How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

I’m carrying over a discussion from the current events area.

E: “Then what are you arguing about? Are you trying to talk yourself out of
doing something or rationalize your not doing anything? You must really
be attached to your pickup. :-)”

I own a mazda 3 and I take the bus most days.

E: “I am not selling anything nor do I need anyone else to act like me.”


Yes you are and do. You want people to do what you have done. You
explicitly state that if more people do that, then we could be saved.

The point that you are not getting is that there are real structural
issues involved here, and the complexity of information that people
have to deal with.  There is an entire political-economic field that is
ignored when you say that this is an issue of internal development. 
You are able to do with your building what you do, because you can. 
You have an economic benefit and you simply can.  From just a business
stand-point you’d be foolish to not invest in new technology.

“If you understand the argument and do nothing, it seems you are not
enacting a global understanding i.e. you don’t value the earth as a
whole to change the way you live.”

Again, that is a really pretentious thing to say.  We all do what we
can. I’m a renter in an apartment, not the owner of a 20,000 sq ft.
building.  Of course, you mean that we do what we can, but “what we
can,” can be very limited. People can be confused as well. They can
make things worse by recycling, for example, depending on their local
situation.  People can want to help, and act out of that, and still
make things worse.  If you actually talk to people, who would be
labeled as very conservative, like small town Texas, you get a much
more complex picture than you are painting. 

In group/out group definitions are continuously redefined, renegotiated
and renewed.  The best way to get someone to be against something you
are for is to define them as an “other.” Self concepts and feelings are
very variable.  This is why groups like PETA and various environmental
groups hurt their own causes.

It is also why telling someone that they are not sure about global warming because they are lower on a developmental scale is not a good idea. 

We have found that the freedom and rights of females in the Islamic
world have gotten worse during the “wars on terror.”  We can only
define ourselves by what we are not.  In opposition to us, people have become more conservative in some of their behaviors.

Actually, this pod was created because I was kicked off the other one for taking part in a thread started by you. We were pointing out that not eating animals was the best thing that anyone could do for the environment.  While that is true, it seemed to produce an us/other dynamic, which made things worse. I wouldn’t doubt that Grey ate more meat that week because of it.


Africa, and other very poor places, have been made much worse by
Western schemes for development. So what we have, empirically, is a
historical situation in which places that are rated as being higher on
the SD scale have made things much worse (recently, not colonially), in
places much lower on the SD scale.

Higher self understanding simply isn’t going to happen in places with resource insecurity.

Recently in Iraq, an anthropologist on an HTT (Human Terrain Team), was
able to empirically show that areas of Baghdad with higher food
insecurity, had concurrently higher levels of violence. Food insecurity
was based on structural and political realities which were often based
on ethic ties.

When the corruption leading to food aid was discovered, and food
security restored, the violence also went down.  So, did people go
from red to blue or orange in a neighborhood in a few weeks?  The causal
relationships involved are really complex.

The current SD model has no external context. It is an academic
abstraction, found within psychology. There is no culture and no
political-economy.


If we add those things then we get a much more realistic understanding
of how subjects are shaped and develop at all levels over time. 

For example:
A recent study from India, by one anthropologist, shows how people
developed an “environmental consciousness” in a very short time. In
this case, over about 3 years, and their views of environmental
protection correlated directly with their position within and physical
distance from political structures enforcing forest protection.


According to the SD model there are more greens in the world in the
U.S. than in most other places, outside Western Europe, but those same
greens built very big houses. So there is a structural issue and there
is also a cultural one as well.  A stigmatization of small mansions for
small families in the suburbs, would pragmatically be a great way
to handle this issue. That trend happened over 50 years, and can be
undone. The stigmatization of smoking happened over about 30 years, to the point where Dallas is now going smoke free as a city in a week.

In fact the recent economic crises is probably one of the best things that could have happened for the environmental movement.  10 years ago, environmental groups could not have predicted the market crash, and were basing their models of trends, imaging they were permanent.  Things were really bleak over the last 8 years, and now there’s great hope.

Crazy thing about getting an world class education. I remember seeing a graph in a text for a medical anthropology reader. In it it showed a graph different communicable diseases, and infections dropped sharply after anti-biotics where developed and used.  On the next page there was the same graph, but this one included data from the 50 year prior to anti-biotics.  What is showed was that when penicillin came around it added a minor contribution to the over all trend, caused by newer practices of hygeine, being practiced by indoor plumming and waching your hands.

There is two lessons in that story.

You brought up the ozone layer, which was huge. I remember that it was everywhere. They replaced one chemical, and like over night the problem went away. Like, WTF?
Sometimes you need to scare the shit out of people to create behavior change, but that change is only short term and it desensitizes people each time.

I can put a gun to someone’s head and make them do whatever I want. But, if I want them to do something after I leave, then I need to sit down, build rapport and talk with them.

Now, I’m just going to mess with you e.  Actually, the more I look into this the more interesting things get.

I’ve already stated that we are and have been coming out of a cooling trend for over a century now, so pointing out the last 20 years on a hundred year graph is pointless. Scale is important here. If we averaged out the earth climate over vast time, then we’d average a temp. more than 10 degree hotter, and the earth was covered with thick forest during a lot of that time. It actually got dryer as it got cooler.
Would we be able to live in that climate?  Actually, yes the odds are in our favor.

e: ” Glaciers around the world are shrinking fast.”

Are they? How do you know?  Because a journalist said so? The same journalists that said you should buy into Bear Sterns about 2 weeks before it was bought for 2 dollars a share?
Let’s explore this issue.
From here: http://www.ask.com/bar?q=glacier+density+in+antarctica&page=1&qsrc=19&zoom=Antarctica+Climate|Facts+about+Antarctica|Antarctica+Maps&ab=9&u=http%3A%2F%2Fphysicsworld.com%2Fcws%2Farticle%2Fprint%2F24767

It is not easy to say which of the three techniques has provided the
best measure of Antarctic mass balance because they each measure the
continent over different scales of distance and time. The volume-change
method suggests that the ice sheet is increasing by 27 ± 29 gigatonnes
per year; the mass-budget method says it is falling by 26  ± 37
gigatonnes per year; while the gravity method indicates it is falling
by 139 ± 73 gigatonnes per year, although much of this difference can
be accounted for by the fact that each technique surveys different
areas of the continent.



Taken together, however, the results suggest that Antarctica could
be making global sea levels rise by as much as 0.1 mm a year or fall by
as much as 0.4 mm a year.

The glacier thing is based on models of what could happen.
Same with the Polar bear thing.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05122008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/bear_baloney_110540.htm

E: “Did we deforest the planet to the extent we have in the last 50 years?”

Oh hell yeah. Europe used to be one huge forest, until neolithic groups of people cut them down.  This is also how a lot of deserts in the Near East came about.
There are actually more trees in the U.S. now than 50 years ago. The issue isn’t really trees, but biodiversity. 

By making things simple, and a matter of over all numbers, the real issue of biodiversity is completely ignored. 

Every rain forest on earth is a human creation, so the solution to saving the rain forests is to protect indigenous land rights. You have to keep people in the forests. Without complex technologies.

Northern environmentalists have been responsible for pushing people out of protected forests, and have really fucked things up.

e: “Like I said before, we can let the experiment run out and know for sure
or we can act. We each make that decision daily (clued in or not).”

We cannot make any such decision without proper and timely information.  No one automatically know all of the current facts they need to make truly good decisions.
I mean besides the fact that a civic is better than a hummer.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Hi Rick

This got me thinking: “The current SD model has no external context. It is an academic abstraction, found within psychology. There is no culture and no
political-economy.”

Thanks for stimulating the grey cells :-)

James

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

E: “I am not selling anything nor do I need anyone else to act like me.”

Yes you are and do. You want people to do what you have done. You
explicitly state that if more people do that, then we could be saved.

Really Rick I am not. I am just sharing a perspective. I fully understand that my perspective cannot be the Truth. I also 100% understand that my subjective perspective has been conditioned by internal structural development and external environmental pressures. This has molded my values to make me act the way I do.

The point that you are not getting is that there are real structural
issues involved here, and the complexity of information that people
have to deal with.  There is an entire political-economic field that is
ignored when you say that this is an issue of internal development.
You are able to do with your building what you do, because you can.
You have an economic benefit and you simply can.  From just a business
stand-point you’d be foolish to not invest in new technology.

Yes, I am just explaining my rational and actions. Maybe that inspires someone else to buy some insulation for their attic or look on the one link I provided and build a $200 do-it-yourself heat box… whatever. We all do what we can, like you say below.

–

“If you understand the argument and do nothing, it seems you are not
enacting a global understanding i.e. you don’t value the earth as a
whole to change the way you live.”

Again, that is a really pretentious thing to say.  We all do what we
can. I’m a renter in an apartment, not the owner of a 20,000 sq ft.
building.  Of course, you mean that we do what we can, but “what we
can,” can be very limited.

That’s OK. In the same way a lot of a little adds to the crisis. A lot of little change can change the crisis. Even what I am doing is nothing compared to what a large company or the government can do. But people will see the equipment on our roof and we will talk it up and maybe increase the adoption of the technology in some small way.

People can be confused as well.

That’s OK too.

–

In group/out group definitions are continuously redefined, renegotiated
and renewed.  The best way to get someone to be against something you
are for is to define them as an “other.” Self concepts and feelings are
very variable.  This is why groups like PETA and various environmental
groups hurt their own causes.

Maybe they do maybe they don’t. Maybe they are a lightning rod to get the ideas into public discourse. Maybe this is how humans learn…slowly, painstakingly and argumentatively.

