The next Buddha will be a collective

While I'm in my Locutus persona part of my function is to assimilate y'all into the collective. Resistance is futile, after all. In that light I offer the abstract and introduction to Michel Bauwens essay of the above name with a link. This has generated some discussion in the integral community in the past so I thought I'd see what it does or doesn't generate here. What new forms of spirituality will emerge from the internet generation and the information age? Perhaps Bauwens has his finger on this pulse?

Abstract
Religious and spiritual expression is always embedded in societal structures. If social structures are moving towards the form of distributed networks, what kind of evolution of spiritual expression can we expect? In this essay, we will first describe the general societal changes that we see emerging, and expect to become more prevalent in the future, then examine to what degree these changes will have an impact on individual and collective spiritual expression. The reader has to bear with us in the first general part, which explains the peer to peer dynamic, in order to understand its application to spirituality, which is the subject of the second part of the essay. Finally, in the third and final part, we will discuss a few concrete examples.

Part One: The Emergence of the P2P principle in Society
Introduction

Spiritual expression, and the religious organizational formats in which context it will take place, is always embedded in a social structure. For example, we could say that the tribal forms of religion, such as animism and shamanism, do not have elaborate hierarchical structures as they arose in societal structures that had fairly egalitarian kinship based relations. But the great organized religions, which arose in hierarchically-based societies, have intricate hierarchical structures, monological conceptions of truth, and expectations of obedience from its members. The Protestant Reformation and its offshoots took on the many democratic aspects which corresponded to the rise of a new urban class under merchant and industrial capitalism, and the many offshoots of the new age movements have clearly adopted contemporary capitalist practices of paid workshops, trainings, etc … (i.e. taking the form of spiritual experience as a consumable commodity).
 
In this essay, we will claim that contemporary society is evolving towards a dominance of distributed networks, with peer to peer based social relations, and that this will affect spiritual expression in fundamental ways.
 
To organize our thoughts, we will use a triarchical division of organizational forms, and a quaternary structure of human relations. Human organizational formats can be laid out as network structures, outlining the relationships between the members of a community. A common network format is the hierarchical one, where relations and actions are initiated from the center. It is graphically represented by a star form, but also often represented as a pyramidal structure. A second very common network format is the decentralized network, where agents actions and relations are constrained by prior hubs. In decentralized networks power has devolved to different groups or entities, which have to find a balance together, and agents generally belong to the different decentralized groups, which represent their interests in some way. Finally, we have distributed networks, which are graphically represented by the same hub and spoke graphic, but contain a crucial differentiating characteristic. In distributed networks, though there are indeed hubs, i.e. nodes with a higher density of connections, these hubs remain voluntary. Think of the difference between taking a plane that is going to go to the destination via a hub airport, and you have no choice but stay in the place, whose flight path has been decided by someone else, and the much greater freedom that you have in a car, where you can still pass through that big city hub if you want, and many people do, but you can also go around it, the choice is yours.
 
Our first contention is that distributed networks are becoming a dominant format of human technological and organizational frameworks. Think about the internet and the web as point to point or end to end networks. Think about the emerging micro media practices such as wiki’s and blogging, which allow many human agents to express themselves by bypassing former decentralized mass media. Think of the team-based organized project groups increasingly being used in the worksphere. In a distributed network, the peers are free to connect and to act, and the organizational characteristics are emerging from the choices of the individuals. The second framework we are using is the quaternary relational typology proposed by the anthropologist Alan Page Fiske, who describes this extensively in his landmark treatise, the Structures of Social Life.
 
According to Fiske, there are four main ways that humans can relate to each other, and this typology is valid across different cultures and epochs, as an underlying grammar. Cultures and civilizations will choose different combinations, but one format may be dominant.
 
Equality matching is the logic of the gift economy, which was the dominant format of the tribal era. According to this logic, the one that gives obtains prestige, and the one that receives feels an obligation to return the favour, in one way or another, so that the equality of the relationship could be maintained. Tribal cultures have elaborate ritualized and festive mechanisms, organized around the notion of reciprocity and symmetry, to allow this process to happen. The second relational logic is Authority Ranking, and corresponds to the just as important human need to compare. This ranking may be the result of birth, of force or coercion, of nomination by a prior hierarchy, of credentials, even of merit. Authority Ranking is the main logic of the imperial and tributary hierarchies (such as the feudal system) which dominated human society before the advent of capitalism and parliamentary democracy. The strong protects and provides for the safety of the weak, who in exchange, pay a tribute. These societies were moved by the concept of a life debt, from the human to the divine order sustaining it, and from the mass of the living to the representatives of that divine order, who required tribute in order to extinguish that debt. The organizing principle is one of centrality (represented by kingship) and redistribution of the resources by a hierarchy. The third format is Market Pricing, based on the neutral exchange of comparable values. This is the logic of the capitalist market system, and the impersonal relations on which its economic system is based.
 
Finally, there is the logic of Communal Shareholding, which is based on generalized or non-reciprocal exchange. In this form of human relations, members collectively and voluntarily contribute to a common resource, in exchange for the free usage of that resource. Examples are the medieval agricultural commons, the mutualities of the labour movement, and the theoretical notion of communism used by Marx (but of course not the hierarchical Authority Ranking practice of regimes abusively using this nomenclature). There is of course a relationship between the organizational triarchy and the quaternary relational grammar. The tribal era was based on small kinship based distributed networks, which had little relationship to each other; the imperial and feudal regimes use the hierarchical formats, and capitalist societies used mostly decentralized political structures (the balance of power of democratic governance) and competition between firms. In contrast, the current social structures are increasingly moving towards manyfold affinity based distributed networks, interconnected on a global scale.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

interesting. the future is here. and kw is nowhere to be seen. i like it.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

interesting. the future is here. and kw is nowhere to be seen. i like it.
 
Interesting indeed. A good question for this pod might be this: Is it possible to have a postmetaphysical spirituality without any trace of Wilber or AQAL?

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

I would say yes.  But I would also say it would probably be hard to have one that does not deal with questions and issues that Wilber has, at least, attempted to deal with in his own model.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

I'm chuffed.

At this point in the agenda we all face the Kunlun Mountains, draw our chairs into a planet enveloping circle and Twitter Kumbaya.

S

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

General Characteristics of a Participatory Spirituality
What does this all mean for the emergence of new forms of spirituality, both in terms of personal experiencing and in terms of new social formats for organizing spiritual life?
 
What it means for the evolution of human consciousness is very well expressed here:
 
“There is overwhelming evidence that the evolution of consciousness is marching on, moving from collective living, where the individual was totally embedded in the life patterns of the collective; through a gradual, often painful, process of individuation, with the emphasis on the will and sovereignty of the individual; to what is emerging in our time: a conscious return to collectivism where individuated, or self-actualised, individuals voluntarily – and temporarily - pool their consciousness in a search for the elusive collective intelligence which can help us to overcome the stupendous challenges now facing us as a species as a consequence of how our developmental trajectory has manifested on the physical plane thus far .. . So human evolution has something to do with human consciousness awakening first to itself, then to its own evolution and to a recognition and finally an embodied experience of the ways in which we are organically part of a larger whole. As we enter this new stage of individual/collective awakening, individuals are being increasingly called to practice the new life-form composed of groups of individuated individuals merging their collective intelligence.”
 
Let us quickly review the changes resulting from the changing ontological, epistemological, and axiological positioning, and then review the principles of peer production that we described above, and see how it can be applied to the production of spiritual knowledge.
 
If we accept the new ontological and epistemological convictions that there are no absolute reference points or frameworks, no objective reality out there on their own, can we still accept fixed cosmologies and religions? If we accept that knowing is a matter of co-creation with other humans, holding different frameworks, and that approaching truth is a matter of confronting those differences in frameworks, and how they illuminate realities in different ways, can we still accept fixed methodologies and pathways, leading to inevitable conclusions about the truth? Or would we expect co-created truth to be open-ended? If we want to act and live according to the peer principle of equal worth of all persons, can we accept the deep-seated rankism that is part and parcel of traditional approaches to religion? The questions are suggesting the answer, and the answer is that in all likelihood, the forms of spirituality that we are striving will have the open and free, participatory, and commons-oriented aspects which the emerging p2p forms of consciousness are desiring to appear in the world.
 
An open and free approach to spirituality would not likely accept proprietary approaches to spiritual knowledge. It would expect that the code and texts are freely approachable, even modifiable. It will not accept the copyright protections of spiritual texts, nor their unavailability. The pathways to spiritual experiencing would not be hidden from sight, but publicly available. The methodologies would be available for trial and experimentation.
 
A participatory approach would mean that everyone would be invited to participate in the spiritual search, without a priori selection, and that the threshold of such participation would be kept as low as possible. Appropriate methodologies would be available for different levels of experience.
 
A commons-oriented approach would lead to co-created knowledge to be available in a common pool, for others to build on and to be confronted with.
 
