You Are the River
Ken Wilber, the leading voice in the integral movement and founder of Integral Institute, was interviewed by Salon about his work and that interview, “You Are the River“, graces the site’s main page today. Ken has worked with tremendous insight and love to craft the finest maps of our experiences and his integral framework is a tremendous treasure. The interview has been linked to throughout the integral community today and is a nice introduction to Ken and and his integral philosophy.
In the interview Ken touches on the limitations of scientific materialism, the absurdities of the new age movement, the relationships the founders of quantum mechanics had with mysticism, human development, and facing death. Ken, as always, presents his work with a rare humility and eloquence.
Ken Wilber may be the most important living philosopher you’ve never heard of. He’s written dozens of books but you’d be hard-pressed to find his name in a mainstream magazine. Still, Wilber has a passionate — almost cultlike — following in certain circles, as well as some famous fans. Bill Clinton and Al Gore have praised Wilber’s books. Deepak Chopra calls him “one of the most important pioneers in the field of consciousness.” And the Wachowski Brothers asked Wilber, along with Cornel West, to record the commentary for the DVDs of their “Matrix” movies.
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You’ve written that many of the great 20th century physicists — Einstein, Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg — were actually mystics, even though none of them thought science had any connection to religion.
I wouldn’t say it quite that strongly. What happened is they investigated the physical realm so intensely in looking for answers, and when they didn’t find these answers, they became metaphysical. I collected the writings of the 13 major founders of quantum mechanics. They were saying physics has been used since time immemorial to both prove and disprove God. Both views are fundamentally misguided. These physicists became deep mystics not because of physics, but because of the limitations of physics.
So understanding that physics can only go so far — that there are many things it can’t explain — is ultimately a mystical position?
That’s correct. These are brilliant writings. They’re really quite extraordinary. Not many people realize that Erwin Schrödinger, the founder of quantum mechanics, had a deep satori experience. He found that the position that most matched his own was Vedantic Hinduism — that pure awareness is aware of all objects but cannot itself become an object. It’s the way into the door of realizing ultimate reality. Werner Heisenberg had similar experiences. And Sir Arthur Eddington was probably the most eloquent of the lot. All of them basically said that science neither proves nor disproves emptiness.
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Does the prospect of dying frighten you?
Not really. What comes up is just thoughts of how much work in the world there is still to do. And with this recent experience — letting me know that Big Mind is what there is — that fundamental fear of dying has basically left. Still, when someone asks if I have a fear of dying, I find myself hesitating. What goes through my mind is positive stuff — friends that I would lose and work that needs to be done.
For more on Ken Wilber and the integral movement, take a look at “Your Four Quadrants“, “The Perspective-Taking You“, “Spiritual Agreement” and “The Integral Vision“.
Tags: AQAL 
, Integral , Ken Wilber
28.04.08 
1 Comment
I Want You to Want Me
With so much information at our fingertips, it is increasingly important to create powerful visualization tools to make it all more palatable. I Want You To Want Me does this in the world of matchmaking. The visualization project “explores the search for love and self in the world of online dating.”
Dating profiles may not seem the ripest place for important data, but there is a lot that can be learned from looking at the traits we think others will value in us and what we want to find in prospective partners. Every stumble and triumph in dating life is an opportunity to reflect on ourselves, and being able to see these pieces from others is valuable in understanding both ourselves and the societies we live in.
Over the past several years, online dating has entered the mainstream, drawing over 50 million visitors per month. En masse, people have condensed their identities into page or paragraph-long descriptions, sometimes complemented by a handful of photographs or peppered with responses to canned questions. These personal profiles are modern messages in a bottle, short statements of self, telling not only who people are, but also what people want. In these advertisements for new human relationships, people package and present their most loveable qualities to help complete their quest to be loved.
I Want You To Want Me chronicles the world’s long-term relationship with romance, across all ages, genders, and sexualities, gathering new data from a variety of online dating sites every few hours. The system searches these sites for certain phrases, which it then collects and stores in a database. These phrases, taken out of context, provide partial glimpses into people’s private lives. Simultaneously, the system forms an evolving zeitgeist of dating, tracking the most popular first dates, turn-ons, desires, self-descriptions and interests.
The highlights the group behind the project have shared range between inspiring and ridiculous, with a person who “will listen to your darkest demons and not fear them” for each one “looking for a guy to JUST make out with.” What this tells us about our outer and inner worlds I’m not sure, but it’s one glimpse more than we had before this project launched.
The video that follows demonstrates the visualization and shares some more about the project. more »
Tags: design , relationships , video , visualizations
23.04.08 Comment »
Translating Environmentalism
Last night I read Paul Chadwick’s Concrete Celebrates Earth Day 1990, as much for the ongoing story as for the relevance to today’s Earth Day. Chadwick pointed out a lot of issues nearly two decades ago that are still incredibly relevant today; global warming, overpopulation, our failure to adopt environmentally sound practices and our failings in communicating environmentalism are all problems we have not adequately addressed.
