank you for your passionate response. As I stated, I think Obama is clearly cognitively Turquoise. All I"m suggesting is that we need to be very careful about labels.

   Your passionate response was absolutely beautiful. I do not doubt that you are an integral thinker, nor am I dubious about your progress from the past to the present. Indeed, you are better than you were.

   Please realize that I simply used your post as a spring board for some concerns I have. The thread, by no means, was referring exclusively to your Obama post.  The thread's purpose is simply to  point out that we have to be cautious--because I am aware that certain thoughts arise attempting to label others as having lower waves of consciousness. Acknowledging and objectifying such thought is the first step.

   Rocco, I sincerely apologize if I ever offended you. And I should've been more skillful because my intention was simply to use your thread as a springboard and nothing more.

   Many thanks to the integral community who gave thoughts on this matter; I hope the dialogue will continue, so that we can lay down the healthiest Kosmic groove of Green and turquoise. Ladies and gentlemen, the adventure begins here.

 

Where is my Gateless Gate?

My transparent eyeball lusts for windless wind...

Thank you!

James

---

O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed in the music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
--W. B. Yeats

 

zneval:

rocco, i enjoy your levity, but i caution you to not become attached to your detachment. sometimes things come along in life that are very serious (death being one of them, I think) that require a serious attitude and treatment-- if not for ourself and our own personal healing, for those around us. (another area that requires seriousness is scholarship). i am curious as to your criteria for considering yourself integral, and what benefit you gain by making that distinction for yourself? i will be honest here: i am terribly skeptical of anyone who proclaims themselves to be integral, primarily because the word has so many connotations. slowly trailing to the point of this thread, then...

rocco, you have conveniently alluded to the Wyatt Erp incident in your post, though I get the idea that you think Ken was in the right. I want to say outright that agree with Cowan in his appraisal of the episode and have been increasingly disappointed with Ken's treatment of the issue. Why do I agree with Cowan and not Ken? there is a fundamental misunderstanding of values (memes) and "stages" (vMemes) that I see all over this forum, and have always been puzzled by it. It is damaging. I have also been confused by what seemed like Ken's misunderstanding of the whole thing. In reading Cowan's reponse, i am comforting in these notions, but it really has made me feel quite disturbed about the state of integral (particularly, the simplification of these issues).

Here is a link to Cowan's response (sorry I can't get this link to work, just copy-and-paste):

http://www.spiraldynamics.org/faq/faq_KWblog.htm

Here are a few quotes from this response that I find pertinent to this discussion:

"vMEMEs don’t talk; people do. vMEMEs are attractors; memes are the ideas and content. The systems are in people; people are not in a system. This is a critical distinction if one is to deal with the premise that human systems change, that humans can change systems, and the SD premise that several systems can coexist within a person."

"The question is: how does this person think about this thing at this time? Not: what color is this thing?

"How a person thinks about a phenomenon and reacts to it is what matters, not that phenomena are locked to levels, or that this is a spiritual hierarchy. (There are different spiritualities and paths to various kinds of "enlightenment" at each of the levels.) This approach is equivalent to creating a catalogue of values and beliefs, then sorting them hierarchically. While it’s done all the time, it’s not what Spiral Dynamics is about. Yes, higher levels are ultimately more option-rich than lower ones and it’s a good thing to open the doors to them. But the challenge is to make existing systems healthier and more functional in addressing the problems at hand while facilitating growth as new problems arise." [please re-read if you think he is being "green" and denying hierarchies, he isn't; he is simply saying that integrality respects all levels of the hierarchy. integrality doesn't say "get integral or else;" Ken does! I wonder why!]

"It is always useful to look at the original materials Ken reinterprets since his renditions sometimes leave a bit to be desired when compared to the sources." [if you are interested in understanding what "integral-aperspectival" consciousness is truly all about, I suggest the tome from which Wilber was inspired: Jean Gebser's The Ever-Present Origin.]

"As we say over and over, our issues are not with integration or the idea of integral thinking; it makes all the sense in the world. Our fuss is with lousy representations of SD and abuse of a valuable model by people who don’t seem to care what damage they do in building up their own movements."

I truly do recommend you read his lengthy response to Ken at the above link. It is simply smarter and has more depth than anything Ken has said publicly on the matter. I have not seen a response to this response by Ken. I cannot help but feel disappointed in Ken by this -- why no response? too immature for Ken to waste his time on? And honestly, I do not want to hear that I am "being too serious" or that "I don't get it" in saying Ken was immature in his comments. If you are going to tell me that I am just "too green", then you haven't read Cowan's response and I doubt if you understand vMemes any better than Ken apparently does(n't). It was simply disrespectful. Cowan's response is as respectful as I could imagine it, reading what Ken had said to him and about Cowan's life work.