Let us know quickly survey how the concrete principles of peer production, which we outlined above, would apply to the production of spiritual knowledge. As a reminder, we listed the following principles: equipotentiality, self-selection, communal validation, and holoptism.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

A number of the above general characteristics could be applied to previous disucssions about how to update Buddhism, or any religion, for that matter. That is, how do we transform religion to formal and post-formal operations? Is it even possible? That's a key question Jackson asks in his article-thread and the same questions are asked above. He seems to think we can leave the forms alone and just recontextualize them, but per above it seems that given the new forms taking place in our evolution that this would also apply to religious forms. We'd also have to change the power structure of the one in charge, the intermediary pope or priest or whatnot, into more P2P commons exploration. We'd have to quit marketing and selling it, putting a ridiculous price on it, as it's for the common good and should be free of charge. (See Shalk's recent inquiry into fee-based spiritulity. And actually current religion operates this way, to their credit.) Meditative techniques and methods would have to be open to experimentation and new, different methods arising therefrom. Most of these P2P principles are certainly not built into the current way religion, including Buddhism, works. Could religion survive such changes?

For the beginnings of an answer it might be interesting to explore Heron's and Ferrer's approachs to the emerging spirituality in the article?

PS: Balder gets a shout-out from Michel in his article:

The ‘theoretical’ evolution towards relational and participatory forms of spirituality has not stood still. Bruce Alderman , in a summary essay on the internet, describes the new trend towards exploring intersubjectivity itself, both through personal and interpersonal forms of inquiry. He describes the work of Christian De Quincey, through his two books (Radical Nature, and: Radical Knowing); the deep mystical intersubjective work of Beatrice Butreau, and the radical nature of the inquiries by the TSK approach of Tartangh Tulku.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

That P2P as a new, evolutionary form occurring in technology, spirituality and business organizations is indisputable. Let's look at how it's manifesting in business, that bellwether indicator of where the leading cultural edge resides. See for example the article “From a hierarchy to a heterarchy of strategies: adapting to a changing context” from Management Decision, 45:3, 2007. Also see this one called “Neither hierarchy nor network: An argument for heterarchy” by Karen Stephenson (in People & Strategy, 32:1, 2009). The latter makes clear that heterarchy combines both hierarchy and more rhizomatic networks (as does the P2P spirituality of Heron), so it's not “simply” or “merely” a green or pluralist meme or organizational structure. I'd argue that it is in fact more of a cross-paradigmatic meme now manifesting and seems far more feasible than a “merely” or “simply” hierarchical model.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

I have to wonder why I have seen nothing written about the P2P phenomenon in II circles. Has anyone? Why do you suppose that is? I even recently brought up the subject in the Yahoo adult development forum, those folks of the MHC. And not a peep. I'd think this phenomenon would fascinate them, as it displays many of those post-formal aspects they talk about in theory. Very strange.

In answer to my own question I the following from Mark Edwards from Part 6 in his ILR interview:

When we get trapped in the logic of the excluded middle we reduce the leadership holarchy, what I call, more broadly, the governance holarchy, to a simple top-down understanding of leadership (or, much less frequently, bottom-up leadership). It is crucial that we differentiate between this governance holarchy and other forms of developmental and ecological holarchy. Where developmental holarchies (which have such a prominent place in Wilber’s AQAL) and ecological holarchies (which Koestler was more interested in) use the criteria of maturation/growth and size/spatial inclusion respectively to define their levels, the governance holarchy uses the criteria of organising, decision making or regulatory power (as in “spheres of influence”) to build up its holarchic structure. In adopting the logic of the included middle we can use our governance holarchy lens in its non-distorting form. We can see leadership and followership as co-creative and dialectical complementarities. We can see them as co-constituting the actual reality of a system’s form of governance and autopoietic identity. We can, for example, see that listening to others is crucial for being a good leader and that decision-making is crucial for being a good follower at every point in the governance holarchy. Leadership becomes much more of a reciprocal and collaborative process when this holarchic multi-level perspective of governance and decision-making is taken to heart.

From this perspective Russ, it occurs to me that your wonderful journal might consider ILR to be an acronym for Integral Leadership/Followership Review. Followership is just as important as leadership in governance because every leader is a follower and every follower is a leader. The reason we don’t see followership as a worthy quality in organizations (although this is changing, see Collinson, 2006; Gasaway, 2006) is because we have adopted the logic of the excluded middle which turns some organizational members (those from the top of the hierarchy) into leaders and some organizational members (those from the bottom of the hierarchy) into followers and we consequently see change as being driven in a top-down fashion. This is a very common reductionism caused by the use of distorted versions of the governance holarchy lens. The postmodern concern with heterarchy and participatory, emergent and bottom-up forms of leadership is a reaction against these top-down distortions. The problem is that postmodernity sometimes throws out hierarchy altogether. In their quite valid disdain for those “excluded-middle logics” that elevate leadership to the upper echelons and relegate followership to the lower rungs, the postmodern leadership theorists are sometimes suspicious of all forms of direction setting and decision-making. In the main, however, the postmodern concern with heterarchical and bottom-up forms of governance calls for a considered balance to the pathologies of hierarchy rather than a complete denial of its utility.

In contrast to these distorted versions of the governance lens, a more integral approach would also proclaim the citizen/worker as leader and the CEO/community leader as servant to balance these distortions. Reciprocal and relational models of leadership/followership are more in keeping with these understandings. At the moment integral theory is overly concerned with top-down models of transformational leadership. The idea is that we change the consciousness of the leader and then see if these transformed leaders can institute some similar transformations in the lower levels. This might be one aspect of how social collectives change but it’s a rather limited one. Top-down models, even when assuming significant transformational capacities at the top, are not sufficient for the consolidation of whole-of-system change. The lens of the governance holarchy adds a whole new dimension of insight and interpretative power to the developmental lens of transformational levels. The use of the governance lens allows us to pick up on top-down and bottom-up reductionisms and power imbalances. It allows us to diagnose problems that arise due to entrenched systems of influence, privilege and bias in the decision-making channels of social collectives such as organizations.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Theur, I really liked this section: ”We can see leadership and followership as co-creative and dialectical complementarities. We can see them as co-constituting the actual reality of a system’s form of governance and autopoietic identity. We can, for example, see that listening to others is crucial for being a good leader and that decision-making is crucial for being a good follower at every point in the governance holarchy. Leadership becomes much more of a reciprocal and collaborative process when this holarchic multi-level perspective of governance and decision-making is taken to heart.”
   In writing about a fictional transfaith community which seeks a sharing culture, seeks to optimally develope each citizen's “gifts”, and seeks to base their collective actions and culture on consented-upon “spiritual principles”, I imagined that the city council (I combined justice, executive, and legislative functions into a term-limited council called The Function of Social Decision-Making - prefering the energy-like term “function” over “departments”, etc.) devised a broad Wilber-like approach to “regulating” social/political/ethical behavior in their small model community of “Allsberg”. The “Regulation Matrix” has Automatic and Controlled at the top axis (rather than Integral's internal(subjective)/external(objective on the top), and the Regulation Matrix has “Internal” and “External” then on its vertical axis. I slightly bent the exact meanings a little to fit catchy/meaningful accronyms of “AIR” (Automatic Internally Regulated) in the upper left quad, ARE (Automatic Externally Regulated) in the lower left quad, CIR (Controlled Internally Regulated) in the upper right, and ECR (Externally Controlled Regulation) in the lower right quad. The whole Regulation Matrix was concieved as a pop-out from Integral's lower right quad. It is a kind of a matrix within a cell, not unlike a holographic construction in which a part mirrors (but, in this case slightly bends/varies) the whole pattern). 
   In the book (The Marketing of Virtue) I then take my best stab at defining each of these perspectives or angles of “regulating” (governing?) the behaviors of the townsfolk. The Automatic forms of AIR and ARE are closer to what you describe above, in which the whole body (in the case of ARE) and the internalized sense of direction and purpose and meaning of the whole operates in the individual out of genuine social interest (Adler, although I conceptualize “social/spiritual interest”), very much in the manner of Aquinas' “Love God with all your heart, and then do whatever you want”. I go on to say that a broader, long range, governance strategy held by the town council (FSDM) is to work toward AIR, but to engineer a healthy culture via ARE as much as possible to get there, and to use the lowest form of making folks do right (ECR) as sparingly as possible and only when necessary. ECR is likened to going anerobic during a distance run. Getting back on the aerobic pace is the main value of the governing body. Actually, to the extent that the highest form, AIR, works, one could hardly call it “regulation” or “governance”. It is only “regulation” from the lower postiion that we find ourselves currently, not having actualized the spirituality of the citizens of the world. 
  I was partially influenced by a book by Werner Lange called Social Spirituality, in which Lange adopts Ericson's stages of development to spirituality, and Lange talks about “actualizing” the inner potential of spirituality via healthy socialization. I wanted to imagine a community bent on such spiritual actualization, by means of focusing on creating a healthy culture. Thus, the developmental model of governance (as opposed to the power model) you mention above, heavily resonates with my thinking up to this point, and with the thoughts I was able to weave (or, sometimes, simply throw in willy nilly!) into the book, now nearing completion. 
  Thanks for your ideas. I think they are great! But we won't make a King out of you, because that is against the vibe you ring! It seems to me the fascination with “greatness” will need to fade out in the new social/spiritual paradigm you are describing. Or, perhaps, we are all great, even when we are taking a crap! 

