Friday, December 26, 2008
Inner Landscapes
AKAirways is an art group based in New York City, led by Anakin Koenig. Their focus is sculpture/installation centered on inflatable objects. The installations are transient and ephemeral, dependent on interaction and engage the environment in which they are deployed. These dynamic works are constantly changing and evolving. The group's work has been presented in a variety of contexts, from the Museum of Modern Art to underground raves, from NASA to the Whitney Biennale.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Arithmetic of Compassion
Ever since he was a child, David Ulansey has been searching for a certain number: namely, the figure for the annual Gross World Product (GWP). The GWP is the value of all goods and services produced each year by the entire human species, and the reason he was searching for this number as a child is that he wanted to take it and divide it by the number of people in the world, so that he would know what each human being was actually entitled to if the world's resources were divided fairly and equitably.
He finally ran into this number recently, and he has now performed the simple arithmetic of compassion. It turns out that the Gross World Product is now $65 trillion. It is important to note that this figure of $65 trillion - arrived at independently by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the CIA - has been adjusted in advance to take into account what is called 'purchasing power parity' (PPP): which means that the figure is 65 trillion units, each unit of which represents what one U.S. dollar will currently buy in the US (The PPP adjustment eliminates from the very start any strategies of denial such as: 'Oh, that doesn't mean anything, you can live like a king in India for $5,000 a year'. No. Wrong.).
Now to the arithmetic of compassion: Since the GWP is 65 trillion U.S. dollars, if we divide that figure by the number of people in the world - 6.8 billion - we get a rough estimate of the maximum annual income that anyone in the world is morally entitled to (assuming that it is moral to strive for an equitable distribution of the world's resources to all of humanity).
So, dividing $65 trillion by 6.8 billion we get about $9,000 per year (again, that's already adjusted for purchasing power parity: it's 9,000 units, each unit of which is what one U.S. dollar will currently buy in the United States). That's what each of us is actually entitled to - $9,000 a year - and any more than that represents institutionalized and socially sanctioned armed robbery: indeed, every additional increment of $9,000 (beyond the maximum moral income of $9,000 a year) represents one slave somewhere in the world whose entire life, birth to death, is completely devoted to getting us our 'stuff'.
And unfortunately we can't "grow" our way beyond this $9,000 a year figure, since at the current level of $65 trillion GWP we have already overshot by 30% what the Earth actually produces. The fact that the human species is already in 30% overshoot means that not only can we not 'grow' our way beyond the $9,000 maximum moral income level, we actually need to shrink that down to $6,000 just to come back to a level where humanity is merely using 100% of everything the Earth produces (rather than using 130% of what the Earth produces, as we are very temporarily doing!). This is especially the case since the world population is due to increase by almost 50% - to more than 9 billion people - by 2050: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=21847
Of course a $6,000 a year income may sound rather frightening to those of us who have become accustomed to the "first world standard of living." However, to place this figure in its proper perspective, it is helpful to keep in mind that according to the World Bank, at this very moment almost half of the people in the world (3 billion people) live on less than $2.50 (PPP) a day - $900 a year - and a quarter of the world's population (1.4 billion people) live below the official world poverty level of $1.25 a day - $456 a year.
In fact, three years ago World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern estimated that a European cow receives $2.50 a day in subsidies, while 75% of Africans live on less than $2 a day. So although $6,000 a year may sound disturbing to us, for the majority of the people in the world it would literally constitute wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Finally, it is crucial to realize that $6,000 a year per person is actually still far too high to be sustainable, even if there were no population growth ahead at all. This is because at the level of $6,000 a year per person for 6.8 billion people, we would still be consuming 100% of what the Earth can produce, and would thus be doing absolutely nothing to prevent the two greatest threats facing us in our own lifetimes: (1) a mass extinction of the Earth's biodiversity resulting from habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and over-harvesting, and (2) catastrophic climate change that could render the earth uninhabitable for much of higher life including our own species.
The solution is clear: we must immediately and drastically reduce our levels of consumption. Something like $4,000 a year per person is probably in the right ballpark for what is ecologically possible and morally justifiable. Again, that may be difficult for many of us to hear, but remember that $4,000 a year is more than 4 times the amount that half of the people in the world live on at this very moment. In fact, according to the World Bank, 95% of all people in developing countries (which means almost 80% of all human beings) live on less than $10 a day - less than $4,000 a year.
Of course then the question is: how can we in the 'developed' world accomplish such a reduction? One common answer to this question is simply unworthy of discussion: namely, 'It's impossible'. Whenever I find that answer spontaneously rearing its ugly head in my own imagination, I like to remind myself that Eskimos live in houses made of ice, but their lives are filled with just as much love and beauty, and their children laugh and play with just as much joy - perhaps more! - as our own.
