[p2p-research] summary of integral essay topic

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Jose,

I resonate with your second paragraph, and recently Douglas Rushkoff made a
similarly one sided analysis of contempary spirituality.

Here's an excerpt of a piece I wrote in March 2006, requoted in a upcoming
blog post on the 7th:


<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/should-a-p2p-devotee-take-money-for-a-contribution-to-the-commons/2009/06/05>

P2P, spiritual narcissism, and post “new age”
spirituality<http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=3395>
[image: photo of Michel Bauwens]Michel Bauwens
5th June 2009

“What we think of as “spirituality” today is not at all a departure from the
narcissistic culture of consumption, but its truest expression. Consumer
materialism and spirituality coevolved as ongoing reactions against the
seemingly repressive institutions of both state and church.”


I’m a big fan of Douglas Rushkoff, author of the above quote, which comes
from a provocative article in the Reality
Sandwich<http://www.realitysandwich.com/i_am_god>.
However, I believe the analysis in this article is too one sided a
condemnation of contemporary spiritual forms.

Just below, I’m republishing my own analysis, published here in March 2006,
which is a evaluation of the ‘new age’ movement from a peer to peer point of
view.

*Michel Bauwens:*

*Despite the many misgivings about this broad phenomena that was once called
the “new age” movement, I think that overall it played a very necessary role
in the evolution of human culture of the late 20th century, as necessary as
the Romantic movement a century before.*

*Defining the new age is of course a very difficult thing, since to many
different people it means different things, it has been appropriated by all
kind of cults, and has of course become a permanent marketing concept in
bookshops, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world.*

*Essential to the new age is in my view that it was a corrective reaction
against an excessive rationalization and mechanization of western life, a
reaction on the dissociation between desire and reason that is at the basis
of Western civilization. As a reaction it was both necessary, and contained
many exaggerated features. I would define it first of all as a general kind
of sensibility that one can find in: alternative and complementary medicine,
ecological sensibility, an openness to non-traditional spiritual paths be it
Eastern or Western esoteric, alternative methods and lifestyles in the
fields of education, architecture, communal living; an attention to both
healing of the self and an attempt to re-enchant the world through
connections with both the natural world and the world of subtle-spiritual
experiences.*

*The flowering of the new age coincided with the political defeat of the
1968 movements, that resulted in a turning inward of many people who felt at
the same time obliged to adapt to a world in which they could not recognize
themselves, while attempting to nevertheless live their values, and change
their life concretely, on a smaller scale, as individuals, families, or
communities. The time in which it arose, the end of a long boom, coincided
with the continuation of the mechanization and commodification of life in a
global capitalist system, a loss of efficiency of the traditional social
technologies of control (the institutional framework of school, army,
prison, and the like), but especially in the traditional Western Christian
traditions which were becoming empty shelves.*

*One of the first tangible benefits of the new age was to reintroduce the
consciousness in the Western world, that spirituality was not a matter of
belief, but one of personal experience, that the various traditions
contained a vast array of psychotechnologies that could open up new vistas
of being and experiencing. It created a possibility for many people to
re-integrate this vast body of knowledge and experience, and in a way that
individuals could experiment and choose their own combination, rather than
following a conventional tradition.*

*It was also a vehicle to rediscover the dissociated aspects of Western man
prior to 1968: the integration of the body, the use of groups with
techniques to facilitate authentic communication without the social mask. It
was in many ways what Freud would term a “regression in service of the ego”,
a return to the repressed areas of the soma (bodily energies), the instinct,
emotions, mind and consciousness. Unfortunately, because it proceeded from a
total lack of experience, as well as had no grounding in tradition, it
frequently stayed in that regressive mode, as a reaction, it was too
anti-mind, and disdainful of the critical subjectivity that was one of the
hard won features of the western tradition. But to paraphrase Lenin, it
probably was a necessary infantile stage of development. In any case, for
many it offered many avenues of integrative work on their selves, a positive
orientation of self-work and change, in a otherwise dark period of negative
social change.*