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

A bit more from the above Edwards interview:

For me however, AQAL’s emphasis on structure comes out of its instinctive combination of only certain lenses (which have a strong structural emphasis, e.g. developmental stages) and its consequential inability to model interaction via processes such as interpersonal and interholonic dynamics (as seen, for example, its neglect of social mediation). Taking the topic of leadership as an example, this is why there is no discussion on participative or bottom-up leadership in Wilber’s writings. Participative leadership is by its very nature interactive and interpersonal. Strategic or executive leadership is, in contrast, concerned with the structural position of CEOs and senior management and almost all discussion of leadership in Wilber’s work focuses on the developmental stages of these senior levels of management. Consequently, an AQAL-informed approach to leadership almost inevitably focuses on a top-down approach to leadership, one that is aligned with the various levels of organizational structure. Hence, we get an emphasis on structure over process—no interpersonal process, no peer-to-peer, no social mediation, just discussions of structural altitude.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Also see Edwards' recent article in ILR (IX:1, January 2009) “Seeing integral leadership through three important lenses: Developmental, ecological and governance.”

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Relating this back to how P2P manifests in spirituality and kela’s concerns in the “privileged access sequel” thread I’ll excerpt some from John Heron’s book Participatory Spirituality (you can see a free Google preview of at this link ) This particular excerpt highlights how so-called “experience” relates to other forms of knowing: 

Sacred Science 

This kind of sacred collaborative practice of the presence of the divine is also an incipient co-operative inquiry into it. The sacred inquiry is conducted in terms of a dynamic interplay between experiential knowing, presentational knowing, propositional knowing and practical knowing: 
1. The experiential knowing is our co-creating with other presences and with each other in the immediate here and now field.
2. The presentational knowing is in symbolizing this experiential knowing in patterns of interactive sound and movement.

3. The propositional knowing is present in critical subjectivity, a vigilant discrimination that monitors what is going on in the light of critical standards and keeps if free of emotional distortion.
 
The practical knowing, the knowing how, it twofold: 
1. The skill in the expressive, symbolizing use of interactive sound and movement.
2. The very subtle skill in managing congruence between the four forms of knowing, so that no one of them takes off on its own alienated from the other two.
The fundamental research cycling is the continuous interplay between the four types of knowing. This is religious action inquiry for each individual and an incipient co-operative inquiry for the group as a whole. The inquiry entails skilled action (practical knowing), monitored by vigilant discrimination (propositional knowing, that symbolizes (presentational knowing) our co-creating relations with other presences and each other (experiential knowing). In such inquiry, the element of celebration, of ecstatic abundance, evident in skilled presentational expression is prior to, is wider and deeper that, the element of inquiry its symbolism embraces. 

The research cycle becomes more complete, and the co-operative inquiry more overt, when it is extended to include phases of explicit conceptual reflection. There is a great deal of virtue in delaying this phase for a long while. This is partly because in our culture it is very easy for such reflections to become rapidly dissociated from its relevant experiential base, and thus to disregard, denigrate or deny it. It is also because the interplay of the four kinds of knowing in the interactive religious inquiry needs a substantial period of ripening and maturity before it can provide a stable foundation for systematic reflection (13).

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Without a kynical thought in mind, I read Heron's excerpt above as providing excellent suggestions for anyone wanting to hold a seance.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Jorge Ferrer says something similar with regard to participatory spirituality and the nature of intrasubjective “experience” along the lines of kela’s concerns. Here’s an excerpt from Revisioning Transpersonal Theory (SUNY Press, 2001):

…the participatory vision is reacting against intrasubjective reductionism, that is to say, the reduction of transpersonal and spiritual phenomenon to the status of individual inner experiences.

The participatory vision conceives transpersonal phenomenon as (1) events, in contrast to intrasubjective experiences; (2) multi-local, in that they can arise in different loci, such as in individual, a relationship, a community, a collective identity, or a place; (3) participatory, in that they can invite the generative power and dynamism of all dimensions of human nature to interact with a spiritual power in the co-creation of spiritual worlds (117).

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Edward,
Your excerpts above skipped a paragraph in Ferrer's polemic, one that fell right in between the two you quoted and is, I think, fairly important in understanding what he is saying. Since Google books won't allow copying, I'll have to type the thing out which gives me time to analyze, so if you see a few parenthetical comments in italics, they belong to yours truly from the steno pool.

“It goes without saying that I am not denying the existence of an intrasubjective dimension in transpersonal phenomena. On the contrary, the emergence of a transpersonal event in the locus of an individual demands the
participation of his or her consciousness. (Well, how about that.
There is nothing quite like stating the obvious in a way to make it
sound profound that creates what someone used to call a “credibility
gap.” Memo: strike the preceding sentence.)  However the
participatory vision reframes this experiential dimension as the
participation of an individual consciousness in a transpersonal event.
What the participatory vision radically rejects is the anthropocentric,
and ultimately egocentric, move to infer from this participation that
transpersonal phenomena are essentially human inner experiences. (I am always a little suspicious when someone uses the word “essentially”…even when I do.) As virtually all mystical traditions maintain, spiritual phenomena are not to be understood merely in phenomenological terms but rather as
stemming from the human participation in spheres of being and awareness
that transcend the merely human (Driver, this is where I get
off…merely human…merely human…merely human. I was going to write
“Fuck Ferrer and the goat he rode in on.” but I won't because he just
might be an unthinking type who doesn't care what goes down under his
by-line and if a cliché is adequate let it stand. In which case I'll
still call out that this is my stop, let me out at the corner. Or else
he meant that the humanity of which I am a part is actually “mere” in
the context of the transpersonal, in which case I'll
still call out that this is my stop, let me out at the corner, because
I don't need to honor with my attention any righteous subordinate who
so demeans the humanity of which I am a part. But to be fair, I'll ride
to the end of the paragraph.) Listen (that should be “read” unless this is the verbatim transcription of a lecture or a sermon) for example to St. John of the Cross (1979) concerning the union of the human soul with God:” (Hasta luego, Ferrer.)

So as I understood the intro and the first chapter of Ferrer's polemic,
this books was designed to relegate to the “dustbin of history” (if
Ferrer can do cliché, so can I) the Cartesian wrought concept that
unconventional experiences are an egocentric, intrasubjective phenom
and since we are all screwed up because of the Enlightenment, hey, lets
just wipe it out. Why don't we take two or three centuries to build one
cathedral for the glorification of the TRANSPERSONAL (for ever be
blessed that name) and subordinate our mere selves to that sponsor and
all-enveloping stronghold (…A Mighty Fortress is Our God…) of all
the truly important events in our mere lives and lets attend St. John
of the Cross and really get medieval.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Yes, I also get off the bus at the sound of his not-merely-human “transpersonal” realm. Fuck 'em indeed. I'm using certain of his points to support my own. This should in no way be taken to mean that I completely, or even mostly, agree with his entire program. Same with Heron. It serves to provide a couple of typical examples of this emerging thing called participative spirituality and take from it what's worthwhile and throw the rest in the dustbin. Same goes for Wilber, you, me, anyone. Ultimately we all have to build our own idiosyncratic “mystery.” As Sara McLachlan sang:

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

YEAH!
Don't we all love Sara,and don't we all love stringing razor ribbon down the sidelines of our lives.
S.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Nickleson, This was nice: ”Driver, this is where I get
off…merely human…merely human…merely human. I was going to write
“Fuck Ferrer and the goat he rode in on.” but I won't because he just
might be an unthinking type who doesn't care what goes down under his
by-line and if a cliché is adequate let it stand. In which case I'll
still call out that this is my stop, let me out at the corner. Or else
he meant that the humanity of which I am a part is actually “mere” in
the context of the transpersonal, in which case I'll
still call out that this is my stop, let me out at the corner, because
I don't need to honor with my attention any righteous subordinate who
so demeans the humanity of which I am a part. But to be fair, I'll ride
to the end of the paragraph.) ”     
  Got me to thinking about the concept of “up creation”, and a recent idea of mine (geared toward the German Idealists notion of Mind “slumbering” and thus manifesting a reality that forgot its Source). Ken Wilber was dialoguing with an author (name?) who coined “up creation”. I then accidentally (or peripherally) used the concept when imagining that we lowly human creatures are participants in God's dream, and as such, may have powers to help God engage in “lucid dreaming” and to begin to wake up from the slumbering - to become more conscious and intentional in the dream we call “reality”. Anyway the idea that we could be lucid God dreamers fits your disdain of putting “human” down. We may play a powerful role in waking up creation. And that would certainly be a form of “up creating”. 
Darrell

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Heron takes into account the different ways of knowing and promotes their integration, cautioning against any one of them being alienated from the others. However I get a sense that he nonetheless favors the experiential via ecstatic celebration through symbolic presentations, as it is “prior to,” and “wider and deeper” than, inquiry. He cautions against doing conceptual reflection too soon lest it dissociate from the experiential, given “base.” Also, in further reading the preview of his book he goes into contacting the “subtle” archetypal realms that seem fully formed and replete with actual entities. Very Neo-Platonic. And again, it appears based on ontological givens and not just morphogenetic gradients. 

Ferrer, on the other hand, recognizes that there is not pregiven reality that we all contact via subjective experience. To the contrary even the most high spiritual reality is co-created or enacted by the very thoughts and expressions we use to enact it. He suggests that it’s not completely relative in that there is something real there that we respond to but it is ultimately not knowable completely and hence always subject to the ways in which we co-create it. In fact the notion of a pure, intrasubjective “experience” is called reductionism because it is created within a wider frame of the event, which includes the cultural or sub-cultural milieu and many other factors. And even the experiences themselves are not the same cross-culturally but are unique to each tradition with its requisite enactments. 

