Bauwens on P2P Spirituality

[Balder]

If we can have p2p economics, why not p2p spirituality?

Michel Bauwens 28 July 2014

No more gurus: the emergence of peer production opens the way to a commons of spiritual knowledge from which all humanity can draw.

Self-organizing fish shoal. Credit: http://cognition.ups-tlse.fr. All rights reserved.

Is it possible to peer produce spiritual experience and insight, just as knowledge, software and code for computers are peer produced by communities of self-organizing individuals? If so, does this matter?

My answer is yes. Spirituality consists of socially-constructed worldviews that may no longer be appropriate to the time and space in which we live. In this context, newly emerging spiritual viewpoints and practices can be seen as necessary ‘upgrades of consciousness’ that can help us deal with new social and cultural complexities. The implications are profound.

Spirituality and religion always bear the hallmark of the social structures in which they were born and become embedded. Emerging religions often represent a partial transformation of these social structures because they represent new forms of consciousness, but they can never become hegemonic if they are not rooted in, and accepted by, the mainstream social logic.

For example, it’s not difficult to see that the Catholic Church and Buddhist Sangha have strong feudal elements in their organisational structures and ideas; or that Protestant churches are strongly linked to emerging capitalist and/or democratic forms; or that what has been called “New Age spirituality” is often geared towards a marketplace of commodified spiritual experiences that are available for sale. There is little doubt that the Catholic Church and the Buddhist Sangha would not have grown as they did had they not accepted the Roman political order and slavery respectively.

Therefore, it’s logical to expect that the emergence of peer production as a new model of value creation and distribution should also lead to new forms of spiritual organization and experience....

[Continued here.]

[Edward theurj Berge]

I referenced the article in this post in the 4th turning thread, suggesting that it was more like the actual 4th turning already underway in all facets of contemporary society, as juxtaposed with what the kennilinguists are proposing.

[Balder]

Cool; I missed that.  The article just came across my feed on FB today.  I think it deserves its own thread on this board (Re-visioning the Great Traditions), so I've added it here. Not necessarily because this is "cutting edge" in all ways (it isn't), but because it does represent -- as you point out -- a movement that is already well underway in multiple sectors.

[Edward theurj Berge]

For reference also see Bauwens' longer, more specific article on the topic: "The next Buddha will be a collective." Btw, Balder is cited in that essay.

[Balder]

Haha, interesting! I didn't know that -- or at least I don't recall that reference, but I do know which blog article he was citing. I don't think it exists anymore, however, since the Zaadz/Gaia site closed.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Also see Bauwens' blog post quoting Ferrer. A snip from the end:

"In sum, an integral development of the person would lead to a horizontalization of love. We would see others not as rivals or competitors but as unique embodiments of the Mystery, in both its immanent and transcendent dimension, who could offer us something that no one else could offer and to whom we could give something that no one else could give."

[Balder]

Nice.  In my recent Bhaskar paper, I argued that Bhaskar's notion of co-presence was a kind of participatory vision which allowed for just this sort of appreciation of others (whether individuals or traditions).

[Edward theurj Berge]

I told Bauwens about this thread and he referred me to this wiki, "P2P Interpretation of Soul as Intersubjective Reality and Spirit as Interobjective Reality," which is excerpts from Joe Corbett's IW article on the topic.

[Ambo Suno]

Hi Bruce -

I am relatively new to the present thread ideas and related materials that this IPS site is exploring and interacting around. In reading through some of Bauwens' article so far I am seeing immediately how the metaphors that I express with typically and that I use to form and organize my personal mental understanding are usually, at least, constrained within one or some of these mentioned models of human relations and organizational forms. This sociological-like study can lift one seriously meta.

Integral theory of course also can and does, as well as do the other theories and ideas presented here on IPS. What I am saying is of course pretty basic and obvious to you all/us.

My personal deeper and persistent sense of what "spiritual" might mean, despite my cognitive tracking of Ken's, for example, four or five definitions, tends to be vague, amorphous, undefined, maybe hugely expansive in subjectivity yet without knowing much about the limits of expanse. Is it far away or very close. This description in a way may also be speaking about my general personal deeper and underlying ongoing sense of subjective self, without the inevitable mental developmental add-ons that in my usual daily hours dominates.

In my daily self and communicational nature, even when I feel I am being creative, original, and correctly representational via expressed or implicit metaphor, it turns out that I am being formed in my language more completely than I remember by social 'grammars' that have and continue to in-form me. I recognize that I have a fondness for metaphors that are based in nature and the world of science and that tend towards being kinetically active.

Recently on the ILC forum there has been discussion about how to make the setting more stable, safe, yet free, growthful, and many fine qualities. Though Layman has been trying to voice some of his vision of facilitative structure, for the most part, myself and others have been attending to more commonly held concerns about moderating and such. As I read this article, I can see how constrained are my views and organizational impulses within these older forms. Integral theory could have informed me similarly, but perhaps it is partly the newness-to-me of Bauwens' approach that has humbled the basis of my riffings. Implicit in what I say are feudal heirarchical, democratic, and other P2P modelings in a quirk mix that I present as possible solution to problems that aren't even entirely clearly understood. I feel old-fashioned, to use an old-fashioned term.

The insights that may be happening around this elucidation of Bauwen and others here may not be immediately very helpful to the cultural, social techno-organizational formats that exist at ILC forum now, but I may be more open to other possibilities such as Layman may be indicating. Apparently fundamental human needs have to be assured, like safety (I think understood in a plenty subtle bio-psychological way and not just a freedom from physical and gross mental harm sense.) I guess I say this since some of the techno-organizational, networking models give me the quick impression of being at a scale and speaking to more outerly conditioned facets of people such that dissociation from the bio-psychological human juiciness and messiness can be ignored. Maybe at our longterm peril and even immediate sense of inadequacy of fulfillment. Dimensions of aesthetics and beauty of older-fashioned psycho-social dancing may be lost.

This last paragraph got away from me a little, as often happens :) Any thoughts that might get me realigned with the topic or continue to clarify, Bruce or anyone?.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Bauwens gave me a few more links, like this one: "From the communism of capital to a capital for the Commons." And this one on reconfiguring politics based on the Commons.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Ambo, might I suggest my review of Rifkin's latest book? It provides a developmental framework on the emerging Commons paradigm already well underway, as well as projections into the future based on current developments. This emerging paradigm seems blatantly missing from kennilingus, which is still stuck on 'integral capitalism' as the height of socio-economics.

[Ambo Suno]

Ok - Rifkins book review goes high on my to read list. Thanks.

[Ambo Suno]

Hi theurj. I read your review - of course well written. Nice. This book covers a lot of ground, eh.

Have you read the book by Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations? Or heard the interview/discussion of the book between author and Ken Wilber? I listened to the interview and was surprised to feel some hope through stories of real-time in-the-trenches experimentation and more spontaneous flowering of "integral" or/and more p2p organizational styles. Cool.