Integral Global Capitalism - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-29T09:43:15Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/integral-global-capitalism?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A1478&feed=yes&xn_auth=noWhich reminds me of the Pope'…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-12-20:5301756:Comment:531852013-12-20T16:07:15.194ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Which reminds me of the Pope's recent words on the topic:</p>
<p>"Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system."</p>
<p>Amen…</p>
<p>Which reminds me of the Pope's recent words on the topic:</p>
<p>"Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system."</p>
<p>Amen brother.</p> Whole Foods Wacky Mackey is a…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-12-20:5301756:Comment:532502013-12-20T02:37:56.443ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Whole Foods Wacky Mackey is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/whole-foods-health-care-s_n_4469314.html?utm_hp_ref=business" target="_blank">at it again</a> with Obamacare. Not surprisingly he said:</p>
<p>"I believe free markets are the best way to organize society and any system that supports capitalism, I’m in favor of.”</p>
<p>Whole Foods Wacky Mackey is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/whole-foods-health-care-s_n_4469314.html?utm_hp_ref=business" target="_blank">at it again</a> with Obamacare. Not surprisingly he said:</p>
<p>"I believe free markets are the best way to organize society and any system that supports capitalism, I’m in favor of.”</p> From David Loy's article “Tow…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-07-07:5301756:Comment:496442013-07-07T22:14:44.901ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>From David Loy's article “<a href="http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/toward-a-new-buddhist-story-2">Toward a new Buddhist story</a>”:</p>
<p>“We need to become aware of the difficulties with traditional Buddhist worldviews as well. […] It originated as an Iron Age mythology and still contains many mythological elements that shouldn’t be accepted merely because they are traditional.</p>
<p>“Like other Axial developments, Buddhism basically rests on cosmological dualism. Instead of God and the…</p>
<p>From David Loy's article “<a href="http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/toward-a-new-buddhist-story-2">Toward a new Buddhist story</a>”:</p>
<p>“We need to become aware of the difficulties with traditional Buddhist worldviews as well. […] It originated as an Iron Age mythology and still contains many mythological elements that shouldn’t be accepted merely because they are traditional.</p>
<p>“Like other Axial developments, Buddhism basically rests on cosmological dualism. Instead of God and the created world, it’s samsara versus nirvana. […] On the popular level of understanding, however, Buddhism devalues this world as a place of suffering, craving, and delusion, and the goal of Buddhist practice is to transcend it.</p>
<p>“Another implication of cosmological dualism is that my individual salvation or liberation is independent of yours. But trying to attain nirvana by escaping from this world of samsara is incompatible with the situation we face today. What is called for now is not people seeking to transcend this world but people who take responsibility for its well-being.”</p> The standard Wilbersaurus arg…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-07-04:5301756:Comment:495282013-07-04T15:52:16.692ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>The standard Wilbersaurus argument is that compassion training is a necessary supplement to meditation since they are evolutionary stimulants to different lines of intelligence. Meditation is primarily attractive to the ideological machinery which observes its short term effects -- enhancement of productivity, relaxed concentration and acceptance of situations. But its longer term effects are supposed to include an increased likelihood for developmental stage-unfolding along the cognitive…</p>
<p>The standard Wilbersaurus argument is that compassion training is a necessary supplement to meditation since they are evolutionary stimulants to different lines of intelligence. Meditation is primarily attractive to the ideological machinery which observes its short term effects -- enhancement of productivity, relaxed concentration and acceptance of situations. But its longer term effects are supposed to include an increased likelihood for developmental stage-unfolding along the cognitive line. So a more complex sense of self relating to a larger worldspace. That is ambivalent in some regards but also does tend to lean in the direction of taking more variables and more entities into account. Therefore meditation, under certain conditions, might be imagined as a kind of Trojan horse. That remains to be seen. As a meditation instructor I can assert that the precise variations in the methodology can make a lot of difference.</p>
<p>In his talks with Buddhists, Wilbs has often discussed the problem of the person illuminated-by-emptiness but lacking in compassion. His solution is usually to affirm traditional empathy-training practices as something which must come before the highest stages of meditative unfolding. One might disagree with him here, postulating that there actually is a very existential rather than contingent-pragmatic connection between meditation and compassion... but the issue of their divergence is more critical socially than the issue of their root affinity.</p>