Now Heron does seem to promote the creation of new content for the forms of knowing, both intellectual and aesthetic (as in the ritual, symbolic performances of sound and movement.) To just maintain the traditional forms does indeed keep us bound to the conceptual systems that created them, with all of their authoritative shortcomings. I’m not sure what Ferrer thinks about this so further study is required.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

From a P2P Foundation article:   

Traditional mystical and religious paths are exclusionary, based on strong divisions between the in and the out group. Internally, they reflect the social values and organizational models of the civilizations in which they were born. Thus they are premodern in authoritarian manner, patriarchal, sexist, subsuming the individual to the whole. Or, in their latter manifestations they are run as corporations and bureaucracies, reflecting the early emergence of capitalism as in the case of Protestantism, and in the case of the “new age”, operating explicitly as a spiritual marketplace reflecting the capitalist monetary ethos, where every spiritual experience can be bought, for the price of attending a workshop or a seminar. When traditional religions of the East move to the West, they bring with them their authoritarian and feudal formats and mentalities. Epistemologically, in their spiritual methodologies, they are authoritarian as well, far from an open process, traditional paths start from the idea that there is one world, one truth, one divine order, and that some privileged individuals, saints, bishops, sages, gurus, have been privileged to know this truth, and that this can be taught to followers. The seventies and eighties have been characterized by the emergence of new religions and cults with a particularly authoritarian character, and by the appearance of a number of fallen gurus , characterized by abuses in terms of finance, sexuality, and power. If one decides to follow an experiential path, it is always the case that the experience is only validated if it follows the pregiven doctrine of the group in question. 

Ferrer’s book, Revisioning Transpersonal Psychology: Towards a Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality, not only is a strong critique of spiritual authoritarianism, which integrates poststructuralist arguments against absolute knowledge claims, but also a first description of an alternative view. In it, a spiritual practice operates as an open process in which spiritual knowledge is co-created, and thus cannot fully rely on old ‘maps’, which have to be considered as testimonies of earlier creations, not as absolute truths. Spirituality is understood in terms of the present relationship with the Cosmos (the concrete Totality), accessible to everyone here and now . Instead of the perennialist vision of many paths leading to the same truth, Ferrer advocates for an ‘ocean of emancipation’ with the many moving shores representing the different and ever-evolving approaches to spiritual co-creation. In an article on ‘Integral Transformative Practices’ , Ferrer also records new practices that reflect this participatory turn, such as the ones pioneered by Albareda and Romero in Spain: open processes of self- and group discovery that are no longer cognicentric, but instead fully integral approaches that collaborative engage the instinctual, emotional, mental, and transmental domains as equal partners in the unfolding of spiritual life. J. Kripal, who is very appreciative of Jorge Ferrer's contribution, does conclude that one more lingering illusion about religion and mysticism should be abandoned: that it is somehow quintessentially 'moral' or 'ethical' and essentially emancipatory in character, a claim that he disputes .
 

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Ferrer wrote a paper with Albareda and Romero (referenced in the last post) called “Embodied participation in the mystery.” It in some ways echoes my previous speculations about a return to earlier levels (aka states) at a certain stage to reown and integrate them. And it is this integration that might indicate a more human, not more-than-human, spirituality. And yes, I know, watch out for the capital letters epitomizing the Real Elements. Here's an excerpt:

In its widest sense, evolution can be seen as involving the progressive differentiation and integration of the Dark Energy and the Energy of Consciousness. In human life, it is likely that the Energy of Consciousness historically emerged by means of an inhibition of the Dark Energy. Far from being an evolutionary mistake or aberration, this temporary inhibition may have been essential to avoid the reabsorption of a still relatively weak, emerging self-consciousness and its values into the stronger presence that a more instinctively driven energy once had in human beings. In other words, the inhibition and/or regulation of the primary dimensions of the person—somatic, instinctive, sexual, and certain aspects of the emotional—may actually have been necessary at certain stages of human evolution to allow the emergence and maturation of self-consciousness and its cognitive, emotional, and moral qualities.

We are convinced that the degree to which human consciousness has developed enables us to take a qualitative leap forward in the evolutionary process. We suggest that we are now collectively prepared to cultivate ways of life based on the integration of polar qualities that have always been seen as opposites, or even as mutual enemies—ways of life that, in general, are based on the integration of the Dark Energy and the Energy of Consciousness. We are, of course, not talking about a return to a state of primordial undifferentiation of these energies, but rather of a process in which both energies, while remaining clearly differentiated, move toward a creative synthesis that brings forth a more integrated state of being affiliated with novel qualities and possibilities. In other words, having developed self-reflective consciousness and the subtle dimensions of the heart, it may be the moment to reappropriate and integrate the more primary and instinctive dimensions of human nature into a fully embodied participation in the Mystery.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Regarding Albareda & Romero's Holistic Integration, Ferrer describes it as follows in his article “Integral transformative practice: A participatory perspective”:

Originally developed in Spain, Holistic Integration is an approach to integral growth and healing that is not based on already existing practices or techniques. Holistic Integration emerges from more than three decades of practically-based inquiry, with the help of the experience of hundreds of individuals in healing and psychospiritual processes. Its main purpose is to facilitate natural conditions that allow each person, free from the potential constraints that are subtly imposed by psychospiritual models and ideals, to lay down his or her path of integral evolution. Practitioners learn to self-regulate a process in which the different dimensions of their being – body, instincts, heart, mind, and consciousness – autonomously mature and are gradually integrated. As I explain below, this is attained through simple but potent practices that open these human dimensions to the essence of both the vital energy and the energy of consciousness. When these dimensions become aligned to these energies, a new energetic axis emerges that guides and fosters the person’s evolution from within, not according to external standards or ideals.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

So is everyone capable of creating one’s own spirituality? Wouldn’t a certain amount of autonomy be necessary to accomplish this? It would seem that many, still at conventional ego development, might not be capable of such a task, instead needing an established religious or spiritual system to follow. According to Cook-Greuter (see below), only about 14% of the population is at postconventional level and hence might not be ready for such a self-created program. And even within her postcon levels it might not even be until one reaches the Autonomous (Strategist) level that one might have this capacity. 

According to CG in “Ego development: Nine levels of increasing embrace” it is at the Autonomous stage where one begins to integrate the various sub-identities within oneself and has the capacity to tell a new narrative based on this accomplishment. It is here that one can truly create one’s own path and style from all that was previously learned. Recall in the “authentic enlightenment” thread the self-system is the key to integrating all the levels, lines, states, etc. But it cannot really accomplish this task if it is itself all over the place due to split-off sub-identities. Hence while the self-system still “integrates” as best it can prior to the Autonomous it is more disjointed and disconnected and not capable of the requisite integration for creating its own way. To attempt this creation prior to this kind of integration might lead to some very fucked up, though in some ways beautiful, expressions . Recall McLaughlan:

oh you're a beautiful
a beautiful fucked up man
you're setting up your
razor wire shrine

So does something like Holistic Integration provide the environment wherein one at a pre-Autonomous stage can rise to this stage? Or is the stage a prerequisite to do this work? Also can we even get to some form of autonomous self-integration without some form of self therapy? Granted Holistic Integration, created by a psychologist, recognizes the importance of this modality so perhaps that is taken into account and therapy, along with meditative technology, can raise one to such a perspective?

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

I anticipate that there might be kind of dialogue on this subject ala that between Hadot and Foucault, with Foucault representing the post-modern and Hadot representing the ancient traditional (though that kind of characterization may be is hermeneutically suspect, since Hadot is living in the modern period). I understand Foucault as emphasizing the aesthetic domain, as aiming at the construction of the “beautiful soul.”
The anarchic theme of “everyone creating their own spirituality” can be said to jibe the post-modern interpretation of “spiritual exercizes.” It reflects a kind of “self-creation,” or a kind of “construction” of self, where the self itself becomes a kind of “work of art.” “Creating your own spirituality” becomes as kind of expression of the “self-creation.”

hadot on foucault.
article.
foucault anbd hadot.
and again.
more.
and this.
related.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

One of the aims in such as regimen, as I imagine it, is that of self-expression. This self-expression need not only entail artistic forms of expression, like drawing, dancing, twisting metal, or playing music, but the totality of one's being, including one's sexuality, where each facet of our life becomes capable of expressing what is basically the ecstatic condition. Even in the classical tradition, we find examples ecstatic expression, for example in the “gitas,” as in the Ashtavakra Gita, or the “dohas,” as in the Dohas of the anarchic, ecstatic Sahajiya sage, Saraha. Such texts, as Da noted, are not “teaching texts” per se, full of injunctions and prescriptive language; rather, they are basically the “ecstatic utterances” of wandering sages and ecstatics.

Many contemporary forms of “spirituality” already contain this notion of a “work on the self” that aims largely at self-expression, and we should not be surprised by this since we are already living in the post-modern condition. For example, note the presence, and prominence, of expression in the following (from a post of Tely's) in which “orgasm” becomes a mode of expression, as well as kind of metonym for the life lived in terms of ekstasis:

[italics added]

Bio-Energetics of Orgasm . Teleclass
…

The sessions will be fast paced and full, emotions are very much a part of this work, processing emotion is not. You need to be comfortable with your own emotions and skilled at being with them without getting lost in them. You are here to explore yourself in the company of other courageous souls.

