Mathing the Loops: An Integral Perspectival Mathematics Approach to Transformational Learning Processes

Mathing the Loops: An Integral Perspectival Mathematics Approach to Transformational Learning Processes

Bruce Alderman   March 24, 2024  
Bruce Alderman builds upon Ken Wilber's integral perspectival mathematics to model the dynamics of Otto Scharmer's "3 Levels of Listening" framework. Alderman develops complex notational equations to map out how each successive listening level involves deeper transformations of belief structures, self-concepts, and collective awareness, culminating in a transconceptual, participatory openness to emerging future possibilities.
Sex, Pronouns, and Prepositions: How an Integral Mathematics of Perspectives Can Stop the AI Apocalypse

Sex, Pronouns, and Prepositions: How an Integral Mathematics of Perspectives Can Stop the AI Apocalypse

Bruce Alderman   March 18, 2024  
Bruce Alderman introduces an expanded version of Ken Wilber's integral mathematics, a notational system for mapping the complex interplay of perspectives in communication and meaning-making. He demonstrates the potential applications of this enhanced system across various domains, from modeling ethical decision-making in AI to facilitating transdisciplinary collaboration, while acknowledging the need for further testing and collaboration to fully realize its potential.
“The Diplomat” Seeks the Bigger Picture

“The Diplomat” Seeks the Bigger Picture

Mark Allan Kaplan   November 10, 2023  
What makes a movie integral? Why are so many integral works science fiction or fantasy? Mark Allan Kaplan and Jonathan Steigman explore the Netflix series "The Diplomat" and how it reflects the Integral structure of consciousness
Diversity, Empathy, and Integration: Reframing and Reclaiming a Movement Toward Healing and Wholeness

Diversity, Empathy, and Integration: Reframing and Reclaiming a Movement Toward Healing and Wholeness

Brad Kershner   August 23, 2023  
Brad Kershner offers a deep and detailed criticism of standard DEI approaches (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), highlighting the complexities of ethnicity, race, and cultural evolution. He challenges prevailing educational metaphors grounded in the postmodern perspective, advocating for a more universal application of modern liberal values, and emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding to forge a more genuine and generative path forward for social justice.
No Beginnings, No Endings: A Dialogue with Living Jazz Great Wayne Shorter

No Beginnings, No Endings: A Dialogue with Living Jazz Great Wayne Shorter

Greg Thomas   March 4, 2023  
Wayne Shorter, likely the greatest jazz composer since Thelonious Monk, was also one of the most influential tenor and soprano saxophonists in the post-John Coltrane period from the mid-1960s onward. His death on March 2, 2023, at the age of 89, marks the end of a musical life that spanned a panoply of styles and configurations, from hard bop to electronic fusion and funk to Brazilian and Caribbean to orchestral and the avant-garde, all suffused his own idiosyncratic melding of sounds and sensibilities which seemed to reach from the heat-center of the earth to the infinite expanses of the cosmos.
We’re Hoping AIs Will Answer Our Deepest Spiritual Question. They Can’t.

We’re Hoping AIs Will Answer Our Deepest Spiritual Question. They Can’t.

Robb Smith   December 21, 2022  
If we can create an AI that seems fully conscious, what does it mean for our place in the universe? Are we really conscious? If we can basically replicate consciousness, how special can life be? How special can our own lives be?
Hope as Process: Being and Becoming in the Great Integration

Hope as Process: Being and Becoming in the Great Integration

Brad Kershner   February 22, 2021  
How do we expand our horizon? How do we learn to see through our current forms of construction and break through into broader, deeper vistas of awareness and understanding, so that we may envision a richer and more nuanced context of possibility, and enact a way of life that forms the shape of our deepest potentials?
Integral Preparation for a Time of Rapid Social Change

Integral Preparation for a Time of Rapid Social Change

Robb Smith   March 8, 2020  
A lifetime of practice has prepared integral people to carry the world through the trying and rapidly-changing times we are entering.
Can the Intellectual Dark Web Save Western Culture?

Can the Intellectual Dark Web Save Western Culture?

Robb Smith   May 30, 2018  
"The question is, will the IDW be more than a counter-balancing force to the dominant intellectual ideology of Green postmodernism? Can they synthesize enough, in time, to articulate positive, coherent and integrative modes upon which culture might be reorganized as it enters the fourth phase in a few short years?"
Star Trek: Discovery and the Moral Arc of the Universe

Star Trek: Discovery and the Moral Arc of the Universe

Corey deVos   March 8, 2018  
The soul of Star Trek isn’t optimism or idealism or a roadmap to utopia. All of those are byproducts of the actual moral core of the series: exploring post-conventional morality, and owning the consequences of decisions made from that stage.
DJ Qbert: Alien Octopus Genius

DJ Qbert: Alien Octopus Genius

DJ Qbert   September 20, 2017  
Part mystic, part alien, part genius, and part octopus, Q was the perfect person to talk to about subjects that seem out of place in a conversation about djing. He’s delightfully bizarre and I knew talking with him would make for some great conversation. For me, interviewing him was a form of deity practice (how do you talk to a God about being God?) and I am genuinely appreciative for him allowing me to see through his eyes for a minute.
The 4th Spinning of Hip Hop

