What Might Come After Postmodernism? - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-29T07:16:04Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/what-might-come-after?feed=yes&xn_auth=noAssuming for the moment that…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-18:5301756:Comment:33642010-08-18T13:04:49.000ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
Assuming for the moment that a strict constructivism might miss the mark, such a view isn't representative of postmodernism generally but rather a specific branch within it. To make such a broad generalization about pomo is antithetical to pomo itself, as it doesn't have its own dominant agenda with broad consensus. It's like the term postmetaphysical, which in itself can enact in diverse ways, only related by being "post" metaphysical.
Assuming for the moment that a strict constructivism might miss the mark, such a view isn't representative of postmodernism generally but rather a specific branch within it. To make such a broad generalization about pomo is antithetical to pomo itself, as it doesn't have its own dominant agenda with broad consensus. It's like the term postmetaphysical, which in itself can enact in diverse ways, only related by being "post" metaphysical. Hey theurg,
I've posted a kin…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-18:5301756:Comment:33582010-08-18T01:27:10.000Zkelamunihttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/kelamuni
Hey theurg,<br />
I've posted a kind of initial commentary/review at the Film and Book club, though I've barely started reading the book.<br />
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<cite>theurj said:</cite><blockquote cite="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/what-might-come-after?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A3354&xg_source=msg_com_forum#5301756Comment3354"><div>Elaborate please.<br></br><br></br>Here's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">wikipedia excerpt</a>, which not…</div>
</blockquote>
Hey theurg,<br />
I've posted a kind of initial commentary/review at the Film and Book club, though I've barely started reading the book.<br />
<br />
<cite>theurj said:</cite><blockquote cite="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/what-might-come-after?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A3354&xg_source=msg_com_forum#5301756Comment3354"><div>Elaborate please.<br/><br/>Here's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wikipedia excerpt</a>, which not surprisingly relates to my questions in the Avatar thread:<br/><br/>"The Blank Slate... [is] arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences."<br/><br/>Also see Pinker talking about it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQHSKLXu2c" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</div>
</blockquote> Elaborate please.
Here's a w…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-18:5301756:Comment:33542010-08-18T01:03:56.000ZEdward theurj Bergehttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/theurj
Elaborate please.<br />
<br />
Here's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate" target="_blank">wikipedia excerpt</a>, which not surprisingly relates to my questions in the Avatar thread:<br />
<br />
"The Blank Slate... [is] arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences."<br />
<br />
Also see Pinker talking about it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQHSKLXu2c" target="_blank">here</a>.
Elaborate please.<br />
<br />
Here's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate" target="_blank">wikipedia excerpt</a>, which not surprisingly relates to my questions in the Avatar thread:<br />
<br />
"The Blank Slate... [is] arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences."<br />
<br />
Also see Pinker talking about it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuQHSKLXu2c" target="_blank">here</a>. I'm reading Steven Pinker's T…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-17:5301756:Comment:33492010-08-17T23:07:06.000Zkelamunihttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/kelamuni
I'm reading Steven Pinker's <i>The Blank Slate: The Denial of Human Nature</i>, and I have to say that it is changing my perspective on a number of things, including post-structuralist/post-modern thought.
I'm reading Steven Pinker's <i>The Blank Slate: The Denial of Human Nature</i>, and I have to say that it is changing my perspective on a number of things, including post-structuralist/post-modern thought. Gosh, Steven, I couldn't work…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-14:5301756:Comment:33242010-08-14T14:23:21.000ZLolhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/marigpa
Gosh, Steven, I couldn't work out whether you were being pomoerotic or post-pomoerotic -- until I found myself in some kind of metastable interplay between the two and suddenly it didn't matter, a hard on is a hard on after all : )
Gosh, Steven, I couldn't work out whether you were being pomoerotic or post-pomoerotic -- until I found myself in some kind of metastable interplay between the two and suddenly it didn't matter, a hard on is a hard on after all : ) A few thoughts.