*In other ways, it was an heir to Utopian Socialism, given the seeming
inability to change society as a whole, countless individuals starting
changing their life concretely: first of all by abandoning a blind trust in
the mechanistic approaches to the human body espoused by Western medicine;
through leaving aside the knowledge-stuffing rote learning in education in
view of regarding the child as a whole; and these kind of changes have made
the world unrecognizable from what it was 30 years ago. Whatever the
negative features of the neoliberal age, many institutions have become more
humane, more egalitarian, more respectful, more attuned to the whole person.
Individuals changed, institutions evolved, and many small scale communal
experiments, even if many failed, yielded valuable learning experiences. To
those who fear irrationality, I would answer that most of the people
involved were from the top layers in terms of intelligence and education. In
a time frame where the left disintegrated and many social acquisitions were
undone, the new age sensibility was a guarantee that millions of individuals
were continuing concrete efforts. In another important contribution, I see
the new age sensibility as also responsible for having forged a new kind of
human being that was more apt to survive in a knowledge-based network
society.*

*Of course, now that we have seen the glass half full, it is necessary to
attend the glass half empty. As we have said, the new age was reactionary in
its exaggerated rejection of cognicentrism, it went often too far in
rejecting the role of the mind and of critical intelligence. Instead of
integrative, it was often regressive, a “liberation from below”, where
selfish desire could reign unchecked.*

*It fell prey in many instances to cultism, mindless anti-modern reactions,
extreme radicalism in food and medical matters that could not recognize
anything positive in western science. Spiritually, it had often a rosy
outlook, that served as a compensation for living through a dreary reality
in which hyper-competition was in many ways degrading the quality of life.*

*Finally, being born itself in an age of hypercommerce, it didn’t take on
the feudal trappings of the earlier spiritual movements, but the trappings
of the market, and started functioning in many ways as a series of
capitalist enterprises, following a market and a marketing logic, and from
the point of view of the users, generating a consumerist attitude of pick
and choose. It stayed into an interiorist mode of changing individuals,
neglecting social change processes, and got recuperated by cognitive
capitalism. Many of these trappings, which sometimes verged on extreme
exploitation by scumbag gurus and cults, are now in my view incompatible
with a authentic spirituality, which now must be open-ended and
participative, and not based on a market model of for-paid experiences. In
addition, we must now both reject cognicentrism, but also the regressions of
the new age to pre-cognitive levels, and instead opt for an integrative
understanding and development of soma-instinct-body-mind-consciousness,
where each layer can develop transparently following its own logic, with
critical subjectivity intact, but also without any dictatorship of the mind
which supposes it already knows where we are heading in these processes of
individual, organizational, and societal change. Following Ferrer’s critique
in his book Revisioning Transpersonal Psychology, we must also reject
viewing the spiritual in terms of individual experience and rather see it as
a function of relationality*

*In conclusion, while we are now definitely beyond a positive role for the
new age, it has outlived its usefulness, and its many sub areas are now
integrated in the fabric of self, organization, and society, it was a
historically important neo-Romantic movement, which served to balance the
excessive rationalization and/or mechanization of society, and despite its
own excesses, it was a vehicle of change for individuals, communities, and
institutions/society.”*


