m alan kazlev said... hi goethean Thanks for your thoughtful comments! First of all, I would like to qualify everything I say here in my reply with the disclaimer that my ideas on these various matters are still in flux, and may and probably will change, especially in the process of writing my book, which is really a sort of exercise in Jnana yoga itself! And perhaps there are also still errors of understanding on my part here regarding Wilberian, Spiral Dynamic, and other forms of Integralism, which need to be rectified. So, that said, to reply... "humans evolved after animals; animals evolved after plants, and the West developed after traditional societies."True, there is an unfolding, an emergence of greater diversity, new forms arising, with more specialised forms arising from simpler and earlier forms. btw in current biology animals didn't evolve from plants, but Metazoa (multicellular animals) evolved from unicellular ancestors. Plants an animals both evolved from ancestral eukaryote microorganisms. Sorry for the hair splitting, but phylogeny is one of the subjects i know about ;-) But let's take the evolution of plants and animals from earlier eukaryotes. It's not that the earlier forms died out (well, maybe some did), but that the biosphere became more complex. So it went from simple microorganisms to complex microorganisms plus plants plus animals. That is indeed an advance, an evolution. But to posit a linear sequence A --> B --> C--> a la a temporalised version of the traditional Great Chain of Being is meaningless. A branching tree is a better analogy, and the branches sometimes converge as well! Similarly for example a world with Western + Traditional Society is more diverse and interesting than a world with only Traditional Society. So this imho can be considered an evolutionary progression. But a world with only Western Society is not a progression, it is simply one thing replacing another.Stephen Jay Gould said that human beings are no more complex than cockroaches... Well cockroaches are amazing critters, and it is not generally realised that there are only a few species that have actually benefited from the urban environment (and hence are declared "pests"), while there are thousands more species that live in natural environments and are rarely if ever seen, like e.g. the giant Australian wingless cockroach, which looks nothing like the household variety. So to me it is not a matter that either man or cockroach is better or worse, but both are different forms of manifestation of the Supreme. The equality of compassion Sri Ramana showed to all sentient beings (and even to plants) is very meaningful to me too. Here we see the foundation of a true Integral morality. But getting back to Gould, it's worth pointing out that almost none of his colleagues agree with his claim that natural selection does not result in a progression to greater complexity. The consensus is that it does (there is an interesting online article refuting Gould on this but unfortunately i didn't save the url). e.g. Cambrian ecosystems were more complex than Proterozoic ecosystems, but less complex then modern-day ecosystems. But with a few exceptions like paleontologist Simon Conway Morris (a Tielhardian Christian), all evolutionists deny teleology, or that humanity has a special place of significance. So complexity is seen as a sort of emergent process. In this regard, Erich Jantsch provides an excellent compromise between reductionism and teleology; his Self-Organizing Universe is one of best books i have ever read (albeit heavy going in parts and starting to be a bit dated as science moves on). Thanks for the Clare Graves quote - very interesting! Of course there is still the problem of what constitutes "higher" and "lower". These terms themselves apply a 19th Century Great Chain of Being hierarchy. Is a human "higher" than a non-human animal? More rational intelligence, sure. But more loving? How do we decide what is "higher"? Is a schizophrenic's understanding of reality inferior to that of a normal person. Less well-adjusted, sure, but perhaps they see amazing vistas the rest of us don't. Charles T. Tart makes some interesting points re unspoken assumptions of Western rationalistic psychology. I haven't studied Graves' work so I don't know how much it differs from the later ideas of Beck and Cowan. I do know that there is something seriously screwy in Wilber's elitist hierarchical conception of first and second tiers. Of course it is quite possible that Wilber is totally misinterpreting Spiral Dynamics, certainly Cowan has harsh words to say about Beck and Wilber's interpretations. But like I said I'm not knowledgeable to judge these things."Maybe if you substitute the word "later" for the word "higher" in the Graves quotation it becomes more palatable." But why should