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.

Peter Fenner, Radiant Mind

Peter Fenner gives about as good, simple and natural an explanation to the space of consciousness as just about anyone I've come across.

A short dialogue, here.

More from the Times Today

Two more quick op-eds from the Times today.

One, from David Brooks, a real strange one about Chinese grief in the aftermath of the Earthquake- I have little to say about it, other than it struck me as just as weird, but that there are perhaps two unfair points: first, directly after the earthquake the drama was huge, and there was a great deal of grief, much of it put down forcibly by the Government, so calling Americans whiners is not entirely fair, though Chinese people don't whine and moan so much at the little things. It gets beaten out of them as kids. (Not necessarily literally.)

And one from Paul Krugman. Krugman's is a post on nationalism and the economic effects of the Russian invasion of Georgia. China is, of course, an overly nationalistic country, but this worries me less than Russia does, for two reasons. Russia has a democracy in name, but has power vested in a very small member of elites, most of whom see the country along the lines of a military power. Also, Russia has not until recently had an overly strong nationalistic sense, or a sense of nationhood, which is one reason why lawlessness and mobsterism prevailed after the USSR broke down. No one in the USSR (or few) actually loved the USSR, and so its breakdown did not lead smoothly into a strong Russian state. That has taken some time to emerge, and emerge it has. But, the problem is the Russians are just starting, as a nation, on this level of development. It takes quite a long time to really go through it to get to the point the west did after the enlightenment. The point is, Russian nationalism is here to stay, and much of the citizenry will be behind it one hundred percent, ignoring rational cooperative concerns for the honor of the Motherland. (Much of this is based on a theory of development I did not myself invent but subscribe to that I will surely be talking about later.)

This contrasts with China, whose leadership, though all agreed on one thing (the continued and unquestioned rule of the CCP) are more cautious, fractured, and numerous than the Russian leadership. China, though strong in her own country (and as Krugman points out, that includes in their minds Taiwan, though recent deals make a military takeover much more unlikely in the short term and hopefully in the long term) and ruthless, are not as likely to go off on somebody else. This is not absolute, of course, and no one knows what will happen as the country matures, but I still feel better about this than about Russia.

The other thing about China is that its genuine and heartfelt nationalism has been rooted and has been expressing itself for some time. Along with that, the western-philes of the country have been undertaking their own Enlightenment, and while this will take a long long time to find a true root and expression in the mainstream culture, it has already started expressing itself in the highest halls of power. (Though is by no means the dominant force in Chinese politics, far from it.)

What may be interesting is a Russia jostling with its neighbor China, both rising world powers and nationalistic neighbors.

But in any case, while nationalism can be healthy, just as self-confidence can be healthy, and is a necessary step for any country or group of people, helping them find an identity, it does not necessarily bode well for world peace, even as interconnected as our economies have become.

So what's the solution? I do not know, but for some time have been thinking of a global organizing body, much more powerful than the U.N. The U.N., of course, has done some good, but its structure is not equipped for the world we live in. Membership, of course, would be voluntary, and governments would only be allowed to participate that exhibited certain features, like direct democracy practices such as having elected officials, and the ability to depose them, a strict rule of law, the ability for direct citizen participation, etc. etc., perhaps on a sliding scale, (the U.S. would not be among the ten highest, if I can remember correctly that would be Denmark) as well as including considerations of population for power-wielding. This could be dangerous, of course (new world order, anyone?) but if a Rule of Law were established, and the countries joining were already culturally proficient in rule of law, there's no reason to believe that this would become an oppressive system. Nor would it exist to threaten other countries national sovereignty. It could merely be a system, a big party, with its doors wide open to anyone who wanted to join, urging countries forward in development. This, of course, is only the slightest sketch.

But perhaps this is just more junk.

Yes. I read the Times compulsively. It is a fault.

And I really know nothing. I am only trying to provoke thought.

A beautiful but disturbing day.

I wrote this in May and sent it to some people, but it seemed pertinent now considering yesterday's post.


This afternoon I had Stone. He is a smart child of eleven and he speaks English very well. Because it was such a beautiful day, and because it is very difficult to get him talking about anything, (we have played monopoly during our two previous classes) and because I was exhausted and didn't want to be boxed up in a room unless I was sleeping in it, I decided we would go for a walk. He strongly resisted this, but as I am his teacher he had little to say. We walked a little way, he complaining all the time. At the underpass of a large road he stopped and refused to continue, so I walked downstairs and waited in the tunnel, figuring he would follow me, and he did, so I led him like this, bit by bit, promising him we could sit as soon as we got to a group of benches in a little corporate park about a five or ten minute walk from the building in which we have class. We sat, and he began to talk, and this was good. We weren't talking about anything in particular, and he, every five minutes or so, brought up the fact that he would much prefer to be inside, but I kept saying wait a little longer, and he did, and we sat, talking and not talking.

