ITC 2015

[Balder]

Meta-Integral has just sent out the call for papers for the upcoming 2015 Integral Theory Conference.  The theme for the conference is Integral Impacts: Using Integrative Metatheories to Catalyze Effective Change.

See here for details.

[Ambo Suno]

If you're looking for one more somewhat interesting speaker to hear (and there probably are plenty) Zac Stein has always been a pleasure for me to hear. He is academically tight and healthily critical in his thinking, and that has felt good to be reinforced in one's skepticism of some mainstream integral tendencies, like sloppiness. But you probably know this about him already.



theurj said:

From that list of presentations I must admit only yours and Bonnie's are of interest to me. And though not listed there I'd be interested in DavidM58's presentation. And your pre-conference workshop, and that's about it so far. I'm still weighing if that's enough of a draw for me to drive up there--over 1100 miles and over 16 hours (too expensive to fly)--work 16 hours, and still pay over $400. Still ruminating but not optimistic.

[Edward theurj Berge]

I have also appreciated some of Stein's past contributions, but his presentation is as follows:

• Zak Stein — Desperate Measures: Global Crises of Measurement and Their Metatheoretical Solutions

I really don't care much for measurement these days from any angle. Or that so doing has much, if any, effect on the theme of the ITC. Or that most of the presentations as described do either, for that matter, if by effective change and impact we mean outside the integral metatheory community and into the streets of social structures and policies that move towards a Commons infrastructure.

[Ambo Suno]

Yes, I follow you. I suppose if a person is attuned generally to the question of what characterizations in a situation are most fact-like, what have been revealed and best corroborated by science method including statistical science, that may be enough. An overall carefulness and skepticism goes a long way. One can dig into particulars as desired.

(I have found his matter-of-factness and his quite meticulous language and brightness always a pleasure.)



theurj said:

I have also appreciated some of Stein's past contributions, but his presentation is as follows:

• Zak Stein — Desperate Measures: Global Crises of Measurement and Their Metatheoretical Solutions

I really don't care much for measurement these days from any angle. Or that so doing has much, if any, effect on the theme of the ITC. Or that most of the presentations as described do either, for that matter, if by effective change and impact we mean outside the integral metatheory community and into the streets of social structures and policies that move towards a Commons infrastructure.

[Layman Pascal]

While remaining agnostic about Zak's presentation, I think measurement is perhaps the central frontier where we must expect to make all kinds of progress.  Several areas stand out to me --

(1) comparative measurement in terms of how well any particular protocol for collective decision making functions

(2) advancements in how monetary units are used to measure "amounts" in the world

(3) the quantification of quality viz. art, well-being, etc.

(4) the measurement of massless energy quantities which underlie conventional quantum and relativistic physics.

(5) valid, nonreductive measurement of all aspects of human character -- such that civilization can be based on this data rather than superficial categorizations

All infrastructure is dependent upon what we are capable of quantifying.  That which does not get measured will persistently remain as a fringe or idealistic alternative to the main system which is being socially operated.  

[Edward theurj Berge]

Agreed. I was specifically referring to measurement of levels of consciousness a la kennilingus.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Along the lines of my recent comments above, Michael Schwartz posted something on this theme at Facebook. For those of you wise ones divorced from that scourge I will copy-paste his post below, which is generating a lot of discussion.

Schwartz:

AGENCY AND STRUCTURE - AND THE INTEGRAL MYTH OF DEVELOPMENT (HEEDING THE CALL OF JUSTICE)

One of the myths of integral has been that more development will lead to resolving socio-cultural problems, the latter often reduced to value meme concerns. Where development in this context means (1) more individual development and (2) more cultural development (where culture is modeled on an individual consciousness hence is a wave, e.g., spiral dynamics as at times to be located in the LL, whereas its originator was in part reworking Maslow’s UL psychology). While development in these senses is important and admirable (it is my main area of work in the world), it is in my view a delusion to think it can carry the burden of socio-cultural transformational work.

