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.

A Story about a story

In "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari he mentions that we create "fictions" that are the glue that allow us created tribes, cities, nations, civilizations, ... We can apply the notion of fiction to Harari's narrative. In a narrative, we decide what to put in the foreground and what to put in the background. His story puts as "individuals" in the foreground. However, we can create similar narratives with different foregrounds:

• Civilizations as foreground - the universe uses building blocks to create structures. First, the universe is created by the building blocks of particles, atoms, ....  Then, those create life, Life then creates more complex structures such as packs, tribes, cities, nations, civilizations, .... The trajectory here is that at some future point, the whole universe will be alive / conscious with these blocks that it is creating.
• Processes - when two cells communicate, they signal each other with some electrical, chemical, ... signals. Each cell interprets that signal and does its thing. There is a communication protocol - signal and what the signal means. Our languages are building blocks to create signals and communicate. These languages than become the blocks to create narratives / stories. With this process in the foreground, we can hardly say that the protocol is a "fiction". It is what is used to create more complex structures. Similarly, gravity is a glue that holds moons, solar systems, galaxies, together. We can't see it (intangible), yet we feel its effects all the time. Similarly, we don't see the glue (narratives) that bind us into groups, yet we feel their effects all the time. With this narrative, is it reasonable to say that the glue is "fiction"? Different glues have different attributes and capabilities. Sometimes we confuse the content of the glue with the "process" of gluing. The process is quite real as far as real goes for us.

As always, ymmv (your mileage/narrative may vary)

A Story

Our book club read "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari and had some interesting conversations about the narratives we create and how our current set of narratives seem to be leading us to an existential cliff. Waking up the next morning, another narrative arose within me.

YAN (Yet Another Narrative): We seem to be caught in a Lilliputian dilemma - which end of the egg is up. Deists have created god(s) in our image (pretty messy) that give meaning to everything. Atheists, on the other end of the egg, say our existence arises out of random fluctuations of quantum foam and has no intrinsic meaning (meaningless). Both sides lose sight of the egg. Here we are in this existence. And perhaps the real question is what are the attributes of the "egg"? The attributes of the egg are all around us, in fact there is nothing but the attributes of the egg. Here are a couple of attributes:

• "Infinite" diversity - wherever we look, high (big) or low (small), we keep discovering new forms, structures, processes, ....
• "Processes" - things unfold in a causal chain. Some unfoldings have good results, some not. How do we create better(?) processes with better(?) results? We do both. Some of our "greats" have said that processes driven by "love / kindness" have better outcomes. They have not figured out how to enact those processes except in small instances. Neither have we. Perhaps there is more to this process (narrative) design than we have yet figured out.
• ..............

As always, ymmv (your mileage/narrative may vary)

Generator Rules / Mental Debugs

Listened to some talks by Tom Chi.  He mentioned this notion of mental debugs (generator rules) that have continuing effects in generating perspective and behavior changes.

• Knowing is the enemy of learning - knowing makes learning impossible. State of knowing closes / impedes the mind to new information / learning in that domain
• Verbs are greater than nouns. Once you categorize something as a noun, mental activity around that goes to zero. If you stay in verb mode, mental activity, learning around that phenomena continues as verbs don't stop this mental activity.
• Crossing the 3 gaps - From first contact: Knowledge -> Practice -> Mastery. Start practicing to learn and that begins the process of mastery. Reading / learning all about it before practice slows down the learning process and to getting to mastery.
• Stay in the medium - stay in the process and in awareness and flow to keep improving whatever it is that you are doing.
• Metabolizability is more important than truth - provide what the moment requires and that can be processed / metabolized not the absolute truth.

More Thoughts About Isms

Thinking about isms, one of the obvious questions: is there a way to evaluate where an ism falls on a scale of function / dysfunction. The first question is what are the metrics for this evaluation. Here is a first pass of measures that may be useful measures to gauge the health of an ism:

• Is it oriented to the past, present, or future? If we agree that we are part of an evolving, changing universe, then it seems that a future orientation is critical. Walking while looking backwards at the past as our authority is prone to serious accidents of running into obstacles as they always seem to arise in this ever changing context. Being focused on the present, smelling the flowers and enjoying the moment is also prone to accidents. If we agree that on a long journey, as this universe seems to be, then survival and thriving entails preparing for the future to the best of our abilities. For example, we prepare for winter by making sure we will have heating and sustenance for that season.
• How large is the circle of inclusion? Does the ism create a tribe in which most members of our species is outside our tribe? This is a serious dysfunction. One of the lessons from our understanding of complex systems and the very basic evolution / trajectory of the universe, is that diversity is critical for the stability, resilience, and viability of an ecology. 
• Is it an evolving ism?  Does it evolve with us and our understanding of us and our place in this universe? There is a feedback loop in the evolutionary process. Many factors causes change, including the entity in question. These changes, with awareness and acknowledgment of them, are feedback that change / evolve the "ism" structurally. By structurally is meant everything from the basic axioms / presuppositions of an ism to its rules / policies, perspective, ...
• Is it an open ism? Does it allow membership to all? And in its tenets, does it allow both joining and leaving without side effects?

By these rather basic and simple measure, most (if not all) of our current isms are very dysfunctional isms. This includes almost all the religions either in their basis or their practice or both. The same dysfunction applies to other isms such as nationalism, communism, capitalism. fascism, totalitarianism,  atheism, anarchism, ...

How do we go about creating an ism that creates a healthy, resilient, antifragile, and viable ecology for our species with the two above metrics?  Are there other metrics that we need for this evaluation?

A side issue to note is that an "ism" proposes a causal chain with a first cause. That first cause is a reflection of the level / stage of development of the creator of the ism. Ism followers often take their notion of first cause as "absolute truth", rather than a window into their own level of development and understanding.

Thoughts About Isms

Some thoughts from reading "The Portable Atheist" an anthology of essays about that topic. Sometimes it helps to look at the larger context of a phenomenon rather than the phenomenon itself.