1) I want to…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-13:5301756:Comment:33112010-08-13T21:30:03.000ZSteven Nickesonhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/StevenNickeson
A few thoughts.<br />
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<b>1)</b> I want to go back to the essay that Balder put up as the genesis of this thread. The operant sentences of which are: "As we embrace our authentic human situation it acquires a more positive feel to it. After all, there is a charm and enchantment of the theatre: a playacting beauty of pretend-being in the play and counter-play of posited or staged illusions and self deceptions. It is like a living art form that we are in and that we are. We may begin to appreciate the…
A few thoughts.<br />
<br />
<b>1)</b> I want to go back to the essay that Balder put up as the genesis of this thread. The operant sentences of which are: "As we embrace our authentic human situation it acquires a more positive feel to it. After all, there is a charm and enchantment of the theatre: a playacting beauty of pretend-being in the play and counter-play of posited or staged illusions and self deceptions. It is like a living art form that we are in and that we are. We may begin to appreciate the theatre as theatre if we learn how to let go of the yearning for old-style being and believing and get more in tune with a post-Postmodern playing of pretend being and believing."<br />
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I guess Miller is saying here that Sartre was pomo. I never gave that much thought, but on reflection if Heidegger was to any extent pomo then so was Sartre and since he was arrested in the Paris Spring of '68, the birth-season of Philosophical Pomo Per Se (architectural and artistic pomo came quite before) then Sartre was pomo and Miller in this essay is more than correct (IMHO) to go looking for a post pomo, or at least post-Sartre, grounding. Maybe when Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness philosophy had a leg up on science as to the nature of consciousness...but no more. To say as Sartre said that the willful suspension of disbelief (as in his Hamlet example) is an act of bad faith, a betrayal of authenticity, (while we now know that it is fully in line with the exercise of complete authenticity) was either ignorance, simple stupidity or a forced acceptance of his self-manufactured dogma of authenticity that he was too lazy or too gloomy to work around.<br />
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The point Miller is trying to make is that philosophy should be seeking that post-pomo time when Philosophers Just Want to Have Fun. With the dubious exclusion of Derrida--though for certain not Derrida acolytes and scholars--everyone, all the pomo critical theorists, all the fey pomo <i>litterateurs</i>, hunger to be imbued with the "spirit of seriousness." Given their cold shoulder reception in the USA how else can they look legitimate?<br />
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So, let's just have fun. Let's see who is having fun. I think Miller was having fun when he used Sartre's absurd language games as a spring board to ask Philosophy to adopt a point of view it has feared to take since Diogenes--much to the self- creation of its own marginalization and debilitation.<br />
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<b>2.</b> Let's hope that Gary Hampson was having fun in the Integral Review article that Edward cited above. I can make an assumption either way. Though Integral Review is not normally a hot bed of pomo analysis (to the contrary it is more like the Integral Province's arch-modern venue for the distribution of sensible shoes) it appears that the editors allowed Hampson the freedom to work toward something of that kind. In one aspect however he failed. The essay seems to be grounded on, and rallied toward in the last few pages, the myth of the given that the Universe supports the oh-so-modern notion that it is always "onward and upward"--toward, toward, toward an ever more perfect future. In as much as Miller said in his piece that optimism is modern, pessimism is pomo, then Hampson's analysis is thoroughly modern.<br />
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But perhaps it can be saved by a little deconstruction of its own deconstruction...how pomo can one get? Maybe even how post-pomo can one get now that there is Millers introduction of fun and the un-spirit of seriousness. The key here is the theoretical backward engineering of Hampson's rhetoric so that it becomes obvious that his goal was primarily an unequivocal flailing of Wilberismo and all the accompaniment was highly sophisticated, and perhaps extemporaneous, burlesque. This might have been the point: the torturing of AQAL As Is (god, how gratuitously tacky, especially these days when one <i>Patron</i> of an Integral site recently referred to Wilber as "Frank Visser's favorite dead horse") in the name of..(?)..in the name of..(?)...oh I don't know...what sounds good; ending white slavery or rehabilitating pomo in the Integral Province? Hmmm. I guess the pomo option is more appropriate, this is philosophy after all...let's eviscerate AQAL to the benefit of pomo in the Province.<br />