<p>So these two points (a) the different effects of different meditation practices over different ranges of time (b) the connection/disconnection of meditation and compassion are of interest to me as part of the consideration of (c) the neo-corporate and ideological adoption of meditation as an efficiency and control mechanism -- marketed to employees as a route to happy meaningfulness and relaxation -- meant, in part, to depressurize the humanly intolerable side-effects of the current globally dominant system.</p>
<p>All that features in Conscious Capitalism... a double-edged sword barely analyzed with any sophistication. And crying out for a ferocious Conscious Anti-Capitalism to at least broach these issues.</p> Of course I’ve had similar co…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-07-03:5301756:Comment:494812013-07-03T15:59:44.067ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Of course I’ve had similar complaints about traditional Buddhism itself, in that while they might seek to aid the poor or downtrodden with food, shelter etc. they have tended not to themselves get involved in politics to change the socio-economic conditions that created such situations. There too there has been a kind of belief that if those helped will then take up the meditative and ethical discipline then this will magically change not only them but those around them. The …</p>
<p>Of course I’ve had similar complaints about traditional Buddhism itself, in that while they might seek to aid the poor or downtrodden with food, shelter etc. they have tended not to themselves get involved in politics to change the socio-economic conditions that created such situations. There too there has been a kind of belief that if those helped will then take up the meditative and ethical discipline then this will magically change not only them but those around them. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engaged_Buddhism" target="_blank">engaged Buddhism movement</a> seeks to counter this fallacious reasoning, noting that to effect broader political change requires broader political action in addition to meditative and ethical training.</p> David Loy is one of the autho…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-07-03:5301756:Comment:496092013-07-03T15:38:12.989ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>David Loy is one of the authors of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-purser/beyond-mcmindfulness_b_3519289.html">Beyond McMindfulness</a>, an informative article about the commoditization of meditation and how it is used to reinforce corporate status quo. Corporations are a agog over it because it reduces stress and improves efficiency, but they don’t want the Buddhism that goes with it. The latter includes a context for meditation that includes ethics, compassion and…</p>
<p>David Loy is one of the authors of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-purser/beyond-mcmindfulness_b_3519289.html">Beyond McMindfulness</a>, an informative article about the commoditization of meditation and how it is used to reinforce corporate status quo. Corporations are a agog over it because it reduces stress and improves efficiency, but they don’t want the Buddhism that goes with it. The latter includes a context for meditation that includes ethics, compassion and rightmindedness, which are not compatible with corporate bottom lines, labor maltreatment and environmental degradation. Hence corporate promotion of the secularized version keeps the benefits but eliminates the moral code that would challenge its own agenda. Such a divorce enhances the abilities of an executive practicing the technique to more effectively abuse his employees via ‘productivity’ quotas, which tends to mean more overtime work for a smaller salary. If that’s stressful for the employee, well then meditate to reduce the stress and be more efficient. The problem is reinforced rather than fixed.</p>
<p>The authors also lay bare the fallacy that if the executive or employee practices meditation then the social good behavior will automatically follow. This has been a major rationalization of the kennilinguists with the leadership training programs. We give them the tech and the tech is so ‘integral’ it will transform them for the good of all. Bullshit. It makes them better bastards since the issue of corporate greed and the inherent abuses of capitalism are completely by-passed. The authors are reminded of corporate sensitivity training in the 60s, where executives were taught to listen and respect the worker’s feelings. What is was in effect was a means of making the worker feel ‘heard’ and then doing absolutely nothing to remedy their complaints. Having been in corporations I’m well aware of this social engineering, having bed fed it many times with no corporate change whatsoever. Now corporate meditation training is the newest means to mollify the masses for the profit of the few. Welcome to integral or conscious capitalism.</p> The so-called Lower Right Qua…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-06-29:5301756:Comment:491702013-06-29T16:42:15.081ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>The so-called Lower Right Quadrant is the sneakiest of all -- the most difficult for human beings to get a firm intuitive grasp upon. To produce systems that are commensurate with integrative consciousness means not merely to have some books, some buildings, some websites which are themed around 'integral community'. It means to produce and advocate behavioral protocols -- especially institutional decision making protocols -- which are of equivalent depth and complexity to this altitude of…</p>