He is a boy that loves his freedom, which is rare in China, but freedom to him means the freedom to play games, and little else. We talked about how schools are similar to jails in many respects (an analogy he, not I, made) and about how even inside of a jail one can be entirely free if he is master of himself. I kept poking him with the hints of nature around us, the birds, and the trees, the flowers and the wind, which (in particular) was too pleasant for me to acquiesce to his desire to return to the classroom, a two by two meter room which may or may not have a window on the eighteenth floor of an office building. I stretched out on a bench a few minutes after arriving, my head and arms and legs hanging off of it (it had no back) and he did the same, and I realized something, and asked him, "Stone, you never in your life have a time when you don't have to do anything at all, when you can just sit and enjoy the day, right?" He said "yeah." "Well then," I said, "I am offering you the opportunity to simply sit and feel the breeze and listen to the trees and do nothing, since you already speak English so it's not difficult for you and you want to go back inside? Why?" He said something about having to work during class, about always having to work and study, about not having any time to do anything else, because this was all that was important. I mentioned the irony of his using our class time to play games with me (he didn't bring monopoly this day, I think because his mother brought him, but he did bring a deck of cards, and was, as I said, rather disappointed when I said that we wouldn't be using them) but the conversation died there, more or less.

After he won me over and I'd had my fill of the (relatively) fresh air of spring in Beijing, as we sat in the classroom, I asked an innocuous question about how much he slept every night. Sleep being important to me and apparently impossible for the majority of Chinese students, I was curious. He said he slept usually nine hours, sometimes eight, sometimes ten, and then he said, which made me laugh, "sometimes more than this or less." While laughing I almost missed him say, "sometimes not at all." "Not at all," I said, trying to drag more out of him but not incredulous, as I have more than one student who routinely pulls all-nighters to finish homework and review even though eleven seemed a little young for this and he said "Sometimes my parents don't let me sleep, because I didn't finish my homework." The way he phrased this made me rather aghast, and I asked him how often this happened. In the last year, he said, "only once." I felt a little better. He has mentioned previously and briefly how his mother is always angry at him, and his family life does not seem joyful, to say the very least. I don't remember how this next part came up, it may have been started by some loose questions and comments about his parents, or he may have just started talking, but he then went on to talk about how his parents hit him, about how they beat him in secret, and how they made him not able to scream, and when he said this last part I almost started crying. "Parents don't care about anything," he said a few times, as I told him that western people think that this is wrong, that in America kids would be taken away from parents for this, that in the west we think this is the worst thing that you can possibly do to a child, someone who is entirely defenseless and powerless, the worst thing you can do is hit them. "It's a terrible, terrible thing," I said in the calmest and strongest voice I could, because I couldn't say anything else. "I know," he said, "parents don't care about anything."

There are parents who genuinely love their children, of course, there are a few I can think of in particular whose pure and warm love for their children shines through their every gesture when I see them together, and even these beatings are motivated out of concern for what the parents believe is the welfare of the child, which is what makes them even more twisted. There is a phrase in China that translates roughly into "Use a stick to raise a good son," something akin to our "spare the rod, spoil the child." There's another one that means, "If you don't beat a kid at all for three days, the kids will climb onto the roof of the house and kick the tiles down." Chinese accomplishes this sentiment in only eight syllables, if you can believe this, (it literally says "three days no hit, house on overturn tiles,") but my admiration for this entirely different language is rather besides the point. "Backwards thinking," I said to him in Chinese, so it would have more effect, and so I'd be sure he understood. He nodded and continued looking at the table between us. "Now can we play a game?" he asked me.