First, social theory posits a distinction between agency and structure. Structures pre-exist the individual and are what make practices possible (and make possible the basic actions of a given practice). Heidegger pointed to this as throwness. While Bhaskar, in pointing to the pulse of freedom and calling for radical transformation, also acknowledged the difficulty in changing such background structures. Agency, in turn, is what takes up a practice as an action, hence is what re-iterates that practice and reproduces that structure and its conditioning force. While there is freedom in enacting a practice, the practice also has limits or norms (and this points to the interesting question, inspired by Foucault, of the distinctions among normal, abnormal, subnormal, de-normalizing, and perhaps what might be called trans-normal, although latching onto the last term alone can be dangerous or delusional). Even acting in a manner that creatively transforms those structures is only, in a given instance, a modification of them and not a leap out. (Hence the limits of one sided views of liberty as negative only.)

Roughly speaking, the LL and LR are the ontological domain of such structures; where the UL and UR are the ontological domain of agency – the two “sides” imbricated in each other. Even when I meditate alone, I am taking up a practice that already exists, hence has unseen background structures of enabling the meditation.

Once one groks deeply the “dialectic” of agency/structure and the complexity of the senses of freedom therein, the status of can development readily shifts, or such is my experience.

One’s UL and UR capacities, including development (to be distinguished from but always already in actuality interwoven with competency and health), inform one’s agency in taking up a given practice that pre-exists and will exist in some version after that action is taken. Higher development does not entail some guarantee of growing beyond those practices – this is a myth or wish, or such is in my view, that has to do with a one-sided fixation on negative liberty (freedom from) grounded in alienation effects on the one hand (“I am beyond it all or can grow beyond it all”) and on the other inherited identity patterns proper to political atomism and its one sided stressing of rights (over responsibilities).

Part of the issue is that LL and LR structures, in the sense I am using that term, along with their practices (e.g., shopping in a grocery store) and basic actions (e.g., handing money to the cashier), are not reducible in their patterning and unfolding to that of developmental waves proper to the UL; that is, the UL is not a universal model for the patterns and unfolding of structures in each of other three quadrants (this being a kind of violation of the integral notion of differing validity claims per each domain as proper to ontological differences amongst the domains). For example, LL, zone 4, discourse structures, are not in the first instance always or even regularly ordered via UL developmental wave pattern; where such discourse structures can and are engaged at any number of levels of development – this is what makes in part, for example, communication within a population possible. A given discourse register can entertain, and does entertain, more than one band width of development (I gave an example of this in a contribution to the Integral Theory in Action volume). Same with ideologies: one can repeat ideologies, without knowing it, at any number of waves, including very high ones. In fact, in my experience at my now research university, itself part of the widespread trend of reconfiguring itself on neoliberal business models (where the rising costs of tuition, from the educational side, is not faculty salaries, but the mad increase of managerial and supporting staff positions, where these now outnumber faculty on more and more campuses, and where faculty are increasingly adjunct hence a disposable work force for this cancer like managerial growth), at my U, people I have known for many years, who are highly developed in any integral sense (we ran an integral pilot for the lead administrators and they embraced it, while scoring very high on the Lectica testing from the outset), and who are exemplary human beings, such people now in administrative roles are acting and speaking in ways that are more or more set by the new set of university structures, to an extent that they do not even begin to recognize to what extent they are being in the world so differently (while faculty see these changes in their acting and speaking , in some cases the shift being dramatic and even leading to memory loss for those valued souls); even as these wonderful people enact their administrative roles from highly developed levels of being; and yet still, in cases, act and speak in what I believe could be demonstrated to be ideological ways. I am sure I too act in these less than critical, pre-structured ways proper to these finacialized-reductions of educational values, even on my side much or most of the time would be my guess. The point is that these structures can and often do have much more “causal force” than does the development of capacities any increase of competences, and the healing of shadow of an individual proper to agency. Nor is this simply a local case of a university, but would extend, so the suggestive argument goes, to socio-cultural life more widely.

There is no way to detect the kinds of discourses one is engaging in and what their effects are, or when ideology is permeating one’s being, unless one can make these to some extent objects and even more so get at the structural generativity of these discourses (to continue to use a zone 4 instance). More individual development does not do that work, cannot do that work, and is not about doing that work. More development may be a helpful condition of engaging in such critical theoretical and historical inquiry, but it does not itself do it. Nor does it locate the generative mechanisms, complexly in play, that are what need to be transformed.

