Mythic Religion and Containment of the Power Ego

A great post from Integral Options Cafe:

The Benefits of Religion

from Integral Options Cafe by WH

Yesterday morning I was being a slacker and not doing homework, so I watched Top Gun, which was on some cable station or another. I really dislike Tom Cruise so I had never seen this flick, but I had heard that it offered a great object lesson in memetics.

Maverick (Cruise's character) is a hot-shot young pilot, but he is very cocky and takes too many risks to show off his skills. Eventually, through no real fault of his own, his best friend and co-pilot dies on a training mission.

Iceman (Val Kilmer) is the rival pilot, equally as talented, but he flies within the rules of the Navy pilots training program, one of which is to never leave your wingman. Iceman eventually wins the Top Gun competition among the pilots in training. Maverick eventually submits to the military structure and saves Iceman in a real life firefight.

Maverick represents an ego-centered memetic stage of development, while Iceman represents a more authoritarian memetic stage. The film demonstrates through (melodrama and bad acting) that the power-drive of the ego needs some strong containment within authority structures to allow it to reach its potential.

By now, you may be wondering what this has to do with the benefits of religion.

Over the weekend, a video made the rounds online of a pastor up in Tempe (just outside of Phoenix) saying he hates Barack Obama and wished him dead. This same man and some of his congregation had shown up at Obama's speech a little more than a week ago armed with assault rifles and handguns.

Here is the video:

Popout

This video has resulted in a lot of despair about the role of mythic religion in our culture. You can read some of the discussion the video generated at my friend Stuart's Facebook page.

Many people feel that mythic religion has outlived its usefulness, or that it is no longer an appropriate developmental response to a complex world. This is not wrong, but it is only a partial truth. In fact, the mythic worldview is losing its power, and that is partially why those infected with a more malignant version of this developmental meme are reacting with fear-based violence.

However, not all religion is bad, and not all religion is malignant. As is the case with the military structure portrayed in Top Gun, mythic religion offers a structure to contain the power-drive of the raw ego. But mythic religion is only one form of religion (and here we are talking specifically about Christianity, not Islam, Judaism, or other religions). There are many rational, egalitarian, and even some integral stage Christians. It is not Christianity that is the problem.

The problem, rather, is that some of the people who adhere to a fundamentalist religious dogma also adhere to a very rigid and hateful form of ethnocentrism. The result is a profound fear of the other, and the other is anyone who does not share their specific values and beliefs about the world.

In the example of this clown up in Tempe, the other is Obama - because he is liberal, because he holds some postmodern relativist values (a woman's right to choose what happens to her body), and quite possibly because he is black. The Phoenix metro area is already well-known nationally for its fear/hate of all people who are not them, as Sheriff Joe Arpio demonstrates on a regular basis.

When religion in this country isn't infected with this ethnocentric hatred, it performs valuable roles in society. It has been inner city churches that have done the most to help those involved in the tribal and ego-based power drive of gang culture grow out of that. Even Malcolm X, although his faith was Islam, found containment for his power-drives in the authoritarian structure of religion.

In the same way that sports teams or the military provide that rule-bound structure to contain the raging egos of young men, so does mythic religion. When well-meaning but misguided liberals worked to disempower inner city churches in the sixties and seventies, it was the the neighborhoods that suffered for the lack of religious authority.

And none of this even touches the benefits that religion has for its believers. Churches provide community, comfort, and certainty. While we may not share their values or beliefs, most of these believers are good citizens. The few hateful people should cause us to condemn the whole religion.

It's strange that I find myself, an atheist, defending religion so often against other atheists. This is not the first time, and it likely won't be the last that I make these arguments, so I guess it part of what this blog is about - an integral approach.

Problem, singular, and integral (theory) solutions.

I've been saying this for years!

An Op-ed from Thomas Friedman. Beyond the corniness of Friedman, this is something that really needs to be said (which I guess could be true of much of Friedman's posts.)

The point of the article:

"We’re trying to deal with a whole array of integrated problems — climate change, energy, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation and the need to grow enough food to feed the planet — separately. The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors...

'We need to stop thinking about these issues in isolation — each with its own champion, constituency and agenda — and deal with them in an integrated way, the way they actually occur on the ground,” argued Glenn Prickett, senior vice president with Conservation International. “We tend to think about climate change as just an energy issue, but it’s also about land use: one-third of greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical deforestation and agriculture. So we need to preserve forests and other ecosystems to solve climate change, not only to save species.'"