Back to the "teal label" discussion, and how it pertains. People are not "colors"! We need to lay to rest this idea that people can even "be a color." We think and act from different systems of thinking within our own being. The point of SD is not to marginalize people by saying "she is mythic blue because she believes the bible is the absolute truth," but rather to say, "her interpretation of the bible seems to be arising from the mythic blue structure of consciousness which is absolutistic in thinking." This also dispels with the notion that "green cannot hear turquoise" or "green cannot even see turquoise facts" that Ken seems to always be pounding in to our brains, because it shows that a person is not green! A person is a person. And I don't think this is solved by Ken's one-sentence disclaimer of, "we have to remember these states are fluid, clouds, etc." He certainly does not talk, on average, if ever, with this fluidity in mind.

I am also confused with phrases like, "well he may be 2nd-tier/turquoise cognitivly, but not in other lines of development." Aside from my objection to labeling anyone a color, where was it stated that the colors apply to all lines of development? Are we refering to Ken's uber-cross-referencing which uses the colors as the y-axis, plotting all those developmental hierarchies along the x-axis? This is my biggest objection-- where is the research that shows these "colors" apply to anything other than Value Structures, to the vMemes? It is okay for Ken to copy and revise these things, but where is the evidence? I "simply" don't find life to be as simple as Ken seems to portray it to all of us... colors versus colors all struggling to the "best" color, turquoise. (or indigo, 3rd-tier? to which I have to say, where on earth is the research for the evidence of these structures? and how are they differentiated from the as-yet little-understood turquoise...?)

I hope this has not sounded like an attack on any of you participating in this thread. I admit it is an attack on Ken. I am really just curious to see what you all have to say about this topic; I hope you do read in length and with an open mind Cowan's response, if you've not before. To James, I would agree with rocco in that it seems like you see Ken as the say-all for integral. This is just not at all the case. The encounters you have with "lower-consciousnesses" and your mental ticks of thinking you are better than them is because Ken has not accurately portrayed this information. It is a tragedy that we spend a half-hour in conversation with a professor and say, "what a greenie, he will never understand me." I think the root of this problem is thinking we are ourselves a certain color, or integral, or however you wish to say it. Integral has, at least to my eye and in certain sectors, become a label of superiority. We should only recognize where a person is thinking from so that we can better relate to them, better understand why they think what they happen to think. It should not be a tool of the ego. I can only wonder how tragic this misconstruing of the integral-aperspectival consciousness might be for our poor, humble God...

in being honest with myself and with you,
hoping for any/all honesty in return,
god bless,
Tim

well said and reseached.

Although Ken Wilber is the person I have most respect for, my rational self always tells me that he can make mistakes too. In "Integral Spirituality" footnotes and appendix 3, I see many intellectual attacks on other works--oh geez, these are just the "fun" things that intellectuals have to engage in. I think from Ken's perspective, it must be a wonderful dance--a first tier back-and-forth fights addressing 2nd-tier issues. Hehe.

You are right, Ken does use other intellectuals' lingos and adapt to his own uses. It's not just "vMeme", but also, Chomsky's "surface structure", "deep structure." or Howard Gardner's "multiple intelligence". (Howard Gardner points out that Ken's use of "lines" differ from his use of "multiple intelligence. and sometimes it's misrepresented.)

The point is having a developmental models is to have people engaging in "aspirations"(emphasized) to grow. You are absolutely right, greens can probably understand turquoise in some instances, because 25% of time, they could be indeed objectifying their own MGM, and see fallacies with it. It's not that they can't hear it, but only that they sometimes can and sometime can't.

And with respects to green academics, indeed, even if they agree with turquoise, because their life works were mostly green, they have to defend their own works in debate! Just imagine. Who would want to say, "all my past 40 years of works amount to nothing?" Of course, they are gonna try to defend it, it's a natural almost survival impulse! (to use in UR terms)

I do notice that Ken points out in the intro, that "Integral Spritituality" is fiilled with levity--the attacks are more blunt, descriptions of 1st -tier more harsh. Well, I can see that Ken was having fun with the book; he was throwing himself into the lila--but frankly Ken, not all readers' can appreciate your approach. "levity is the wiser tone" is not going to be understood by many people. And frankly saying that "70% of the world's population is Nazi..." is just too much, we understand what you mean, but many people are going to take it literally.

I know many people from developing countries, and indeed they can be very ethnocentric. But most of the time, they are only ethnocentric to their countries historical enemies, (eg Chinese can be very antagonistic toward the Japanese; or the Armenians very antagonistic to Turkish; Danish to the Muslims and so on) But do they want to eliminate all the world's population and declare their countries as the supreme?

