What is special about Integral Activism?
I think Integral activism faces some of the same challenges that are endemic within the field of integral thinking more generally-that is how to think in more holistic and comprehensive ways when much of our experience is highly situated. One of the fascinating contributions that integral activism has to make to the larger field (and Raul has done some of this) is in considering how power and privilege play a role in what we call integral. Both in terms of who ‘speaks the language of integral’ as well as in relation to what is considered the most highly evolved or comprehensive forms of integral thinking. I also think that in the push toward non heirachal thinking or in attempting to integrate more categories are often horizontalized and the question of values comes up. I think Integral activism may sensitize people to the fact that when someone is suffering they are going to prioritize the immediacy and importance of that experience. In fact, the strength of character, the insights into oneness that emerge as a result of the struggle to effect change are I think are very strong pathways through which to access integral thinking. One potential concern I have is that we may see engaging with the ways that separation (all the isms) manifests in the world as a stumbling block to some higher consciousness and that we need to ‘deal with that’ to get to some more integral place and that it is in that higher place that the work really begins and so some more advanced beings are already doing that. I think somehow transforming separation, creating lived experiences of oneness or understanding and feeling multipositionality is the place where integral being often occurs. It is often ‘in the trenches on the front lines’ (can someone give me a nonwarlike descriptor) as a result of the challenge, resistance, creativity, and struggle to embody more inclusive values to come together across lines of difference and come to know something new. I think of the archetype of the Buddha as an integral thinker, it wasn’t only in his father’s castle that he came to his view and reflective processes were key but she/he also went out and engaged the world. I think integral activism can make a strong case for how engagement in social justice expands the limits of our situated identities. A series of stories and case studies would be fascinating in this regard. Anyone want to write it with me? Interested to hear your thoughts on this unfiltered post….
Activism, as I understand it, arises from the desire to eliminate suffering that results from an injustice. This is a little different than looking at suffering itself as part of the human condition. But the problems are definitely intertwined, often conflated and confused. This confusion is sometimes the root cause of injustice itself! Part of integral activism is to be able to understand suffering in its proper context – so that we can make informed actions from a larger choice field. If I respond to my personal, human, ego-centric suffering without seeing it in a larger context-field – my actions will probably be ego-centric and tend to actually feed my own sufferings. If I respond to the suffering in my neighborhood without the context of power-privilege with respect to the larger community – then my actions will probably be self-serving, and actually add to the injustice. So yes, what is immediate, is that we acknowledge both suffering and injustice. In fact, each of us participates in suffering and injustice in various ways most of the time. What is needed, is the ability to see this in relation to larger and larger contexts. This is where integral understanding has a role to play.
I disagree with those “integral” ideas that are based primarily in terms of hierarchies. I believe that moral intuition is profoundly personal, and the engagement with the other occurs at a deep intersubjective (or transpersonal) level. At that level, hierarchical notions don’t compute – because boundaries dissolve, and hierarchies depend upon boundaries.
The measure of integral activism, should not be made in terms of “higher” values, or “higher” levels of consciousness, but the capacity and degree for engagement at deeper and deeper intersubjective levels, including non-human sentient beings. It’s THAT direction, IMO, we need to be pointing to. Not toward the direction of ever-more complexifying conceptual schemes (however fun it is to play with those).
The idea of “the capacity and degree for engagement at deeper and deeper intersubjective levels” is interesting can you explain further? I am dealing with ever complexifying conceptual schemes and want to hear your way out…Also what does IMO stand for?
Of course in this written medium, I have to use concepts. The important thing to remember, is that I am trying to use concepts that point to something else– something implicit in experience. This is different than using concepts that point to other concepts. Integral theory, for example, is a theory about how “structures” are related — but “structures” are conceptual abstractions. I don’t want to make a theory about theorectical strcutures. I want to use concepts to point to something subtle, implicit — that can be discovered. But only if you “look at” what I am pointing to. Not if you merely manipulate the concepts. For example, if we were tasting wine — I might say something like “the taste of raspberry under winter oak.” And we would have to tease out what “raspberry” “winter” “oak” and “under” were pointing to — the subtle distinctions that we are trying to make a language for. So this is the first step before you read my comment/ response. To try to feel into what I am pointing to– rather than trying to udnerstand how the concepts “work”… This of course is easier to do in workshop/practice venues.
Let me make a metaphor for “deeper and deeper intersubjective levels.” I will use the term “deeper” because the experience that I am pointing to feels like a journey to deeper levels of self, something that is more fundamental, more whole, more grounding, and feels (here is a geeky term) ontologicall prior — that only means that deeper levels feel like they have always already been there waiting for us to discover them. This is a different “direction” than the ever-increasing complexification of categories. We are not trying to combine more and more “things” — we are trying to mine deeper and deeper depths of awareness.