Most of us move in the world with some degree of control, we hold back. There is, quite often, some place where we are not yet willing to orgasm fully, or we disassociate from our orgasm, another way to control through avoidance. Whether this is in the bedroom … in our experience of sex, in love … in our experience of relationship, in work … in our relationship with our career, in expression … or in our relationship to our creativity, we hold on, lock-down and live “in spite” of ourselves. We control or disassociate from our orgasm rather than plunging into the pelvis, allowing it's fury to free us.

There's good news.

The very lock-down that we experience in our body is our leverage. This is the revolutionary concept that Reich and Lowen presented to the world decades ago. Our resistance, our blocks, contain the key to the full expression of pleasure and intimacy in our bodies, hearts, minds and spirits. When we expand our scope of feeling into our pelvis, pelvic floor, vagina, and penis, and we meet any vestige of “lock-down” with awareness, with breath and with courage, we are catapulted directly into full orgasmic experience - not just in sex, not just in lovemaking - in every waking moment. Not just in the genitals either, in every single cell in our bodies and every aspect of our lives - especially those area where we feel frustrated and blocked. It's no longer a full body orgasm, it's a full life orgasm … fierce, full of fury and free.

You will experience …

Your Erogenous Potential
We'll begin by exploring breathing techniques that expand the body's capacity for full orgasmic expression. You will feel areas of erogenous potential you've never felt before, I guarantee it.

Full Orgasmic Expression
We'll practice ways of walking and standing that translate directly into the experience of lovemaking and increase the ability to deeply feel full orgasmic expression.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Interestingly enough, Albreda & Romero also teach Holistic Sexuality. Here's their description from the Esalen 2006 Summer Program:

Holistic Sexuality: A New Integral Approach
Ramon V. Albareda, Marina T. Romero

This workshop is for individuals who wish to access the full potential of their vital primary energy, and explore how this energy can be creatively expressed and integrated at somatic, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. It is designed to teach you how to connect with this energy not only as a creative force for everyday life, but also as a bridge to the deepest dimension of your reality and a catalyst for grounded spiritual growth. It will also assist you in the discovery of your own unique path of integral evolution by grounding your consciousness in your own vital potentials. 

The leaders write, “We understand Sexuality to mean the vital primary energy of the person, and Holistic as referring to the different levels – somatic, emotional, mental, and spiritual – in which this energy is transformed as well as the totality of this transformation.” Life’s natural processes are the organic references for this transformation and inspire the healing principles and practices that shape Holistic Sexuality. Holistic Sexuality has evolved into a practice of its own through decades of research and experience. It is affiliated neither with Tantra nor other methods of working with sexuality. 
 
The leaders will facilitate a group process as well as counsel each participant individually to design personalized practices. You will learn how to safely self-regulate your own process from a place of awareness of your present capabilities and necessary boundaries. This workshop will guide you in:
 
· Developing a path of self-knowledge, regeneration, and creative evolution
· Transforming the limiting unconscious tendencies of your vital primary world
· Working through conflicts that hinder your sexual self-expression
· Integrating sexual and spiritual energies to enhance the quality of your life
 

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Indeed. Note the language in the above as well,
 ”…explore how this energy can be creatively expressed…”
”Working through conflicts that hinder your sexual self-expression…”

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

An interesting interview on the Burning Man project.

As you may know, I also love this flick. So much for the classical traditions: up in smoke.
hahaha.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

But Burning Man, per the interview, allows for “unbridled self-expression.” No expression is better or worse than the next. All is equivalent and connected by the “primal” ceremony of the burning man, a reconnection to our primal roots. Hence this could take “legitimate” self or group expression as in The Wicker Man, where human sacrifice is acceptable because it too connects us to our primal roots. Yet recall from above:

We are, of course, not talking about a return to a state of primordial undifferentiation of these energies, but rather of a process in which both energies, while remaining clearly differentiated, move toward a creative synthesis that brings forth a more integrated state of being affiliated with novel qualities and possibilities.

To just make the return leaves out the integration aspect, and this really does require a high degree of ego development. That's why I cautioned above that to just engage in unbridled creativity might lead to some seriously fucked up expressions, human sacrifice being one example.

On the other hand, Burning Man does have guiding principles, many of which are indeed from a postconventional value system. Hence it's not strictly just a return to the primal. Some of those principles include: decommidification, communal effort, environmental concerns, civic responsibility etc.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Hey Ed,
Yes, of course. I wasn't actually advocating either the Burning Man ceremony or the human sacrifice of the Wicker Man. I also agree that a true return to the primal is not only undesirable but probably impossible. I also agree that a pure anarchism may be problematic, if only because it can lead to some serious fuckupedness. I am currently reevaluating the pure anarchism of the kynic. I'm experimenting with a form of Paganism of sorts at present and that is why I brought forward the Burning Man/Wicker Man image.

I also have reservations about a pure aestheticism. Even self-expression seems to me to be still attached to the philosophy of the subject. If it is the post-modern aesthetic then maybe we can distinguish between the post-modern and the post-structural. The post-structural is more interested in intersubjective communication as self-constituative.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Yes, my original posts indicate what might be called poststructural expressions as P2P spirituality. That is, autonomous individuals networking into a collective, intersubjective intelligence.  Such intelligence no longer subscribes to the philosophy of the subject, or as Ferrer calls it, “intrasubjective reductionism.” Recall that in this view the former is expanded into mutl-local, participatory “events” (reminiscent of Caputo). All of these emerging individual and cultural traits are examples of postconventional, postformal, postmetaphysical modes of operation. It is not a pure aestheticism where anything the individual does is acceptable under the rubric of “self-expression.” As you note, in many ways such an aesthetic still clings to a philosophy of the subject or intrasubjective consciousness as the final arbiter, often expressing as a nihilistic and narcissistic anarchy with its accompanying cynicism.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Kela and Ed,
I'm going to address both of the preceding posts with one response and a question: are y'all working on trying to keep a less than interesting thread alive?  (P2P is not interesting) C'mon! Y'all can do better.

Kela wrote: “I also agree that a pure anarchism may be problematic, if only because it can lead to some serious fuckupedness. I am currently reevaluating the pure anarchism of the kynic.”

I think it is clear on the face of history, and in the depths of the most responsible Anarchist Theory, that pure anarchy is just as impossible to attain, perhaps even theorize, as a return to the true primal. Anarchy is social and intersubjective and intersubjectivity is always self-organizing (anti-anarchy). The only pure anarchist will be the last human left alive and freely practicing kynacism.

Kela wrote: “I also have reservations about a pure aestheticism. Even self-expression seems to me to be still attached to the philosophy of the subject.”

Since 19th century Aestheticism was contingent on a prior positivism, how could it be pure? And given the hindsight of over a century, how can one consider it to be even marginally effective? If on the other hand this is only about aestheticism and the second sentence is to follow from the first, then “self-expression” requires at least one if not two descriptors. Someone giving an opinion in a AIG Board meeting is certainly self-expression, but hardly aesthetic. (BTW, the second sentence of the Kela excerpt leads immediately to a tautology.)

Kela wrote: “If it is the post-modern aesthetic then maybe we can distinguish between the post-modern and the post-structural. The post-structural is more interested in intersubjective communication as self-constituative constitutive.”

If one takes Barthes death of the author seriously and to its logical conclusion, and if Barthes is as purely postmodern as I have heard told, then there can be no self-expression in postmodernity. But it still has a faint prayer in the post-structural, as Kela says.

Edward wrote: ”Yes, my original posts indicate what might be called poststructural expressions as P2P spirituality. That is, autonomous individuals networking into a collective, intersubjective intelligence.  Such intelligence no longer subscribes to the philosophy of the subject, or as Ferrer calls it, “intrasubjective reductionism.'”

As I understand it, P2P is essentially about virtual communities and networks, i.e. if I'm typing into a computer linked with a “community”it is P2P but if you and I met over lunch then it would just be asocial engagement. In this light, the far-flung network of electronically connected Brains in Jars is the defining aspect of P2P. If this is the case then Communications Theory; 1) renders the word”intelligence” highly suspect in this context and, 2) stands Ferrer's” intrasubjective reductionism” on its head. Communication theory originated in Bell Laboratories and has evolved (in part) into studies that deal with the number of bits of information understood over the number of bits expressed. (The former is always smaller than the latter.) The ratio only approaches “1” in face-to-face conversation.Telephonic communication reduces the bits understood by at least 20%. The effective conveyance of information is reduced by at least 50% in written communication. (Having been a professional writer, editor and writing teacher/tutor for over 20 years I have to say that 50% is wildly optimistic, especially in what I see coming out of virtual communication.) What this means is that over 50% of P2P in-put is either not understood, or misunderstood on the out-put end. This is not intelligence, it is a free-for-all guessing game filled to over half by projection and error. In the Virtual, Barthes “Author” is 150% dead except to themselves–in the jar–where they are effectively reduced to a solo subject floating in their faux amniotic fluid and hopefully talking to themselves with some degree of understanding. Meanwhile, the reader is barely hanging on by the sheer will of wanting to be amused by a process rather than being actually informed by another flesh and blood presence.

Edward wrote: “As you note, in many ways such an aesthetic still clings to a philosophy of the subject or intrasubjective consciousness as the finalarbiter, often expressing as a nihilistic and narcissistic anarchy with its accompanying cynicism.”