Notice the word "integrated" above. As I struggle to explain Integral Theory to everyone, one thing I keep coming out with is that it's mostly a different way of looking at things, a different set of lenses through which to look at the world, one which tries to take into account that reality is unified.

What this means is that if there's a problem, it's most likely either one of viewpoint, or one of orientation.

How can a change of viewpoint change everything?

Well, remember when fire was magic, some random event or act of the gods? Of course not. Every advance that we make occurs because of a shift in viewpoint, a greater, deeper, or wider understanding, or a more encompassing, more connected worldview.

There are no problems in the Universe. You have problems. There are two ways to eliminate them: externally and internally. If you no longer care about something (internal) it's not a problem. If you remove the external cause of the problem, it's not a problem. Both are important. You won't be a very good human if you ignore the external reality of problems. You'll probably starve to death. But you also won't be a very good human if you don't grow past some of your problems. You'll be waiting for your mother to feed you, and you'll starve to death. Both are shifts in viewpoint: you either change your view of what you are and what your relationship to the world is, or you change the way you look at the outside world, which changes what you can do to it and in it.

The shift in perspective that Friedman is discussing is from one where each act in the universe, or process (a series of acts and reactions through time) is basically unrelated to each other (SDi 5) to one which recognizes that every act has consequences for every other ongoing process, or that every process and system is linked to each other (SDi 6). You could also view this in terms of input and output, in the movement from an understanding of inputs and outputs occurring separately to one where every output is a different process' input, creating cycles.

Much of where modernity has gone awry is in disrupting cycles between the output of one and the input of another, creating waste, which doesn't exist in the natural world.

This is not to say that man has no right to tinker with what's there: as mentioned in the end of the article, we can make nature better, or rather, better for us, which is the process of solving problems externally. (Very simply, making a roof underneath which to hide from the rain.) What we need to understand is that instead of creating a different framework to solve every problem we have, we already have been given the perfect framework within which to work, we just need to recognize it as such.

What does it feel like to be Integral, and what are we doing?

Warning: Jargon.

Originally, this was a reply to a question on Open Source Integral, "What does it feel like to be Integral?" It deals with the question, as well as with what Integral is and what it's doing, also touching upon Ken Wilber's role in "integral." It's slightly modified.

To answer the question directly, integral probably feels different a little bit to everybody going through it, though I'd suspect there are quite a few similarities. There's an openness to experience, much less resistance (and so anxiety) to life and what's around, but the only real way I can say it is that I feel much more like myself: less like I have to act, and so much more willingly an actor, because it's fun. Maybe in short it's just that: simply more myself. I believe that's probably true for most, though what you've got to grow into and what blocks you need to remove are certainly different for everyone. A large part of the transition into integral for me has been allowing myself to open up to my emotions (though I would not say that's true for everyone,) and so life has become fuller; again, I feel like I'm more me more of the time now, and noticeably, joyfully so. Along with that there's the openness mentioned: all this richness and open emotion flows in and out. I'm much more aware and accepting of it, and much lest graspy or resistant to it-- that is, this fullness is equally a wonderful emptiness--there's an embracing and simultaneous awareness of what the mind would consider exclusionary opposites, for example, a grounded solidity in the midst of hundred-cycle-per-second change. When I do get anxious over something, or feel a tension in my body (1,000 times a day) I'm aware of it very quickly, and can note where it's coming from internally/externally, largely releasing it. There's also, for me, a marked sense of autonomy that comes from the release of anxiety about personal agency, along with a greater comfort in actually relinquishing any control over to the second by second rhythms of the world.

Other than that, I have to lightly disagree with a slightly dismissive tone in this thread [at OSI] in regards to Wilber. I do not worship Ken Wilber, though perhaps I used to, when I was jealous of him for the first couple of years after I'd read him for the first time. (Haven't we all been?) I'd love to have come up with AQAL, but actually coming into an integral level of being, rather than merely intellectualizing it, that's just not there anymore. I'm myself, and so better at that than KW could ever be, and joyous about it, because we're the same thing, and what's in store for me is just who I am. How could anyone else do it? Still, I feel much of the conversation here is bashing on or devaluing Wilber without a real appreciation. I certainly don't think that you have to understand Wilber to be integral (or even have ever heard of him) but you have to at least wrestle with him until you can definitively say where he goes awry. Some of the comments expressing a common sentiment against certain aspects of Wilber's variety of integral I think Wilber would whole-heartedly agree with, because he makes them explicit himself. They're not missing from his theory, they're in it.

