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One Good Thing

Posted January 12th, 2012 by Stanley in Community Development
In Reference to:
From Stardust to Supermind: Core Integral Q&A With Ken Wilber

One thing that has been extremely disappointing for me is that although integral theory sounds magnificent, and I deeply believe that Ken Wilber’s intentions are stellar, I have not yet seen where we have done one significant good thing in terms of making our world a better place. To me it seems like something is very wrong with what has been going on here. It’s like we have been just rotting for many years.

 

In question 2, a caring person asked Ken what we can do to make our world a better place. Ken did NOT say that we have done this and give her a long list of our great accomplishments. I assume that this is because there are not yet any. He said that what we need is more individual development. Let’s take a look at what he suggested;

 

·         More workshops and seminars like at Esalen. Now I am not against these but Michael Murphy has admitted that short term seminars, even those months long, just don’t work in terms of helping humans to change.

·         Meditation.  If we don’t practice meditation by surrendering to an authentic teacher we might be likely to only achieve an inflated and unwell ego.

·         Taking the perspective of others. If one narcissist takes the perspective of a bigger narcissist what do we hope to achieve from there?

·         Seeing patterns of wholeness. If our motive for doing this is just to polish our unwell ego all we will achieve is more sick pride in our cleverness.

 

This author is not saying that these ideas are not good ideas. I just don’t think they go far enough to help us actually achieve great positive change in our bleeding world. What would it take for us to be able to grow into this?

 

Some ideas I have are to begin functioning as a post “selfish me” community, build on a foundation of rock solid ethics and wearing a crown of communitywide selfless service to all.

 

Any other ideas from people of goodwill out there?

 

No cyber-stalking please. I may have to periodically wipe this post clean of trolling and cyber-stalking. (Is trolling and abuse really the only “integral difference” we want to make in our world?)

http://365daysofgoodness.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/project-goodness-logo-one-little-hand-at-a-time-2.jpg

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One Good Thing

Posted January 12th, 2012 by Mark Evans

 We look at the world from Second Tier and we see all the problems that we would solve if we were King.  Since we're not, we're stuck watching the suffering while we wait around for everybody else to catch up, and it's going to take decades, not the few years we'd like it to take.  

I go to a Pluralist church (Unitarian) and every time some bit of racism makes the news, they moan "oh this system hasn't changed a bit."  My standard response is: "back in the 50's, many whites thought blacks shouldn't be allowed to vote.  When was the last time you heard someone say blacks shouldn't be allowed to vote?"  There has  been a huge change, but it goes much slower than we prefer (decades, not years).  

What I did to move our great society along was offer classes in meditation and integral theory, mostly though the church.  I got about 100 Pluralists per year introduced to 2nd Tier.  It takes a long time.  Be sure to target young adults too, they can get it just as fast.

Give 2nd Tier books and Integral Live CD's to leaders and hope they catch on.  I gave a copy of The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas Barnett to my Senator when he was struggling with Foreign Policy issues (he said he spent a lot of time in airports and appreciated the gift of a book).  I gave the President of the Unitarian Church a CD of Don Beck when he said he wanted to do something big about racism in the US.  They are all shots in the dark, but the guy who prosecuted Brown v. Board of Education was a poor, black man who wanted to go to law school and someone stepped up and paid for it, probably not expecting him to try, and win a landmark racism case decades later.

Trying makes us better people too.

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After Another

Posted January 12th, 2012 by Layman Pascal

--

The "integrated" approach is to demand progress in all functional domains.  Its quite obvious that inner development is absolutely critical because no helping of any kind is going succeed very long until a lot of people have higher vision and higher heart.  On the other hand, as some people point out on this site, there are problematic structures in our techno-economic and social-legislative system which guarantee mass suffering and inhibition of human progress.  And there also need to be more coordinated approach to direct compassionate engagements.  Some people are hungry to intensely help a few people; others are hungry to help a lot of people a little bit.  

So we need to both stress the necessity of the form of helping which draws our heart the most AND find ways to comprehend and affirm people who are more suited to help in other domains.

I am a huge fan of critiques which reveal that all kinds of energetic efforts to sensibly and practical help other humans beings could be counter-productive or futile when viewed through a more complex lens.  But all the same we are, we should be, driven toward such actions.  And hopefully we can increase our ability to discern more productive from less productive.  I think perhaps there has been a lack of definition on what might distinction second tier compassion-engagements from first tier versions... of if there even is such a distinction.

Obviously I think we can assume that a lot of us are doing things privately -- but how urgent is it for us to join together to take larger more coherent actions?  Probably pretty urgent.  Like citizens trying to overturn a crazy bylaw... the victory is not so much in the immediate change but in the practice it gives us for mobilizing in the service of our ethical values.

From where I sit the ecological conditions of the planet require such a massive effort of monitoring, cleaning, managing, etc. that nothing short of a international "French foreign legion" of volunteers could even start addressing it.  I'd like to see an integrally organized, international eco-ethical movement of some kind to coordinate local endeavors.

 

 

Thanks, I've been...

Layman Pascal

 

(to receive other "Weekly Harangues" write to: pretendtomeditate@gmail.com)

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Hi Stanley

Posted January 12th, 2012 by Shikha Sabharwal

"To me it seems like something is very wrong with what has been going on here." Yeah, I've gotten that sense, too, lately.

One good thing... I hear you. I remember that feeling, so well...without hope, and you're okay with spending the rest of your life on your knees, as long as...but...

Faith and trust, are the answers, for now, I believe. And discernment, without analysis, which I think comes easy for you. It's hard when others (sometimes so many others!) don't seem to see it, like there's a whole elephant missing from the elephant picture...

It won't take decades. That's ridiculous. It won't even take years. It's good to have faith, initially, and for the gaps, and to trust the people you trust, for what you trust them for, and to not deceive people, so there's not layers of untrust blocking the way to trust, which is what it takes, really. Trust. You know the truth...and it's helpful to have a reference point, so actions, intentions, in relation to things like 'harm' can really be divided into more simple categories like 'helpful' and 'harmful', or 'good' and 'bad'. You can tell by the sickening feeling, then, not that you're doing something wrong, but that you're holding on to layers of feeling unworthy, not of guilt, but of shame, and that it's never your fault.

We're not here to do God's job. It's impossible for us, so no worries. It's not even really in our hands, at all :o)

I'm grateful for you, anyways.

With Love,

Shikha

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Dearest Stanley

Posted January 13th, 2012 by kbd2005

I hope that I haven't in any way contributed to what you call "cyber-stalking".  I fear I may have and that's why I've stayed away.  I need to regroup as well as I think the website does in general. 

If I've caused pain, please forgive me.  Best to you.

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Charles Eisenstein's "The Revolution is Love"

Posted January 15th, 2012 by Tara Aders

I just listened to this podcast, the latest in Terry Patten's "Beyond Awakening" series. Imo, what Eisenstein says goes straight to the heart of our dilemma here on Third Rock and offers a profound shift in how we hold and respond to it.

Here's a link if anyone is interested.

http://beyondawakeningseries.com/blog/archive/