later be better than earlier? I am not denying qualitative differences, hierarchies, etc. To do so would be to reduce everything to what Wilber calls "flatland", and I am as opposed to that perspective as he is. It is my thesis that qualitative differences do not mean a value hierarchy, in which one is more important or special than another. "Is algebra "better" than arithmetic? Not necessarily, but it's certainly more useful in some situations. But it might not be so useful to a Stone Age hunter."Sure, no problems there! And similarly a world in which there is both algebra and simple arithmetic is more complex and so better than one in which there is only algebra alone, or simple arithmetic alone. Two things have inspired this new insight in me, and motivated me to write that blog post. The first has been my experience with Ramana. Before I was contacted by Ramana's Light I was happy to slot him in the overall scheme of literalist Aurobindonian stages. Having contacted Ramana's Light personally, I find it equal to Sri Aurobindo's Light. To me they are both avatars, it is not that one is better than the other. Yet to look at their teachings from a mental (intellectual/theoretical) perspective, there is no doubt at all that the Aurobindonian teaching is far more inclusive, more integrative, than Ramana's or Shankara's Advaita! But Ramana's personality and presence is greater than his outer teachings indicate. So if you only take his external teachings, you only see part of the picture. Ditto for Sri Aurobindo's external teachings. This is why trying to understand Sri Aurobindo from a merely intellectual perspective doesn't work (and I argued in part 3 of my first essay on Integral world this is where Wilber is in error). But, to re-emphasise, a mental perspective of a sage's or an avatar's teaching is not false as such, but partial. It's like the story of the blind men and the elephant, where a part of the elephant is mistaken for the whole. The blind man who grasped the elephant's ear thought the whole elephant looked like a fan, and so on. Similarly much of the Integral movement up until now is based on the meme of a simple linear series of progress. It is thus stuck with making wrong assumptions based on partial knowledge. But the real thing that triggered my post was attending an introductory talk for this symposium http://www.awakeningthedreamer.org.au/moreinfo.html and this really got me thinking about the place of tribal wisdom. Not just as something that archaic stone age man would use, but as something that is relevant to the Western world today. And this is not in the sense of replacing the West of course (I for one absolutely love my Western lifestyle and Western toys!), but existing alongside it, and recognised as equal but different and complementary, not as an archaic and primitive ancestor. Note that in current Integralist - certainly in Wilberian - terms, shamanic and tribal knowledge is (mis)interpreted as belonging to the pre-rational "Magical" stage. Or when adopted by the modern activist or environment movement as "Green" and "lower tier", or even "Mean Green Meme". It can thus be dismissed as inferior to the "higher tier" of the integral position. This is the same attitude shared with many religions and philosophies, they all have a hierarchy of insight with their own mental dogmas enthroned at the top. And it is this whole elitist, exclusivist attitude, which I see as the antithesis of the true integral perspective. Anyway thinking about the perspective of mainstream Integralism, it seems to me that all it is doing is rehashing the old racism, chauvinism, and specieism, in which all the "earlier" stages are simply states on the way to our present level of development. In this context Wilber is very 19th century Victorian, and so is Integral Spiral Dynamics (Clare Graves I haven't studied enough to comment on). This is not to say there is no truth in these things, just as it would be wrong to say there is absolutely no truth in the 19th century Eurocentric concept of the Great Chain of Being. But what is of value in these things - what is true in them, in other words, which is that there is a hierarchy of levels and gradations of being - is heavily distorted and mythologised and totally confused with objective material reality, and so needs to be interpreted with the right hermeneutic (i.e. with esoteric and spiritual insight). It's exactly the same as with the Bible and other religious scriptures, which are just as equally distorted and mythologised. What I am interested in then is taking the Integral movement to a new level, beyond its current 19th century memeset. Not saying that the 19th century memeset is wrong of course. Like everything else, it's only partial, not wrong ;-) 8:41 PM
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