<p>The so-called Lower Right Quadrant is the sneakiest of all -- the most difficult for human beings to get a firm intuitive grasp upon. To produce systems that are commensurate with integrative consciousness means not merely to have some books, some buildings, some websites which are themed around 'integral community'. It means to produce and advocate behavioral protocols -- especially institutional decision making protocols -- which are of equivalent depth and complexity to this altitude of consciousness. Conservatism and Corporatism generally operate slightly below (rather than notably above) the already simplistic and outdated LR protocols of Democratic states.</p>
<p>We must challenge ourselves in many ways when it comes to this zone of political, technological, ritual & socio-economic programs. On the one hand I find myself advocating Integral Machiavellianism -- the courage and cunning to play sin & virtue off against each other, to think in non-sentimental terms about placing ends above means, to exploit the structures and inner tendencies of the different evolutionary layers in human beings & to indulge-harness the selfishness of individuals and cabals to produce part of the engine we need is all stuff that challenges us. There is, surely, far too much idealism among integral-sensitives... and contemporary ideology works today's progressives and would-be paradigm-shifters as if they were as much a puppet as the self-styled conservatives of the world.</p>
<p>At the same time, there is a pretty obvious problem of facile compromise and naive "balancing" which goes on. There is a common tendency to mistake social regression for an authentic "right wing". And it is obvious that the hive-mechanics of the implicit ideology in which our world operates does not except visionaries and meditators from its subliminal control. </p>
<p>At the very least, we find that "integral capitalism" is all-too-easy to affirm, so amenable that it begs for an <em>integral anti-capitalism</em>.</p>
<p>In fact, it seems like integral theory is a perfect vehicle with which to <em>critique Corporations as non-holons</em>. The holarchical enfoldment of atoms by molecules introduces a new level of autonomy, community and intelligence... not a system by which a few of the atoms in that molecule reap disproportionate benefits. <strong>"Top o' the heap" is not a "higher level".</strong></p>
<p>So despite the real need to observe interesting things like the 'conservative social mentality' of ancient sages, the need to make a clear stand against naive pluralist sentiments, the strategic pseudo-Marxist idea that the real revolution depends upon the establishment first of egoic modernity pattern, etc. there still stands out a glaring failure of institutional integralism to produce and support radical politics which counterbalance its own attempt to be amenable to all "types"... and which keeps pace with the emergent urgency that characterizes a great many of those who operate with integrate sensibilities in the current global climate.</p>
<p></p> The following is from Corbett…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-06-29:5301756:Comment:492672013-06-29T13:38:53.667ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>The following is from Corbett's Integral World article "<a href="http://www.integralworld.net/corbett10.html" target="_blank">The rise of integral conservatism</a>":</p>
<p>He discusses Habermas' instrumental rationality and how it manipulated people and the environment for profit. And that Kennilingam supported this critique in favor of a more integral or postformal rationality. And yet the old adage "what what I do, not what I say" seems apparent. He said:</p>
<p>"That the integral…</p>
<p>The following is from Corbett's Integral World article "<a href="http://www.integralworld.net/corbett10.html" target="_blank">The rise of integral conservatism</a>":</p>
<p>He discusses Habermas' instrumental rationality and how it manipulated people and the environment for profit. And that Kennilingam supported this critique in favor of a more integral or postformal rationality. And yet the old adage "what what I do, not what I say" seems apparent. He said:</p>
<p>"That the integral leadership beginning with KW chooses to remain silent and even takes sides favorable to the right-wing austerity bastards (which includes the so-called center-left these days) on this most timely and urgent issue, I think speaks volumes not just about their intellectual bankruptcy but about their own aspirations to power and wealth, the same kind of petty bourgeois opportunism that gets minorities and women into positions of power without really changing anything, those very things that strategic-instrumental rationality can be employed to acquire and accumulate, at whatever the cost. Indeed, there are those including myself who have experienced first hand the interpersonal and institutional manipulations of KW and his inner circle of loyalists who will go to great lengths to avoid and otherwise exclude anyone who questions or challenges the 'party line' of integral ideology and its practices. Of course, the solution to this political corruption within the inner integral circle is to splinter off into a more progressive and open network of integral scholars and practitioners who don't deploy strategic-instrumental manipulations for their own personal systemic benefit within the integral echelon."</p>
