"Integral Ecology": A Sneak Preview of The Book

(This note was originally placed in the regular Forum discussion, but since I thought it especially relevant to this presentation, I put a copy here.  Please excuse the duplication and any non sequiters in the text)

  My copy of Integral Ecology arrived the other day and I could swear I heard trumpets playing in the background as it was delivered.  But maybe it was just the groaning of the UPS agent as he carried it to my front door (humor alert).  It is a big tomb at 800 pages, but it is manageable since the first 154 pages are related to Integral Theory and so will be familiar to all Wilber fans and the last 231 pages are references.  This still leaves 371 pages of industrial strength reading on integral ecology.  The first 233 pages of this section are related to defining and “filling out” the 4 integral quadrants with the various ecologically related perspectives, along with a lot of related explanations.  They fully discuss the 4 “Terrains” (the What) of Behavior, Experiences, Systems, and Culture, as well as follow the methodology of defining and using the 8 ecological selves (the Who), the 8 ecological modes of research (the How), and the 12 niches (the What).   This section is followed by 3 case examples of “Integral Ecology in Action.”  I really appreciated their emphasis on the practical use of integral theory.  The opening quote for that chapter states: “The ultimate most holy form of theory is action.”  Amen to that.

  The reason I call this a sneak preview is because while I have only read a few sections and scanned the rest of this book, there was one chapter I read that was very poignant to our Climate Change Forum and so I wanted to share it with my fellow IL members.  It also supports my contention that reading this book would be helpful in guiding us in our Climate Change Forum discussion.

  I was very well behaved (2nd humor alert) when I first got this book and so I calmly and with great restraint read the inside and back covers, the preface, and then turned to the table of contents.  There on page 339, I found Chapter 11, “Integral Ecology in Action”, so I immediately turned to that page and started reading.  Oops, a little premature perhaps, but in the middle of the first page, I hit gold.  They stated that in this chapter they would be presenting guidelines to assist us (the reader) in applying the Integral Ecology Framework to complex ecological problems.  My hopes went up.  They then stated: “After introducing these guidelines, we apply them to global climate change to illustrate the Integral considerations of such a complex problem.”  I had a serious OMG reaction, since this was exactly what I was searching for.  While the whole outline on climate change is only about 7 pages long, the authors noted it would take a whole book to integrally fill out this guideline.  The outline also created so many ideas of discussion in my mind that I wanted to share this with my fellow integral life members in the hopes that it would inspire us to recreate a new discussion on climate change.

  In my last blog in this section, I threw down the gauntlet to other members of IL and challenged us to have a truly authentic integral discussion on Climate Change.  After reading the outline “An Integral Approach to Global Climate Change” in Integral Ecology, the gauntlet is still there.  Do you dare pick it up?  It will be quite a commitment if you do, but in my mind, well worth it.  It will help us all integrally grow together and perhaps we’ll even do some good.

Good luck and please remember to use good body mechanics when picking up this book.

Mike Breland