This is an excellent case in point: I know the definitions of all 6 abstract nouns in this sentence, and the 5 adjectives, and the 1 pronoun, and the 3 verbs, and all the other syntactical oddments, but when they are so arranged I probably have a 15% notion of what it means–and this from one who used to score in the 99th percentile in reading comprehension.

But anyway, thanks y'all, I was amused by the process. (Smilie)

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

P2P is not interesting…but…I was amused by the process.

…but when they are so arranged I probably have a 15% notion of what itmeans–and this from one who used to score in the 99th percentile inreading comprehension.

I figured my sentence about anarchy and cynicism would get a cynical reaction from the anarchist. To be honest, for the most part it is you who are neither interesting nor amusing. Articulate yes, but that's not enough to garner either. You are of course entitled to your opinion, such as it is, and to post here freely. As I am entitled to mostly ignore you, as I generally do.

But there is that maybe 15% of the time when you are somewhat amusing, like that insult about my incomprehensible writing. It of course has to be my writing given your superior reading comprehension. I don't know how I ever got past my English Professors and attained a BA in English Literature, summa cum laude, with such atrocious writing. It was an amusing insult, I must admit, so thanks for that.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

I figured you were baiting me, Edward, so what else could I say? It is just one of those dysfunctional relationships. But– not to be cynical, from your performance on this site and on others, it is easy to imagine that you were one of the best students any professor has ever instructed. (Nonetheless, the sentence in question fell apart at the comma.)

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Kela,
You wrote: I am currently reevaluating the pure anarchism of the kynic.

If you are viewing kynicism now with a skeptical eye, you might be interested in Marianthi/Lionza's development of what I believe is a superior alternative, aeluroicism, the perspective of the cat. Greek, by birth and disposition, M knows well that cats are to Greece what cows are to India so despite the veneration of Diogenes, one of her heroes, and his kynics, she took off on the last few paragraphs of one of my old blog posts and began what might a fun piece of work that could take Sloterdijk's project to ever greater heights.

The developmental sequence went like this:

Me from the blog post:
Marianthi posted this comment on one of the blog posts below.
“Steven,
Quoting here one of your ´contexts:
‘I have found in a few rather rare instances people whose autonomy of mind is as well developed as their level of self-awareness. They seem not to have any need for belief. They seem whole in both heart and mind.’
Would you tell me more about this WHOLENESS of heart and mind? Is that the instance when one is not divided against oneself but knows, feels, un hesitantly- but something else as well? Is it total conviction or fullness of instinct or all of the above?”

 (other irrelevant stuff)

“…or the fullness of instinct…”
I like that phrase and the fact that it is present in the question tells me that Marianthi knows a lot more about this Wholeness apprehension than she might be letting on and it makes me wonder if I am not a student in her class. Instincts are not high on the praise list for most folks from a culture with a background in the desert religions. Alternative journalists often make good use of the word if they are not the kind to take themselves too seriously. Human Behavioral Ecologists like it too and they seem to be such delightful subversives that I will gladly give them a plug whether or not they know of what they speak. More respectable civilians, those with spiritual inclinations or at least transcendental leanings prefer however a marginally near miss in the word “intuitive.” Butter would not melt in their mouths…but it appears that I digress.

Fullness of Instinct.
Instinct is informed by experience. This seems fairly obvious on watching the hunting strategy of an old cat…it appears to have what it needs to achieve its ends wu wei; seasoned but unconscious calculations of odds against exertion and factors of distance, terrain and cover, when to stalk, when to pounce, when to just sit back bemused and wash the face. Old cats have no need for beliefs for they have all it takes to live well without it. There is an age when they pass being needy. Marianthi and I have talked of the informing of instinct to make it full.
So how does one know there is no need to believe? “How do you know when,” she asked me last week and hinted she already knew.
It is without doubt when one catches themselves preening a little like an old cat, looking that way at the world, catching the taste of a sense that no matter how long the delicious free falls through the abyss that come the bottom, if it comes, one will land on their feet. Will it hurt? Who knows. But its safe until then.

M's comment:
I´ve been swimming round images of ´fullness of instinct´ for a whole year now, dear wise one, before I could add my comments to the richness of yours. Thank you for them. In those waters came bobbing up two of my favorite characters: Diogenes and Hari.
The first one, the real man who lived and became the most famous of cynics of Ancient Greece, rejected all proper norms and requirements of his society, lived as an ascetic, made fun of Plato (to his face and to his students), masturbated in public with the comment that he wished his stomach could be as easily satisfied as his penis and insisted that what was good enough for a dog´s comfort was good enough for a human. Kynion, old Greek word for dog made him and those who espoused his thought into kyniki : dog-like, from which English somehow derived the word cynics, the dog-like ones, who needed little beyond satisfying the bare cravings of instinct and could laugh at those who needed more.
The second one is called Hari. She´s the protagonist of a book yet to be written, a wise old lady, lover of Diogenes, who pulls the ground from under his feet as passionately and often as she can. She´s groundless and invites him there. She visits him draped in silk garments and tries to anoint him with perfumed oils. Stuck in his rejection of comfort he rejects them. She laughs, he frowns. Next visit she wears rags, eats dirty raw onions with him (his favorite diet) and spits the tough stems out. She stinks, he stinks. She rejects him. He pines, but stays stuck to his show-off onion diet. Then she comes to him as the temple scholar, in simple linen, embracing scrolls full of quotes. She reads them to him for hours. He yawns, she demands mental alertness from one who says he´s better than those who need comforts. He falls asleep. Sternly she asks him why on earth he sat like an old dog, listening till he slept. He can´t figure her out. Loves and hates her. Her shifts, her freedom to contradict herself and catch him out at his rigidity are ultimately so entertaining. She´s more like an aeluros, a cat, in ancient Greek. Flexible, not set in her ways, responding to the moment, to the instinct of what seems right for the time even if it completely contradicts yesterday. She awakens and bends Diogenes out of his posturing. The aeluroics begin with her.
I know you know her.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

“I have found in a few rather rare instances people whose autonomy of mind is as well developed as their level of self-awareness. They seem not to have any need for belief. They seem whole in both heart and mind.”

”Old cats have no need for beliefs for they have all it takes to live well without it.”


It may be the case (and I think it is but don't wish to argue for it now) that it's a moot issue whether anyone has any need for beliefs, for the simple reason that beliefs do not exist and no one believes anything to begin with.


On this view, “beliefs” belong to an everyday conception of mind (“folk psychology”) which will eventually be eliminated by neuroscience. In this eventuality, we may continue to speak of “beliefs,” but only in the same way that we speak today of “the sun rising” and “the sun going down.”


If beliefs don't exist, there can be no such thing as a “need for beliefs.”


Does this mean that there are no individuals, however rare, who ”seem whole in both heart and mind”? As you quote (in the “Authentic Enlightenment & Lines of Development” thread), “Those who know, don't say. Those who say, don't know.”

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Jim,
It has long been in the back of my mind that you are the only enlightened member of this pod. You are an artist…why not? We know you will never say.
I'll be back presently with more.
S.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Jim,
There is a need within some people and they believe that it is a need for a belief. If it were not there this pod, this site, would not exist. Somewhere within that excised material that I labeled “other irrelevant stuff” I mentioned that Allan Watts had defined “belief” as a desire for redemption rather than a profession of faith.

A story: Years ago when I was a young, radical journalist, there was a man named Bill Veeder who used to tell bartenders for me, “bring my son a double Scotch..” He was not my father, but one of the four or five men (including my father) for whom I've had any respect. Bill was a water rights lawyer who had defeated all comers in the longest trial in the history of the USA. He had never lost a case in a court of appeals or before the US Supremes. I once had a lover, a lawyer, who had seen everything there was to see come through a Federal Court, and she said she had never seen any lawyer who could take total control of a case and a courtroom…including the judge…like Bill Veeder. He worked almost exclusively for Native Americans. One mid-morning Bill and I were hanging out in the lobby of the Ridpath Hotel in Spokane, WA, when a young lawyer with some tribal clients came up and asked Bill how he, Bill, could lay everything he was and all he ever had on the line for a tribe, gamble all he was and all his client's future on his ability to prevail. The guy was looking for advice, enlightenment from the Master, and Bill fed him a line of BS, platitudes and sweet nothings. The lawyer walked away apparently impressed and I asked Bill why he'd delivered the guy a line of crap. And Bill said, “Because he will never do it. He is a necessitous man. If he had to ask he will never know.”

There are those who are necessitous; a word no one should ever forget.

Jim: On this view, “beliefs” belong to an everyday conception of mind (“folk psychology”) which will eventually be eliminated by neuroscience. In this eventuality, we may continue to speak of“beliefs,” but only in the same way that we speak today of “the sun rising” and “the sun going down. If beliefs don't exist, there can be no such thing as a “need for beliefs.”

Whether or not a belief can exist…god, now there is a blast from the past…in 1973 I wrote an eventually anthologized essay that contained the phrase: “The idea that the sun would come up tomorrow was about the most exotic abstraction their ruined minds could handle.” We're back in the present now and I am writing that whether or not a belief can exist is a little bit beside the point of whether or not there are The Necessitous out there with a seeming hollow within their brain or their bowels that they want filled with something that will assure them of who and where they are, what it is. Do you think one should deal them platitudes and sweet nothings? God knows there's more than enough of that to go around, to feed the multitude.