So the first level of intersubjectivity, is filled with signifiers only, that have “flown the coop” so to speak. There can be a lot of levels between signifiers pointing to other signifiers pointing to other signifiers… we forget what we are talking about! This is where we spend most of our time. From a certain perspective, it can be seen as a type of high play. But we forget it is creative play — we mistake it for something else. And we loose track of how it arises from a deeper “movement.” — from something like trying to make connection in a socio-community sense.
Socio-communion then , is the deeper level, underlying all our signifiers. We are trying, at some level to SAY something. To communicate something. We get all wired up about it, until we turn toward something about the shared human condition, of being-in-community, of being-in-relationship as it is commonly understood. Here we might begin to see injustice, and social change needs. This is the level of “otherness” as understood by the postmodernists.
Trying to get “at” otherness, drives us deeper into our common ground — the world we share. We begin to make connections about our biological and planetary heritages. We see how cultures arise and make it difficult to “reach out and touch” everyone. We try to access a deeper ground where those socio-cultural diferences don’t matter. We see karma arising through stages of birth and death. We see mothers protecting their children, and the needs and affections of humans and non-humans alike. We start to feel the pulse of creation– the labor and the joy that effects all creation. We see how this underlies the manifestation of identity in communion, as well as identity in agency and individuality. We see how everything moves in a purpose-driven way towards manifestation. We see how this purposefulness creates life upon which community arises, upon which signifiers emerge in all their wild complexities. Everything is connected.
As we develop greater capacity and degree for engagement at deeper and deeper intersubjective levels — the notion of “intersubjective” itself dissappears into an ever-more subtle sphere/field of consciousness. We begin to engage what the Buddhists call “substrate consciousness” or “species” consciousness (not withstanding other sentient beings). We apperceive timeless myths, dreams, desires, suffering, celebration, joy, dance, suffering, gods, devils, demons … all at play in an eternal dance of creation/arising. We taste the ENERGY of creation! We can touch it at its source. We apperceive how everything arises co-determined and enmesshed, and from this arises community and identity and difference.
Beneath the “substrate consciousness” we can feel into our very being-into-becoming. Unbounded, whole, generative of all the other levels; clear, precise, it has the quality of the sun, which is nothing but its own radiance, and from which all life sources.
Coming back to earth (so to speak) ha ha… If I can walk into a room where I am speaking of social justice, and social injustice, if I can at the same time I am manipulating signifiers (you know how people are) I can remain attached to that source, from which all this complexity flows — it should make quite a difference!
Beautifully said, this is exactly what I feel like a strive for in my work. Both actually, more complex conceptual schema for understanding the connections between things, and this deeper intersubjectivity. I am writing my dissertation on education and complexity theory and focusing on the importance of methodological complexity and havent yet fully found the language to articulate the deeper intersubjectivity and the distinctions you made above are very helpful. And yes we should have a chat about this stuff at some point soon.
Both actually, more complex conceptual schema for understanding the connections between things, and this deeper intersubjectivity.
.. perfect! take the deeper intersubjectivity as the “measures” of the conceptual/complexity…. you might find that the “deeper” you are able to ground your own thinking, the more complex your ability to think…
but caveat here… Complexity theory does not mean that you can juggle more and more things– that means “complicated”. A jumbo jet is complicated. The theory of flight (dynamics of wind/ velocity) is complex.
good for you!
bonnie
I was reading Sorokin this weekend (The Ways and Power of Love) – he is pretty much Eurocentric- Christian borgeoise in his thinking … and dated… however, he introduces this notion of the “adequacy ” of love. For example, one might love another intensely, or love humanity intensely, (there are different degrees he has) — but fail to love adequately — like pampering your child, or having a failed welfare program, or ruining an ecosystem that you actually love. So I was thinking about this in terms of integral activism. That along with this type of deep inter-subjective resonance, we must learn the skills for an adequate love to put conscious love into action that will have positive outcomes. And this is where the “thought” complexity comes in — doesn’t it?
ANd for me what comes up, when we put ourselves to the question of adeqacy — is that we begin to put our minds (individual and colelctive) towards solutions. But the very structures of thought are embedded in pervasive historicty — embedded in the very situations we are confronting. And so I believe it is important, with integral activism, to address these thought structures, in a way that can completely liberate and transform how we think oursevles into solutions.