On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 9:36 AM, jose ramos <actionforesight at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Michel
>
> The first link doesn't work for me, I don't know about others.
>
> Anderson's critique is interesting, but I wouldn't use terms like
> 'post-Wilber' or 'after Wilber', this gives Wilber too much credit in
> the first place.  I'd locate him as one variant of 'integral
> thinking', no less and and no more. His is an important variant, but
> there will be many 'post' and 'pre'  along the way - we hope ;)   I
> certainly agree with his critique of intergral commodification and
> political connections with neo-liberalism.
>
> The other issue is the critique of synthesis (New Ageism) as part of
> modern day capitalist ideological hegemony. As a former Californian I
> agree somewhat, and have plenty of anecdotal examples. However  my
> view is that people are continuously working towards synthesis in many
> aspects of life. There are many movements toward holism, and they can
> be greatly liberating and not necessarily part of capitalist hegemony.
>
> The question re: small academies and 'online degrees'. I hardly see
> these as part of the hegemonic  configuration. Try the Chicago school
> of economics, Harvard Law, and all the other institutions that
> naturalise   disciplinary boundaries, not people unraveling them.
>
> thanks for email, very interesting.
>
> Jose
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 12:27 AM, Michel Bauwens<michelsub2004 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > For those that don't have the time to read the whole thing a summary of
> the
> > issue:
> >
> >
> > Going beyond Wilber’s enclosure of the Integral Commons
> >
> > Michel Bauwens
> > 5th June 2009
> >
> > Citation from Daniel Gustav Anderson:
> >
> > By “after Wilber” I mean that the sun has set on Wilber’s project in a
> > number of ways, at least as a practical and intellectual project. It may
> > carry on as a religious institution, which is beyond my concern for it.
> The
> > “Wyatt Earp” episode should have made this obvious to anyone concerned
> why
> > this is so, if it wasn’t clear to them before this.
> >
> > Michel Bauwens:
> >
> > If you’d ask me to describe the ‘epistemological’ (i.e. form of
> knowledge)
> > status of P2P Theory, then I would say it’s an applied theory designed to
> > develop a coherent set of concepts which can explain the emergence of
> peer
> > to peer dynamics and its expressions, with an underlying emancipatory
> > intent. But the method that I use to arrive at conclusions is itself an
> > application of integral theory.
> >
> > I have explained my take on this in the following article: Beyond
> > Perspectives, Reductionisms and Layers, which appeared in Integral
> Review,
> > Issue 1, 2005 (June), pp. 14-15.
> >
> > In short, it’s a method that allows you to intergrate the various aspects
> of
> > reality, both objective (things), inter-objective (their relationships),
> > subjective (intentional realities) and intersubjective (shared cultures
> and
> > worldviews). My own method derives from Wilber, but is also radically
> > different because Wilber oversteps boundaries and uses flawed
> > interpretations to arrive at a synthetic interpretation of reality that
> aims
> > to become dominant.
> >
> > I had the occasion to critique Ken Wilber’s work in two short articles:
> >
> > * The Cult of Ken Wilber,
> > http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/Cult_of_Ken_Wilber.html
> >
> > * A critique of SD/Integral,
> > http://www.kheper.net/topics/Wilber/SDi_critique.html
> >
> > However, it is the deconstruction by Jeff Meyerhoff in Bald Ambition that
> > has destroyed the edifice as a project with scientific claims.
> >
> > In the theoretical article that I will be citing below, an episode is
> > mentioned, “the Wyatt Earp episode“, Wilber unfortunately broke down as a
> > coherent thinker and became the leader of a kind of intellectual cult,
> that
> > is terminally closed to criticism. It signalled that the edifice was
> beyond
> > repair.
> >
> > At the time of my break with the mothership for the reasons explained in
> my
> > short critical pieces above, I called to divest the integral movement
> from
> > the particular Wilberian’s interpretation, and called for a emancipatory
> > integral theory, that would replace the neoliberal and neocon alignment
> of
> > the Wilberian’s. However, despite the launch of an originally promising
> Open
> > Integral blog, this failed to materialize. (however, I consider my own
> P2P
> > Theory to be a candidate for such efforts, though it’s focus is limited
> to
> > the P2P field)
> >
> > Recently however, I discovered the work of Daniel Gustav Anderson in
> > Integral World, which carries a lengthy interview of him by Erik Scott
> > Thornquist, and points to two major essays laying the foundation for a
> > ‘critical integral theory’. I am therefore, understandably exited about
> the
> > belated discovery of Daniel’s work.
> >
> > Daniel’s interview shows that the critique is very congruent with mine,
> > though much more detailed and updated, and of course, he has worked out a
> > coherent alternative, something I choose to forego, instead focusing on
> the
> > P2P Theory, but as a means to the same end.
> >
> > His bio says that he “is presently a graduate student in Cultural Studies
> at
> > George Mason University. His interests include critical theory, ecology,
> and
> > European and South Asian traditions of dialectical thinking.”
> >
> > His two main and recommended essays are:
> >
> > * “Of Syntheses and Surprises: Toward a Critical Integral Theory”
> >
> > * “Such a Body We Must Create: New Theses on Integral Micropolitics“,
> >
> > Both of them have been published in Integral Review.