And then there are those few who aren't. They have. Like old cats.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Steven,

Yes, there are “The Necessitous” who seek to be filled with platitudes, sweet nothings, and assurance. And yes, whether beliefs exist is beside your point. I changed the subject.

Though I can't find any at the moment, I recall past posts by you, on this or possibly another board, wherein you said things about belief (or quoted M) similar what you said in a post in this thread, to the effect that some have such a developed autonomy of mind that they have no need for belief.

If beliefs exist, then I would say that everyone who isn't brain dead has them, including anyone who believes they have no need for them. And if beliefs do not exist, then neither the autonomous of mind nor The Necessitous have them.

So when someone suggests that they might have no need for beliefs, I want to ask if they really believe that.

Back to The Necessitous. I do see and agree with you point: there are The Necessitous out there with a seeming hollow in their brain or their bowels that they want filled with something that will assure them of who and where they are, and there's more than enough platitude and sweet nothing dealing going around to feed that multitude. I hear a lot of talk about “truth” (or “Truth”) from The Necessitous, yet it often seems to me that the entire game they're playing is all about running as fast as possible away from truth.

On the other hand, I'm one of the necessitous and the older I get the more I suspect myself whenever I find myself reacting to how ignorant and asleep “other people” are. And I'm basically an old cat that is sometimes a dog. And sometimes a cow, sometimes a bull, sometimes full of bullshit, and so on.

Moo, meow, and woof.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

I think beliefs are important as long as we understand what their nature is. In my view it functions as a starter point:

Beliefs-> Faith-> Knowledge.
Hypothesis-> Theory-> Proof.

This topic started off with “The next Buddha will be a collective”. I interpret theurj originally posited this statement from his scale somewhere between belief and faith.

However, from my experience I already know it is knowledge. When something is 'known' or 'proven' it can be factually re-applied and used.

For example, Wilber's model is a theory, not a proof, and certainly not fact; his cult behaves as if it is. The emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

His seemingly total disregard for the scientific method has created many neurotic behavior patterns; failed 'integral' communities, failed websites, sloppy & narcissistic thinking, elitism, slimy marketing, etc.

However, bullshit makes great fertilizer. And we are the new crop…

ne·ces·si·tous (-təs)
adjective
in great need; destitute; needy that is necessary or essential calling for action; urgent

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

I interpret theurj originally posited this statement from his scale somewhere between belief and faith.

To the contrary, the thread started with the empirical facts (proof) of how P2P is now manifesting in global society. From these facts Bauwens is positing a theory of how and why this is occurring.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Thanks for the clarification theurj.

You play with theories, I'll work with knowledge.

I hope others are enjoying your 'ageless' character as much as I am…

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Mark, I liked that redirection of the group's attention, toward what seems to me we might call “functionality” (as in my “functional philosophy” that I expounded on somewhere, and haven't revisited much - until now). I recall many IL discussions involving “operators” (which was reminiscent of psychology's “operational definitions”, that I internalized during my psychology schooling and work - the value of operationally defining something). Your discussion above seems to point us back in the direction of “act”ual action to improve the quality of life for both the individual and the collective. Act like Christ or Buddha or any highly spiritual being that existed or that we imagined existed. Just do the collective Buddha thing. Lets get down to business with it. 
  Is that the sentiment you are expressing? It certainly has a lot of merit to it. At some point our emphasis needs to shift to “practicing” what we preach. 
  Darrell 

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Jim,
It has long been in the back of my mind that you are the only enlightened member of this pod.

How quaintly Romantic. Jim's a good guy, and one of the most insightful, and clever, people I know, and no doubt he's had his share of “experiences,” but I've never entertained the possibility he might be “enlightened,” whatever that is. I wonder which tier he should be ranked at?  I hear that tangerine and Sicilian lemon are fashionable colors this spring. ;-)

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

“recognizes the importance of this modality so perhaps that is taken
into account and therapy, along with meditative technology, can raise
one to such a perspective?”

“The next Buddha will be a collective.” [italics mine]

The Buddha already is the collective and as an individual.

Can you hear the Buddha in Sarah's second track (I Love You) on the album, “Surfacing”? Can you hear and see the Buddha in each other?

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

quit laughing, bruce! ;-)

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

perhaps we need a thread on sloterdijk. one problem i have with kynicism is that it is inherently elitist. i also think that we can distinguish kyncism as a kind of 'path' from the role of the kynic vis vis his/her relation to society, which is what most authors, including sloterdijk, have been emphasizing of late (e.g., jesus as jewish kynic, etc.).

i'm not so much interested in alternatives as in dialogues. while i find several narratives of late to be interesting (we had a glance here recently at deleuze/guattarri's), among more the interesting ones, in my mind, are sloterdijk's and gadamer's, who are two of the primary discussants residing in my brain.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

We do have a thread on Peter Sloterdijk.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

one problem i have with kynicism is that it is inherently elitist.

So is the non-kynical practice of philosophy, and any up-market art, and neurosurgery and preforming in Cirque du Soleil and being a cat. The proof of the latter is that I once told a Newage-ie friend that the next incarnation after being a Buddha was to become a cat–how elite is that? And for about 5 seconds he believed me.
And speaking of the Buddha and the next one, I'm going to sign off this thread with the mention that P2P is great for networking open source software and linking 'puters to synthesize a server…but beyond that? I have been a member of too many collectives, serious collectives, and despite all the New Lefty intentions and rhetoric they all quickly evolved into pockets of inefficiant, non-hierarchical totalitarianism

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

It's “elitist” only in the sense that we can't all be kynics. One role of the kynic is to function as a kind critic of society. He/She stands outside of society and throws rocks at it, ala Ken Kesey. Kynicism is like mysticism in that it is not for the masses. It is only “problematic” insofar as it cannot be prescribed as a general philosophy available for all. As it is in itself, though, it serves a very important role.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

It is only “problematic” insofar as it cannot be prescribed as a general philosophy available for all.

That is where the elitist is wrong, because everyone has access to the choice to stand outside and throw rocks or kisses or whatever. Even if there is a gun to one's head, there is still access to the choice. It is available to all. Whether or not they take it is still subject to their choice.

I casually assume far more of the best of everyone around me. And you would be surprised how often I get it.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

An absolutely perfect response Steven.

You do not surprise me that you get it.

So what do you plan to do with it?

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

Celebrate!

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

If everyone is standing on the outside then there will be no left on the inside, and we will have nothing left to do but throw rocks at each other.

I think evenm Sloterdijk himself realizes the limitations of kynicism.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

You need to catch up in the Sloterdijk thread. See this post, for example:

Within Sloterdijk's recent work, he becomes doubtful of his earlier position, as he seems to have realised that the kynical position is not one which solves the problem of cynicism properly. It might bring about a temporary relief, but that is all. Therefore, he has been working towards a stronger conception of the Good within his latest main works. Although, Sloterdijk himself has gone beyong his early works, the kynical position defended in the “Critique of Cynical Reason” nevertheless has to be regarded as a suitable developmental step between cynicism and a stronger position of the good, and so is a position worth to be taken lightly.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

kynicism can never become a political philosophy in and of itself. it always stands in relation to political philosophy as such. it is the “other” of political philosophy. and it is for this reason that it is important. but it can never be a theory of anything, let alone of the polis. it's fine if you want to be hunter s. and one day blow your brains out. but it has no recommendations as to how to society should comport itself; it can only point to the absurdities of the polis.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

kela wrote: If everyone is standing on the outside then there will be no left on the inside, and we will have nothing left to do but throw rocks at each other.

That is an interesting mind's-eye image…off the cuff structuralism. Change the channel and….

In all the pomo madness, winds blowing chaos in all directions where everything is a flux of trans-gendering, intermeshed insides and outsides and no one can tell a holon from a handsaw and the kynic is the cynic is the Last Men dodging rocks. (Yes, the world is real. A kitten just dashed across this keyboard, charging a fly, and she only hit the 'q'.)

And then: I think even Sloterdijk himself realizes the limitations of kynicism.

Of course, this should go without saying for always within this vale of tears everything has a limit. But it is a stretch to put a limit on the joy of a kynic's life; a joy that might come from knowing she has mastered through courage and brass a little bit more of her fate than a cynic. But at the end of the day, when one realizes that joy is just a minor part of a kynic's self-definition, all the rest is clear, all the rest is theater.

For example; I can play in the daylight Voltaire to Edward's Leibniz, or more fitting, Archilochus to his St. Anselm, but it is theater…entertainment between feedings… but right… at the end of the day, no kynicism. I have reached my limit
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

I hang up kynic on the peg of the perchero, and just like any last man I teach M a Cuban rumba that is contained atop a bistro table or a bolero that no room can hold.

If a kynic fails to say something real (we will never know if Diogenes said anything real) they have reached the limit and then they fail.  To me this was something real. You might have read it before, but nonetheless it is real. It was so down and dirty but we were saving lives.

Ciao Luego,
S.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

“This might be a little too eccentric to put on the market…it goes into my collection.”

”…I hauled it back out, shot it up with a little adrenaline, tidied the style and added a bit or two, found it suitable again for public consumption and hung it on the board at Integral Visioning.”

I love your sense of style Steven…
…and we're still saving lives.

