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The State of the World

There Isn't Any Integral Politics Out There....

Contributors: Jim Garrison and Ken Wilber

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Ken highlights the necessity of an integral politics in the following dialogue, and Jim points out, with considerable persuasiveness, just how rare any sort of integral response has been, here or abroad. But one thing is becoming increasingly certain to individuals everywhere—any approach less than integral is doomed to failure.

Jim Garrison

Jim Garrison is the chairman and president of the State of the World Forum, which he cofounded with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1995. The State of the World Forum (SWF) is often thought of as a "shadow UN," in that it is the largest forum of world leaders outside of the United Nations. From Margaret Thatcher to Ted Turner, from the Queen of Jordan to Desmond Tutu, from Jimmy Carter to George Bush Sr., all have been part of the extraordinary dialogue that is the State of the World Forum.

Continuing the conversation about the state of the post-9/11 world, Jim reemphasizes the fact that he dire state of international affairs is exacerbated by the fact that truly integral political solutions are neither being advanced or even discussed on any sort of significant scale.

“September 11 caused a regression to more reptilian impulses, and the result is a political Jurassic Park. It’s an extremely unstable and dangerous situation....”

This is all the more important in the wake of an article that appeared in the European press, signed by, among others, both Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, formerly viewed as philosophical and political antagonists. As one newspaper summarized it, "One surprising consequence of the war in Iraq is the surrender of postmodernism to a victorious modernism. This has been largely overlooked in North America. In reaction to the U.S. intervention in Iraq, Jacques Derrida, a famous postmodernist, signed on as co-author of an article drafted by the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, previously an opponent of his, in an unmistakable endorsement of modernist Enlightenment principles. Derrida, the apostle of deconstructionism, is now advocating some decidedly constructive and Eurocentric activism."

What this actually means is not such a victory for either modernism or postmodernism, but a faltering step toward a more integral political stance that explicitly includes Enlightenment principles (modern), but set in contexts of multicultural adjudication (postmodern), with neither of them sufficient to carry the day alone. That both Habermas and Derrida signed this type of agreement is nothing less than historical, a watershed in the rocky road to integral politics in theory and practice.