Here is where the integral distinction between “deep” and “surface” is at issue. Integral has made the distinction, that only the “deep” dimensions become kosmic habits. But that negates the “surface” dimension of a cultural as having continuing force, even if for centuries confined to a region, now unleashed into the dance of cultural hybridity, hence having causal force in the world today (why is this not also a “kosmic habit” with some staying power?). It also simplifies cultural diversity by subsuming that diversity under a universal, where the “deep” is the enduring and explanatory category, the “surface” a local expression in the end subsumed under that universal. This makes history and world complexity more manageable, and is an important moment to be sure, but it also can suppress differences, conjuring them away in a hyper-monological manner. The “second-tier” movement can be instead be that of universal-particular-singular, where there is recognition that a given particular has some difference from other like particulars that exceeds the sameness category of the universal, hence that the particular is also singular. This opens the door to notions, as in Bhaskar, of the concrete universal – concrete singular per dialectics, and indeed other modes of recent dialectical or like modes of cognition. Translated back to integral, one cannot keep looking only at “deep” dimensions and relegating “surface” ones to the side, but take them all up in a complex constellated, dynamic analysis. Spiral dynamics, as “the” value line, is in this regard problematic and reductive when it is taken to explain all manifestations of values in world history (which in part is its intent or how it is used). A quick glimpse at comparative religion or comparative philosophy or a comparative cultural anthropology quickly calls that kind of use of such a powerful and important model, like spiral dynamics, into question. For the integral world, this would entail serious engagement with history and historiography at various scales of inquiry, almost completely lacking in any robust manner in integral reflections and fresh scholarship.

What are the consequences of the view presented here? One perhaps is that integral can do well to flesh out the structures operative in the LL and LR, in zones 3-4 and 7-8, both on their own terms and in their constellated and dynamic-historical co-constitution and unfolding. A quick list: the tensions within capitalism as a system that is generative and reproductive (e.g., Harvey on the 17 contradictions of capitalism, among other studies by various authors); the neoliberal situation of national politics (Wolin on the trend towards “inverted totalitarianism”), neoliberal discourse modes of governmentality (Wendy Brown), communicative capitalism (Dean on the uses of new media), alienation effects and pre-given master-slaves ways of interacting (Bhaskar), total bureaucracy (Graeber), mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry and their generation of inter-individual aggression along with the carthasis of such aggression via mechanisms like scapegoating and closed economy sacrifice (Girard), interpellated subjectives and self-identities as these inform how we move in the world, shifting in the last decades from and amongst the entrepreneurial self to one’s being a moment of human capital to the indebted human being (Lazzarato), and more. These authors are in various ways pointing to tension points in generative structures, or point in the direction of such structures and their tension points, these analyses not only seeing what is now as simply “bad” as much as sites of potential creative emeregence in a more just direction. Many other authors, of less critical-leftist soundings (where these political labels seem to me to be moribund), who stress “positivities” of what is emerging more in the forefront, need also be brought into the fold, but not at an actualist level to mix and match and prove oneself as a balanced second-tier values kind of a person, as in so-called “integral politics,” which is to “embrace” both republican and democratic value schemes, where the issue for an integral critical theory is to locate constellations of structures that pre-condition our political scene of such values in the first place (and where the regulative-normative dimension of this all is grounded in a philosophical claim about the transcendental call of justice, a silent call always already to which we can respond or not). For example the entire field of what counts as politics might itself be what is to be transformed, perhaps "negotiating" two sets of value schemes one manner of approach (if that approach is working at the "surfaces" of it all). But that requires some understanding of the complexes of structures that open the current field of the political in the first place.

While agency development is fantastic and a needed piece of the puzzle, when cleaved from actual integral critical theorizing it ends up its own form of fantasy, alienation, even cultivating what Hegel-Bhaskar call “beautiful souls” (highly developed and shining beings while thoroughly alienated often with a sense of superiority and specialness, hence in the end imbalanced, as attested to by many of us “high” altitude integralists, and I do not exclude myself of course, with more than our share of "shadow.").