I actually might have forgotten about this, busy and tired as I was today, were it not for my last two students of the day, two middle schoolers, Wendy and Joyce, who I teach together. They'd be seventh graders in America. I had only three hours of sleep last night, so I was exhausted, and I had nothing to talk about really. We usually gossip, more or less, and they tell me about their school, and the students (this I could really write a book about, they go to the best middle school in the country, with all that this entails. They are both good students, but there is some serious influence at this school. The President of China gave a speech there this year. That sort of school.)
Today, as I said, I just couldn't keep any line of questioning up, I was way too tired. Eventually for some reason the question popped up in my mind again (again, on topic) "How much do you sleep at night?" Joyce sleeps a healthy amount; Wendy between four and seven hours, a little on the shy side. We then had a long discussion about how lack of sleep hurts students and doesn't allow one's mind to function at one-hundred percent, and then how people need time to themselves during the day or the week or sometime at least when there's nothing that they have to do, which I was comparing to the sleep that the body needs to regenerate, which evolved into a discussion about how people shut parts of themselves off in order to get done what they have to, and how that makes them ultimately weaker and less able to accomplish anything meaningful (my view,) or how this makes one capable for doing what they have to do, to get what they want, and how it is the people who need rest who are actually weak (Wendy's view. Joyce usually disagrees with her when we talk about things like this but I think she feels powerless to do anything about it, she sees the logic and feels what I'm saying but sees no road out.) Without going into the details of the discussion, Wendy, the more talkative but less fluent one said, "we've lost our tomorrows," at one point, which I think is one of the most beautiful English phrases I can remember hearing, and later, when I summed up the conversation by saying, "you're saying to me that in your lives the two of you have no time to just be yourselves," she said, "yes. We have no time in our lives to be ourselves."

This was the connection to my time with Stone. My female student was saying that she can't stop, that she couldn't stop, that she couldn't listen to those parts of herself that she had shut up in order to be able to sleep only four hours a day, in order to be able to study with all of her "free time," in order to go to special classes all weekend etc. etc. I was getting that feeling from Stone as well. Walking outside on a beautiful day, just sitting on a bench in a park watching people walk around made him uncomfortable.

This frightens me deeply, because these are not isolated cases. This is the mindset of the entire society. Every kid is expected, required, and made to do this. One of my older students has a son of five years. He recently went on a trip with his grandparents to Nanjing; she picked them up at the train station the morning of our class. "You let him miss a week of school?" I asked with a teasing disbelief. "How? Why?" "It's Kindergarten," she said. "It's not important." "Would you," I began, knowing the answer, "have let him do that next year, if he were in first grade?" "No!" She said, with a tint of surprise and the same air of obviousness with which I asked the question. "And why not," I asked, "what is the difference between kindergarten and first grade?" "In First Grade," she said, "there have..." she struggled for the word, "kaoshi." She looked at me hopefully. "Tests," I said, "In first grade there are tests." "Yes," she said, "In First Grade have tests."

Notes on comments from "Eatin' Meat" and Tantra.

Two good comments, much more thoughtful than I was expecting. If you have not read them you can read them under the post "Eatin' Meat."

From nlv, the main thing that I was hearing was the "why is this so repugnant to people?" problem. Why does it bother people so much that others choose to be vegetarians? As nlv said, "Why on earth do people feel so threatened by someone cutting meat out of their diet? Who can i possibly be hurting by this decision?"

I think there are many reasons why people feel so threatened by others' choosing to become vegetarians, but they all revolve around identification. People are creatures of habit, and their habits, and activities, become mistaken for who they are. For just a gross simplification, think of somebody who always goes out with his friends for beers after work. If he stops drinking, or even if he finds a new activity, or a girlfriend, say, his relationship with those people can change drastically. He may find that he was friends with them more out of circumstance than anything else, and they may resent him for this. Again, this is a drastic simplification, but think about how people answer the question, "who are you?" Beyond age, sex, and nationality (still not a real determiner of who a person is,) isn't it most often with a list of activities? I am a mother, I am a soccer player, I am a restaurateur. The work one is probably the answer given most. Who are you? I am a television ad-man, I am a teacher, I am a window-washer. Now, most people won't answer "I am a meat-eater," but they don't have to (see below,) and the point is just that people often mistake what they do for what they are, so when somebody else chooses to do something that seems opposed to one of their activities, they feel like they are being attacked, because, on some level, they're taking it personally.

But with meat-eating especially, because this isn't even a conscious choice. It's so embedded in people's activities, and in the culture, that it seems one-hundred percent natural. That someone would choose to go against this is an affront. (What could be more American than a hamburger with cheese?) And so that somebody else has gone through the conscious process of rejecting this makes it feel (feel being very important, it is an emotional reaction, not a rational one) as if someone has consciously deliberated and debated and come to the decision that yes, you, meat eater you, are wrong as a person. Especially if somebody is close to you, or if you are part of a group with a set of associated characteristics, meat-eating being one of them (I'm thinking, like, a sports-team of manly men big boys beer drinking meat eaters, perhaps, or a frat house...or pig farmers,) your decision to forgo meat could make them feel uncomfortable. You were on their side, they trusted you, and now suddenly, "I don't even know you anymore, man."