<p>And from his article "Ken Wilber, philosopher-king":</p>
<p>"What concerns me most is not so much the apparent cult-like tendencies of the inner circle of KW-integral, but the almost banal stride with which a social Darwinian perspective makes its way into integral theory through none other than the king himself, KW. Individual survival strategies in response to collective crisis seems to be all the fashion-rage among new age self-help gurus these days, indeed, as it always has been in America. Personal responsibility for ones fate in life beyond external determining forces of oppression is also a well known tenet of integral politics, and of a Buddhism that has historically been used to justify the caste system in traditional Eastern societies. In fact, Wilber has gone so far as to claim that <a href="https://www.coreintegral.com/blog/why-buddha-was-republican" target="_blank">Buddha was a Republican</a>, thus recruiting Buddhism to the cause of joining the chorus of those right-wing conservatives who blame the victims of social injustice for being lazy, irresponsible, not of right mind, and generally deserving of what they get. The war of all against all in a neoliberal world of the global race to the bottom thus seems to find a champion in the KW-integral call for individual responsibility, mental discipline, and physical austerity, aka, blaming and punishing the victims of the unregulated excesses of financial and political elites."</p> Joe Corbett has an interestin…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-01-01:5301756:Comment:452032013-01-01T16:23:57.719ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>Joe Corbett has <a href="http://www.integralworld.net/corbett11.html" target="_blank">an interesting Integral World response</a> to the Institute for Cultural Evolution (ICE). It seems ICE blames pomo for not getting along with modernist capitalism, nor recognizing all its wonderful benefits. It those MGMs would just get over their dysfunction and integrate modernist capitalism things would work out just fine. Corbett, to his credit, berates ICE's Polyanna attitude that the…</p>
<p>Joe Corbett has <a href="http://www.integralworld.net/corbett11.html" target="_blank">an interesting Integral World response</a> to the Institute for Cultural Evolution (ICE). It seems ICE blames pomo for not getting along with modernist capitalism, nor recognizing all its wonderful benefits. It those MGMs would just get over their dysfunction and integrate modernist capitalism things would work out just fine. Corbett, to his credit, berates ICE's Polyanna attitude that the corporate-industrial-military complex can be "swept aside" once pomo gets on track and we can get on with the business of selling evolutionary theory. He notes that this is incredibly naive, since it misses the power structure of that massive complex and how it limits the very possibilities of action of the underclass, lest they be out of a job and die. And all the while meanwhile ICE touts individual initiative (more like obsession) and material consumption as positive values we should "integrate" is some kind of next gen survival of the fittest. All of this is explicit in the thread criticisms above.</p> I've often speculated on the…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2011-09-10:5301756:Comment:277432011-09-10T12:50:39.695ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
<p>I've often speculated on the relation of capitalism to feudalism, that the former is in many ways an outgrowth of the latter, more of a lateral development than a vertical one. <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net/Feudal_Origins_of_Capitalism" target="_blank">This article</a> offers some interesting history on their relationship. An excerpt:</p>
<p>"It was the increase in the standard of living of the lower strata moving in the direction of relative equalization of incomes... that for the upper…</p>
<p>I've often speculated on the relation of capitalism to feudalism, that the former is in many ways an outgrowth of the latter, more of a lateral development than a vertical one. <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net/Feudal_Origins_of_Capitalism" target="_blank">This article</a> offers some interesting history on their relationship. An excerpt:</p>
<p>"It was the increase in the standard of living of the lower strata moving in the direction of relative equalization of incomes... that for the upper strata represented the real crisis.... There was no way out of it without drastic social change. This way... was the creation of a capitalist world-system, a new form of surplus appropriation. The replacement of the feudal mode by the capitalist mode was what constituted the seigniorial reaction; it was a great sociopolitical effort by the ruling strata to retain their collective privileges, even if they had to accept a fundamental reorganization of the economy....most importantly, the principle of stratification was not merely preserved; it was to be reinforced as well."</p>
<p>We see this continuing to play out in today's economic battles, with conservatives conserving the stratification of privilege, power and wealth at the expense of the rest of us. Capitalism is a regression into feudalism, albeit a more 'complex' one, not an advance into freedom and shared opportunity concomitant with the Enlightenment. Now a democratic economy led by (noncorrupt) unions, maybe...</p>