It is also why telling someone that they are not sure about global warming because they are lower on a developmental scale is not a good idea. 

This all started because I told a young entrepreneur how to sell to his prospective customers. He needs to understand the vmeme narratives people enact. If he can do that he will close more deals and help the green economy, etc. I did not suggest to him to tell his potential customers or his friends that they are losers because they are lower on a developmental scale of values. I might say that to you because we are good old friends and can tolerate each other’s bluntness. Unless you are getting soft of course? :-)

–

We have found that the freedom and rights of females in the Islamic
world have gotten worse during the “wars on terror.”  We can only
define ourselves by what we are not.  In opposition to us, people have become more conservative in some of their behaviors.
 
Actually, this pod was created because I was kicked off the other one for taking part in a thread started by you. We were pointing out that not eating animals was the best thing that anyone could do for the environment.  While that is true, it seemed to produce an us/other dynamic, which made things worse. I wouldn’t doubt that Grey ate more meat that week because of it.

For me, anything that sheds light is a good thing. Even if some don’t like what they see and there are “consequences”. I did not mind sacrificing you to make a point. :-)

–

Africa, and other very poor places, have been made much worse by
Western schemes for development. So what we have, empirically, is a
historical situation in which places that are rated as being higher on
the SD scale have made things much worse (recently, not colonially), in
places much lower on the SD scale.
 
Higher self understanding simply isn’t going to happen in places with resource insecurity.

It is not impossible but it is made more difficult.

Recently in Iraq, an anthropologist on an HTT (Human Terrain Team), was
able to empirically show that areas of Baghdad with higher food
insecurity, had concurrently higher levels of violence. Food insecurity
was based on structural and political realities which were often based
on ethic ties.
When the corruption leading to food aid was discovered, and food
security restored, the violence also went down.  So, did people go
from red to blue or orange in a neighborhood in a few weeks?  The causal
relationships involved are really complex.

SD claims that the external conditions drive upward and downward movement along the spiral until 2nd tier is reached. Then the external environmental effects do not “control” one’s values do the degree they did in first tier. One’s existential angst has been mitigated to a large degree.

The current SD model has no external context. It is an academic
abstraction, found within psychology. There is no culture and no
political-economy.

It is laid out that way but maybe take a look at how Don Beck has applied it and is applying it in large scale ways.

If we add those things then we get a much more realistic understanding
of how subjects are shaped and develop at all levels over time. 

Sure I think this could be called applied SD.

For example:
A recent study from India, by one anthropologist, shows how people
developed an “environmental consciousness” in a very short time. In
this case, over about 3 years, and their views of environmental
protection correlated directly with their position within and physical
distance from political structures enforcing forest protection.

According to the SD model there are more greens in the world in the
U.S. than in most other places, outside Western Europe, but those same
greens built very big houses. So there is a structural issue and there
is also a cultural one as well. 

Right so what came before Green is Orange and that would be the value that goes hand in hand with big houses. So a person can have a ORANGE/green, orange/GREEN, GREEN/yellow or green/YELLOW values and so maybe the ones closer to ORANGE would want the big house and fast cars, etc.

A stigmatization of small mansions for
small families in the suburbs, would pragmatically be a great way
to handle this issue. That trend happened over 50 years, and can be
undone. The stigmatization of smoking happened over about 30 years, to the point where Dallas is now going smoke free as a city in a week.

Sure or create a straight up Orange competition to see who could have the biggest house with the lowest energy bills i.e. get them to make their house more energy efficient. They spend their cash on an industry that needs money to grow. The status symbol becomes arrays of evac tubes and photovoltaics on the roof of a McMansion.

In fact the recent economic crises is probably one of the best things that could have happened for the environmental movement.  10 years ago, environmental groups could not have predicted the market crash, and were basing their models of trends, imaging they were permanent.  Things were really bleak over the last 8 years, and now there’s great hope.

I agree. We need to look at energy vs GDP and become more efficient. Less cash spent on energy means more cash for other things like healthcare, etc.

You brought up the ozone layer, which was huge. I remember that it was everywhere. They replaced one chemical, and like over night the problem went away. Like, WTF?

CFC’s are super pernicious to ozone. I think it is like one CFC molecule can destroy 10,000’s of ozone molecules.

Now, I’m just going to mess with you e.  Actually, the more I look into this the more interesting things get.
I’ve already stated that we are and have been coming out of a cooling trend for over a century now, so pointing out the last 20 years on a hundred year graph is pointless. Scale is important here. If we averaged out the earth climate over vast time, then we’d average a temp. more than 10 degree hotter, and the earth was covered with thick forest during a lot of that time. It actually got dryer as it got cooler.
Would we be able to live in that climate?  Actually, yes the odds are in our favor.

Look I understand that there are fluctuations. What caused those? In the past we obviously didn’t. But are we now? Are our actions collectively en masse large enough because there are now billions of us causing harmful climatic changes. I really don’t know but I don’t need 100% surety to act especially if the actions I take help the economy etc. I see a win-win, now if it turns out to be a tie-win. I am OK with that too. Again, what is the downside buddy?

-

e: ” Glaciers around the world are shrinking fast.”

Are they? How do you know? 

I have seen it first hand hiking in the mountains. There will be a picture of a glacier from 100 years ago in the Ranger station. I took some pictures and compared. The glacier is half gone. Here are some more pictures. Maybe they are all fabricated for political/economic reasons. Maybe the glaciers move this way every 500 years. I do know that greenhouse gases trap heat which increases the speed at which the glaciers melt.
-

E: “Did we deforest the planet to the extent we have in the last 50 years?”

Oh hell yeah. Europe used to be one huge forest, until neolithic groups of people cut them down.  This is also how a lot of deserts in the Near East came about.

There are actually more trees in the U.S. now than 50 years ago. The issue isn’t really trees, but biodiversity. 
By making things simple, and a matter of over all numbers, the real issue of biodiversity is completely ignored. 
Every rain forest on earth is a human creation, so the solution to saving the rain forests is to protect indigenous land rights. You have to keep people in the forests. Without complex technologies.

Agreed but I don’t quite get that we created rain forests? We can add as many topics to the conversation of Environment and Economy. But maybe Biodiversity should be treated by itself as a subset of the Environment?

Northern environmentalists have been responsible for pushing people out of protected forests, and have really fucked things up.

Agreed. I am a conservationist not a preservationist. More people have to care for the land and use it wisely then not use it at all. Where we mountain bike, there are many folks that have a stake in the trail system. Horse back riders, hikers, mtn bikers. At first we did not all get along. The mtn bikers scared the horses and hikers. The horse riders and hikers thought they owned the trails because they were there first.  But we have come to realize that if we come together more and exert a collective political might, then we can keep the land developers out.


e: “Like I said before, we can let the experiment run out and know for sure
or we can act. We each make that decision daily (clued in or not).”

We cannot make any such decision without proper and timely information.  No one automatically know all of the current facts they need to make truly good decisions.
I mean besides the fact that a civic is better than a hummer.

Right and SD claims that as external environmental factors change, that forces people to adapt. That adaption has been to greater complexities of thought with a larger concern for others, at least that is the case for those people that have survived.

–

BTW Here is a good interview from Yesterday’s Charlie Rose with Steven Chu, United States Secretary of Energy about these topics.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10138

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Wow, with these long posts of our, no one is going to read this stuff.
Of course, we fundamentally agree with each other, and I don't think that was in doubt. That's what allowed me to play devils advocate, something I really love to do, and know that you would see it for what it was.

I don't really have anything to comment of until here:

e: “This all started because I told a young entrepreneur how to sell to his prospective customers.”

Right, and my point was that if he wants to sell anything to anyone, he has to learn how to actively listen to people. Walking into a situation with a deductive model, isn't the right answer.
I've said it before; SD is only helpful when interacting with others in helping produce compassion from understanding. When you can understand what is going on, then you can interact more fluidly and compassionately.

This is actually also the cornerstone of Neuro-Linguistic Programing.

The other thing to realize is that while it works, just like acupuncture, it works whether you are right about what is going on or not; that is, studies show that it doesn't matter where you put the needles.  Here we are looking at a change in the salesman, but most people don't get that. They think that they have the tools to change the “other.”
Directly shaping the concepts and subjectivity of others requires a lot more time, planning and information.

Example:
This last weekend I was training with the 345th psyop co., one of the most experienced and highspeed special ops. reserve units in the country.  One of the training scenarios was negotiating a contract for airtime with a radio station in Afghanistan and not getting taken for a ride, because these Pashtun warlords are not stupid people.
One of the hidden lessons in all of these senerios, is that while you have to get a base line for the culture, and traditions of a group before you deal with them, there is still a great deal of variability within groups. Things like class and  ethicity are terrible predictors of individual behavior and personality.

SD is no different. According to SD, demographic characteristics, are in part determined by a person's center of gravity, and in part their center of gravity is determined by these characteristics.  The reality is the situation is always more complicated.  So the first thing you have to do is talk and listen to people. 

The worst thing a new psyoper can do is to think, “ok, I've been trained in Pashtun culture, so I need to use this strategy.” 

We have to have real curiosity. It is amazing how much people want to explain themselves and their ideas to you. If you just ask why like, “what is is about this whole global warming thing that you doubt?” or, “that is really interesting, I only have one wife, but you have 6, tell me about that,” then people will tell you what you need to know.

So, while SD can increase of compassion (good), it can also decrease of curiosity (bad).