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In explaining why he was not a Marxist, Marx wrote that instead of relying on dogma or precedent or the cachet of a famous philosopher, one should always allow the issue to decide the mode of its own analysis. This is always the best fall-back position because it allows one to make up the methods as one goes along and skew them in favor of the beneficiary and against the victim. The only work that follows is matching the victim's cherry picked flaws with contraindicant quotes from fashionable theorists and lacing it all together with bouquets for the beneficiary. In the end one reconciles the few discrepancies that exist between what passes for pristine analysis and the concluding paragraph, which of course was written before the rest of the project ever took shape. Finally one rests in knowing that an act of assassination has the appearance of furthering the world's intellectual enterprise. It is called having fun with rhetoric and I was always so satisfied when I did it well and without detection.<br />
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So, I reiterate my hope that Hampson, in Miller's post-pomo spirit of having fun, wrote the cited essay in this same declamatory sensibility, because if he did not then all that work and no play made Gary a very dull boy.<br />
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<b>3.</b> In the recent past I have come across two instances of concise elegance: the first was Patti Scialfa's lyric, "I left some skin on fortune's wheel..." and the second was Joseph's take on pomo, "...the point of it all is to engage our unexamined presuppositions and grandiose constructions with a critical methodology."<br />
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What could, should come after that?<br />
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Nothing.<br />
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Hey, I've had my post pomo fun. Hope you did. I agree with you, Joseph, tha…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-12:5301756:Comment:32922010-08-12T19:24:17.000ZHertzschuchhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/xn/detail/u_3dgti8sgxdw1h
I agree with you, Joseph, that some of the continental postmodern writers, and especially french ones, are very difficult to read. In fact, as a french speaking person, Derrida in french sounds like suffering from a severe alzheimer. I don't know how the english translation is, but I bet they made it a bit more easy. Piaget is in french a hard read as he breaks the rules of the normal lenghts of sentences, but it doesn't cross the "disease" threshold. But Derrida is just unbearable. French…
I agree with you, Joseph, that some of the continental postmodern writers, and especially french ones, are very difficult to read. In fact, as a french speaking person, Derrida in french sounds like suffering from a severe alzheimer. I don't know how the english translation is, but I bet they made it a bit more easy. Piaget is in french a hard read as he breaks the rules of the normal lenghts of sentences, but it doesn't cross the "disease" threshold. But Derrida is just unbearable. French people have a lot of fun making simple things complicated: it's a cultural ego boost. And I think that D was not immune to that. The least we can say, is that he didn't put much effort in getting understood by a wide array of people. In fact he's quite elitiste in his writings.<br />
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But I also want to lay down some of my interrogations about the subject of "Integral Christianity". In fact I feel quite uneasy with this association of terms. I'd be more happy with "Postmodern Christianity", as I think that we have first to witness that. By that, I simply mean that reaching a Christian attitude where all other paths are given the benefit of doubt as to also reaching God (second person), is already a long way to go.<br />
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As for calling any tradition "integral", be it Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Judaïsm, Christianity or what else, seems to me to be like shooting oneself in the foot. I'm well aware that Hinduism and Buddhism have had an important place in Wilber's model, and that seekers from other traditions may feel lessened, but trying to get your brand "integral" doesn't seem for me to be the right approach to make the "thing" go forward. This kind of endeavour is totally green.<br />
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I tend to think that beyond postmodern, there's no more ability to call oneself Christian, Buddhist or anything else.<br />
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Steve McIntosh calls for a stripping of the integral model of some of the eastern concepts. He also advocates integrating more christian culture in it. That is for me the height of green stuff.<br />
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So for me, interreligious dialogue, differentiation and bonding is postmodern work. And we need that...badly!<br />
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But integral has nothing to do with it.<br />
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I personally think that integral=mystery. Mysteries are beyond previous categories, open spaces, new lands.<br />
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P. And P.S. to my above tangent…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-12:5301756:Comment:32912010-08-12T11:04:02.000ZMary W.http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/MaryW
And P.S. to my above tangent -- It was a pretty small group of people attending these workshops, but they included folks from various denominations, including Catholic, Anglican, United Church of Christ, Methodist, Seventh-Day Adventist, Mennonite, and others ...
