The Importance of Bullshit

Numbers of people use "bullshit" as a way of describing narratives that they disagree with in a rather pejorative way. I would suggest that, as Yuval Harari points out in 'Sapiens', that myths / narratives, with no tangible substance in the real world,  were what allowed us to form ever larger groupings - from tribes to villages to towns to citties to nations to a global 'civilization'. The side effect of all these groupings was the technology and comforts we enjoy these days. So, one way of phrasing this is that bullshit is the manure that fertilized our development to our current state of existence with our capabilities to reach the moon, mars, and beyond. In that sense, the value of bullshit is immeasurable.

The Perils of Geometry for Integral Theory, Spiral Dynamics, and Developmental Psychology

In developmental models, there are several factors at play:

• A developmental hierarchy of stages of development
• A transcend and include meta model of including earlier stages and adding more features

This geometry can be misleading in that it presumes that a higher stage of development is "better" in all aspects from an earlier stage. However, let us take the example of red stage vs green stage. The current world situation seems to, for the moment, clearly indicate that red strategies are superior to green strategies in getting ownership of key decision making functional areas. Hence, red states / groups are far more effective in getting political, judicial, and legislative power compared to orange and green groups.

In terms of the spiral, more options are available as one progresses up the development chain. However, fewer options are available for lower level behaviors. Hence, a red person will have more red options then a green person as exemplified by the story below.

This is a fractal pattern. We generalize one improved measure / metric to thinking that all other measures are also improved. We can see this in all sort of different contexts:

• teachers are assumed to know everything and students little to nothing
• bosses / leaders are assumed to be able to make all decisions and explain why
• parents are supposed to be "right" all / most of the time
• ...

It reminds of a story a colleague once told us. In a public argument with a two year old, the two year may often win as it he/she will resort to whatever behavior will get him/her their desired outcome. This includes public tantrums, screaming, etc., etc. This, in a public place, will push the shame / guilt buttons of many adults to give in to a two year old's demands.

Integral Meetup

Who may be interested:
People who are interested in understanding the complexities of our current times through the lenses of various models such as integral theory, spiral dynamics, systems thinking, the fourth turning, the righteous mind, dialogue, complex adaptive systems, .... One of the key ideas behind this group is that no one person has "the" right perspective. However, if we dialogue in a circle, we can each begin to deepen our understandings through inquiry.

Meaning, Words, Deep Structure

Words, nouns about abstractions, can be considered to have a deeper structure than their surface meaning. Take a word like fundamentalism. It is typically applied to a fervent(?), true believer(?) in some tradition / religion, particularly, some belief that the speaker of the word does not ascribe to.

We can deconstruct the word fundamentalist/ism to a degree of binding between an agent / person and a belief system. This can then be applied across multiple contexts / any context. A scientist can be a fundamentalist. As can an economist, a doctor, a politician, an engineer, a biologist, ..... Different agents can bind to their models of reality to such an extent that they filter out any anomalous data / evidence.

This deep binding to a perspective can be a feature or a bug. It is a feature when one uses it to devote one's full capacity to explore a particular domain. It is a bug when this binding filters out all evidence to the contrary.