In Integral there is no true explinatory principle behind internal development empirically. In SD, Clare Graves thought that it was actual brain structures that were activated by existentual reality.  One question screws that up: how did the structure develop without the situation and how did the situation develop without the structure?  The fractle nature of the universe helps us understand how this could happen, but we can see that SD is still completely void of processes beyond, “then a new existential situation is encountered, activating…”
As a social scientist, I need something more inductive and empircal that that. That is a psychologist with a really bad and old understanding of anthropology.

A good example of what I'm saying:

Right so what came before Green is Orange and that would be the value
that goes hand in hand with big houses. So a person can have a
ORANGE/green, orange/GREEN, GREEN/yellow or green/YELLOW values and so
maybe the ones closer to ORANGE would want the big house and fast cars,
etc.

There are all these combinations in both Europe, Japan, China, etc…, but you don't see such large houses for small families. To ignore the political economy, geography, and culture is to be blind. Economists think they can study a “market” without studying people, and that caused the “market” to collapse.

Look I understand that there are fluctuations. What caused those? In
the past we obviously didn’t. But are we now? Are our actions
collectively en masse large enough because there are now billions of us
causing harmful climatic changes.

Those are the right questions. Another question to ask is if there is such a thing as a single “global climate,” beyond computer models.
Two days ago, the BBC kept announcing a finding by a few scientists, that stated,

“If average global temperatures go up 3 degrees, over an extended people of time (100 years), then there is the posibility that the Amazonian rainforest could turn into a desert.”

There are a lot of ifs in that statement. The fact that this was based on a single computer generated model, on top of the ifs, was mentioned in passing. This science is based on gathering and interpreting data to come to a pre-determined conclusion.  No one has been able to produce a concept of true, globality like climate scientists have.
The data seems to show that we are agrivating and exagerating a natural process of climate variation. I mean, like you say, carbon in the atmostphere helps warm the planet and that is going to interact with these processes in some way; probably in devistating ways.
Science is marketed in a way that makes it seem like we know more than we do and have more control than we do. Journalists aren't trained in science, so they don't understand the process of theory building. More than that they really don't understand funding cycles, or the extreme politics involved in getting grants and getting published. I left academia and I am now in an applied program.

This article helps explain this process better than I can:

http://www.ask.com/bar?q=global+warming+skeptics&page=1&qsrc=145&ab=3&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reason.com%2Fnews%2Fshow%2F34939.html

Anyway, the point of all this is that you cannot separate public opinion from the politics.

This whole thing is really interesting, becasue I went into this argument talking about how and why people believe things that they don't know from direct experience, but completely believing that global warming was a current fact. The more I actually look into this, the more messy and interesting it gets.

I have seen it first hand hiking in the mountains. There will be a
picture of a glacier from 100 years ago in the Ranger station. I took
some pictures and compared. The glacier is half gone.

I didn't know that the glacier both always existed and had a right to always exist in the future. North America was once covered by glaciers that don't exist anymore.

Agreed but I don’t quite get that we created rain forests?

I should say, rainforests in their present existence. Forests existed before people, but rainforests by and large are like green deserts.  They don't support life that doesn't have rather specific niches, and could never support humans alone.
Humans have shaped them, and every other environment, over time to increase their biodiversity in a way that better supports people.  If we like rainforests and would like to sustain them the way they are, then we have to allow the people that shaped them into what they are contiune to do what they do.  We really don't know what form they will take with no people.

Right and SD claims that as external environmental factors change, that forces people to adapt.

Actually, like I state, SD states that is doesn't force people to adapt, but rather it causes pre-existing structures in the brain to become activated.  Adaptation only works with what already exists. You cannot will a biological change.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: “This all started because I told a young entrepreneur how to sell to his prospective customers.”

Right, and my point was that if he wants to sell anything to anyone, he has to learn how to actively listen to people. Walking into a situation with a deductive model, isn't the right answer. I've said it before; SD is only helpful when interacting with others in helping produce compassion from understanding. When you can understand what is going on, then you can interact more fluidly and compassionately.
 

Look the stage and the environmental conditions have been set. If he gets a meeting with someone, then he is going to get objections he has to overcome in order to close the deal. Those objections will be clustered around a limited number of vmemes. Let's say you are an owner of a building. Can you give me one legitimate objection that does not fall under first or second tier value memes? Now if he has all the “answers” going into a meeting, then he can interact, listen and deal with the persons objections in a language they will understand in a more relaxed easy going fashion. He can then focus on communication and not what is being communicated in a language the other person can actually hear and understand. If he can discern where they are coming from, then he can connect at that level and get the person to buy in to what he is selling.
–

In Integral there is no true explinatory principle behind internal development empirically. In SD, Clare Graves thought that it was actual brain structures that were activated by existentual reality. One question screws that up: how did the structure develop without the situation and how did the situation develop without the structure? The fractle nature of the universe helps us understand how this could happen, but we can see that SD is still completely void of processes beyond, “then a new existential situation is encountered, activating…”


They co-emerge or tetra enact of course. Quick question. Have you read Spiral Dynamics?

As a social scientist, I need something more inductive and empircal that that. That is a psychologist with a really bad and old understanding of anthropology.
 
A good example of what I'm saying:
“Right so what came before Green is Orange and that would be the value
that goes hand in hand with big houses. So a person can have a
ORANGE/green, orange/GREEN, GREEN/yellow or green/YELLOW values and so maybe the ones closer to ORANGE would want the big house and fast cars, etc.”

There are all these combinations in both Europe, Japan, China, etc…, but you don't see such large houses for small families. To ignore the political economy, geography, and culture is to be blind.
 

I would say the same values are in all cultures but they manifest differently dependent on right quadrant environmental factors. Give me one value from any culture that does not fall within first or second tier value memes.
–
“Look I understand that there are fluctuations. What caused those? In
the past we obviously didn’t. But are we now? Are our actions
collectively en masse large enough because there are now billions of us
causing harmful climatic changes.”

Those are the right questions. Another question to ask is if there is such a thing as a single “global climate,” beyond computer models.
 
Is there more than one earth they are trying to model? I see one global climate system comprised of internal and external variables. We have been unknowingly manipulating some internal variables due to the amount of humans inhabiting the planet. So we need to get people to understand that and more imprtantly feel that. My wife's cousin is finishing up her PHD in Environmental Engineering. She feels the only way out is thru government regulation. She feels people won't change. I say they won't change because they are not at a level that they value the planet as a whole i.e. they are still in first tier.

The data seems to show that we are agrivating and exagerating a natural process of climate variation. I mean, like you say, carbon in the atmostphere helps warm the planet and that is going to interact with these processes in some way; probably in devistating ways.

 

So what are you arguing about?
–
e: ” Glaciers around the world are shrinking fast.”

Are they? How do you know?

“I have seen it first hand hiking in the mountains. There will be a
picture of a glacier from 100 years ago in the Ranger station. I took
some pictures and compared. The glacier is half gone.”

I didn't know that the glacier both always existed and had a right to always exist in the future. North America was once covered by glaciers that don't exist anymore.
 
Has man ever inhabited a planet without glaciers? So you are in favor of letting the experiment run out and do nothing? You are in favor of letting all the glaciers melt and so the people that rely on water half the year from glacier melt would drink what…their yak’s urine? Do you think it a good thing to have the Yangtze and the Ganges run dry half the year?

–
“Right and SD claims that as external environmental factors change, that forces people to adapt.”

Actually, like I state, SD states that is doesn't force people to adapt, but rather it causes pre-existing structures in the brain to become activated. Adaptation only works with what already exists. You cannot will a biological change.


I don't recall this “pre-existing structures in the brain” talk in Spiral Dynamics.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

I'm real busy getting ready for a trip tomorrow morning to Santa Fe for the annual, Society for Applied Anthropology Society.  Anyway, so I'm just gonna clear one thing up.

e: “I don't recall this “pre-existing structures in the brain” talk in Spiral Dynamics.”

It isn't Spiral Dynamics, its in Clare Graves source work, which is what SD is based on. I love to read source work, because I know how easy it is to use citing to make a point.
When I write a paper I often think about what I want to say and then I think about who I can cite to give what I say authority. I'm pretty sure that's what most people do after a certain point of experience and study.

Ok, one more thing real quick:

e: “My wife's cousin is finishing up her PHD in Environmental Engineering.
She feels the only way out is thru government regulation. She feels
people won't change.”

People have no choice but to change, it's how they change that is the rub.
If government is really just a formal, bureaucratic way of organizing a lot of people, then changing regulation is changing people.
I think this is what people don't get. The economy, government, capitalism, or whatever, are just cultural discourses playing themselves out in daily practice.
They are inventions of our imaginations carried out in our practices, and as such change as our imaginations of the world change.

So, an applied SD (I like the term) would move beyond the theoretical and help to produce the kind of cognitive dissonance that comes about when the upper limits of one way of imagining the world to be come into stark contrast with the world one lives in. 

Oh, BTW, retrofitting or building a structure with efficient, green technology is a no brainer in the U.S. today. It doesn't require any talk about the environment at all.
It's a matter of trust. Does the person trust that you are honest and right that they will save money and do better in the long term.  To gain someone's trust and allay their fears, you have to listen to them.




 

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

I'm real busy getting ready for a trip tomorrow morning to Santa Fe for the annual, Society for Applied Anthropology Society. 

http://www.sfaa.net/sfaa2009.html
Looks interesting. I was on a retreat just outside Santa Fe a few years ago, really beautiful landscape. Did you sign up for any tours? Report back with any cool anthro stuff.

–

e: “I don't recall this “pre-existing structures in the brain” talk in Spiral Dynamics.”