There's often a defensiveness in this as well. Your conscious decision, even if it's not paraded in someone's face, can make others guilty, especially if they haven't themselves done the thinking necessary to justify their choices to themselves. You're making them look a little like a slob. I'm not suggesting that most people have thought out their meat-eating, quite the contrary, they haven't, and this might also make them uneasy.

As nlv says, "But what really bothers me about everything is not that i get embarrassed or even harassed for my choices, i can deal with that no problem, it's that i see a cruelty expressed by people when something appears against their own traditions. It has been made so clear and tangible because they are allowed to make fun of me, and their initial reactions aren't suppressed because it's not a big deal to make fun of a vegetarian." This sums up what I've been saying nicely, I think. Why is there a word "vegetarian" but there's no word "omnivoritarian?" Or "carnivorarian?" (Despite the fact that a diet of eating only meat would be ridiculously damaging to one's health I think most omnivores in america would contend in vain against a vegetarian that they were carnivores until the mistake was pointed out to them.) It's groupthink, the tendency to just go with what seems normal, without ever trying to figure out where or why something is normal. What's normal never needs to be defended, it's assumed, which is why there's no word for the "ideology" of one who decides to eat meat, though there is vegetarian "-ism."

I think the feeling of loathing one feels as a meat-eater for vegetarians that I noted in the post comes from this, and is a projection. You feel, as a meat-eater, that vegetarians are attacking you irrationally, because, of course, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing. They're attacking not only one thing, but all the things that you stand for in your life (again, what could be more American than eating a cheeseburger, so someone who loves america and associates america with cheeseburgers is going to feel as if you're trying to change what america is with your transgression of ridiculously "not-eating-cheeseburgers-as-an-american.")

Obviously, I'm not saying that any vegetarians are actually attacking meat-eaters when they become vegetarians, quite the contrary, but that's the point: the identification is a mistake. You can eat meat, but that is not who you are. The more emotionally mature and stable somebody is the less likely they are to be offended what you decide, but, then, perhaps most of the population is not extremely emotionally mature. Fortunately our society is less coercive than most of the societies in history, even if it can still be difficult to make the choices, or, as nlv says later, be the type of person that lives necessarily on the outskirts of mainstream society.

And the other thing is that most people, excepting those close to you, and those who are truly idiots, and those who are partisan for one reason or another, probably don't care that much if you're a vegetarian, even if they might make fun of vegetarians behind their backs, or feel vaguely threatened by it. But, of course, the people who are loud get all the attention. Few vegetarians are militantly so, but those are the ones you remember. Something like being Christian and being constantly identified with Jerry Falwell.


As for Cary's comments:

One word she mentions is "sacrifices," and actually, though I understand what she's saying, I would have to disagree with the word. I think when people make "sacrifices," they're usually making a mistake, or trying to jump into a decision before they're ready for it, or they are simply blaming something else for making them miserable.

An example would be if somebody had a child early, and they feel as if they are sacrificing their youth and fun to take care of the kid. They are always working, and they dislike this, they bitch about it, etc. etc. They feel as if they are forced into it by something, or by themselves, and they end up seriously resenting the kid. But, they are not being honest with themselves, or at least not open with themselves. They are making a choice, and though the circumstances may have forced them to make a choice they wouldn't have wanted to deal with originally, they do have a choice. They are working for their baby. They are not forced to do this. They could desert the child, or give it up for adoption, but they have chosen not to do this. I am not suggesting that they are all good choices, merely pointing out that when you feel forced to do something, you are usually just leaving some possible choices out of the framework. But, by doing this, you are denying the part you play in making the choice. It doesn't make work any better, perhaps, but at least there's the recognition that you have chosen to do this, that, given the circumstances, which you cannot change, it is what you want to do. (yes I am aware of the grammatical problems with the subjects in this paragraph and I don't care.)

Fortunately, no one is going to force you to be a vegetarian, and you shouldn't force yourself to do it either. "I think the biggest issue for me, and I think for others in my boat, is how daunting it seems to take this whole thing on fully." There's a Japanese concept from a mashing of two words that mean "good," and "change," and it's Kaizen, which means, basically, small, constant, incremental change, which takes active engagement with your life. As Cary says, conscious consumerism, or let's say, for here, living a conscious life, demands your attention, but there's no reason you should force yourself to sacrifice anything you don't want to, and that's the point.