Much of today will be focused on bringing attention to environmental problems and possible solutions and that is absolutely vital. But how we communicate environmentalism is something we need to look at very closely if we want to be successful in building a world that encourages everyone to live in ways that keep nature vibrant. The Concrete special includes a segment of Concrete talking about the challenge of getting conservatives engaged in environmentalism, and recommends recasting the environmentalist as a patriot. This sort of reframing environmental concern is vital in engaging as large a portion of our world as possible in action to protect life. We need to set aside our idealism and passion for the cause of environmentalism and pragmatically weigh our methods of presentation.
One of the greatest contributions of developmentalism –and integral theory more particularly– is the notion of altitude, or the fact that we have different levels of development as people and societies. People can be egocentric, ethnocentric or worldcentric, with only the latter group –making up only a small percent of the Earth’s population– caring about the entire world innately. Using awareness of these altitudes, we can more effectively communicate with people where they are instead of assuming everyone thinks in the same ways and has the same concerns.
An ethnocentric person, say a fundamentalist conservative, may respond better to environmentalism being in the service of their family, God and country than some of the ideals we, as environmentalists, hold. And we can work with that in ways like the one Paul Chadwick suggested years ago, by changing the messages we use. By focusing on local impact, the cost to humans everywhere and other pieces of the environmental concerns we have that are more relevant and visible for people not plugged in to the environmentalist movement, we can create more and better change. Pointing out the stakes people have in the Earth in a way they can understand and embrace is absolutely necessary if we can to succeed in protecting and advancing the Earth.
For more on environmentalism, I highly recommend Communicating Integral Sustainability and C4Chaos’ Environment blog entries.
Tags: Earth Day , environment , Integral , nature , personal development
22.04.08 Comment »
Nomadism as Catalyst
My ideal life is freewheeling and nomadic; my envy boils up most when I see projects like GeekBrief’s The Big Trip allow for travel, creativity, technology and work to mesh. The Economist suggests we’re moving toward facilitating this in a smaller scale and I’m thrilled at the prospect.
“The New Oases: Nomadism changes buildings, cities and traffic” explores the untethering of people from places of work, learning and socializing. Changing technological and social realities free us from stodgy notions of place and leave the how and where of many tasks forever altered. The reshaping of our architecture is one response to this that is especially exciting; environments are expected to be reshaped to do away with obsolescence of holdovers like the desk and serve human connections and productivity.
The fact that people are no longer tied to specific places for functions such as studying or learning, says Mr Mitchell, means that there is “a huge drop in demand for traditional, private, enclosed spaces” such as offices or classrooms, and simultaneously “a huge rise in demand for semi-public spaces that can be informally appropriated to ad-hoc workspaces”. This shift, he thinks, amounts to the biggest change in architecture in this century. In the 20th century architecture was about specialised structures—offices for working, cafeterias for eating, and so forth. This was necessary because workers needed to be near things such as landline phones, fax machines and filing cabinets, and because the economics of building materials favoured repetitive and simple structures, such as grid patterns for cubicles.
The new architecture, says Mr Mitchell, will “make spaces intentionally multifunctional”. This means that 21st-century aesthetics will probably be the exact opposite of the sci-fi chic that 20th-century futurists once imagined. Architects are instead thinking about light, air, trees and gardens, all in the service of human connections. Buildings will have much more varied shapes than before. For instance, people working on laptops find it comforting to have their backs to a wall, so hybrid spaces may become curvier, with more nooks, in order to maximise the surface area of their inner walls, rather as intestines do. This is becoming affordable because computer-aided design and new materials make non-repetitive forms cheaper to build.
Our shared spaces, be they cafés, parks or public transportation, are becoming multi-functional hybrid places where we can be as comfortable meeting a work deadline as we are interacting with our most intimate friends. The emergence of more neutral, flexible places –what sociologist Ray Oldenburg named “third places”– changes how we relate to cities, making our routes alter from tedious in-and-outs to fulfilling meanderings. There are pitfalls ahead in merging spheres of life, but the potential for enriching life is exciting.
Tags: architecture , design , nomadism , productivity , technology , work
21.04.08 Comment »
Vertical Urban Farming
We may soon be planting marigolds on the moon, but right now we need to be sure we are using our existing technologies well on Earth to feed billions of people. Treehugger is bringing attention to vertical farming that could be used to make urban environments more self-sufficient. “Vertical (Diagonal?) Farm from Work AC in NYC” first takes a look at a proposal for transforming a lot in New York City into a farm that stretches up to match the vertical reach of some skyscrapers. The site also comments on a proposal for Toronto and some ideas for more mature versions of the concept. It has been widely proposed that vertical farming is the future of agriculture.