In any case, I sympathize with the orignal poster, who mentions that a large awkwardness with the theory is the clunkiness and large amount of jargon. The language problem reminds me of my students here in China. In order to become comfortable speaking English they've got to learn a whole deal of commands and other 'class-functional' words just so we're using as little Chinese as possible (like, "what does that word mean,") that are usually more complex than their English level. There's so much to learn before you even get to really using it for yourself, and so i would suggest that the third-personness of the original poster's previous integral experience was because he hadn't gotten to the point where he'd internalized it, and that the yearning to do so from a personal standpoint likely shows that he's growing much more wholly into an integral awareness/living. It was third-person because 'not-you,' not because of any weakness in the theory (of course third-person,) but because he was still acclimating to the a gigantic instruction manual, so to speak. Anyone at an integral level of consciousness ought to recognize much of KW's work without having to talk and debate so much about it. I did much the same thing as he did, but never quite despaired about it. Now I see it as my intellectual understanding (where I could arrange and understand all that outside of me) helped to pull me up into an overall integral level of consciousness, beyond my simple verbal/rational mind.

In addition, there are quite a few areas where the main stream of Integral theory needs some retuning, in the very least as far as presentation is concerned. For example, the word "evolution." Evolution means reorganization of self in order to adapt to a changing environment, and so technically, yes, the higher up the spiral you go, the more evolved you are. Human evolution is taking place not only at the physical level, but at the mental level, and faster. Of course, for "8s," who are supposed to be tuned into how their actions are taken at each level, this word can't possibly be the right one. Talk about someone as being more evolved and you turn off most of the "lower tier," not just the greens. It's elitist in the worst way. This, of course, is only an apparent elitism-- the word as it's used within the integral culture is not a judgment of overall worth, but fitness, but try telling that to someone you're calling "less evolved." Is there a solution to this? I usually say people "with" a level 8 consciousness rather than "who have," but still. "Higher/lower," or "later/earlier," you're still going to run into the problem. In the trajectory of the universe, you see a clear trend towards systems of greater complexity which become better and better able to replicate and then improve themselves over time, from the primordial soup to humans, and then within the human mind. So how to say this without offending? This is what we're doing now, trying to figure out a way to pass this knowledge down the spiral in the best and most helpful way possible to facilitate further growth. But I also find that many integralists have a far less than humble attitude, and watching them speak about "higher levels" and this and that, one gets the sense that they are making overall value judgments, and are PROUD of it, which I think would be a mistake, something that may turn off quite a number of people who would otherwise be helped greatly. There's a technical term for the professors in college who lord their superiority of knowledge over their students rather than give them a patient, friendly hand: assholes.

But what would integral be without Wilber? Along with the above idea of a bottom-to-top development certainly anything that could legitimately be called integral has to deal with the four quadrants, that is, that every 'thing' that exists has four aspects, which are epiphenomenal, and yet separable. Why? I have spent years tracking this down, and the shortest answer is that reality is contradictory, that is, since the mind cannot grasp reality in thought, what is real will always seem to be contradictory, because the mind can't follow both logical conclusions. Too quickly because it's a different discussion and because you all likely know what I mean anyway: zero, one, and infinity are all actually three different conceptual ways of looking at the same thing, which is existence, consciousness. Try to think about one absolutely without the others: it doesn't work. A world of oneness without second would be a void with no differentiation, but even here the concepts collapse: that void would be infinite, that is, the void (0) of oneness (1) would still be infinite. Similarly, everything has an inside and an outside reality that are different and yet entirely the same, a plurality and individuality that are separable and inseparable. Ask "yes, but where's the last (ultimate) oneness," or "where's the lowest denominator," and you're thinking, and you'll never quite get it like that. The lack of any possible logical end in itself points to the truth in this. Without zero, no one, without inside, no out, without plurals, no singulars.