It isn't Spiral Dynamics, its in Clare Graves source work, which is what SD is based on. I love to read source work, because I know how easy it is to use citing to make a point.
 
So you have not read SD? How many of Wilber’s books have you read cover to cover? I am only asking because your welcomed criticisms would be a bit more accurate if you actually read the material you are criticizing. :-)

–

e: “My wife's cousin is finishing up her PHD in Environmental Engineering.
She feels the only way out is thru government regulation. She feels
people won't change.”

People have no choice but to change, it's how they change that is the rub.  If government is really just a formal, bureaucratic way of organizing a lot of people, then changing regulation is changing people.

You are only changing people’s behavior by enacting laws. The change from within, the emotional buy-in, is governed by what a person values.
 
I think this is what people don't get. The economy, government, capitalism, or whatever, are just cultural discourses playing themselves out in daily practice.
They are inventions of our imaginations carried out in our practices, and as such change as our imaginations of the world change.

Agreed and wonderful insights. But again, imagination is from within. You imagine a “better” future based in part on what you currently value.

So, an applied SD (I like the term) would move beyond the theoretical and help to produce the kind of cognitive dissonance that comes about when the upper limits of one way of imagining the world to be come into stark contrast with the world one lives in. 

Yep but the cognitive dissonance is par for the course. Just wait around long enough and the situation is going to change. Within this thread, do we have to wait and actually see the glaciers all melt to produce the cognitive dissonance? Do I actually have to get lung cancer to quit smoking?

Oh, BTW, retrofitting or building a structure with efficient, green technology is a no brainer in the U.S. today. It doesn't require any talk about the environment at all.
It's a matter of trust. Does the person trust that you are honest and right that they will save money and do better in the long term.  To gain someone's trust and allay their fears, you have to listen to them…
 
and talk to them in a language they can understand i.e. in line with their values. Otherwise there is no connection and no sale. Unless they have already convinced themselves you have what they need/want.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: “So you have not read SD? How many of Wilber’s books have you read cover
to cover? I am only asking because your welcomed criticisms would be a
bit more accurate if you actually read the material you are
criticizing. :-)”

I've read 4 cover to cover, and a Brief History of Everything about 3 times. The last one was, “A Theory of Everything.” I noticed that after 4 I wasn't taking in any new information. Ken tends to say the same thing in different ways.  Up from Eden was really conjectual, like reading Freud talk about mythic characters or Jung about Archetypes.  I know that there have been upgrades to Integral in the last few years, but I haven't seen any of it based on empiric, cross-cultural evidence outside of thought experiements or labs. If you know of something then please let me know, honestly. Because if I even thought of putting any of it in a posistion paper, I'd get a lot of heat.

I haven't read SD cover to cover, just went through it to see if it had anything new, but I've read journal articles and other writings from Don Beck and Clare Graves. I was suprised that Clare Graves only has 2 journal articles that I could access. 
I've also written back and forth with Natacha Todovoric (formally, I've never met any of them). She always writes from her blackberry from some speaking engagement. I've been assured that there are “many” studies proving the tenents, but nothing specific.  I was told that a sociology graduate student was using SD in a disertation, but nothing specific.

Ok, gotta go. I'll let you know how things were.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: ” Report back with any cool anthro stuff.”

Actually, there was a lot of networking going on. There was also two panels on development, environmental justice and tourism in an environment of global warming.
There were papers and discussions about how to shape arguments and data in a way that motivates positive behavior among different kinds of actors, like policy makers.
A few papers on how the carbon markets work. I took a workshop on understanding how policy is made and how to influence it, and one on how to use agent-based modeling programs; very interesting stuff.  They brought in people that were responsible for the Smoke Free Arizona campaign and policy.  They didn't say it, but it was obvious from everything they said that they were pushing smoking bans as a back door way to get people to stop smoking without actually making it illegal. This helped me to see the inner workings of processes that I'm talking about here.
There was also a bunch of stuff concerning military and intelligence anthropologists.  Oh, and I can't forget that there was one proto-typical woman from the Bay Area preaching in a presentation about a new power plant planned for the Bay Area. It was really bad. I mean it wasn't scholarship, it was just a kind of bad journalism. She was what Ken talk about when he talks about MGM.
You don't find a lot of people like that in Texas, which helps me to understand how the MGM label came about.

I also had a long chat with an ecologist that decided to become an anthropologist. I was talking with him about global warming, and how computer models are derived (he was also in the agent-based modeling workshop).  He confirmed what I thought from studying this issue. That in order for ecologists to be absolutely certain about the effects of global warming and the effects of green house gases over the next hundred years, they'd need about 100 earths to experiment on, pumping carbon dioxide in each of them, more sensors monitoring each than they currently do.  But, that we currently know enough now to warrant cautionary policy changes for the public good.

The problem is that it is presented as though we have absolute knowledge. This produces a problem with credibility. Which leads me to something else I learned relevant to this issue, and in line with what I'm trying to say.

There was a team there, and a guy who worked for the government on anti-drug and rehab research. Using various computer models and ethnographic research over 40 years, they were able to determine how one drug becomes successful like tobacco or heroin, while others come and go in trends, like crack.

One of the parts of this process is a process of story telling among people, beginning with the people in social networks that try things first and start trends. It is these “drug narratives” that correspond to “drug attitudes of permissiveness.”  With every drug there are good stories and there are bad ones, but there are some drugs where the good or bad out weigh each other.  They found that if they could harness these “bad stories,” which developed naturally within a drug taking community, they would be much more successful in anti-drug campaigns. The problem they said, was that not all drugs are the same, and in order to have any credibility, they'd have to mix in some aspects of the “good stories” in with the bad, even if there was more bad than good, otherwise people would reject the messages as being not credible.
The official U.S. policy is no one can say anything positive about an illegal drug. The first time you use heroin you will die, or smoke weed you'll drop out of school. One of the guys got so frustrated with this policy that he quit after over 30 years.

This is pretty much what I'm saying about how issues are painted as though there is one and only one side and reality to the truth of some issue. All climate change stories, and climate change is a cultural construct like everything else, are extreme and equally bad. People get confused, because if everything they do is equally bad, like having to get to work or heating their homes in the winter, then nothing gets done. 
The smoking ban people knew they couldn't get tobacco itself banned, so they banned it in public places and made it so inconvenient for people to smoke that it accomplished what the DEA hasn't been able to do.

Tobacco takes a very long time to kill someone, if it ever does directly, and global warming is not an obvious fact right now (oceans are flooding the coast yet), and the problem to creating change for either seems to come from this same cause. So perhaps the way to solve one is the same for the other.

Small, incremental, local change that makes things inconvenient slowly, rather than massive macro-level change, or individual free choice.

The high gas prices the last 3 years have probably done more for reducing green house gases than All Gore's film.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

That in order for ecologists to be absolutely certain about the effects of global warming and the effects of green house gases over the next hundred years, they'd need about 100 earths to experiment on, pumping carbon dioxide in each of them, more sensors monitoring each than they currently do.  But, that we currently know enough now to warrant cautionary policy changes for the public good.


 


Agreed

The problem is that it is presented as though we have absolute knowledge. This produces a problem with credibility. Which leads me to something else I learned relevant to this issue, and in line with what I'm trying to say.


 


I hear you but should Al Gore have watered down his message? 'Well we kinda think this is happening so if you want to, no rush now, I mean if you have the time and it is not too big of an inconvenience, you may want to turn your heat down a degree or two'.



This is pretty much what I'm saying about how issues are painted as though there is one and only one side and reality to the truth of some issue. All climate change stories, and climate change is a cultural construct like everything else, are extreme and equally bad. People get confused, because if everything they do is equally bad, like having to get to work or heating their homes in the winter, then nothing gets done. 
The smoking ban people knew they couldn't get tobacco itself banned, so they banned it in public places and made it so inconvenient for people to smoke that it accomplished what the DEA hasn't been able to do.




Again I hear you but there is an aspect of global warming that is not just cultural. Like acid rain, it has an effect outside of Lower Left culture and impacts the Lower Right in which humans are not the only effected agents. Smoking and drug use are a human problem with ramifications pretty much confined to human culture and society (local crop and land issues notwithstanding) but climate change is a global problem beyond clutural rammifications.



Tobacco takes a very long time to kill someone, if it ever does directly, and global warming is not an obvious fact right now (oceans are flooding the coast yet), and the problem to creating change for either seems to come from this same cause. So perhaps the way to solve one is the same for the other.

Small, incremental, local change that makes things inconvenient slowly, rather than massive macro-level change, or individual free choice.


 


Maybe we can do a bit of both. Force big business to change via legislation and incentives and offer individuals incentives. They pretty much banned CFC’s in AC units world wide without much to do. I don’t see why we can’t mandate change. I mean we are not suggesting we turn off people’s heat or AC, etc. The problem we have is we don’t know how much time we have to cross a tipping point where we will not be able to go back.

The high gas prices the last 3 years have probably done more for reducing green house gases than All Gore's film.


 


That and the bad economy cut the demand for oil worldwide. So why not start the economy back up with green initiatives. It makes great sense and solves at least 2 problems.


 
- 
 


Thanks for the report! I have really enjoyed these forays into the lower left and right quadrants. I took a few sociology classes in undergrad and used to chat with this one professor after class. He thought I was a sociology major and was a bit shocked when he found out I was an engineering student.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Cool. I knew we'd come closer to the center and it always fascinates me to witness the process.