Let this be a provocation – that our concerns with integral spirituality, if they are full, not forget the call of justice proper to our immediate historical circumstances and the suffering of so many based on less than just structural complexes. All this is said with love and in the openness of dialogue and mutual learning geared to the common good. And too a plea that integral spirituality not itself end up as yet another path and domain of growing imbalanced-alienated souls.

[Edward theurj Berge]

My comments from that thread:

Thanks Michael. Keep in mind that this phenomenon also relates to 'academic' integralists, in that some in that ivory tower think that only those so engaged are worthy of inclusion in this sort of discussion and enaction. Bruce (Balder) continues to bridge both worlds by offering the Ning and FB IPS forums, where quite a few of us guerrilla integralists are making headway in this kind of endeavor.

It seems with metatheory we're still only in the UL via structuralism, the outside of the interior. It does not address LR social structures, let alone provide means to change them or the will to make those changes. Just teaching metatheory to corporate upper management doesn't do anything to challenge the entire capitalist corporate structure in the first place, let alone implement a more Commons-based structure.

In that regard, the upcoming ITC 2015 theme is catalyzing effective change. Do any of the presentations address the above? Do any provide ways and means to enact the new Commons infrastructure? Or critique capitalistic inequality, etc? That is, catalyze effective change?

Also we must remain aware that Facebook is one of those underlying infrastructures of the capitalistic frame. And by so participating in it we feed the beast, which has appropriated and distorted a P2P meme for its own agenda. We cannot just say "well there's no alternative, if we want to connect we must accept it." There are alternative social media but we're too damned lazy and comfortable to do something about it. It's just too convenient to accept it and play along to get what we want out of it, regardless of the consequences.

Along that line, Ning is a step up in the right direction. And it's a far better format for online discussion, video sharing etc. Yet few of you here use Ning IPS.

[Edward theurj Berge]

From this recent ILR interview with Sean Esbjörn-Hargens:

"[T]he theme of the conference, which is around 'Integral Impacts' which is simultaneously a statement and a question aimed at exploring the issue of whether integral approaches are more impactful than other non-integral approaches? The narrative that we tell ourselves in the integral community is that it is. It logically has to be. And yet there aren’t a lot of examples that really make that case. If push comes to shove, I think we as a community are hard-pressed to actually demonstrate that."

[Ambo Suno]

Thanks, t. This interview re-stimulates some enthusiasm for me who has some difficulty self-generating and feeling & holding higher visions.

I liked hearing named the dysphorias that are easy for me to feel and be immersed in, within the quote below:
"I think as a global community we’re in a sense finally starting to get serious, finally starting to translate what we do in ways that are more available to both progressive and mainstream contexts. I think the integral bubble in a sense has burst and that there’s kind of a dysphoria. The value of an integral approach I think is starting to flow in a lot more directions and new ways so I think there’s a delightful diversity, a maturing diversity that’s present. Following Mark Edwards’ lead I like to label this integrative pluralism."

There is a lot I could say about how I see and critique myself, in mixed emotional ways, against this bustling backdrop, but I think I won't wander down the maunder.

The narrative of integral and meta-integral movings and movement seems, at this moment to me, quite, well, moving and perturbingly awe-filled. Something like that.

Gooday.



theurj said:

From this recent ILR interview with Sean Esbjörn-Hargens:

"[T]he theme of the conference, which is around 'Integral Impacts' which is simultaneously a statement and a question aimed at exploring the issue of whether integral approaches are more impactful than other non-integral approaches? The narrative that we tell ourselves in the integral community is that it is. It logically has to be. And yet there aren’t a lot of examples that really make that case. If push comes to shove, I think we as a community are hard-pressed to actually demonstrate that."

[Edward theurj Berge]

In the recent FB discussion linked above Eric post this link. I agree with him that given SSU has been "quite literally turned over to the exigencies of the private capital market and Wall Street bond underwriters with reckless abandonment" should be a topic of considerable inquiry if ITC is serious about trying to "catalyze effective change," since holding their conference there financially supports this corporate agenda at SSU. Is it consistent with their theme? Someone supporting ITC please address this issue. I'm all ears.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Eric from the FB thread:

the social conditioning and propaganda in the usa is so deep that it seems like these kinds of things are just part of the ongoing march of the zombie apocalypse. to be honest, I found the recent incident where some integral organizational people treated joe corbett like shit for speaking about class oppression to be appalling. when I called some of the jerks out on that, they treated me like shit too, so no surprise.

any attempt to "connect the dots" between such despicable behavior/attitudes at the lack of awareness about the SSU scandals is of course pure speculation, but it does make you wonder how far the corruption of "integral" actually goes, and what kinds of corporate schemes are really going on with the integral "ca-ching" (coaching) and "conscious capitalism" crowd.