> >
> > Here are some excerpts:
> >
> > 1. Integral theory as a broad historical movement, predating, co-existing
> > and post-dating the particular interpretation by Ken Wilber
> >
> > In particular: Wilberism is an attempt to enclose the integral commons
> >
> > Daniel Gustav Anderson:
> >
> > “The conclusion I take from this history is that Wilber’s integral theory
> is
> > but one manifestation of a much broader historical phenomenon. It is a
> bit
> > disingenuous to say that it’s a singular work of singular genius as some
> > like to imagine it is, anymore than the so-called Cartesian worldview was
> a
> > strict result of some French guy’s geometry homework. Wilberism is not
> > particularly unique in this sense. Actually, Wilber’s project has all the
> > formal characteristics of any other subcultural phenomenon (see Dick
> > Hebdige’s work on subcultures). The difference is that Wilber’s
> subculture,
> > the subculture identified by affiliation with objects Wilber produces or
> > endorses, is privatized to a nearly unprecedented degree. Aficionados of
> > romance novels or kung fu films or like myself particular professional
> > sports teams engage with all these objects as commodities, surely, but
> > imagine if one kung fu director and his associates claimed that only his
> > movies represent the authentic vision for the genre and, further, the
> only
> > solution for humanity’s complex of problems. It would seem preposterous
> to
> > me but then again when Wilber makes such claims or allows such claims to
> be
> > made on his behalf, people buy it.
> >
> > So what kind of cultural phenomenon is this? It’s a cultural phenomenon
> like
> > anything else, which means it can be understood in the way any other
> > cultural phenomenon (psychoanalysis, the novel, internet discussion
> boards)
> > can be understood. I suspect this is one reason why Wilber is so hostile
> as
> > in Boomeritis and elsewhere toward humanities disciplines and those of us
> > who work in them. We are the ones who have read the books and the
> secondary
> > scholarship he claims for his own, and can call him on it when he makes
> > mistakes or preposterous claims, and we have plenty of practice in
> reading
> > carefully and examining arguments. This makes us less developed, if a bit
> > more rigorous I suppose.”
> >
> > 2. The neoliberal alignment:
> >
> > “His 2003 comments on Iraq are an ample enough demonstration of this. The
> > Iraq comments, SD, and Boomeritis are all symptoms of Wilber’s political
> > alliance with the cultural right in the U.S., expressed as the Reagan
> > Revolution but really going back to the Nixon-Pinochet years at least in
> my
> > view. Perhaps Europeans don’t see all the ways in which he lines up with
> > neoliberalism and the cadre of people who later put Reagan into power in
> > many of his more minute gestures, but if you survived the culture wars of
> > that period, you see where Wilber stands.
> >
> > Berlant explains this as well as anyone. This is the cultural policy of
> > neoliberalism, late capital, where one defends “authentic values” or
> > “traditional values” or “values” as such which is to say one defends
> > “traditional” class and gender and racial privileges against
> socialization,
> > democratization–one protects the status quo against a radical critique.
> > Those who defend the status quo are those who tend to profit from it, so
> > that person is defending against a perceived risk against profitability.
> The
> > silly polemics Wilber puts forth as if they are serious concepts against
> the
> > “green” meme should be understood in this way: Wilber is still carrying
> > water for the Reaganites because he stands to profit from doing so, to
> gain
> > from it, specifically to gain actual capital or cultural capital. Why
> else
> > would someone play this game? Remember, neoliberalism is a form of
> identity
> > politics as much as anything else, but one’s identity or selfhood is
> > expressed through consumer choice or brand preference. You are what you
> > consume. Trungpa Rinpoche’s advice against spiritual materialism comes in
> > handy here.
> >
> > If “earpy” shows us that Wilber is more interested in selling
> enlightenment
> > lessons and accessories than in producing responsible theory or science,
> the
> > cultural politics of Boomeritis and Spiral Dynamics (already latent in
> SES,
> > the “angry book”), the actual politics of the Iraq fiasco show Wilber to
> be
> > invested in anti-intellectual work in favor of business interests, late
> > capital (criticism is bad, praise is good). This means his project is
> quite
> > the opposite of a transformational model when you get down to it. He is
> > invested in maintaining the status quo, of producing transformations that
> > maintain and reify the status quo. Zizek’s critique of “western Buddhism”
> > applies directly to Wilber in precisely this sense. If that is your
> > interest, then fine, so be it, but at least be honest about it. Say so,
> and
> > don’t pretend to some kind of novelty or fundamental transformation.
> Admit
> > it. But if you object to this situation, then do something else. That
> > “something else” has been my own path.”
> >
> > 3. Selling snake oil on behalf of the prince:
> >
> > “My overarching question is this: is the Integral Institute’s affiliated
> > programs with JFK University and Fielding Graduate University on the
> > for-profit solutions-distribution model, and if so, what does that tell
> us
> > about the future of integral theory as Wilber is promoting it, Wilber’s
> > version of integral? By contrast, is the California Institute of Integral
> > Studies analogous to the Catholic institutions established in the 19th
> > century, or the neo-evangelical religious institutions of the mid-late