There is actually a lot I have to write about this whole thing. One thing I think is crucial is that while your right that cultural constructs have effects beyond culture, there is no way to make changes outside culture. I.e., if you want to reduce acid rain you have to deal with human behavioral change, so you have to understand how policy is made, how culture changes, etc…

As an engineer you can design amazing stuff, but it is culture that decides if the technology exists, if you have the resources, if previous concepts are available for you to imagine something, etc…

The current over-emphasis on the upper quadrants is an issue for me, because of my background.
I'll list just one more thought.

Escobar, an anthro., has written extensively about how a global market economic discourse is a cultural construct. He positions it in a historical political-economy, and shows how it renders other economic discourse invisible by usurping the hegemonic authority to speak for various economic structures.
One of his main points is that there is a market economy for economists to study because a rational, economic discourse has permiated and shaped both society and culture to the point that one exists and seems both natural and inevitable.

So, it isn't that economics came about becasue something natural called the market economy developed in the evolution of man, but that a cultural discourse shaped it's emmergence over time and gave the people that helped produce it something to study. He then points to the discourse of development and development economists. We can see in historical time where and when current development discourses first emerged in the last century.

So, how do we know that an integral discourse operates any differently, espeically without more empiric research?

For example, Anna Tsing, has shown in how a “nature lovers” cultural discourse came about and was popularized by John Muir in the U.S. She then shows how this discourse is linked to concepts and discourses of “cosmopolitanism.”  She shows how this nature lovers (green) discourse comes about and exists in different forms depending where it is expressed, and by whom. It is linked to people's various imaginings and invocations of the cosmopolitan.

It is very possible that our interpretation of processes of cultural change are rooted in a discourse of progress which has also rendered social and cultural forms existant for us to interpret in the first place.

what do you think?

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Cool. I knew we'd come closer to the center and it always fascinates me to witness the process.

We are good friends and listen to each other. Besides, I am always living in the middle…so really I was just waiting for you to come around. :-)

There is actually a lot I have to write about this whole thing. One thing I think is crucial is that while your right that cultural constructs have effects beyond culture, there is no way to make changes outside culture. I.e., if you want to reduce acid rain you have to deal with human behavioral change, so you have to understand how policy is made, how culture changes, etc…

Agreed

As an engineer you can design amazing stuff, but it is culture that decides if the technology exists, if you have the resources, if previous concepts are available for you to imagine something, etc…

Agreed. BTW I was a C-student in engineering, not for lack of ability but boredom. I was more interested in philosophy at that time.

The current over-emphasis on the upper quadrants is an issue for me, because of my background.
I'll list just one more thought.
Escobar, an anthro., has written extensively about how a global market economic discourse is a cultural construct.

Within AQAL I would say a global market economy began to arise after nation states arose. I would place it in the LR (the way societies organize). I would say that it co-arises with cultural constructs and not within them i.e. economies are not within the LL. Otherwise the global market economy transcends any one culture and that is not the case, it is more a linking of disparate economies that allow the transfer of goods and services from one society to another.

So, it isn't that economics came about becasue something natural called the market economy developed in the evolution of man, but that a cultural discourse shaped it's emmergence over time and gave the people that helped produce it something to study. He then points to the discourse of development and development economists. We can see in historical time where and when current development discourses first emerged in the last century.
So, how do we know that an integral discourse operates any differently, espeically without more empiric research?


This has been an axe of yours to grind for awhile now. I think you are being a little too demanding on the theory. It is after all a rather ambitious endeavor, to unify all fields of knowledge throughout all of history. So, yeah it is going to take some time to prove…if ever.

For example, Anna Tsing, has shown in how a “nature lovers” cultural discourse came about and was popularized by John Muir in the U.S. She then shows how this discourse is linked to concepts and discourses of “cosmopolitanism.”  She shows how this nature lovers (green) discourse comes about and exists in different forms depending where it is expressed, and by whom. It is linked to people's various imaginings and invocations of the cosmopolitan.

Sure this is a orange/green version of a respect or recognition of the importance of the environment and the yearning to live in harmony with it. But that love or respect can be recognized at any time and level and need not be limited or defined solely as cosmopolitan. Here are a few quotes from Chief Seattle:
“Every part of all this soil is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hollowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. The very dust you now stand on responds more willingly to their footsteps than to yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.”
“The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things are the same breath - the animals, the trees, the man.”


It is very possible that our interpretation of processes of cultural change are rooted in a discourse of progress which has also rendered social and cultural forms existant for us to interpret in the first place.

I think it undeniable that thought has gotten more complex and inclusive in it’s trajection towards the infinite.

–

Was in Davis California and drove this electric car.


Took this snap too of a electric car only parking space with a “free” charging station. Pretty cool huh?! So you see we can invest in sustainable energy without it even being real yet. That is, create the infrastructure and when the next big invention comes up i.e. energy via photosynthesis of algae, etc., just plug the energy into the infrastructure grid. Think about it, all the money that is used up for lighting and fuel…we could take that cash and pay people to maintain and build the grid. A more sustainable green economy. I think Obama gets it!

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

http://www.daviselectriccars.com/

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Thanks e

Some cool environmental / new energy ideas, plus some hard research and development, going on here too:

http://science.discovery.com/video/ecopolis.html
(Event though the clips here are too short and rather superficial, the full videos give more detailed info on the research.)


And this guy Willie Smits gets my vote for integrating the financial, the legal, the biological, the social, even the climatic, in creating startling real world results in the Indonesian jungle

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html
(I like the way he almost berates the TED crowd for their applause early on in his talk.)

James

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: “So you see we can invest in sustainable energy without it even being
real yet. That is, create the infrastructure and when the next big
invention comes up i.e. energy via photosynthesis of algae, etc., just
plug the energy into the infrastructure grid.”

In order to do that you have to have a very good understanding of how policy is made and how policy makers receive information and which forms of information they value.
You also have to envision what something would look like with the proper economy of scale. How many solar panels would you need, how much power would they produce, who would get them, etc…
Corn based ethanol was easy, because it was politically, economically and culturally viable for Americans.  So, we went about producing it in quantity and now there are serious issues of food price increases, food insecurity with harder to get cooking oil which is a necessary high calorie item in food insecure areas, a loss of biodiversity with massive mono-cropping for fuel, etc…

Such solutions are easy on a small scale and among those with a lot of extra income, but are they feasible on a larger scale?  Where would we get the electricity for all the cars without nuclear power?  Where are you gonna build wind farms?
For example, in Mexico people are being kicked off their land to make room for wind farms that supply power to the U.S.  This issue cannot be dealt with without the political economy and ecology understood properly, which we need to look into.  Nothing is ever just a matter of something being available or feasible and therefore easily done or politically possible.

If we melt the Ice caps we will submerge major coastal cities. We have to ask ourselves what that means. I mean we can rebuild a city.  We have to view how we understand that in terms of our situatedness in the world.  Why is the loss of NYC or Hong Kong an unimaginable tragedy to us that we have to do something about right now, yet the famines and genocides that we create in Africa something of less importance?  Will it matter to someone starving in the Desert whether Miami is underwater?  What does mean to have a stable climate, and why do we think a climate is supposed to be stable?
We have to understand how people understand and interpret symbols, behavior and material culture in connected ways, if you want to influence change.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Great stuff James!! I used to read Popular Science as a kid and have always loved these sort of promising technologies. The water sewage treatment piece reminded me of this gadget. My buddy had one on a recent hiking trip and it works great (some of the reviews were negative). I thought immediately to use it in Asia. You can then drink the local water without much to do and not have to buy plastic etc. (Although I would still carry drops if you were going camping etc.)

Willie Smits should get a Noble Prize!! Coolest thing I have seen in a long time. And all from a simple feeling of compassion. It is amazing when the heart and mind link up…so great to see!

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: “This has been an axe of yours to grind for awhile now. I think you are
being a little too demanding on the theory. It is after all a rather
ambitious endeavor, to unify all fields of knowledge throughout all of
history.”

I would have to call that academic laziness. I am not subjecting this theory to any more rigor that I would any other. That's the whole point of theory building. You are supposed to attack them, it's an adversarial system. You attack them, they hold up and they are therefore strengthened. What makes a theory solid is nothing more than it's longevity. That's it.  I'm just smelting the gold and checking its purity.

Integral works because it is so loose and broad based. When we are
sitting from the vantage point of our own culture these structures seem
obvious, because they are played out on our t.v.'s and politics.

So
are we studying reality or are we studying our own cultural discourse.
I keep going back to economists and how they've shaped our culture to
reflect a rational discourse in a way that makes their models seem
natural.

The integral answer of course is that it was the Orange
meme of rationality which interacted with a particular material,
cultural and historical reality which, in turn, produced Classical,
Neo-Classical, and then Neo-Liberal economics which shaped the world
moving us from Blue to Orange. I get that.
But, how do we know?
How do we know that it was simply a material, cultural and historical
set of variables upon the point and time within a particular
personality in which rationalist, probabilistic economic thinking
developed and spread through power, because it favored the powerful?
The human mind is a pattern recognizing and producing machine. Every
folktale on earth, ever recorded, follows a certain pattern of
unfolding. This means that our brains are hardwired to pull a certain
kind of story from discursive reality.

Integral theory accounts for all this, but so does the culture concept.  Integral theory is linear though, rather than relative, which is something easily tested for.

e: “Here are a few quotes from Chief Seattle”

Chief Seattle never actually said that. That was made up later and publisized as a form of propaganda. Seriously.