Similarly, I see a great difficulty in any integralism without the concession that reality is non-dual. It seems the very foundation of integral thought and life. The looseness and freedom and wonderful bursting emptiness of integral life comes with the experiential knowledge that the categories are only artificial approximations, and that every line drawn is only another way of illuminating the great unity, of which you are both a part and the whole.

So where are these complaints coming from, really?
What is Integral? What are we doing here?

Integral Theory (and the Integral Life) I think, is directed towards health, wholeness. That's the endgame, right? Integral Theory is a sort of map, a map of our species and our thought, but ultimately it only has use as a tool for our growth, as individuals and as a kind. That is, it is the first attempt at what the conveyor belt to a realized culture that Wilber sometimes talks about might look like. I feel as if many people here are critical of Wilber merely because it's the first time the whole map has been put together, and so, for lack of detail, their home isn't on it.

But there's rejection here where there could be shivering excitement. There's plenty of inference here about integral life beyond or outside Wilber, but I haven't really seen any thing concrete mentioned. We want to know what you're doing! If there's something missing, go live it! We're on the frontier, yeah? We're on the frontier of manifested consciousness as far as we can tell, so be pioneers! Wilber's model seems sparse only if you aren't filling in the gaps with your own engaged life. Of course there's so much to be done without him: he's only one person! His ILP box set perhaps seems like a poor representation of the possibilities of the integral life, but it's not meant to be definitive, it's meant to be suggestive, and that's made explicit. You have to engage with your own life to find the best ways to exercise and challenge yourself in every facet. How? Well, here's one example, the box set, (which I don't and haven't used) play around with it. (play)

The integral wave of consciousness is in its first stage as a mass phenomenon (not just isolated individuals), which means that you and I are determining what it is and means concretely and not just in the abstract, right now, but also means that 1- a lot of people are just coming into it from green and 2- b/c of this we're only starting in a large way to paint integral over structures which come from much earlier forms of consciousness. Hell, even the level-five worldview is still just opening over much of the world. Every person/culture that goes through it leaves their paw print. I feel like Wilber is being criticized for both not making the map more lush and interesting when he can only illuminate the views from his integral life and provide a larger framework, and also for laying the groundwork too thoroughly, as if telling you that when you're in college you'll have a great time, take a number of classes, be there for most likely between three and five years, meet plenty of interesting people, grow greatly personally and intellectually, etc. etc. preempts anything fun you'll actually do. We're all growing into greater recognitions of what reality is. That growth will be one-hundred percent personal, though the recognition is eternal. We may not have named this world, but it's ours for the making.

But that world will be colored within this framework, at least as long as it takes to start to flesh the higher levels out, when we can see where the holes are. The truth, I feel, is that if we are to succeed in getting through the problems the world is facing today, we're doing it through Wilber's influence or we're not doing it at all.

So what are we doing? We've lived in a valley all our human life, sending explorers up and over the mountains occasionally, but not caring as a species (or needing, or able) to go see it. Wilber was not the first out there, but he was the first to come back and explain to a large group of us just what was to be gained outside of our valley and how to do it, and how some of the major explorers did it before us. In any case, we're the first sizable chunk of the population to have camped in the gigantic and fertile plain on the other side. So what do we do? Not a rhetorical question. Let's get some answers.

For me, at this point, I am trying to explicate to my understanding what integral is and means, both within the community, and to the rest of the world. I believe that we are in a transition period in the movement, between when the news really got out with Wilber and when there will be a core and sizable group of people at an integral level, and that it's crucial to get to the next stage: having a fair number of people with influence, or power, or authority, operating and creating at an integral level of consciousness before too long. Much of what I do on this blog is aimed at using real life examples to illuminate integral theory and promote, flesh out, and examine integral thinking. I am also doing the internal work necessary: rounding off my weaknesses and fears, augmenting my natural talents, meditating, etc. etc.

One thing I think very important is to have the language debate. Is there a way to discuss this in depth in terms more intuitive, or is there a point at which you just simply have to explain the theory (I've gotten this down to about a five minute spiel that works pretty well) outright? Unfortunately many people here, rejecting the language, reject the theory, it seems.

How do we keep this alive? Keep it going? I think it will have it's own natural momentum, whether here on the web or somewhere else, or (most likely) with no real centralized base, but spread all over the place. But the most important thing is that you bring your energy to it, of course. You don't have to write ten pages, but keep up with others, offer pointers or criticisms, and take it out to the world. Engage.