The 4th Spinning of Hip Hop

Justin Miles   September 20, 2017  
Hiphop is largely studied from the outside in. We enjoy the music, the art and the dance. We judge, argue, evaluate and rank it, but not much attention is paid to what happens inside the artist. The 4th Spinning is an attempt to look at Hiphop from an Integral perspective, which simply means exploring the inside-and-outside of individuals (behavior, psychology and spirituality), and the inside-and-outside of groups (culture and society), to not only understand but to manifest Hiphop in all of its fullness.
No Boundary: A Union of Opposites

No Boundary: A Union of Opposites

Ken Wilber   July 2, 2017  
Ken Wilber explores the intrinsic dualism of the mind, offering a simple but cogent way to "transcend the pairs" and discover the nondual heart of the Always Already.
How Zen Can Provide Leadership in a Post-Truth Trump World

How Zen Can Provide Leadership in a Post-Truth Trump World

Ginny Whitelaw   June 19, 2017  
Ginny Whitelaw offers some valuable advice on how presence, resilience, and centeredness can help us illuminate a better path forward in the midst of the "post-truth" collapse.
Making Sense of Trump’s Exit from the Paris Accord

Making Sense of Trump’s Exit from the Paris Accord

Gail Hochachka   June 12, 2017  
Last week, Trump stated his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement regarding climate change. Trump announced that the USA will withdraw based on the sense that it will negatively affect US jobs. To explore this, I turn to Integral Theory, which is a comprehensive transdisciplinary theory developed by contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber and applied by others across several professional fields. We can draw upon these ideas regarding the dynamics of social groups to make sense of Trump’s exit from the Paris agreement.
Shapes of Mind: The 10 Stages of Consciousness

Shapes of Mind: The 10 Stages of Consciousness

Robb Smith   March 19, 2017  
At Integral Life we sometimes refer to different stages of consciousness in order to make sense of various issues or complex situations. So I thought it might be useful to briefly outline the ten stages of consciousness-or what I often call the ten shapes of mind–in order to provide an orienting primer for those who are new to Integral Life. For those who have been with us a long time, hopefully you'll enjoy a refresher.
Zen Leadership and Putting the “Happy” in Happy New Year

Zen Leadership and Putting the “Happy” in Happy New Year

Ginny Whitelaw   January 23, 2017  
Welcome to the New Year! In the Chinese system, we’re entering the Year of the Rooster and, my, doesn’t it already feel like a wake-up call?
Trump and a Post-Truth World

Trump and a Post-Truth World

Ken Wilber   January 2, 2017  
The election of Donald Trump is an evolutionary self-correction that has been decades in the making, a backlash against the failure of the leading edge of consciousness–postmodernism and pluralism–to acknowledge the lie underlying the progress they’ve pursued: it’s not equal, it’s not consistent and it doesn't make room for everyone. But a new integral force is emerging that can move beyond the narcissism and nihilism of political correctness to offer genuine leadership and a move towards a developmental-based wisdom of greater wholeness.
We’ve Elected a Wartime President

We’ve Elected a Wartime President

Robb Smith   January 2, 2017  
I'll get to the point. The United States has just elected a wartime president, a Commander in Chief who is already on a wartime footing and was on a wartime footing from the moment his campaign began last year. And he won because a significant portion of the country were the war’s first casualties and they wanted a president who could help them stop losing. This isn't a military war. It’s a jobs war.
Always Already: The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness

Always Already: The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness

Ken Wilber   December 10, 2016  
In this excerpt from The Eye of Spirit, Ken Wilber offers one of the most powerful (and beautiful) pieces of spiritual writing he has ever produced. This is the very first time these words have been reproduced on the web, and we invite you to share this chapter however you like.
Right Bucks: Money and Spirituality

Right Bucks: Money and Spirituality

Ken Wilber   November 23, 2016  
In dealing with this issue of money and Dharma—or money and spirituality in general—there are at least two very different items that need to be teased apart and addressed separately. The first is the appropriate monetary value of any relational exchange (from medical care to education to goods and services in general); and the second is, should monetary exchange ever be linked to Dharma teaching?
The Morning After

The Morning After

Robb Smith   November 9, 2016  
Americans have just elected Donald Trump as President-elect of the United States of America. I know that a few of you are elated and many more are terrified. I can understand both emotions. I am far from a natural-born Hillary Clinton advocate, but during the course of the campaign there was simply no possibility that I would be voting for Trump, a man who who speaks against many of my deepest principles. And yet he won — by the slimmest of margins — but a clear win nonetheless.
Campaign Fever: How We’ve Turned Indignation into a National Pastime

Campaign Fever: How We’ve Turned Indignation into a National Pastime

Ginny Whitelaw   November 2, 2016  
It seems we have caught a kind of fever, where anger and indignation are becoming an art form, where one-sided views are called news, and where we can get stuck in a place of no progress. That place could be called coping, as opposed to transforming, and it precedes what I call the "first flip" of Zen Leadership...
What is Transformational Learning?

What is Transformational Learning?

Robb Smith   August 15, 2016  
Transformation is the process by which a person “grows their mind” by building a broader worldview, deeper skills, better habits and expanded perspectives. Integral Life is a member community designed to offer experiences, media and practices that help you grow your mind and evolve your life.
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