" Research could be undertaken regarding the relationship of integral theory to Lakoff and Johnson’s work on conceptual metaphor and embodied philosophy. "-Gary Hampson
Thanks Marco for sharing this essay and here are some raw feels. Can we generate new metaphors for our future besides the well worn war zone metaphors we all know so well? I think the essay invites us to go beyond polemics into some healthier integrally inspired shared metaphorical landscapes.
In our video many of us do draw upon Lakoff and Johnson. This seems to be a center for many of our research initiatives. Clean Language emerges directly out of L & J and the insights of Cognitive Linguistics and is also going beyond them in significant ways. A review of some of our maps I posted above point to dynamic reference points in our development without references to the kinds of top down management models rampant in Wilber world. We can and must go in a different direction and I believe in Cosmos we are doing just that. We demonstrated by the interplay of clean interviews over several sessions can take on concrete expressions. The actual languaging generated in each interview translated into drawings which translated back into more languaging and has created conditions for transformation changes ( third order). This is iterative, messy and a lot of fun. And we know each other at a deeper level and have more rapport with the Other than conscious aspects of our nature.
We could be doing more of this and doing it better. When we can each bring forward our own metaphor, that is unique rather than predetermined archetypal, we engage in a third order process orientation. This is more generative than I believe the L & J models intend to be. We are finding applications for that theory, a theory that needs some flesh. We need to get our metaphor out in the open and into our neurology and this is what I believe we have actualized.
As I read the article, I realized something wants to live here and something wants to die. I am suspicious of the numbered lists that go on forever, quite common in most Integral products and all of the color coded spirals and pie charts. They are very soothing, of course, and create a sense of comfort, like a pretty power point presentation but I doubt seriously that the effort to create order out of that kind of map making actually works. It usually tries to impose an order by outline, an order that actually doesn’t exist. It is a map without a territory.Most numbered lists are just an attempt to impose a left brained structure that isn’t there, upon a swarm of the undefinable. It is a theory that relies heavily upon what the cognition has access to which is very little. Fragile and easily swept away in a crisis. Integral theory was woefully inadequate in its analysis during the last economic downturn. Neo-liberal fantasias. But all of that is blood under the bridge. What happens next?
So I agree with the author that too much logic and not enough vision is probably a big problem in Integral studies. The developmental models emphasized in this essay look like transitional objects to me, emerging out of already hardened categories, defended by elaborate amounts of words signifying nothing. Sort of like the security blanket the little kid drags along . High intellectual play can be a form of cognitive constipation seriously out of touch with those who are scrambling around in the street, in real time.
I would add that Vision that is primarily grounded in the visual system will not go very far. Proprioception and kinesthetic intelligence are required for adequate translations of perhaps paraconsistant logics into contact with other sensoriums. This is perceptual rather than perspectival and probably takes some re-training to register the difference. I recall that many in Wilber world claimed that perspective organized the perceptual but I just registed a lot of talking heads. The Wilberians were as a group no where near their bodies. They seemed to assume, as the author points out, that we need to move onto second tier ( more and grander abstractions) and we can then from third tier look down on everybody and win the grand prize.
Gebser’s higher octave of the Integral doesn’t need a second or third tier of observers. What is needed is actors and dancers and performers who can get on stage and tune into the audience and make a show work. This is not about having a system in place, it is about an effective performance. It is improvised and scripted and each man and woman plays many parts and guided by discipline flow, a capacity for sharing attention.
I believe a careful review of the maps generated by our group in past cafes can give us a sense of our movement, our affective shifts, our group’s proprioceptiveness as we are engaged as participant-observers rather than as members of a neo liberal regime forced to watch the show from the third tier as most of the Wilberians of my acquaintance were most at home.
So I imagine we who are about to die have learned a lot and that an Alter-Integral could arise that is symbiotic- poetic and enjoys the paradox and the mess and the quick sketch on the back of a napkin can be generative in ways that a pie chart cannot. We are in perpetual motion, and as we contact a deeper time, we are getting a brief glimpse perhaps beyond construct-aware.