One more minor point off another comment: I agree that some of Beck's (and Wilber's) takes on the spiral are off-putting and need adjustment, but "second-tier" is certainly not bogus. There is a huge gap (I call it usually the existential gap) between the realization that the world is without inherent meaning (green 6) and that that's a good thing (Yellow/Teal 7.) Second tier consciousness, while characterized by many things, is rooted in the knowledge that we are both the subject and the object, and I don't think this is something that, on a tactile (and so effective) level, anyone on a six and lower can quite get. It is a leap.

Why Isn't the Brain Green? / HAPPY EARTH DAY!/ The Emerging Integral World

(a short apology to those of you who are not familiar with Integral Theory. I try to use as little jargon as possible, but sometimes it doesn't work. I will be putting up posts soon for cross-reference of technical terms.)

Why isn't the brain green?
An article in the New York Times.

The short answer is that while we all have the capacity for global-level concern, most people have not developed to this capacity. Humans 20,000 years ago had no need to think globally, and so biologically there's nothing that would make a human "green." Even asking the question is a little odd; why in the world would we have developed a concern for the environment millennia before we had invented/discovered the concept? Embedded in the question is the assumption that being green is a good thing for the brain absolutely, as if somehow the brain ought to be green, but this is like saying that a bacterium ought to be concerned about the health of the human host. Humans aren't bacteria on the world, of course; it is a comparison of scale, and the difference between the two, that humans have the ability to understand their reality mentally and alter their behavior based on it, is important. Human evolution is primarily taking place not biologically, but conceptually or memetically, or if you insist, mentally, though the last word is not quite precise enough. The brain isn't green because it's not a biological necessity. "Greenness" is something that becomes necessary only when the human organism is acting on a global level. Fortunately, unlike bacteria, we might be able to stop ourselves from being so biologically/physically successful that we destroy the conditions permitting our own physical existence.

And to the article, which has a number of interesting points:

Firstly, nobody seems to care about the environment this year.

'At the top of the list [naming American citizens most pressing worries] were several concerns — jobs and the economy — related to the current recession. Farther down, well after terrorism, deficit reduction and en­ergy (and even something the pollsters characterized as “moral decline”) was climate change. It was priority No. 20. That was last place.'

Something in this is reminiscent of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. You can't be worried about something largely intangible (at this point, at least) if you don't have a job or a house or food to eat, and so in a recession, there's no climate change. The article glosses over this without mentioning this hierarchic (holarchic) aspect. 'Weber’s research seems to help establish that we have a “finite pool of worry,” which means we’re unable to maintain our fear of climate change when a different problem — a plunging stock market, a personal emergency — comes along. We simply move one fear into the worry bin and one fear out." It's not that our pool is finite, though, it's that more pressing physical fears trump the abstract ones, or, SDi level one problems (not having food, say) trump any problems at the higher levels. If you're so hungry you're digging through rancid garbage heaps you're probably not too concerned about expressing the unique snowflake of yourself through romantic photos of the rain.

Of course, much of the impetus of the article is that Climate Change, far from being something abstract and in the future, is coming to a neighborhood near you. Until it does, for most people, it's just not a real problem; that is, "Climate Change" will never be a problem, higher food prices from desertification of agricultural land will be a problem, and even more directly, having less money from spending more on food will be the problem. The higher up the spiral you are, (the higher your cognitive/memetic level) the more real the problem is to you, which is to say no problem is ever abstract. No matter how you try and make the problem seem a problem, without direct apprehension of a problem, there simply isn't one. The article describes this in the following way:

'There are some unfortunate implications here. In analytical mode, we are not always adept at long-term thinking; experiments have shown a frequent dislike for delayed benefits, so we undervalue promised future outcomes. (Given a choice, we usually take $10 now as opposed to, say, $20 two years from now.) Environmentally speaking, this means we are far less likely to make lifestyle changes in order to ensure a safer future climate. Letting emotions determine how we assess risk presents its own problems. Almost certainly, we underestimate the danger of rising sea levels or epic droughts or other events that we’ve never experienced and seem far away in time and place.'

The problem isn't real for most people. Even if they can cognate it, or, say, have an emotional reaction to the idea of their children growing up Mad Max, unless it holds their attention it'll be gone soon, as they fall back into their operative consciousness.