The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart of the world’s urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), [...] a long-term benefit would be the gradual repair of many of the world’s damaged ecosystems through the systematic abandonment of farmland. In temperate and tropical zones, the re-growth of hardwood forests could play a significant role in carbon sequestration and may help reverse current trends in global climate change.
- “Vertical Farming - The Future of Agriculture?“
Most of the world’s population will be living in cities in the coming decades and meeting the basic needs of everyone on the planet will be unavoidable if we wish to flourish. It is therefore important that we recognize the possibilities for efficient, safe and elegant ways to produce food we have available to us. There’s no compelling excuse for not building a future where everyone is fed with the best foods we can grow and I imagine vertical farming has a place in any well-rounded vision for feeding the future.
Tags: agriculture , design , environment , future , technology
20.04.08 Comment »
The Perspective-Taking You
The podcast Buddhist Geeks recently featured one of my favourite spiritual teachers, Diane Musho Hamilton in two dialogs. Diane practices a coalescence of disciplines including Zen, Big Mind and Ken Wilber’s integral framework. In “Discover Yourself as a Perspective-Taking Being” the discussion focuses on her personal experiences and the four quadrants. That discussion is expanded in “The Three Faces of Spirit: Where is Awareness Locating Itself?“.
The practical use of the four quadrants that Ken Wilber has pointed out is superbly articulated in these dialogs, especially as it relates to spiritual work. In each moment we find ourselves in, whether in meditation or in work, we can hold these perspectives and facilitate better responses and greater insights.
Thanks to the folks at FallingFruit.tv, I can share the audio below.
“Diane Musho Hamilton, Zen sensei and Big Mind lineage holder, joins us to discuss her personal story on the path of awakening. From experiencing the death of several friends at a young age, to studying with Chogyam Trunpga in the mid-80s, to becoming the first lineage holder of a unique new spiritual process called Big Mind, join us as Diane shares the intimate details of her life as a seeker (and non-seeker).
In this dialogue we also touch in on the importance that the work of integral philosopher Ken Wilber has had on her teaching, especially with regards to what Wilber calls the three primordial perspectives. These three perspectives can be summarized by the pronouns, “I” (first-person), “we” (second-person), and “it” (third-person). Find out why these perspectives are so important to someone who is trying to bring together the spiritual quest with all of their other endeavors.
- “Discover Yourself as a Perspective-Taking Being“
more »
Tags: AQAL , Big Mind , Buddhism , Diane Hamilton , Integral , Ken Wilber , meditation , religion , Zen
19.04.08 1 Comment
The Marigold Moon
Humans moving into space is an inevitability in my vision of the future, and some of the early steps in making it more attractive and feasible are being planned right now. Ukrainian scientists have demonstrated a method – using a hardy bacteria – that allows marigold to grow in rock very similar to the surface of the moon, meaning that it is likely possible and relatively easy to grow plants on the lunar terrain. Tulips, cabbage and arabidopsis are proposed as other plants to be tested in actual lunar conditions.
Marigolds on the moon may be beautiful, but it’s the potential this unlocks that matters. We can extrapolate from this breakthrough and imagine using the knowledge gained to create human-made ecosystems on other bodies in our solar system and beyond. It’s an enchanting thought that we may be able to instill cold rocks with the life we treasure on our own Earth.
In what marks an important step towards helping lunar colonists grow their own food, a Ukrainian team, working with the European Space Agency, ESA, has shown that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food.
The research was presented at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna, by Dr Bernard Foing of ESA, director of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group, and father of the SMART-1 moon probe, who believes it is an important milestone because it does away with the need to bring bringing nutrients and soil from Earth.
He has worked with Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the Ukranian Academy of Sciences in Kiev, who planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to lunar soil, called regolith.
They did not grow well until the team added different types of bacteria, which made them thrive; the bacteria appeared to leach elements from the rock that the plants needed, such as potassium.
Even better, bacteria are able to withstand extremely tough conditions, so would be an ideal way to fertilise lunar crops. “That is the new aspect of this work,” says Dr Foing, who presented the study at the EGU meeting, said there was no reason in principle why the same idea could not bear fruit on the Moon itself.
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I’ll grow marigolds on the moon“
There’s a pull on my senses of wonder and responsibility in the notion that we can spread the beauty and potential of the life that has blessed Earth. If it allowed for the awesomeness of humanity and what we can become on one world, why not pollinate others? And why shouldn’t we disperse humanity’s best features along with it and allow the fullness of our great care, beauty and understanding to flourish without boundary?
Tags: future , nature , space
18.04.08 1 Comment
Future By Design
This past week I watched Future By Design, a superb documentary that explores the vision of futurist Jacque Fresco. The film itself is beautiful and compelling, but it is the mind of the man it features that has me ranking it as the most important documentaries I’ve seen.
