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What about the Children; The real need behind the urgent drive for integral leadership.

Last post 09-23-2007, 9:39 PM by benachad. 3 replies.
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  •  09-22-2007, 2:01 AM 28828

    What about the Children; The real need behind the urgent drive for integral leadership.

    There is little doubt that the ecological changes confronting humanity are fueling a lot of needed growth, especially moving larger numbers of conventional orange towards post- conventional green. The relatively rapid expansion of what was just the leading edge up until a few decades ago is amazing. But, why the urgency and almost simultaneous push for second tier, or integral, modes of i.d. and meaning making? After all, the slower pace of growth has served in the past for a solid integration of the once leading edge into the leading power structures. And this has served to leverage the smaller numbers. Indeed, we see the beginnings of the same with the influence of green in academicsand politics today. There is little doubt and a lot of evidence that the green vision is sufficient in breadth (understanding systems and extension of compassion towards living beings) to provide the tools and even leadership that could do a lot to alleviate the situation, probably buying humanity a century or two, plenty of time for integral to slowly evolve into being; except for one major glitch. What about the children?

     

    Herein lies the single most dangerous shadow or blind spot for green consciousness, although orange has made its own contribution here as well. It was the orange rejection of blue values; values that put the stamp of the Divine on blue's laws as an appropriate means (and accurate description) for the era of blues rising to dominance, that opened the door to the wholesale condemnation of all things blue. With green this rejection turned to a total deconstruction. For green values, morals and ethics were rightfully revealed to be relativistic. Good so far, but and with this the emergence of the red shadow in action and the infection of boomeritis relative became individual with little or no regard for one's place in the whole. This has its own set of issues in how the individual entering green consciousness traverses this relatively new territory. But the biggest pitfall lies in how and with what tools green chooses to raise its children. Without the respect that is necessary for the very real and valuable contribution of blue (reverence and respect for social order through rule of law) the children of green stand a good chance of becoming stranded at red, strongly egocentric, but with the breadth of green technology at their disposal. Need I say more? Perhaps just two more words, integral parenting

    Jerry

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  •  09-22-2007, 8:08 PM 28875 in reply to 28828

    • bulungi69 is not online. Last active: 01-22-2008, 4:09 AM bulungi69
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    Re: What about the Children; The real need behind the urgent drive for integral leadership.

    Hi Jerry,

    Interesing that we both have similar posts. And also that they remain unanswered (both here and metaphorically!)

    You may have checked out my 'Africa -2nd tier post' but I am facing a similar challenge in my prospect of creating a orphange with similar inetgral considerations.

    I believe the area of Intregral parenting (once again, metaphorically!) is right up there with 'population control', and 'would we still be together if the kids left' (try that one at party sometime!)

    Ie, pretty taboo (purple!) I've been curious  why Ken seems adament that  a centre of gravity at snd tier and an integral world governance is still possibly a couple of centuries away. And then i think of our children, and i watch the evening news (on that rare occasion!) and i think of that beautiful 5 year old boy that I babysat last night that is already at a very healthy red/blue  (moreso than my ass!) and i think 'here we have it,,,'!

    Just how many of our children can we truly say are healthy at this stage.

    And 200 years suddenly doesn't seem that far away...

    kind regards,

    Darren
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  •  09-23-2007, 7:06 AM 28896 in reply to 28875

    Re: What about the Children; The real need behind the urgent drive for integral leadership.

    Hi Darren,

    Thanks for taking the time to engage me in this topic. I had not yet read your post (it was on my mental list) but did last night after seeing your reply here. I will drop back to it shortly and would like to ask some questions for clarification and to move the conversation forward.

    Meanwhile, back to the question of what integral parenting might look like. I offer the following:

    In considering any new endeavor or approach to addressing an issue it seems very important to me to be clear on what is the intention of the proposed activity. Intention determines directionality and serves as a compass point to keep one on track. Since life is a bit messy at time I think this analogy of a trip, utilizing a compass, may be very helpful ... after all, the shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but we don't see many straight lines naturally arising and any trip we take will entail adjustments in our route. And on microscopic examination we will find man made straight lines are only relatively so. Sorry, I got sidetracked, let me return to the importance of intentionality and how it applies to the issue of raising children in an integral fashion.

    If the intention in raising children is to see that they do not disrupt the current social order then there are well worn tracks laid down to accomplish this ... it is the amber (blue) approach in its many guises born out of the multitude of social constructs in which it was applied. A very good approach as far as it went, but as Orange or the scientific mind began to emerge into human consciousness the ways of amber became problematic. The rigidity of invoking divinity as the source of all laws, morals and ethics that served to move humanity through the treachery of red's each for themselves mentality was now a solid wall that blocked the way. And those that dared climb to the top to look over incited others to tear the wall down.

    The intention of child rearing for Orange culture is to encourage Individual expression while still maintaining social order. Our modern day school systems and democratic institutions are the result. But, the failure of Orange to adequately address the inherent contradiction of a split intention and to honor the depth of the preceding amber level that provided the moral compass to guide the determination of the law of the land produced a social structure that suffers from multiple personality disorder and has the depth of a cartoon.

    This is enough for now. I don't want so much here that it discourages someone from reading it. I will pick up the thread later today or tonight.

    Jerry

     

     

     

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  •  09-23-2007, 9:39 PM 28924 in reply to 28896

    Re: What about the Children; The real need behind the urgent drive for integral leadership.

    For the sake of clarity I have taken the time edit and rewrite the post above and added another paragraph or so. I see in the forum on Integral education below that the topic of Integral parenting is also a suggested topic. It seems appropriate to move this thread there. I have changed the name and entered the full post there.

    Jerry

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