Tantra, which in the west is usually associated most with freaky sex, unfortunately, is this kind of active conscious lifestyle. All it asks is attention, and everything else is permissible. So, instead of forcing yourself not to eat that piece of steak, etc. etc., you say, okay, I want to eat this piece of steak, though I feel a conflict as well, I will pay attention to what I'm doing, I will use this steak as a vehicle for awareness. Two things happen. One, you find that your conflicts become less and less, internally, that you stop being so hard on yourself, and Two, that the changes you want to make come anyway, naturally. Let's say you're really paying attention while you're eating this steak. You may come to notice externally (and there's nothing wrong if you don't) that, actually, it's kind of gross, maybe you can see a vein or maybe paying attention to it brings associations (like the bones of the steak with the bones of a living animal or roadkill you just saw) you don't want to make when you're eating, or internally, that actually your desire to eat the steak was coming more from outside expectations or environments than it was coming from the steak itself. These are hasty examples, but the basic idea is that with attention, internal and external, you will less and less desire those things you had before. This is in contrast to the Yogic mindset, which says "This is WRONG, I WILL not do it," detrimental for two reasons. One, how do you know it's wrong if you've never really investigated it yourself, might these ideas of wrongness be received as well, just from another side of the debate? And Two, you're strengthening your ego in this process, in the long run aiding its games and your own helplessness to its whims.

So actually, what you call half-assed vegetarianism, is actually not such a bad thing, provided that you are active in your investigation, and constantly thinking and watching, even if you still want to or occasionally eat meat. Half-assed vegetarianism is terrible, of course, if that means you never think about it and just use it as a way to feel better about yourself relative to other people.

Any ideology is mistaken, the only best thing to do is to think and investigate for yourself. Get to the bottom of it, and when you do, dig deeper. So, do what you can now, and it will seem less daunting to you, but do it with one-hundred percent of your heart and attention. You will find, I think, that if you do this, and continue to do this, and continue to do this, you will get far much more accomplished than you ever felt possible.

By the way, the "conscious," part of "conscious consumerism/ capitalism" is a word that rankles me as much as "vegetarian" used to when I was a teenager, because I think it makes a lot of people feel better than those around them. I am conscious, I am awake, I know, I am right, and everyone else is a jackass. In a way, part of this is correct, someone actively engaged with their life and not just drifting is, in a sense, more alive, and yet this is no license for superiority, because there is none. So I prefer the word "tantra," though I am looking for a better one, if anyone has any suggestions, wrapped up as tantra is with hairy-people sex.

And, of course, this doesn't mean that you don't try, it means that you try as hard as you can to pay attention to everything going on in and outside of you, which, if you do, you will find making everything else around you falling into place naturally, and it will seem as if it all just happened. Do what you can. Those who try and do too much at one time almost always end up making things worse. Either they ruin their cause, or they turn others against it. The Soviet Union tried to force a feudalist society towards communism in strokes of the clock, which was totally missing the historical argument of communism. They were trying to make an infant graduate from college, and those that try and make huge life changes instantly usually relapse in a week, stealing from themselves the motivation and confidence to make further improvements.

Further:

"We don't realize the costs that this mentality and these expectations have on everything". Nope. We don't. But we will. There is no free lunch.

"And until it's easy for people to do the right thing, they probably won't."

That's basically the whole idea of conscious capitalism, and, actually, capitalism isn't that far away from this at its heart, though it gets crapped on by people who don't understand it. (And I wouldn't say the U.S. is a pure capitalist country, just as it isn't an actual democracy.) It's the most efficient way to allocate resources, and I think that we'll find, as this goes on, should it start to succeed, is that we'll see that the fair way of doing things for everyone is also, actually, the most efficient way, like how automakers, who all complained they wouldn't be able to make money if mpg standards were raised in the seventies, all saw their profits increase when they were implemented.

But any way, the moral of the story is pay attention to what you're doing, and don't be willfully blind, because, at the end of the day, there is no universally right thing to do. Just keep plugging.

You are unlikely to change a lot of people's minds, especially in your generation or of those older than you. Those that agree with you were likely predisposed towards your viewpoint anyway, but push on. The differences you make may seem small, but they add up.

nlv- "You can eat all the meat you want or not, i don't think you are a worse person for it. For some reason, i don't think the majority of people can say the same thing." Hopefully one day they will, and people won't find themselves the focal point of the hatred of others for their conscious choices, or, nlv says, simply "because they are different."

Make Connections.

Yes Ma'am.

Welcome to my blog.

This blog is more or less subject-less, and while I fear that this may limit my readership in the ridiculously specialized world online, I can't really write about anything but nothing, everything.

I am looking for other people interested in this, which, to put a name on it, might be called something like "the development of consciousness," and encompasses all realms of human learning and experience.

Here is a place for the investigation of ideology and belief, and so I encourage you to hit me in my blind spots, making us all stronger.