An anthropologist I know lived in the rain forest of Peru for a couple of years with a native group there. There are only about 5 members who are bilingual with Spanish, and they have a website.  They quickly learned the environmental discourse of German tourists who always wanted the locals to show them nature.
So my friend told me, that the monkey that they hunted which was something that “went into the pot,” became one of the symbols for them to protect their homes from outside developers. They were immediately able to co opt the language of Northern environmentalists and use it in a way to gain support for self-preservation.  They understood the discourse, it wasn't 3 memes up and only available to them through mystical experiences or trances. It was a very strange way of thinking for them, since it was just outside to them, but Northern environmentalists are the same way.  A New Yorker in the city doesn't equate their outside with “nature,” either. 
The interaction with eco-tourists has also had an effect upon the way the natives view their own forests. We have studies that show ecological consciousness can develop rather quickly, in a few years time, within those that more closely articulate with the political power structures expressing such thinking. That is accounted for more with post-structuralist theory, than the slow integral theory.

There is a privileging of the psychological over the anthropological in our culture and this is reflected in Integral. Individuals are given primacy of agency in value memes. vMemes are embodied within individual psychology, and the key is to understand how an individual's psychology is different from another's, and how this difference is expressed in society and culture by aggregates of individuals with similar psychological traits. This emphasis on a psychological view is itself a product of a U.S. worldview.
I think this is the wrong way to go about it, but we shouldn't separate the psychological from the anthropological, which would be hard.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: “This has been an axe of yours to grind for awhile now. I think you are
being a little too demanding on the theory. It is after all a rather
ambitious endeavor, to unify all fields of knowledge throughout all of
history.”

Rick: I would have to call that academic laziness. I am not subjecting this theory to any more rigor that I would any other. That's the whole point of theory building. You are supposed to attack them, it's an adversarial system. You attack them, they hold up and they are therefore strengthened. What makes a theory solid is nothing more than it's longevity. That's it.  I'm just smelting the gold and checking its purity. 
 
Rick all I am saying is that it would take Wilber 200 lifetimes to “prove” beyond a skeptics reasonable doubt all the implications of the theory thru all the knowledge domains he is trying to incorporate. Given that, is it really a valid criticism to say HE has not done the research and is lazy? How many years do you think it took him to get a handle on all the knowledge domains in the first place? So you think it humanly possible to do research to prove his theory also in one lifetime? You want to write a book and you want to do field study in some area of Anthropology. How long and how much effort is required? Think about what you are asking for a second. So are we studying reality or are we studying our own cultural discourse. Pray tell, how do you discern the difference? In which quadrant is reality situated? 
 
– 

e: “Here are a few quotes from Chief Seattle”

Rick : Chief Seattle never actually said that. That was made up later and publisized as a form of propaganda. Seriously. 
 
I am well aware of the controversy concerning the authenticity of Chief Seattle quotes. If you look at the quotes I picked you won’t see “web of life” mentioned. But you are skeptical. Here are some quotes from many different tribes. You think they are all propaganda from cosmopolitan elites? Did they also make up the idea of Mother Earth and the Great Spirit?http://www.sapphyr.net/natam/quotes-nativeamerican.htm 
 
There is a privileging of the psychological over the anthropological in our culture and this is reflected in Integral… I think this is the wrong way to go about it, but we shouldn't separate the psychological from the anthropological, which would be hard. 
 
That people may focus attention on the upper quadrants is probably true. I don’t see how that is the fault of the theory. There is after all a LL quadrant. It has been mentioned many times before that experience is tetra-enacted. AQAL is 4 broad ways of talking about experience. Thanks for helping to try and balance out the views we chat about!

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: ”Pray tell, how do you discern the difference? In which quadrant is reality situated? ”

That is the rub, isn't it. If you can't tell, then what's the point?

But your not really listening to me here. Utilizing Ockam's razor, and the empiric, inductive studies that we have done, wouldn't take 200 lifetimes. I'm not sure where you're getting that.

Ken has written that he was reading a book or more a day and that he was no longer taking in significantly different information anymore from the authors. I'm saying that he skipped an entire paradigm and discipline in the process. He had time to read the most obscure philosophers and metaphysicians ever published, or translated, and he didn't have the time to pick a few of the better known researchers from the social sciences? 

Anyway, I'm saying that the theory is almost completely deductive, as are most of the questions that the psychology is based upon.  Deductive is fine, but you eventually have to test deductive reasoning.

“I don’t see how that is the fault of the theory.”

The theory doesn't have some will of its own. It's a theory put forth by one guy. That's it. It is therefore his fault. He has privileged that paradigm in over 20 books. You will never hear about the theory beyond a small group of people and never by academics or applied practitioners. The entire evolution of the theory has happened in his mind.
David mentioned that he said something about differences in cross-cultural expression of vMemes and that was great. I think Ken is fully aware of this, and has expressed it in anthropological journals, so he could get on a plane and travel around and see if the world matches up with what's in his head.

But, then there are subtle ways interpret behaviors from preconceptions. 

A groups of medical anthropologists checked themselves into a mental hospital by saying they heard three sounds in their heads, a plomp, clump, and something else. They were admitted and diagnosed with schizophrenia. After being admitted they never experienced any  other symptoms, and acted normally by our standards.  They were kept there fore a few weaks though, and everything they did was interpretted by the doctors as signs of the illness. If they fiddled with a pen, then it meant something.
They were finally released, but had no idea that they, the doctors, were being studied by the researchers. This is a classic tale in medical anthro. and it applies here.  If you're a hammer then the whole world looks like nails.  I'm a soldier and I interpret agressive behavior differently that others often.
The money is there, just commission a small team of two people to test a hypothsis. Grad. students are cheap.

BTW, why did you quote the Chief Seattle thing anyway?   I am sure that the whole speach was made up, not just a part. I'm sure that he or some other indian said something, and it was retold and retold and when the lie becomes legend, print the legend.
Here's one version:
““The white man's God cannot love his red children or he would protect
them. They seem to be orphans and can look nowhere for help. How
then can we become brothers? How can your father become our father
and bring us prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?.And
when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my
tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores
will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's
children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop,
upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they
will not be alone.The White Man will never be alone. Let him be
just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.
Dead, did I say? – There is no death, only a change of worlds.”

I'm not sure why you mentioned it though. Anyway, there wasn't some journalist there with a tape recorder. No person that learned English as a second language later in their lives, from a totally different culture is going to spout off this kind of prose.

This is some good back and forth, but I like it better when we tag team someone else.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: ”Pray tell, how do you discern the difference? In which quadrant is reality situated? ”

That is the rub, isn't it. If you can't tell, then what's the point?
 
In which quadrant is reality situated?

–


But your not really listening to me here. Utilizing Ockam's razor, and the empiric, inductive studies that we have done, wouldn't take 200 lifetimes. I'm not sure where you're getting that.

 You were saying Ken is being lazy and has no field work. As it would take many lifetimes to prove the validity of all data points and their relationships in all quadrants, etc. So the field work is no longer necessary?


Anyway, I'm saying that the theory is almost completely deductive, as are most of the questions that the psychology is based upon.  Deductive is fine, but you eventually have to test deductive reasoning.
 
I agree, this is the stage we are at and probably will be at for a long while.



“I don’t see how that is the fault of the theory.”

The theory doesn't have some will of its own. It's a theory put forth by one guy. That's it. It is therefore his fault.

 OK so when Einstein came up with his theories but the technology was not there yet to test them, that was his fault? And when the tech became available could Einstein have tested on his own or did it take hundreds of people and resources etc to finally get the testing off the ground. You want Ken to test in all quadrants, all the knowledge he is trying to synthesize? Is that realistic? IT’S A HUGE THEORY BRO!


BTW, why did you quote the Chief Seattle thing anyway?  
 
You said: For example, Anna Tsing, has shown in how a “nature lovers” cultural discourse came about and was popularized by John Muir in the U.S. She then shows how this discourse is linked to concepts and discourses of “cosmopolitanism.”  She shows how this nature lovers (green) discourse comes about and exists in different forms depending where it is expressed, and by whom. It is linked to people's various imaginings and invocations of the cosmopolitan.
 
I Said: Sure this is a orange/green version of a respect or recognition of the importance of the environment and the yearning to live in harmony with it. But that love or respect can be recognized at any time and level and need not be limited or defined solely as cosmopolitan. Here are a few quotes from Chief Seattle..
 
You were skeptical so I gave you a bunch more quotes from other native sources showing the love and concern for a harmonious living with the environment. A deep recognition of the seamlessness in which we all are situated is not only a “cosmopolitan elitist” idea. You still remain skeptical? Did you have to read constructionist literature in order to respect and feel intimately connected to the land on which we all subsist? Didn’t you ever go camping as a kid? Ever walk past a poisoned stream or lake? Do you feel anything when a bay is destroyed by an oil tanker spill like the Grim Reaper himself set up camp there?


This is some good back and forth, but I like it better when we tag team someone else.
 
Invite some of our old pals from the old pod. :-)
 

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: Invite some of our old pals from the old pod. :-)

Hee hee hee

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: ”You were saying Ken is being lazy and has no field work. As it
would take many lifetimes to prove the validity of all data points and
their relationships in all quadrants, etc. So the field work is no
longer necessary?”

I have to finish a paper I'm writing, so I'll comment on the rest of your post a little later.

I think your argument is partially based in your education of engineering.  I can't be sure, but I can't think of any other reason you'd think that it would take “many lifetimes” to do any of this. Read a few ethnographies, seriously, and you'll be amazed at what can be found in a few years. This isn't about more quantitative data, but a lack of qualitative data. Ken has no qualitative data. You need that qualitative data in order to test the validity of psychometric data. You can be very accurate in your statistical data, but the validity of that data is only as valid at the data you plug in. The physical sciences, psychology, economics, and deductive sciences are based on an assumption that is has very poor face validity.

