Thinking Integral (Response to Shaman Sun)

I just read this piece the other day on a blog called Shaman Sun.

It's basically evaluating the totemic role Ken Wilber and AQAL play within "Integral Theory." Wilber's work has been criticized for several different things, some of them raised in this article, including, mostly, 1- it is too complicated, 2- it is too simplistic, and 3- it confuses the map with the territory, that is, it pretends itself to be life, and not merely representative of it.

I will try to defend his approach, as I see each of these arguments as perhaps not groundless, but at least misguided.

For number one, I have to admit I find it frustrating trying to explain all of the jargon involved in integral theory, but have been able to work out a five-minute version. Much of what I'm trying to do is explain this way of looking at reality simply, trying to get people to grasp some of it. Of course, to really get into it, some of the terminology is unavoidable; that is, it's there for a reason: it's certainly possible to explain, say, the difference between someone with a pre-conventional and post-conventional level of consciousness, and even why they may be confused by someone with a conventional level of consciousness, all without using spiral dynamic nomenclature, but to do the roundabout over and over again in every article or post or conversation is a real pain in the ass. I also suspect that any academic theory has much the same problem, which is what makes professors often such boring people outside of the classroom. Just kidding.

It is difficult to get to the meat and bones of an academic theory because the complexity is fairly high. However, just as with any theoretical "step-up," say, from pre-calculus to calculus, where there are a necessary group of skills/ terminologies to be mastered at the lower level in order to manipulate them at the higher one, once the terms are familiar, and what they stand for internalized as experiential knowledge, they are no longer so daunting. Certainly I am not the only Integral Student to see levels and lines and stages and states everywhere I look every day. BUT NOT LITERALLY (complaint number three.) I actually do think that for the complexity of our world, Wilber's model presents a remarkably simple, and yet accurate theory. Which brings us to-----

Number two- it's too simplistic. "With all the complexity in the world, all the randomness and messiness and infinite variety, how could a model ever get it right?" I actually think what Wilber's theory does so brilliantly is make room for all of the mess. It doesn't include it all, that would truly be too complex, but it makes room for it. It took me until the release of "Integral Ecology" to see a practical example of what Wilber talks about when he says that so much more research is needed, and that the AQAL framework can be applied to different areas of research, the operative word being "framework." AQAL itself may not be so messy, but it's just the outline. Integral Ecology (which, disclosure, I have only read a summary of and listened to an hour-long talk about between one of the authors and Wilber) takes that framework and then tries to see the messy study of ecology through it (there are over two hundred different "ecologies.") If it succeeds, it does what any good framework does: takes all that messiness and gives you a method of relating all the different pieces together in a (post?) logical way.

As for complaint number three, "but this isn't the world!" (closely related to the above) it seems to come from a relativistic standpoint used to making this objection against any system of thought. I am, however, still brought to near-confusion when I hear it, since Wilber says so clearly and directly that this map, and any map, is just a map, and enjoins the interested to personal practice beyond intellectualizing and philosophizing. It seems to me to be a keystone of the theory: enter into your own life to see, as it must be experienced. Along with the above, that's where the messiness comes in. Nobody is a level five. No society is at some particular level. It's all fluid. Another connected keystone is that reality is non-dual, and so, just as with the messiness above, it must be remembered that a) all of this applies to you and can be realized directly and b) all of the lines are, if not arbitrary, somewhat artificial. It is, in other-words, built-in to the theory.

Why has this been missed? Perhaps because explicating the framework itself has been Wilber's intention, and that this labor is so large that little room is left to mention the above, though it is slipped in quite often. If it takes five thousand words for a discussion that's the bulk of the chapter, and then there's one twenty word sentence in the chapter saying, "oh yeah, don't forget, this is only a map, you've got to observe how it actually fuctions in real life."

As for Manuel DeLanda, I must conceed ignorance of his work. It sounds interesting and it's certainly integral, but what do we mean by that word? AQAL is comprehensive. It is an integral theory in that it tries to tie everything together. But, there is another way to use the word "integral," and that is, "at the first stage of second-tier thought (Yellow/Teal in Spiral Dynamics SDi.)" DeLanda seems to be a lower-right quadrant (that is, based on the external nature/behavior of groups of people (or whatever holon you're looking at)) theory coming from the stage seven (integral) level of human consciousness. It is in this a way a huge improvement over previous views assuming the coherancy/individuality of holons, but is not integral in the broadest sense.

I do agree that the postmodernists come as a reaction against, a call that the Emperor's got no clothes, something important and necessary before you actually consider what the Emperor looks like naked, and that they had less to offer in this respect.

And no, Wilber doesn't exactly detail the relationships between every thing, other than to say that "it's all actually the same thing," but this is the key insight. Without this, there'd be no question of detailing, investigating, and discovering all of the details, because there'd be no one looking, and nowhere to hang them. Certainly Shamansun's call at the end for "a more dynamic theory of social science [to] emerge in the 21st century, one that is more analogous to the messiness [of] biological evolution," is to be heeded. But the theories that emerge, and continue to emerge, will be within the general framework established by Wilber, at least until it's fleshed out enough for us all to see what's there, and what's missing.