My response:

I'm giving the benefit of the doubt and not assuming conscious corruption but rather like all of us the gravity well of embeddedness in the capitalist structure is mostly invisible. Nonetheless it is incumbent on us to bring it to light and do something about it. Recall the following from Michael's agency and structure post:

"[I]n my experience at my now research university, itself part of the widespread trend of reconfiguring itself on neoliberal business models (where the rising costs of tuition, from the educational side, is not faculty salaries, but the mad increase of managerial and supporting staff positions, where these now outnumber faculty on more and more campuses, and where faculty are increasingly adjunct hence a disposable work force for this cancer like managerial growth), at my U, people I have known for many years, who are highly developed in any integral sense (we ran an integral pilot for the lead administrators and they embraced it, while scoring very high on the Lectica testing from the outset), and who are exemplary human beings, such people now in administrative roles are acting and speaking in ways that are more or more set by the new set of university structures, to an extent that they do not even begin to recognize to what extent they are being in the world so differently (while faculty see these changes in their acting and speaking , in some cases the shift being dramatic and even leading to memory loss for those valued souls); even as these wonderful people enact their administrative roles from highly developed levels of being; and yet still, in cases, act and speak in what I believe could be demonstrated to be ideological ways. I am sure I too act in these less than critical, pre-structured ways proper to these finacialized-reductions of educational values, even on my side much or most of the time would be my guess."

[DavidM58]

My paper will touch on a couple of related themes. I'm not anti-capitalist per se, but looking at LR structures, the important thing I believe is to understand what does it take to support the techno-economic structures?  Energy and resources.  Current capitalist structures are built on the assumption of ever upward economic growth, which cannot happen indefinitely on a finite planet. A move to more Commons based structures I believe will be more adaptive to our energy descent future.

However, that also doesn't mean that all capitalist, competitive, hierarchical structures will need to go away - just brought into a more functional, and hopefully more socially just fashion, such as that outlined by economist Peter Pogany.  

Alfonso Montouri critiqued integral and the last ITC 2013 here, where he cautioned us to the dangers of over-emphasising hierarchical development theory ("One of the historical criticisms of hierarchical theories of development is that the person developing or using the hierarchy almost inevitably finds himself at the top of said hierarchy. Whoops! There’s a not-so-subtle tendency to feel like a master of the universe when the whole map of creation from soup to nuts appears to be laid out before you. It becomes tempting to play a game of “Where (below me) do you belong on the evolutionary ladder?”).

Montouri now has an interesting new piece in the latest issue of ILR, "The Perils of Pernicious Polarities: Contemplating Creativity, Coll...."  Though he's long been a champion of collaboration, here he warns of the danger of going to the other extreme, and recommends a balanced, nuanced approach. He writes:

"The dualisms are coming to light, and sometimes in extreme forms. This is polarization is surely a harbinger of change, but it also leads to frustration and conceptual as well as political impasse. It’s easier to think dualistically than to think in a way that recognizes and indeed promotes generative complexity in the form of a more nuanced understanding of the world. This will require a more radical approach, meaning one that goes to the roots of the issues we’re dealing with. In this case, the nature of creativity, agency, individualism and collectivism and their social scientific correlates atomism and holism. The taken-for-granted way in which we’ve been taught to think will require exploration and reconceptualization. If we are re-inventing the world, we need to understand where we came from and how we got here."

theurj said:

...It seems with metatheory we're still only in the UL via structuralism, the outside of the interior. It does not address LR social structures, let alone provide means to change them or the will to make those changes.... let alone implement a more Commons-based structure.

In that regard, the upcoming ITC 2015 theme is catalyzing effective change. Do any of the presentations address the above? Do any provide ways and means to enact the new Commons infrastructure? Or critique capitalistic inequality, etc? That is, catalyze effective change?...