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Posted May 20th, 2009 by Schalk Schalk in AQAL Map

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Hmmm...

Posted May 20th, 2009 by Matthew Flowers

Wouldn't the Chinese people who view American football negatively be ethnocentric?

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I wasn't being negative...

Posted May 20th, 2009 by Matthew Flowers in response to [Comment Deleted]

You do need to say it a different way.

You say:

What about the other points? Are you on board with the notion that 70% of humanity is ethnocentric across the lines of development? Or on any line?

That was the point I was making. Ethnocentricity is not applicable to different lines of development it is its own line of development, the "Self" line. How do I see myself?

"There is only me, I am what is important." is EGOCENTRIC.

"I am a part of a group of people that share the same blood or a common ancestry and we need to look out for each other." is ETHNOCENTRIC.

"I am a human and I share a common bond with all humans everywhere regardless of their nationality, religion or ancestry." is WORLDCENTRIC.

"I am a sentient spiritual being and if other sentient spiritual being are discovered they are my kin." is KOSMIC-CENTRIC.

I hope the scale keeps going but any higher potentialities are lost on me. As far as the 70% statistic bandied about I don't know if it is exact and I don't know how any exact statistic could be drawn but I would be inclined to agree that the majority of people in this world would (in deeds and not in thought) be concerned with the plight of their respective ethnicity at the expense of all other ethnicities.

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Confusing the issue

Posted May 20th, 2009 by Matthew Flowers in response to [Comment Deleted]

There can be correlations among different lines of development but you cannot say just because someone rates high on a kinesthetic line of development they are worldcentric or higher, it's apples and oranges.

I stand by my initial assertion regarding the term "Ethnocentric" only being applicable to the "Self" line of development, even after reading the glossary definition. There is an overlap however between the "Self" developmental line and the "Moral" developmental line. What is right is right for me, for my tribe, for all humankind, for all sentient-spiritual beings... and so on.

With morality and self-identification so closely related it is easy to apply the color scheme to one or the other interchangeably. When religious fundamentalists (of any religion) are said to be amber, they are being recognized as being at a Moral and Self stage of development that is ethnocentric. Their "Self" is a part of a tribe whose "Moral" imperative is to do what is right for the tribe, and that is ethnocentric.

When Mr. Wilber and others say that 70% of humanity is at ethnocentric OR LOWER, they are also saying that roughly 30% of the population of the world is self-identified as worldcentric or higher, and acts morally so. If I had to make an assessment of all of the people that I came across in any given day I would end up with a slightly less drastic statistic but these are people in the developed world, rarely to I come across anyone from the developing world (who would naturally be at lower stages of development.)

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Nailed it.

Posted May 21st, 2009 by Corey deVos in response to Confusing the issue

Nice work Matthew. When Ken makes a comment like "70% of the world is ethno-centric or lower" he is categorically NOT talking about cognition or even spiritual growth--he is talking about self-identity, values, and worldviews. As Sean Hargens often points out, it is usually the case that our identity, values, and worldview tend to lag behind our cognitive (and perhaps even spiritual?) development. I have heard Ken say that the vast majority of computer programmers, for example, are displaying at least a "teal" level of cognitive development, but that does not mean that they are necessarily coming from an integral or even pluralistic worldview, or that they have moved into Kohlberg's fifth or sixth moral stages. Even a cursory look around the web would seem to confirm this.

When it comes to spiritual development, it gets even trickier. Just as cognition is "necessary but not sufficient" for growth in other developmental lines, i can't help but to think our spiritual line is closely related with our moral development, and the fullness of its expression in the world depends largely upon the worldview that contains it. Taking these things into consideration, it seems dubious that so many could be seen as operating from a "second-tier" level of spiritual development. James Fowler's work seems to support this, whose 6th stage ("Universalizing Faith") represents the equivalent of 2nd-tier growth in the spiritual line, which he found very very few of the general population ever actually growing into.

To me this entire discussion places a spotlight upon the need to be very careful with the semantics we use to communicate these sorts of realities--words like "ethno-centric" or "amber" are what i call a "heavy lifting words," and are essentially meaningless until we offer enough granularity of context to actually communicate anything worthwhile. Otherwise we are just playing with stereotypes--useful stereotypes, but stereotypes nonetheless.

Corey W deVos
(dj rekluse)

Writer, Content Producer, and Webmaster
Integral Life, Integral Naked
Managing Editor, KenWilber.com

"Include the Values, Negate the View!"

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ethnocentric

Posted May 20th, 2009 by camfree

Hi Schalk,

No argument here... I spent some time in South-East Asia recently and while I didn’t meet any enlightenment masters, this part of the world seems to have seamlessly integrated the spiritual line of development into their way of life – and yes, it’s not something one needs to defend or argue about... That's kind of rude or taboo... At various points I tried to have a debate with some people in Thailand (a monk and a bar girl) about the Christ vs. Buddha question and they were both very open to alternative points of view, not at all sensitive about their beliefs – and it’s this cultural sensitivity about ones belief-system that characterizes ‘ethnocentric’ for me... It doesn’t seem to exist in the parts of SE Asia I’ve been too...

That said, there is also a tendency to project our spiritual fantasies onto the exotic Eastern cultures, and I would want to avoid this too – they are not enlightened, but neither is their identity exclusively caught up in a particular value-systems – and this is basically second-tier - or at least world-centric - as far as I can tell...

As for the 70% of the world are ethnocentric statement, maybe it's a motivational strategy employed to defend a particular frame of reference or view of the world... or maybe if we substitute USA for world it is closer to the actual state of affairs... But it's good that someone wants to challenge these sweeping generalizations - I'm becoming increasingly skeptical about using these big categories to describe whole chunks of reality... but still believe that Integral is best framework available to made sense of the complexity and the chaos...

Cam

"Become passers-by" (Jesus of Nazareth)

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Hmmm...

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I wasn't being negative...

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Nailed it.

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ethnocentric