Implicit in this understanding is the notion of 'raw' data; pieces of information which can be retrieved and later subjected to analysis. Theory is acknowledged as central to the process only during the analytic stage.
The anthropological stance vis-a-vis datais that data are always cooked.  This cooking process takes place at every stage of the research process. Researcher stance, theoretical perspectives, technologies adn techniques of recording all affect what is found. We find the answers to the questions that we ask, explicitly and implicitly. Data are produced, not gathered. In integral there is simply too much that is assumed, and taken for granted from a particular cultural position.

If he wants to only synthesize existing data, I guess he could do that; but again, there are entire disciplines he's leaving out of this “Theory of Everything.”

Integral states that an outward behavior can be based on variously different internal states, but we view the behavior of “Others” through books, television, stories and radio, and we assume that we can know their internal state.

There are also methods in statistical regression that allow you to get a clearer picture of what variables affect a dependent variable more or less significantly, or if they co-depend too much to tell.

There are no natural borders in this process, there is only One thing, but that's not how the theory is usually presented.  It states that everything is co-emergent.  But, whenever anyone talks about quadrants, and social change, they almost never include anything beyond internal vMemes. 
If the self is simply a manifestation, in place and time, of the same infinite variables of cause and effect as everything else, like a table or an earthquake, simply at a certain relative level of scale (the scale of the individual). And, that the interaction of these variables manifest creativity, then we are that creativity at a particular scale.  This is very important, but unless we have more real, and not anecdotal, evidence for limiting brain structures, or evidence of vMeme centers of gravity within populations that are immutable (and not constantly shaped, maintained, and changed by society and culture), then we have to let this part of the theory remain a question more than an answer.

If I understand how you interpret cultural symbols, and language at the group level, then I can shape information a certain way in order to change your behavior anyway I want to. I don't have to shape the information to your internal state, because that doesn't matter at the level of the group, which is where we are interested. No one gives a shit what Rick or e does alone.
And this brings us full circle with my original point.  The question isn't, “what is the difference, psychologically between a truck guy and a hybrid guy?” The question is, “what does a truck or a hybrid mean symbolically to various groups in America.” They don't mean the same thing that they do in Japan, or France, regardless of internal states.

I know that isn't really a simple analysis, so let me know if I need to break it up.

Rick

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Rick: Ken has no qualitative data.

What is it that he doesn't have qualitative data for?

Rick: There are entire disciplines he's leaving out of this “Theory of Everything.”

What disciplines are left out?

But I don't think it's so much a matter of including or naming each discipline but having room for them, making a place in the model for them, and I think he does that with the hori-zones, as any discipline would fit into one of those hori-zones, some perhaps spanning more than one.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Great questions, David.
“What is it that he doesn't have qualitative data for?”

Qualitative data on really anything, but on vMemes especially. You can see and measure political complexity, organizational complexity, an increase in inequality, etc… You just have to operationalize the concepts and measure those variables. You still get into the question of how accurate a variable measures the concept, but I won't go there.

How do you observe and measure an internal state? You can wrongly assume that a survey instrument can be used cross-culturally and get invalid data, which is what's often done. Psychologists are getting much better about this however, so I don't want to bag on them too much. The data used in Integral is usually old data though.
So if you want to know how a person understands their world, and orders things conceptually, then you have to go where they are and talk with them. You have to get a sense of what is going on within their context; symbolically, behaviorally, and materially, and how they fit together.  You have to question everything. You cannot interpret the behavior of others in a way that would make sense to you, you have to understand how things make sense to them.
The floor that you stand on is a very relative thing, for example. It has no real inherent property; it is what it is.

American's conceptualize that the floor is inherently dirty, for example. That is why we wear shoes inside and why we always clean it. It is already dirty and needs constant cleaning. So we don't sit on the floor, we use chairs, and we don't eat near it, we use tables. We can see how our cultural understanding of something we call “the floor,” shapes both our behavior and our material culture.

The Japanese understand a floor to be clean. They don't want to dirty it by wearing shoes on the floor. They sit on the floor and eat much closer to it. How they understand what they call a floor shapes their behavior and technology (material culture).

The concepts of the floor are rather arbitrary, but the behavior and technology aren't. You cannot separate the fields of symbolic meaning, behavior and technology, but you have to understand them inductively.

You can say that a peasant has a fundamentally different understanding of the world, a very different epistemology, but you have to understand their culture and their context of being in the world to understand why. Integral simply states that they have a lower center of gravity, and therefore a less inclusive understanding, leading to different behavior and simpler technology.
But, a peasant works with their environment directly. They plant seeds and can see their relationship with their land in very direct terms. We have to understand this relationship within their context, not in ours. 
Our relationship with the environment happens within a decontextualized market economy that fetishizes things into commodities with a market value detached from their use value. It is also a symbolic relationship formed in a very different context.
We do not see the fruits of our labor. We produce something and we don't hold it or consume it. We produce it, it goes into the market and we get back a completely different form of symbolic capital which we can use to purchase the products of Other's labor.
When peasants who have an understanding of their world from a certain context take part, often against their will, with the market economy, they tend to continue to fetishize their labor and its fruits in a way that no longer applies to their new situation, which seems irrational to us, but makes perfect sense when you better understand their context inductively from the ground-up.

So you are right that anthropology and sociology can fit easily into that map, but if you do that you get a way of explaining the map that might not require the explanation that the universe is becoming conscious of itself in a uni-linear way.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Rick: Qualitative data on really anything, but on vMemes especially.

I'm sure more data would help, but I don't think we can dismiss the work of Clare Graves, Don Beck, Carol Gilligan, Lawrence Kohlberg, Susanne Cook-Greuter. There's actually a lot of data to support it (see the charts in the back of Integral Psychology), not that more wouldn't be a good idea.

Rick: The Japanese understand a floor to be clean. They don't want to dirty
it by wearing shoes on the floor. They sit on the floor and eat much
closer to it. How they understand what they call a floor shapes their
behavior and technology (material culture).

I think they have the right idea. Why track mud in the house?

Rick: But, a peasant works with their environment directly. They plant seeds
and can see their relationship with their land in very direct terms. We
have to understand this relationship within their context, not in
ours.

I think this is very important, but in addition to the stages of development that have been found cross culturally, not instead of them.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

David: ”Rick: Qualitative data on really anything, but on vMemes especially.

I'm
sure more data would help, but I don't think we can dismiss the work of
Clare Graves, Don Beck, Carol Gilligan, Lawrence Kohlberg, Susanne
Cook-Greuter. There's actually a lot of data to support it (see the
charts in the back of Integral Psychology), not that more wouldn't be a good idea.”

I don't know the details of two of these people. Could you tell me if any of them studied anything cross-culturally, with an anthropologist to make sure they were doing things accurately? And, has anyone done anything in the last 30 years, during which time huge leaps in understanding have taken place?

Clare Graves for example, used a very old and very misunderstood understanding of cultural evolution from the late 19th and early 20th century to set up his theory.  During his time, psychologists still believed that a human was a human was a human, and if you study the psychology of a normal, healthy human in a lab, then you are studying the psychology of all normal, healthy humans. 
During is time it was also believed that genes were wholly determinate in a person's phenotypic expression.  We didn't understand how plastic the human body and brain was to cultural realities then. 

This epistemology is a certain way of understanding observation, yet this epistemology can't be separated from the context in which it develops. As far as I know Graves, Beck and Kolhberg don't have any footnotes in their paradigms to include this sense of culture, do the other two?

I've been going on about how a certain kind of rational, economic thought pervades our culture, and therefore our science. The only way to see that is to study and understand how others set up their economies, politics, laws, etc… As far as I know only anthropologists, and to some extent sociologists do this, yet they have no place in Integral.
Here is a point from Escobar's Development, pg. 58:

“The aim is not to decide whether the early development economists were right or wrong, but to develop a historical, epistemological, and cultural awareness of the conditions under which they made their choices. Even if the economists operated in a domain of discourse [meme] that had been created not as a result of individual acts of cognition but though the active participation of many in a historical context, the choices they made embodied commitments that had social and cultural consequences.”

Then from a paper by an anthro. and a psychologist working together:

” 'Development' itself is a cultural concept, masking a particular ideology… …In present-day anthropology there is no logical contradiction between structure and change or between system adn event; they constitute simultaneities. In other words there is no culture outside the living reality of thought and action. In social space people are both definers and defined. THis means that human beings themselves are the agents of the social system and of history… …Every event is simultaneously a realization adn a change of the system… …Change or devleopment is inherent in culture.”

What these guys are arguing against is an old view of culture and change, one that Grave was using even after it our outdated in anthropology.  That cultural and social change required some outside force.  Integral is set up within this epistemology because of it.  All change has been predetermined and is linear, we just move through stages socially, but we are not the direct causes of that change; something that can be understood empirically.  Rather, some undefined and nebulous concept called “Spirit-in-Action” takes the role of changing force.

It's like the reincarnation debate.  With what we know now about how cultural change happens, there is no need for this. Just as you don't need a reincarnation concept to have Buddhism, you don't need an outside change concept to have Integral.
The only reason that this isn't immediately clear is because Integral is a product developed almost entirely in the upper two quadrants. This renders a great deal invisible, becasue no one ever actually has to go and talk to the people that the theory represents.  You can use the people and culture of where ever you are to induce a deductive understanding of everyone, everywhere. 