Mark

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

this made me think of E. M. Forsters great essay, Two Cheers For Democracy …

“I believe in aristocracy, though - if that is the right word, and 
if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the con-siderate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke. I give no examples - it is risky to do that - but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first three qualities I will let him in! On they go - an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People - all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, 
seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart's affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.”

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

P2P is manifesting in politics and journalism via group blogs like The Huffington Post and The Daily Kos. And not only manifesting but surpassing traditional political and media outlets in efficiency, accuracy and the bottom line, making money. In the political sense, outperforming traditional campaigning by making a new President via Obama's innovative, interactive, internet usuage. P2P is not just for open source software or networking computers anymore.

And it's not about everyone being part of a collective like the Borg, where there's a monolithic leader or Truth that everyone mindlessly believes in. As Bauwens said in the beginning of this thread, it is “a conscious return to collectivism where individuated, or self-actualised, individuals voluntarily – and temporarily - pool their consciousness in a search for the elusive collective intelligence.” Note the emphasis on indiviuated, self-actualised individuals, not programmed automotons. And note that the collective intelligence is not a final, definitive Truth but a continually shifting, growing, intersubjective interaction. This pod, in fact, is such a P2P expression.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

“This pod, in fact, is such a P2P expression.”

Clearly theurj, you work with knowledge and don't play with theory.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

P2P is not just for open source software or networking computers anymore.

That's tantamount to saying that socialization by one's peer group is not just for adolescents anymore. It is for the entire herd, from kindergartens to geriatric wards…anyone who can keyboard electronic excitement onto the back of a piece of glass–complete with all the pathologies, the pandemics of ignorance, superficiality and conventional wisdom. P2P could easily be the sui generis progenitor of Baudrillard's Integral Man…

especially in the context of the Huffington Post…

I know it is a little indecorous to lay out a few street creds in such a pristine environment as this, but that rarely stopped me before. Story: Early Spring 1974. I had recently promoted myself from Managing Editor to Senior Editor of a specialized investigative news magazine whose readership was almost entirely civil rights workers, politicians and journalists. It was a time when the print coming out of New York City, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, L.A. ruled the media. I got a call from a friend who was the national press liaison for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He said he had just audited a meeting between Kent Frizzell, Chief Solicitor for the U.S. Department of Interior, and a writer for TV Guide. Frizzell was the government's man who negotiated with Dennis Banks, the final settlement for the 72 day take-over of Wounded Knee, SD, by the American Indian Movement. The writer was doing a three installment piece on how the entire news media of a nation had abominated itself at Wounded Knee in perhaps the most agregious media circus in the U.S. since the Spanish American War, complete with blithe ignorance, arrogant ignorance, racism and obsequious pack reporting. My friends said toward the end of the meeting the writer asked if any good journalism  had came out of Wounded Knee. The friend said, “Frizzell pulled out the article you wrote, and said 'This was the only writer there who actually knew what was going on.'”

At that magazine 46 different major news papers from around the country arrived at our door daily, and the weeklies and monthlies. And the staff, three or four nihilistic prima donnas, would pick these bones like vultures, select our fights and go out and write up what was really going on. We were entered only once in journalistic competition and they had to invent for us an award: Better Than Best of Show.

I subscribe to and read the Huffington Post, blogs and all, because it sparks the more morbid aspects of my curiosity and reminds me so much of reading those 46 pathetic dailies all those years ago. It helps put the natural joys of my living into prospective in the style of “There but for the grace of god, go I.” So those guys helped to elect a president…bfd. That doesn't make it good journalism and so it remains in my view as another arrogant propagation of trendy, provincial, malinformed, half-cocked conventional wisdom that has the sense and sound of a Bee Gees music video. It has no sense of history or process, continuity or interrelatedness. It has no historiographical underpinning thus it has no “bottom,” or in other words it has no sub-structural design. It is only a surface, a passing event in itsel fthat distances the reader from the events that it is supposed to communicate.  Look who's coming! Its Baudrillard's Integral Man.

Finally, I question if Huff Po is really P2P (perhaps a good thing) since almost all the content is run through Ms. Huffington's commercialized, server-like brain. Her political sentiments aren't all that bad, but her sense of profound quality blows.

I've been reading Bauwens for several years and find him a curiosity. There is something charming about his optimism but I wonder about his naïveté and the cheerleading qualities of his ridged, lock-step rhetoric. All these peers are individuated and self-actualized? I checked his board of directors and the Ghost of Maslow isn't there. How does he know? Those of us in the collectives wherein I worked would have said the same about all our members. None of us were mindless, Borg-like, programed automatons subordinated to a monolithic Truth. I'm a little amused that you would suggest that.

I first scanned this Next Buddha article several months ago, reviewed it again when this thread was first posted and just now went back over it with added care to find why I found it more off-putting than his other stuff I've read. There are a few so-so aspects that I find troubling, the sterile, arthritic quality of his prose makes me edgy about the process of his thought. And the thought is a little too structuralist for my tastes. Then I come across references to the Classic “Society is greater than the sum of its parts…” which is, I guess, an acceptable European thing to write, though it would hold no water on any part of the globe which has, or currently is, helping to inform my take on the world. But given that, I still have to say that the Romantic alternative,  “Society is less than…” is equally indefensible. It is a contention best left to sophomore classes in rhetoric and debate. So why did Bauwens go there? Is it his nostolgia for the structureless structure?

He writes: The new commons is not a unified and transcendent collective individual, but a collection of large number of singular projects, constituting a multitude .

Sounds like Proudhon to me.

He writes: The cooperativity is not necessarily intentional (i.e. the result of conscious altruism), but constitutive of our being, and the best applications of P2P, are based on this idea. Similar to Adam Smith's theory of the invisible hand, the best designed collaborative systems take advantage of the self-interest of the users, turning it into collective benefit.

Sounds like Proudhon to me. Proudhon and all the other anarchist intellectuals who were eventually tossed from the International by the Marxists who cut this kind of collectivist project short.

I have heard tell that the world's only true collectivist systems were the anarcho-syndicalist projects set up in Republican held territory during the Spanish Civil War. Again betrayed by the Marxists who would rather destroy the anarchists than help save Spain from Franco.

The history of Proudhon/Kropotikin/Bakunin-style anarchy since their expulsion from the International is not pretty. Political anarchy in the U.S. and Europe is a study in total dysfunction. And Bauwens, all his hopeful geeks and hackers, show up on the doorstep of all the factions, all the in-fighting, all the dogmatic rigor mortise, with a “Here we are to save the day!”

All the rest have heard it before.
Ciao,
Steven

P.S. To be fair I have seen a couple of instances where an anarchistic spontanious order of the kind Proudhon proposed and Bauwens lionizes has worked. 1) The general condition of Venezuelan traffic. 2) A temporary, emergency/remedial project that was contingent on a single situation in an agricultural setting. (The kind of thing upon which Kropotkin based his entire philosophy.) A situation that would arise perhaps once every 10 to 15 years. It had not theory behind it, no philosophy, no rhetoric, no millennial dreams. It was only based on intellegence, and unspoken humanity. It arose, spontaneously ordered itself (forget pure anarchy) achieved its purpose and dissolved.
There are some things that should not be thought through.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

The malodorous miasma of a dissolving dinosaur from a cantankerous crypt.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

lol

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

See this from Wired Magazine (5/22/09): “The New Socialism” by Kevin Kelly:  

Wikipedia, Flickr and Twitter aren’t just revolutions in social media. They’re the vanguard of a cultural movement. 

We're not talking about your grandfather's socialism. In fact, there is a long list of past movements this new socialism is not. It is not class warfare. It is not anti-American; indeed, digital socialism may be the newest American innovation. While old-school socialism was an arm of the state, digital socialism is socialism without the state. This new brand of socialism currently operates in the realm of culture and economics, rather than government—for now….unlike those older strains of red-flag socialism, the new socialism runs over a borderless Internet, through a tightly integrated global economy. It is designed to heighten individual autonomy and thwart centralization. It is decentralization extreme. 

Instead of gathering on collective farms, we gather in collective worlds. Instead of state factories, we have desktop factories connected to virtual co-ops. Instead of sharing drill bits, picks, and shovels, we share apps, scripts, and APIs. Instead of faceless politburos, we have faceless meritocracies, where the only thing that matters is getting things done. Instead of national production, we have peer production. Instead of government rations and subsidies, we have a bounty of free goods. 

In the late '90s, activist, provocateur, and aging hippy John Barlow began calling this drift, somewhat tongue in cheek, ”dot-communism.” He defined it as a “workforce composed entirely of free agents,” a decentralized gift or barter economy where there is no property and where technological architecture defines the political space. He was right on the virtual money. But there is one way in which socialism is the wrong word for what is happening: It is not an ideology. It demands no rigid creed. Rather, it is a spectrum of attitudes, techniques, and tools that promote collaboration, sharing, aggregation, coordination, ad hocracy, and a host of other newly enabled types of social cooperation. It is a design frontier and a particularly fertile space for innovation. 

In his 2008 book, Here Comes Everybody, media theorist Clay Shirky suggests a useful hierarchy for sorting through these new social arrangements. Groups of people start off simply sharing and then progress to cooperation, collaboration, and finally collectivism. At each step, the amount of coordination increases. A survey of the online landscape reveals ample evidence of this phenomenon.

Re: The next Buddha will be a collective

sounds more like some form of socio-anarchism than some form of “socialism.”