Well, I leave you all to decide.

---

O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed in the music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
--W. B. Yeats

Zneval's quote:

quote:

To those of you who see the arrogance of Ken and are tired of his simplifications of other's theories, I commend you. It takes time and some seriously scary moments (everyone find Ken to be an uber-genius, at first), but as Castel says, it truly is heartening to know that the TRUE theories and research underlying SD understands all these things we have been upset with Ken for not understanding. (Namely: "The SD/Graves model is not a typology for categorizing people into eight rigid boxes. These are ways of thinking about a thing that reside in varying proportions within human beings and which ebb and flow, not labels for kinds of human being. The question is not how to deal with a person at a given level, but how to deal with the thinking of the level when it is activated in its particular way in that person.")

/end quote

Yes, sometimes I find Ken's self-serving comments a little disconcerting. But it's ok. He is allowed to have a big ego, for him, it's an objectified big ego. But frankly, Ken Wilber is not more arrogant than many of the academics. And also take note that sometimes it's necessary to refer the achievement of your own works just so that you can establish credibility to the audience you are addressing.

With regards to his often-repeated statements. Who actually enjoys repeating stuff over and over again? To repeat the statement I made before--"why do you think Ken stayed a hermit for 30 years?"

The post is not to defend Ken's statements or change your opinion of him. But it's important to get ourselves into the shoes of others before making comments about the instance behaviors of others.

 

I do acknowledge that my opinion of him could be biased. Although I've never seen Ken in person, my admiration of him is primarily due to the fact that I was integrating numerous disciplines on my own, before reading Ken's truly eye-opening framework. I can appreciate AQAL framework so much because I was in the process of connecting, and understood the nuances of such pansophy. I simply have to say that Ken's pansophy is much grander and more comprehensive than that of my own, he really save me from discovering through the hard ways. Thus I would like to affirm Ken's contributions.

---

O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed in the music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
--W. B. Yeats

ChangchupNyima:

Okay, now I'm confused.  I can't tell if you are being serious.   

The Ken Wilber article in my above post is something I made up.  Think of The Onion newspaper.  The positions I show Ken taking were done because I thought it would be funny since they are so much the opposite of his actual thought.  They are an extreme version of what I perceived as your "problem" with how Ken use(d)s Spiral Dynamics and by pointing out the obvious silliness of such views I was hoping you would notice how out of it someone would have to be in order to hold them.

In any case, I had a lot of fun writing it.  I made myself laugh over and over.

 

Don't you think the "article" is funny?  I'm not quitting my day job or anything but seriously...

 

-Jeffrey

Rofl! What a relief! I can only laugh at the relief...

---

O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed in the music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
--W. B. Yeats

In response to this recent discussion I imagine that Ken had to let go of a lot of what he read as he read it while searching for the nugget(s) of clear insight.  While reading Kant or Piaget it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.

Also I want to really thank WindowlessWind for those first few posts on humility and 2nd tier, I really enjoyed them and I think humility is an important reminder and one which I really need to apply more deeply when in interpersonal relations, to par with my own moral standards (moral thoughts, not actions) as I witness my thoughts and physical sensations in response to those thoughts.

My work is partly in signal analysis and I find that sometimes looking at the direction of change is a more immediate representation than an absolute value.

Here's to humility,

Ryan

Great post.

  I noticed on Rocco's thread that he attacked another person, who tried to consider Mike huckabee as a viable candidate, as being first-tier person who did make the second-tier leap.

  I don't see so much problem of Obama being teal. But the attack on another person as first-tier simply based on a post goes too far.

  Rocco later apologized, so I consider the point settled.

  I heard some of Ken's concerns that "green" is being used as a bad word. I agree with the posts that state that vMemes are probability clouds.

 

Best.

Great post. Look for more replies.

DustVille:

Thanks for reviving a valuable topic!

It has become SOP (standard operating procedure) to talk about the level/colors in relation to people. He's teal, he's green, she's turquoise, etc.

Aren't the colors place markers for general levels of development? And these levels of development only make sense in reference to particular lines?

Without specifying the line at issue, to say someone "is Teal" is akin to saying "I have a dozen."

Teal what? A dozen what?

Example: Wilber has mentioned that a good definition of enlightenment probably includes an Indigo level of development on the cognitive and self lines.

So, unless it is clearly understood that we are talking about the cognitive and self lines, it makes very little sense to say that a person is or is not Indigo.

I guess when we are talking about politics and we say someone is Green, the implication is that their v-meme resonates at its highest around green values. Is this right? I am not sure this assumption is warranted, though.

The same issue comes when we say someone is First or Second Tier. Along which line or group of lines? Does this mean cognitive by definition?