Interesting thread you got going here. Kinda hard to step in at this point, but that’s hasn’t stopped me before.
Arthur, you’re probably already aware of Wilber’s recent writings on IMP, integral methodological pluralism, which attempts to map out the variety/diversity of methodological approaches along the AQAL quadrants. Seems interesting, though I have no immediate use for it nor need to evaluate it. Bonnie, you might have some thoughts on this.
The conversation on “higher vs. deeper” (it did seem like an either/or proposition?) made me think of how I am tending to “view” development that might reconcile the polarity.
I think that by navigating the “depths” of our subjective experience (ideas, sensations, perceptions, emotions, identity, etc.) and connecting intersubjectively with “others” within the “breadth” of collective objective/material relationships (the plane in which life is lived and social power dynamics and injustice manifest), consciousness also “rises” or, rather, expands like a bubble or three-dimensional sphere encompassing height, depth and breadth. Perhaps, then integral consciousness is simultaneously higher, deeper and broader than fragmented, fixed and impermeably-boundaried selves, identities, consciousness.
Perhaps development, then, is measured (given the compulsion to measure things) not by levels of height or depth of the container of consciousness, but by its volume (size… warning: does size really matter?) or maybe by its capacity (potential and/or demonstrated) to make complex connections with the infinite number of elements within its field.
Raul! Something funny first– I did my major theoretical work around a very eclectic western-tibetan thinker named Herber Guenther. He describes in difficult language the dynamics of consciousness– and I have often re-languaged it as throwing/ spinning pizza dough. The dough gets wider (breadth) but in this case (of consciousness) also thicker (both depth and height) as you throw it. This is a low-brow re-translation of guenther — but here you have tapped into it too!
So for me, the interesting thing, is that there is some kind of elemental “feeling” we have of “moving” in differnet directions. Curiously Aurobindo makes much of the same case. Your notino of “volume” means that a circle grows in volume in many aspects at the same time. This is what we might be trying to get at/ language.
good stuff
Well, if you saw Artie’s video recently posted by Joshua talking about “critical yeast” as a metaphor that complements the notion of “critical mass” you’d realize that your dough languaging fits perfectly! Hey, we can start a social justice think tank and call it “Integral Pizzeria.”
But, anyway, the “volume” or “mass” (by the way, dough in Spanish is “masa” which also means “mass”) as indicative of amount or degree of consciousness is problematic to me as it reminds me of those phrenologists founders of physical anthropology that equated skull size with brain mass with intelligence – the bigger skulls belonging to white Europeans. However, the image of neural connections in a brain of any size has more of an appeal.
“I think somehow transforming separation, creating lived experiences of oneness or understanding and feeling multipositionality is the place where integral being often occurs.”
Hey Artie…love this line above. Thanks for highlighting one of the potential (and frequent) downsides in the Integral community/wave…always striving for and valuing something Higher…in ways that often demean and devalue Lower stages/levels/waves. O, the quest for a truly integral embrace! :)
I like what Bonnie’s speaking to when she talks about it being about something “deeper and deeper”…and I strongly affirm Raul’s three-folding of depth, breadth, and height.
As is so widely the case with we modern humans, people are fairly successful at grasping ‘integral’ in a cognitive way, and yet it becomes a very different story with the questions of integral embodiment, integral being, integral practice, and integral maturity.
This touches on the more loose & open way I was trying to hold the word “integral” at our gathering…as a way of showing up fully and authentically in the world, a way of meeting the world, that arises from deep rooted interconnectedness, attunement to its/our systemic nature, and with a subversive love that softens, blurs, and gels…that clarifies, coheres, and connects.
Some quick thoughts…more to come!
p.s. non-warlike descriptors from Nature to replace “in the trenches of the front lines” – something about “engaging our growing edges” …others?
Integral Pizzeria!
Love it Raul, and that critical yeast is weaving more fully into our masa! :)
Hey Bonnie…love your first line here…and the whole passage…juicy! :)
Will be keeping this nearby to play with soon…
“Part of integral activism is to be able to understand suffering in its proper context – so that we can make informed actions from a larger choice field. If I respond to my personal, human, ego-centric suffering without seeing it in a larger context-field – my actions will probably be ego-centric and tend to actually feed my own sufferings. If I respond to the suffering in my neighborhood without the context of power-privilege with respect to the larger community – then my actions will probably be self-serving, and actually add to the injustice. So yes, what is immediate, is that we acknowledge both suffering and injustice. In fact, each of us participates in suffering and injustice in various ways most of the time. What is needed, is the ability to see this in relation to larger and larger contexts. This is where integral understanding has a role to play.”