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: ”You were saying Ken is being lazy and has no field work. As it
would take many lifetimes to prove the validity of all data points and
their relationships in all quadrants, etc. So the field work is no
longer necessary?”

Rick: I think your argument is partially based in your education of engineering.  I can't be sure, but I can't think of any other reason you'd think that it would take “many lifetimes” to do any of this. Read a few ethnographies, seriously, and you'll be amazed at what can be found in a few years. This isn't about more quantitative data, but a lack of qualitative data. Ken has no qualitative data. You need that qualitative data in order to test the validity of psychometric data. You can be very accurate in your statistical data, but the validity of that data is only as valid at the data you plug in. The physical sciences, psychology, economics, and deductive sciences are based on an assumption that is has very poor face validity.
 
How long would it take to get enough qualitative data to prove his theory? How long would it take to “prove” that Amber follows Red? How many cultures would he need to study and how many people would he have to talk to prove that? 20 minutes, 2 weeks, 2 years, 20 years? If it does not take so long, maybe you should do it. Make a pretty good name for yourself!


Integral states that an outward behavior can be based on variously different internal states, …
 
I don't think integral states that. Integral states that certain outward behavior emerges with certain internal states.


There are no natural borders in this process, there is only One thing, but that's not how the theory is usually presented. 

The way I understand the theory is, there is an occasion and that occasion can be looked at and talked about from 4 broad perspectives.


It states that everything is co-emergent.  But, whenever anyone talks about quadrants, and social change, they almost never include anything beyond internal vMemes. 
If the self is simply a manifestation, in place and time, of the same infinite variables of cause and effect as everything else, like a table or an earthquake, simply at a certain relative level of scale (the scale of the individual). And, that the interaction of these variables manifest creativity, then we are that creativity at a particular scale.  This is very important, but unless we have more real, and not anecdotal, evidence for limiting brain structures, or evidence of vMeme centers of gravity within populations that are immutable (and not constantly shaped, maintained, and changed by society and culture), then we have to let this part of the theory remain a question more than an answer.

Right and how long would it take to gather that real evidence at every level in every quadrant?

If I understand how you interpret cultural symbols, and language at the group level, then I can shape information a certain way in order to change your behavior anyway I want to.

Yeah you could just ask me to do something, I am a pretty amiable guy. :-)

I don't have to shape the information to your internal state, because that doesn't matter at the level of the group, which is where we are interested. No one gives a shit what Rick or e does alone.
And this brings us full circle with my original point.  The question isn't, “what is the difference, psychologically between a truck guy and a hybrid guy?” The question is, “what does a truck or a hybrid mean symbolically to various groups in America.” They don't mean the same thing that they do in Japan, or France, regardless of internal states.
 
Estimate how long would it take to create and conduct this one study and interpret the data for all cultures on the planet by myself? BTW I never claimed that buying a hybrid vs truck was dependent upon psychological internal states but internal values.


Rick to David: This renders a great deal invisible, becasue no one ever actually has to go and talk to the people that the theory represents.
 
How long would it take to talk to enough people to prove his theory?

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: “How long would it take to get enough qualitative data to prove his
theory? How long would it take to “prove” that Amber follows Red? How
many cultures would he need to study and how many people would he have
to talk to prove that? 20 minutes, 2 weeks, 2 years, 20 years? If it
does not take so long, maybe you should do it. Make a pretty good name
for yourself!”

That's not how science works. You never actually prove anything. He has set up a theory and needs to test it. If he's successful then others will carry out similar studies, and then off it goes.  In anthropology we are still testing methods and theories from 50 years ago. You would need a longitudinal study actually, which is normal for academics in the field who typically spend 20 to 30 years with various groups.  You'd need a way to operationalize the concepts Amber and Red.
To us these to make sense, but how do you make them fit into another culture? In order to do this you'd have to carry out at least a two year ethnography among a group you'd like to test. This is more common with academics. Us applied guys don't get that kind of time, because no one's gonna pay for it.
You can't just go in and give a survey or psychometric test, because you won't know how valid the questions are to your target group. Are the questions even relevant? 
For example if someone phone polled me and asked me if I was right or left politically, I would be able to really answer it, because I'm really neither. They could ask me if I'm religious, and I'd say yes. They'd ask me how many times I went to church, and I don't go to church, or believe in god, etc… They questions are not valid, in that they don't accurately measure the variable needed to test and generate data for theory building.

If you asked a Japanese person if they recycled, they'd tell you yes, but that doesn't mean they are green, it means they are legally required to recycle everything.  Without the context, you get bad data.

There's a well know situation researchers doing ethnosemantic studies in the 1970's.  They were collecting the mental maps (taxonomies) of how people order their worlds through language.  Some were looking for a universal color scheme, which would be to find the lower limit of how many colors a people used in language, all the way to the upper limit, and all those in between.  They put together a pattern that followed a kind of cultural devleopment of colors.  They were later dismissed as new evidence came in that destroyed their model, though.
One in particular was a South American group that had a concept for the color red that no one could figure out. Finally someone found that the color red was more than a color to them. It was also a state of desication. It was both an adjective and adverb.  This was the first case that showed that the understanding of colors was not universally patterned.

“BTW I never claimed that buying a hybrid vs truck was dependent upon psychological internal states but internal values.”

Values with are culturally derived and mediated through symbols.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: “How long would it take to get enough qualitative data to prove his
theory? How long would it take to “prove” that Amber follows Red? How
many cultures would he need to study and how many people would he have to talk to prove that? 20 minutes, 2 weeks, 2 years, 20 years? If it
does not take so long, maybe you should do it. Make a pretty good name
for yourself!”

Rick: That's not how science works. You never actually prove anything. He has set up a theory and needs to test it. If he's successful then others will carry out similar studies, and then off it goes.  In anthropology we are still testing methods and theories from 50 years ago. You would need a longitudinal study actually, which is normal for academics in the field who typically spend 20 to 30 years with various groups.  You'd need a way to operationalize the concepts Amber and Red.


So you are testing theories from 50 years ago and it takes 20 to 30 years and yet you feel Ken is being lazy? This is why I said it will take 200 years+ of field work to prove (to the skeptic) that his theory holds water.
.

“BTW I never claimed that buying a hybrid vs truck was dependent upon psychological internal states but internal values.”

Values with are culturally derived and mediated through symbols.

Of course, the values tetra arise.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

e: ”Values with are culturally derived and mediated through symbols.

Of course, the values tetra arise.”

Yes, they tetra arise with all things being equal. All things are not equal. I'll make my point in more detail later.

Also, seriously pick up an ethnography, I can recommend a few to show you what I'm talking about.  And again, you never prove a theory. You test it and by virtue of it's longevity it is strengthened.  The details of evolutionary theory have changed a great deal in the last 100 years, but it's only gotten stronger over time.
Don't get attached to the details of Integral. And don't tell me your not.

I would settle for a couple of years of empiric data by Ken. You set up a model, you have to test it. Julian Steward set up a very ambitious model of cultural ecology, and he spent a lifetime to give it some empiric credibility. You don't just set something up and not test it. He doesn't have to do it, but someone does. The money is there to do something. I promise there are people that would jump at the chance to disprove it, which would be better. If someone tries to discredit something and they fail, then that's the best thing that could happen for the theory.
Until we get that data, my points are valid, because my points are based on real data.

“A wise man believes what he sees, not what he thinks.”

rick

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Also, seriously pick up an ethnography, I can recommend a few to show you what I'm talking about. 
Sure, please do.

Don't get attached to the details of Integral. And don't tell me your not.

:-)  I am not. I just like it for the simple fact of its inclusiveness. It also differentiates enough to give some context for the seeker. It’s currently weak in studies and praxis.

I would settle for a couple of years of empiric data by Ken. You set up a model, you have to test it. Julian Steward set up a very ambitious model of cultural ecology, and he spent a lifetime to give it some empiric credibility. You don't just set something up and not test it. He doesn't have to do it, but someone does.

Agreed but Ken’s theory goes beyond LL culture. So if it took Julian Steward a lifetime giving support for an ambitious theory in one quadrant, how long for a theory that is uber ambitious in all quadrants? Ken’s genius is better served in theory building.

–

“A wise man believes what he sees, not what he thinks.”

“Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.”

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

Rick: I don't know the details of two of these people. Could you tell me if
any of them studied anything cross-culturally, with an anthropologist
to make sure they were doing things accurately? And, has anyone done
anything in the last 30 years, during which time huge leaps in
understanding have taken place?

Kohlberg's work, for one, was based on cross-cultural studies, as you can see here.

Another really interesting issue, though, is different types of these value memes. For example, the Wilber quote earlier spoke about agentic American Orange and communal Japanese Orange.

I think that's a really interesting subject. I wonder, for example, if Islamic Orange would be as secular as Western Orange or if perhaps an Orange Islam is possible. That would be very helpful, if such a thing is possible.

I think it's this sort of thing you have been getting at in your posts, isn't it? That would be very good work for the next generation of integral researchers.

Some people will want to dismiss all global vmemes when they see a difference from one culture to the next, but I think that is a mistake (it ignores a lot of data). I think we just need different types of vmemes from culture to culture, just like we have different types of people within a culture within the same structure.

Thank you for those quotes from Escobar and the other paper; they were great.

I think it can seem like integral focuses on the individual quadrants, but I think that's just because of the emphasis on personal transformation, ILP, etc. I don't think that's a reflection on the theory.

Re: How subjects are shaped, from Obama's Budget

You are so so wrong e…..


Kidding. I'll get back to this in a while