'And even if we could remain persistently concerned about a warmer world? Weber described what she calls a “single-action bias.” Prompted by a distressing emotional signal, we buy a more efficient furnace or insulate our attic or vote for a green candidate — a single action that effectively diminishes global warming as a motivating factor. And that leaves us where we started.'

The "we" in this article used over and over again is intended as "us humans," but I'd propose that it actually shifts back and forth, mostly covering 5th-level rational operating humans, people at around the same basic level as the NYTimes itself, no coincidence. Articles like this could be taken as evidence of the push of a large number of the "East-Coast rational-liberal" demographic, again, NYTimes readers, into the 6th level memes, or at the least as a record of the struggle moving between 5 and 6. The single-action bias noted above is seen when somebody is trying to make a change in their life, and brings us back to the question of the article, "Why isn't the Brain Green?" "We" want it to be, so "we" do a few things to pull us in the direction, though obviously the "we" hasn't fully arrived there yet. One practices and practices and practices behavior one knows is beneficial, and, with persistence, can eventually make that behavior part of their daily consciousness. One tries and tries and tries again over a number of years to eat more healthily, and eventually five years down the road, even if one hasn't reached their original ideal, not only eats more healthily, but does it naturally, without thinking or struggling, enjoying it. This is the process the above is chronicling: people's actions as they try to do something they think is better than what they are but don't yet own it. There are plenty of people who live every decision in their lives with a full environmental consciousness. They just aren't the mainstream.

Interestingly, the title of the article itself relies on an "Overdrive 5" mentality that we are the brain, that all behavior originates in the brain. Of course, had the title been, "why isn't the mind green?" the answer would have been, "because some people's mind's aren't." In either case, "greenness" is something learned/ grown into, it is not a given, except as a potential.

So what do we do as integrals if we don't want the world to warm into hell?

Most often, people think of the problems as technical. But, as climate change is being caused by people's behavior, so must human behavior be the basis for combating it. As logical as that seems, 'the notion that vital environmental solutions will be attained through social-science research — instead of improved climate models or innovative technologies — is an aggressively insurgent view.'

So, what changes are we talking about? Obviously, the more people at a level 6 or higher in the world, the more likely that, naturally, things will be handled in a more environmentally-sustainable way. Equally as obvious: we're not going to get there any day soon. Interestingly, the article takes a rather integral framework for dealing with this problem.

'If you don’t think or feel there’s a risk, why change your behavior? In response, researchers like Leiserowitz have investigated messages that could captivate all different kinds of audiences. Reaching a predominantly evangelical or conservative audience, Leiserowitz told me, could perhaps be achieved by honing a message of “moral Christian values,” an appeal possibly based on the divine instruction in Genesis 2:15 to tend and till the garden.'

To deal with the problem integrally, we need to give incentives to every level of development to create a sustainable (not merely environmentally so) sound community. For 5s, the emphasis can be on the business opportunities of conscious capitalism. As mentioned above, religious 4s could be persuaded that it is God's desire that they take care of the Earth.

This goes back to the beginning and the list of people's priorities of concern: there is no singular problem, there are many manifestations of one problem, and they need to be dealt with as one problem with many heads. Integrally tackling Climate Change means improving our economies and the stability of our societies, it means dealing with energy, and terrorism by helping to cultivate healthy societies in other parts of the world, it even means re-instilling and fostering a sense of moral community, though it would likely look a little different than the ideal of those who answered the above survey with "moral decline," even if grounded by the same basic sentiment.

The author of the article is a little skeptical about this at first, saying that some of these practices being researched (what the main content of the article is) seem to manipulate the natural decision making process, but comes to the conclusion that there is really no natural decision making process; one cannot make a decision in an absolute vacuum. I'd add that the "nudges" the author talks about are done by every society that has ever existed; it's called "acculturation." The difference here is that we are becoming conscious of this, and of how to manipulate this, which most of the best leaders were likely quasi-aware of in any case. One of the biggest factors, the article mentions, is whether decisions are made individually, or in a group.