And P.S. to my above tangent -- It was a pretty small group of people attending these workshops, but they included folks from various denominations, including Catholic, Anglican, United Church of Christ, Methodist, Seventh-Day Adventist, Mennonite, and others ... Hey Joseph --
It seems to me…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-12:5301756:Comment:32792010-08-12T10:41:05.000ZMary W.http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/MaryW
Hey Joseph --<br />
<br />
It seems to me that integral Christianity is nascent, a seed that sprouted just a blink of an eye ago, but not yet at the breaking ground stage. There is yet time for that dialogue with emergent evangelicals; I don't know if it's really a question of an inner circle missing the boat; it's more like several boats have just started their engines. (Still and all, a lingering insularity does make for very slow cross-fertilization. I remember Richard Rohr once making a joke about how…
Hey Joseph --<br />
<br />
It seems to me that integral Christianity is nascent, a seed that sprouted just a blink of an eye ago, but not yet at the breaking ground stage. There is yet time for that dialogue with emergent evangelicals; I don't know if it's really a question of an inner circle missing the boat; it's more like several boats have just started their engines. (Still and all, a lingering insularity does make for very slow cross-fertilization. I remember Richard Rohr once making a joke about how the Franciscans and Benedictines, 2 venerable religions orders <i>within the same denomination</i>, were thinking about beginning some dialogue . . .)<br />
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I was at the recent Integral Theory Conference (hi Patrick, hi Bruce) and attended two half-day workshops and one 90-minute presentation on Integral Christianity. Wonderful stuff! Chris Dierkes led the workshop on Integral Mystical Christianity, which focused on experiencing God in relation to first, second, and third perspectives. The workshop on Integral Church was led by UCC pastor Tom Thresher, who invited us to examine how one might develop a Christian community that would hold space for different worldviews (tribal, mythic-literal, traditional, modern, postmodern, etc) in a way that would be inviting and nourishing for folks operating from various stages of faith. And Neville Kelly's talk argued for a more "multilingual" theological model "capable of bearing the communicative weight of the comprehensive and varied languages spoken and understood across the Christian denominations." There was actually very little discussion on meditation and contemplative practices. Whether we call it postmodern…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-08-12:5301756:Comment:32762010-08-12T06:08:55.000ZJosephhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/JosephFarley
Whether we call it postmodernism, post-postmodernism, or integral post-metaphysics, the point of it all is to engage our unexamined presuppositions and grandiose constructions with a critical methodology. I honestly don't think we have to worry too much about overemphasizing the negative. Creating bright shiny narrative worldviews is what humans do naturally.<br />
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It seems to me that one reason postmodern & continental thought is difficult to approach is that many of the primary sources…
Whether we call it postmodernism, post-postmodernism, or integral post-metaphysics, the point of it all is to engage our unexamined presuppositions and grandiose constructions with a critical methodology. I honestly don't think we have to worry too much about overemphasizing the negative. Creating bright shiny narrative worldviews is what humans do naturally.<br />
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It seems to me that one reason postmodern & continental thought is difficult to approach is that many of the primary sources (Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, & Marion) make for dense & obscure reading. Most of my own understanding of postmodern thought has come from overviews written by Stanley Grenz, James K A Smith, & Merold Westphal (all evangelical Christian academics); or by creative interpreters such as John Caputo, Gregory Desilet & Peter Rollins.<br />
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I recently watched Derrida, a DVD documentary where a video crew followed the man himself in a variety of interviews and interactions. I got some sense of his method, watching him engage brilliantly & playfully with different audiences & individuals. Much more than my few poor attempts to read him.<br />
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KW & others in the Integral scene have made proclamations about creating an Integral Christianity. Mostly this has been about encouraging meditation & contemplative practices with an AQAL perennialist theoretical overlay. Which is OK as far as it goes. What is interesting to me is how they missed the boat completely on the evangelical engagement with postmodern thought that's been going on for the last 15 years. I've not heard of KW or anyone in the inner circle engaging in dialogue with influential emergents such as Brian McClaren or Peter Rollins, who have been a part of a movement of genuine, creative grassroots change in western Christianity.