What is an Inquiry?

Inquiry

It's the end of the world as we know it... or is it?

How do you relate to the prediction that our world is on a crash course headed towards destruction?  How do you feel when you hear people talking about global environmental crisis, the rise of terrorism, the crashing economy, etc.?  Are people shouting too loud, or not loud enough for you?  How can an Integral perspective help with these pressing issues, and/or the ability to hold these pressing issues in a way that honors the fact that, in the end, we really aren’t sure what is going to happen?  In these challenging times, what words of wisdom can you offer?

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the coming singularity

Posted September 11th, 2008 by ralph weidner
My own sense is that for those of us embarked on what might be called the Integral quest the answer is necessarily yes, at least in part. Of course, to the extent that we are in touch with the infinite, with the absolute, or whatever else you may wish to call it, and stably so, that aspect of our worldview will not end, come what may. But our worldviews necessarily have a finite aspect as well, which from an Integral perspective, can always be improved upon by transformation to more inclusive, more encompassing worldviews. And could there be any better time for this than the present?

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same boating

Posted September 15th, 2008 by Kerry Dugan

Seeing Ken Wilber address attitudes and strategies regarding catastrophies such as economic collapse (the IL video, in the World Affairs channel, The Ever-Nearing Apocalypse), and noting that Alan Greenspan called the huge events of today on Wall Street (re: Lehman Bro.s, Merrill Lynch...) the worst he had seen in all his career, I was glad to hear Ken emphasize that human creativity shouldn't be underestimated.

On that day in Oct. 1987, when the market 'crashed' I happened to get on a Wall Street subway car right around five o'clock in the afternoon. The whole intersubjective tone of the passengers was markedly different than any other rush hour commute I'd ever joined. The day had shaken loose alot of the normal insulations and preoccupations which tend to fill the use of that context. Guards were dropped. Tangible commonality pervaded the space; 'all in the same boat. So many competitive trajectories of individual persuit had given way to actually being together. Can you imagine how novel that could seem?

An enforced surrender of one set of focuses gave rise to another set. There seemed to be a re-humanizing effect in play. The 'crash' was a shift in that sense. Tragedy hadn't necessarilly percipitated a regression, not with what I saw and felt in that subway ride. Something opened up. Different for each of us, but salient and undeniable in it's potency. A disruption in the momentum of lesser and intentional systems made room for recognitions of other, greater, deeper and more immediate contexts.

That and similar occassions have helped me trust in our resilience. What I don't care to place too much trust in is any propensity to define success as predeterminable , to cross bridges before they're come to, or to project imaginary senarios on to the territories which we're, nevertheless, traversing together.

'all for now,

Kerry

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Nothings going to happen...

Posted October 2nd, 2008 by camfree

Wouldn't it be astonishing if - first the first time in recorded history - our current generation realization that we are NOT the center of the universe, and that we are not going to usher in the greatest social transformation in human history... If there is a lesson to be learned from the Enlightenment and the modern West it is gradual realization that it is not about us... From Galileo's discovery that the earth is not the center of God's plan for the universe, to Darwin's discovery that we are just one species amongst many, to Freud's discovery of the unconscious and that we are not even master's of our own supposedly "rational-autonomous" ego, to the post-modernist insight that there is only "vanishing things" - there seems to be a clear pattern - a relentless de-centering of our all too human desire to see ourselves as an object of primary importance in the world...

Of course, every generation - from the apocalyptic expectations of the early Christian to the failed utopias of the 20th century - wants to believe that they are special, the critical agents of transformation, but the shocking truth is that things will just go on as they always have - there will still be wars, economic upturns and downturns, famines, diseases, technological inventions, ecological decimations  and meaningless human suffering... but this is nothing new... Nothings going to happen, it seems that the last thing we want to admit is that human history will just go on as it always has, nothing world-shattering will happen at all...  Now THAT would be a radical shift in the average mode of consciousness... the undeceived are mistaken

 

--

"Become passers-by" (Jesus of Nazareth)

 

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What about global warming?

Posted October 24th, 2008 by barbi hammond

I'm surprised that no one seems to speak much about the effects of global warming.  That seems to be the most critical issue affecting us globally today and may well result in the "end of the world as we know it."  Michael Crichton seems to make light of these in trying to debunk the "bad science" of the environmental movement, which I've discussed elsewhere.

According to State of the World Forum petition "Global Call to Action," they state the threat in the following manner:

The crisis of global warming has suddenly moved from the indeterminate future to our immediate present. The current word from leading scientists is that the serious impacts from global warming are already bearing down upon us and will hit us with potentially incapacitating force within three to four years unless we respond decisively.

The gravity of our situation has been detailed by James Hansen, Chief Scientist for NASA, who states in Science magazine that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." Hansen details six irreversible tipping points, including massive sea level rises and dramatic increases and extreme weather events, which are already wreaking havoc around the world.

Add to this the statement of Indian scientist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "If there is no action before 2012, that is too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."  He said this in December 2007.

These statements are coming from the most eminent scientists of our time and therefore must be taken seriously. We have only a few years, four at the most, to take decisive action or we will enter a chaos zone that could be more gruesomely awful than anything we can currently imagine.

Because the challenge is global, our response must be global. Because the threat is imminent, our solution must be immediate.

Overview

State of the World Forum was founded in 1995 by Jim Garrison with Mikhail Gorbachev, who served as the Convening Chairman.

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Our next evolutionary step

Posted November 18th, 2009 by Lisette Schuitemaker

When I heard Ken say that global warming is probably not happening, first I register shock. How can he say that? How can this man, having the authority that he has, pull the rug from all that I am doing? Then I see, I am reacting from attachment to content which has never served me well. Life flows for me when I realise that our common causes, scientifically proven or magnified by the prevalent meme of the day, be they global warming, the crash of the monetary system or whichever of the predicted ways that our lives will be changed from how we know it, are no more or less than evolution urging us on. The next evolutionary step is always that was what separate before comes together into a more complex form. Around the possible solutions for global warming, with the The Hague Center in Kopenhagen we will be hosting the Climate Solutions Meshwork. And yes, this is about finding ways to overcome our consumerist ways. And it is about coming together. About knowing we are all part of the one humanity. Realising we all have our part to play in making life on this planet good for all of us who are, to begin with, one. In acting against threats, real or just perceived to be real, we make our next evolutionary step. This, at least, is how I've come to see it.