What is an Inquiry?

Inquiry

What do you feel you simply do not understand about Integral theory, practice, application or community?

What do you feel you do not understand about the relationship between all of them? How can you gain better understanding? Do you feel motivated to understand? How can we help?

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2 out of 3 members found this useful.

The details

Posted October 7th, 2008 by Andrew

this is such fascinating stuff though.  cross cultural cross topic practical philosophical coordination, referencing and codifying.  could never have been done before but it happening now.  what a wonderful and priceless gift to humanity.  no surprise is his name is "ken" --

"i never wanted to join the military.  why would i?  they dont let you start out being a general.  i was geneal at birth.  i started without a body i remember clearly.  overtime became this."

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4 out of 4 members found this useful.

Integral Arguing/Battling Emails

Posted December 31st, 2008 by Mike Breland

  I would like to see mock arguments on Integral Life, with the participants using integral theory as the basis for how they interact.  In other words, an integral argument or perhaps an "Integral Reality Show".  I don't mean that they should quote Nietzsche and Derrida, but a real live, practical example of how 2 people can have a significant disagreement and not necessarily resolve their problem, but at least show how each perspective can be honored and not marginalized, while also taking holarchies into consideration such that one person's argument may be (shown to be) stronger than the other's.   

  I also realize that a teal person arguing with a red person would be very different than a teal-teal interaction, since different world views and hence different tools and techniques would be involved.  However, in this case, I'm assuming that most of the members of integral life are around the green meme level, so would want to see what form that level of argument might entail.

  I see Integral Life members as developing an integral culture, a culture that is or may be evolving out of the green meme to teal or turquoise.  That means going from multiplural aperspectivism to holarchies as a world view.  My simplified interpretation of this is that it involves going from "everyone is right" to "everyone is relatively right".  To determine who is more relatively right means arguments/debates to determine "greater correctness".  In other words, in accepting holarchies, suddenly we are propelled from the relatively safe zone of "everyone is right" to a zone where arguing (or some variation on a theme) is once again an accepted (or necessary) cultural vehicle to determine greater correctness.  That's a hard lump to swallow for us egalitarian green memers: someone is actually better (relatively, in a certain sense) than someone else?  I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't have problems dealing with that.

  Thus, a series of staged battling emails between some of the more experienced members would be helpful, starting with some pretty straight forward issues and progressing to more complex ones.  By more complex, I mean not some idealized argument between perfectly controlled enlightened beings, but fallable, irritable, but well meaning integral not quite newbies who are fumbling their way through the integral way.  What could perhaps make this serve as more of a teaching tool for us would be to have about a day between email replies (once the argument reaches a boiling point) so that we members could have time to think about:  "What would I say here" and possibly even send in our replies for other members to read and comment or vote on.  I could eventually see an integral arguing DVD being made, since email interactions are different than face to face interactions.  This DVD could show how a teal person might deal with a green, orange, amber, or red level person.

  Presently my interpretation of an integral argument is one that is marked by the participants having the ability to not only be aware of the perspective of the other person as well as their own, but also able to consider other perspectives as well to see if that helps resolve the issue.  Also, if the argument gets off track or just plain ugly, they have the ability to step back and look at the situation and do a little remediation.  This might include an acknowledgement that the argument has dropped to a red level perhaps due to using words with pejorative connotations, as well as acknowledging that where the problem may lie is in the differences in their perspectives, so that the issues being argued about may be different than what they think they are.  I would also suspect/hope that much of a true integral, teal/turquoise argument would entail each person presenting data to support their argument and that the data would be sorted into a holarchy to determine which data is "more correct."  That may eventually require some sort of qualified group to make the final "greater correctedness" decision.   However, it ends though, no one is marginalized, as that is the "real teal deal."

  In the green meme world, this sort of interchange might result in both parties agreeing that it's just a question of perspective and that they are both right, but then nothing would be resolved.  Whereas in a teal/turquoise world, the issue could potentially be resolved based upon holarchies of rightness.  However, I really can't picture how that could be done without creating a lot of "my altitude is higher than your attitude" situations.  Once that occurs, I would think the argument has dropped into the amber or red level, and so isn't "integral" anymore, but that interpretation may be incorrect.  So, I have an adumbration of how this might play out, but don't have the experience to actually flesh it out.  I suspect a truly integral debate would appear (to me) to be somewhat dependent upon the style of the people involved, but that eventually a pattern will evolve, a Kosmic Groove as it were, that I am hoping I and the other members will then be able to pick up on and apply in this developing Integral Culture.

  I guess what I'm really saying is that I think that arguing and staying integral is a definite skill, and I for one, feel a need for some mentoring.  "Real" arguing is not something I've done for quite some time and so I'm concerned I will just regress to my amber/red self (You're wrong, I'm not!) when confronted with this situation, unless I have some sort of example that I can fall back on.  I guess in this case, I would fall "up" to it, but you get my drift.

Thanks for this consideration,

Mike

 

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1 out of 1 members found this useful.

More on 4th, 5th...nth perspecitves as well as Integral Calculus

Posted May 18th, 2009 by Keith Orndoff

I have read everything I find and don't seem to be able to rap my mind around this topic.

Which is kinda sad because I'm pretty sure that a clear grasp of this would quickly bump my cognitive abilities up quite a bit.

 

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Simple examples

Posted October 4th, 2011 by Thomas Arnold

 

 

As a beginner in the model, I would love to see many simple examples of what "things," different aspects of life, actually look like from all 4 Quadrants.   Would really be a simple way to get familiar and in the habit of including all 4, and getting familiar with the Reality that all 4 applies to everything.

Ex.  An object,  an emotion, a theory, an energetic quality,  ...anything!