'The subjects in half of the 50 test groups would first make their decisions individually and then as a group; the other half would make group decisions first and individual ones second. Weber and Handgraaf were fairly confident, based on previous work, that the two approaches would produce different results. In Amsterdam, Handgraaf told me, he had already seen that when subjects made decisions as a group first, their conversations were marked far more often by subtle markers of inclusion like “us” and “we.” Weber, for her part, had seen other evidence that groups can be more patient than individuals when considering delayed benefits. “One reason this is interesting is that it’s general practice in any meeting to prepare individually,” Handgraaf said. Or, to put the matter another way: What if the information for decisions, especially environmental ones, is first considered in a group setting before members take it up individually, rather than the other way around? In Weber’s view, this step could conceivably change the decisions made by a corporate board, for example, or a group of homeowners called together for a meeting by a public utility. Weber’s experiments have also looked at how the ordering of choices can create stark differences: considering distant benefits before immediate costs can lead to a different decision than if you consider — as is common — the costs first. Here, then, is a kind of blueprint for achieving collective decisions that are in the world’s best interests'.

The most interesting of these "nudges," as mentioned above, is the group dynamic.

'“We enjoy congregating; we need to know we are part of groups,” Weber said. “It gives us inherent pleasure to do this. And when we are reminded of the fact that we’re part of communities, then the community becomes sort of the decision-making unit. That’s how we make huge sacrifices, like in World War II.”'

As a more concrete example of this type of thinking:

'In 2005 and 2006, Orlove observed how the behavior of the region’s poor farmers could be influenced by whether they listened to crucial rainy-season radio broadcasts in groups or as individuals. Farmers in “community groups,” as Orlove described them to me, engaged in discussions that led to a consensus, and farmers made better use of the forecast. “They might alter their planting date,” he said, “or use a more drought-resistant variety of seed.” Those in the community groups also seemed more satisfied with the steps they took to increase their yields.'

Some of the feel of this is coming from the transition between level 5 memes, which are individualistic, and level 6, which are communitarian, but the thrust of this seems to be integral: everybody makes an individual decision, there are no decisions mandated by the collective, but one's individual decisions are made in the context of an open, fluid, and continual conversation with the community. It is possible to encourage individual thinking and innovation without devolving into groupthink, a staple of an unhealthy manifestation of level 6.

Another interesting quote:
'“Remember when New York tried to enforce its jaywalking laws?[...]You can’t enforce stuff that people don’t believe should be done.”'

This sums up much of the article: unless it's organic, change, and policy to help produce it, doesn't work. Taking a much wider view, all of this is natural, just as the nudging is a natural part of the decision making process. Societies get to a certain point, then they clean themselves up. There's nothing you can do to push that process along artificially. This, however is often taken as a level 5 mantra when confronting environmentalism: business will naturally get cleaner, just leave it alone! That is the thrust of the following Op-Ed from John Tierney, also from the Times: "Use Energy, Get Rich, and Save the Planet!" Of course, the backlash is also natural, that is, the environmental movement itself is natural, not simply some freakish reactionary outgrowth to late stage-capitalism, a point the Tierney Op-Ed doesn't make explicitly.

While this is and has been true, we're not dealing with relative levels of environmental cleanliness between countries, we're dealing with one non-interchangeable world. In the past, a country could clean up after industry became cleaner, because the pollution could be diffused throughout the rest of the planet and eventually eliminated through natural cycles, like plants cleaning air. The scope, now, is bigger. Not only are we (as a planet) making pollution on a much larger scale than one hundred years ago, we are doing it as a whole planet, not individual countries, and the worry is that there will be a point beyond which the life on the planet won't be able to clean it up again, and that this point will be here before the 2060 that Tierney says could well be the end of carbon even without policy pushes. Additionally, when rich counties got richer, they often got cleaner not just from cleaning up industry, but from moving it to other areas of the world. But where do high-polluting factories go when China and India get rich? And then after that?

What die-hard level 5s often miss in the environmental debates is that when a canary dies in a mine, nobody is worried ultimately about the canary. The difference between the canary, and, say, the 400 or so dead zones on the ocean floor, is that we have no choice but to go on living in the mine.

So, there will be a day when everybody up and down the spectrum of humanity feels the environment is, in one way or another, the biggest issue we have to deal with. That's what we're trying to avoid.

'“Increasing personal evidence of global warming and its potentially devastating consequences can be counted on to be an extremely effective teacher and motivator,” she wrote, pointing to how emotional and experiential feelings of risk are superb drivers of action. “Unfortunately, such lessons may arrive too late for corrective action.”'