Fresco has invented countless features of a future he hopes we will choose to build, an efficient, elegant and finely crafted world in which we consciously and intelligently construct cities and societies that best facilitate the quality of life that can foster the best humanity can become. His attention to details in aesthetic, functional and cultural realms is uncanny, so much so that his models of future cities are striking in their comprehensiveness, viability and beauty. The cities he promises are inviting and grant hope that we can shape a future that fulfills our potential.
One of the insights that makes Fresco’s work so important is the recognition that we should soon be able to move beyond a world of scarcity into abundance. With more resources than we need to ensure high quality of life for everyone on the planet, our major stumbling blocks lie among our personal and cultural shortcomings that inhibit actualizing staggering good.
There may well be some shortcomings in Fresco’s designs and our own reactions to them, but at the very least he has a competency and coherency that most of the people behind the plans and visions for our cities and infrastructure lack. Piecemeal and foggy visions plague so much civic planning throughout the world and create needless problems that skillful design can remedy. In my own city there are obvious follies from the past and looming on the horizon that are discouraging, and I’m sure that is the case in most places. I see visionaries like Fresco as vital to shaping the landscape that healthy societies will thrive in for decades to come.
more »
Tags: design , environment , future , Jacque Fresco , technology
27.03.08 Comment »
Your Four Quadrants
In Ken Wilber’s integral theory the concept of quadrants is central (the AQ stands for all quadrants). The quadrants represent 4 essential dimensions of every thing, including each of us. We each have an interior and an exterior (a subjective and an objective dimension) and exist both as a whole in ourselves and as a part of a greater whole (we are holons, or whole-parts). These two axes in concert give us the four quadrants, the “subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective.”.
These simple distinctions allow for a lot of clarity in understanding our world and the various ways of thinking about it. The four dimensions disclose four primary perspectives that are at play in every discipline from physics to sociology, meditation to systems theory. If we leave out any one quadrant we are thinking partially and neglecting an essential and irreducible facet of our lives.
To learn more about the four quadrants, read on at Holons‘ “What are the Four Quadrants?”
What’s the point of looking at the world through a 4-quadrant lens?
Simple answer: Anything less is narrow, partial and fragmented! Integral Theory maintains that all 4 quadrants are real—and all are important. So, for example, to the question of what is more real, the brain (with its neural pathways and structures) or the mind (with its thoughts and perceptions), Integral Theory answers: BOTH.
Moreover, we add that the mind and brain are situated in cultural and systemic contexts, which influence both inner experience and brain activity in irreducible ways.
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All four quadrants are real, all are important, and all are essential for understanding your world.
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The more we can consciously include the 4 quadrants in our perspective, the more whole, balanced, healthy, comprehensive, and effective our actions will be.
Tags: AQAL , Integral , Ken Wilber
19.03.08 3 Comments
Elfquest Goes Free
For thirty years Elfquest has been one of comics’ gems, growing as an independent comic into one of the medium’s most endearing, compelling and beautiful bodies of work. Using fantasy and science fiction elements for its framework, the series explores sexuality, love, ethnocentrism, persistant change, and a range of issues the visual style and broad medium are not often recognized for.
Creators Wendy and Richard Pini will be publishing the entire series of Elfquest online for free to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of the first Elfquest story. Already a healthy selection of issues are available and by the end of the year over 200 will be readable with no cost and only a web browser is needed to do it.
Thirty years after its first appearance in early 1978, Elfquest is poised to make its biggest online splash ever. Beginning March 14, and every Friday throughout 2008, Warp Graphics presents every Elfquest comic book story from the Original Quest all the way up to 2006’s “The Discovery.”
With over 6000 pages of material to prepare and upload, the project will easily take the remainder of this 30th anniversary year. The initial offering will start off with an explosion of firsts: There will be the entire first graphic novel, to introduce new readers to the characters and world of Elfquest, plus the first issues of all the spinoff titles produced during the 1990s. Each week will see several more issues added to the collection. Eventually, every published page will make its way to the online archive. A timeline and a catalog of all Elfquest appearances are part of the package, so all readers will be able to experience the complete saga from start to present-day.
My own love for Elfquest goes back a long way. Throughout my high school life Elfquest was the one comic series I followed faithfully. It offered me the first and most positive portrayal of polyamoury in my youth and gave me solace as I tried to come to some sort of understanding and acceptance of my own polyamourousness. My first taste of Taoist philosophy, my broader understanding of love and sexuality and my appreciation of family and community all have foundation stones in Elfquest that I am deeply thankful for.
Delve into Digital Elfquest and be sure to start with “Fire and Flight“.
Tags: comics , Elfquest , fantasy , polyamoury , Taoism
18.03.08 2 Comments