> 20th
> > century, such as Liberty University or Regents University or Orel Roberts
> > University, where the mission is to instill adherence to particular
> values
> > in students, which is to say, indoctrinate them in a particular theology
> > rather than a method of inquiry such as critical thinking? (As an aside,
> one
> > may want to check how many graduates of such schools held significant
> > positions of responsibility in the Bush administration, and the
> consequences
> > of this pedagogy on the health and safety of the world.) How about
> Naropa?
> > Or the Center for Consciousness, Transformation, and Human Potential that
> is
> > now getting started at my own state school, George Mason University, as I
> > understand it on the basis of a private donation?
> >
> > I don’t claim to know what the situation is at any of these places,
> frankly.
> > I am very curious, and more than a bit concerned in some cases. I am
> > interested in the ways in which the kinds of cultural capital or even
> > emotional capital that can be accumulated through acquiring an online
> degree
> > through the auspices of Integral Institute, and how that emotional
> capital
> > might be fungible into social capital and plain old capital capital, as
> > Illouz’s analysis suggests it should be. This would mean that these
> online
> > degree programs are part of a very long history in the US of corporations
> > looking for ways to manage emotions in the workplace, and promoting
> people
> > who have disciplined their emotional and subjective lives in particular
> ways
> > to be good and happy workers, wizards of the spiral of accumulation,
> masters
> > of the art of the happy acceptance of everything (and not organizing
> > horizontally in class terms, but integrating vertically into the “depth”
> of
> > an organization, willingly subordinating oneself to a “higher power”).
> >
> > I would like to remind our friends of Paolo Freire’s pedagogy of
> > problem-posing. I’m laughing because you and I have discussed this at
> length
> > in the past when we worked together. Now, in the case of JFKU or FGU or
> CIIS
> > or Naropa: is this a banking model, where the student makes a withdrawal
> of
> > a theology-commodity and the institution makes a deposit of
> > value-commodities? That, to be sure, is to be avoided. I very much doubt
> > that education as problem-posing, where you’re pulled out of the cave and
> > exposed to an indifferent light (this requires some adjustments), can be
> > profitable in the same way a retreat center or health spa dedicated to
> > rearranging the furniture in the cave according to proper design
> principles
> > would be. Learning is challenging and is designed to produce a certain
> > capacity for independent action; it is not pandering and designed to
> produce
> > dependence on an institution or a charismatic figure or a metaphysics.
> >
> > Students who have more familiarity with the specifics of these sites will
> be
> > able to draw their own judgments from these conceptual tools. And
> seriously,
> > read your Freire if you haven’t yet done so. His critique of
> institutional
> > education is as trenchant now as it has ever been.
> >
> > The nitty-gritty detail of your question, Erik, has me speculating on how
> > one might tackle the question of what good a degree in integral theory
> might
> > do for someone. I take for granted that people who enroll in these
> programs
> > are earnest in their aspiration to be helpful to others and to serve an
> > ideal that is greater than their own immediate and proximal needs. Surely
> > these people are doing it on purpose. But they are also investing
> > substantial capital (money and time and effort) on this project of
> earning a
> > particular degree that entitles them to a particular social role: as a
> > therapist, a teacher, or what have you. These are institutional roles.
> So,
> > are students enrolling in these programs with an eye toward
> > becoming-institutional in particular ways, that is, of taking on
> > professional titles in clinical and educational institutions themselves?”
> >
> > 4. Daniel Gustav Anderson’s recommendations on the way ahead for
> > post-Wilberian integral students:
> >
> > “Put your work in the public domain, and restrict your integral
> activities
> > to not-for-profit organizations and research materials readily available
> at
> > public institutions. Stop buying shit because it has the word “integral”
> on
> > it, unless you feel it appropriate for your guru and your idea of Spirit
> to
> > be working as prostitutes such that you need to keep paying and paying
> for
> > intervals of integral embrace. We call this “voting with your wallet” and
> > it’s the only kind of critique that works in some corners of
> neoliberalism.
> > It may be the only form of criticism that Integral Institute will respond
> to
> > at this point. Monkeywrench the flattery machine by not buying into it.
> > Instead, one can help democratize and socialize the integral project,
> > becoming an active participant rather than a passive consumer of content
> as
> > it were.”
> >
> > --
> > Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> > http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> > http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
> >
> > Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> > http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> > http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
> >
> > Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
> >
> > The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> > http://www.shiftn.com/
>



-- 
Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com

Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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