Beyond all its other characteristics, Homo Sapiens is a species capable of extreme adaptability. The time has at last arrived for us to become actual human beings, and to allow compassion - and celebration! - to guide us into a radically new world: a world where we experience 'quality of life' for ourselves as being indistinguishable from 'equality of life for all.
He finally ran into this number recently, and he has now performed the simple arithmetic of compassion. It turns out that the Gross World Product is now $65 trillion. It is important to note that this figure of $65 trillion - arrived at independently by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the CIA - has been adjusted in advance to take into account what is called 'purchasing power parity' (PPP): which means that the figure is 65 trillion units, each unit of which represents what one U.S. dollar will currently buy in the US (The PPP adjustment eliminates from the very start any strategies of denial such as: 'Oh, that doesn't mean anything, you can live like a king in India for $5,000 a year'. No. Wrong.).Now to the arithmetic of compassion: Since the GWP is 65 trillion U.S. dollars, if we divide that figure by the number of people in the world - 6.8 billion - we get a rough estimate of the maximum annual income that anyone in the world is morally entitled to (assuming that it is moral to strive for an equitable distribution of the world's resources to all of humanity).
So, dividing $65 trillion by 6.8 billion we get about $9,000 per year (again, that's already adjusted for purchasing power parity: it's 9,000 units, each unit of which is what one U.S. dollar will currently buy in the United States). That's what each of us is actually entitled to - $9,000 a year - and any more than that represents institutionalized and socially sanctioned armed robbery: indeed, every additional increment of $9,000 (beyond the maximum moral income of $9,000 a year) represents one slave somewhere in the world whose entire life, birth to death, is completely devoted to getting us our 'stuff'.
And unfortunately we can't "grow" our way beyond this $9,000 a year figure, since at the current level of $65 trillion GWP we have already overshot by 30% what the Earth actually produces. The fact that the human species is already in 30% overshoot means that not only can we not 'grow' our way beyond the $9,000 maximum moral income level, we actually need to shrink that down to $6,000 just to come back to a level where humanity is merely using 100% of everything the Earth produces (rather than using 130% of what the Earth produces, as we are very temporarily doing!). This is especially the case since the world population is due to increase by almost 50% - to more than 9 billion people - by 2050: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=21847
Of course a $6,000 a year income may sound rather frightening to those of us who have become accustomed to the "first world standard of living." However, to place this figure in its proper perspective, it is helpful to keep in mind that according to the World Bank, at this very moment almost half of the people in the world (3 billion people) live on less than $2.50 (PPP) a day - $900 a year - and a quarter of the world's population (1.4 billion people) live below the official world poverty level of $1.25 a day - $456 a year.
In fact, three years ago World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern estimated that a European cow receives $2.50 a day in subsidies, while 75% of Africans live on less than $2 a day. So although $6,000 a year may sound disturbing to us, for the majority of the people in the world it would literally constitute wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Finally, it is crucial to realize that $6,000 a year per person is actually still far too high to be sustainable, even if there were no population growth ahead at all. This is because at the level of $6,000 a year per person for 6.8 billion people, we would still be consuming 100% of what the Earth can produce, and would thus be doing absolutely nothing to prevent the two greatest threats facing us in our own lifetimes: (1) a mass extinction of the Earth's biodiversity resulting from habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and over-harvesting, and (2) catastrophic climate change that could render the earth uninhabitable for much of higher life including our own species.
The solution is clear: we must immediately and drastically reduce our levels of consumption. Something like $4,000 a year per person is probably in the right ballpark for what is ecologically possible and morally justifiable. Again, that may be difficult for many of us to hear, but remember that $4,000 a year is more than 4 times the amount that half of the people in the world live on at this very moment. In fact, according to the World Bank, 95% of all people in developing countries (which means almost 80% of all human beings) live on less than $10 a day - less than $4,000 a year.
Of course then the question is: how can we in the 'developed' world accomplish such a reduction? One common answer to this question is simply unworthy of discussion: namely, 'It's impossible'. Whenever I find that answer spontaneously rearing its ugly head in my own imagination, I like to remind myself that Eskimos live in houses made of ice, but their lives are filled with just as much love and beauty, and their children laugh and play with just as much joy - perhaps more! - as our own.
Beyond all its other characteristics, Homo Sapiens is a species capable of extreme adaptability. The time has at last arrived for us to become actual human beings, and to allow compassion - and celebration! - to guide us into a radically new world: a world where we experience 'quality of life' for ourselves as being indistinguishable from 'equality of life for all.
The Present of Presence
Most people have not yet fully processed the magnitude of the economic crisis that will continue to deepen in the next years. Our lives may depend upon working through the causes and logical consequences of this disaster, which can be blamed on the greed and ineptitude of the ruling elite. The short-term prognosis is devastating. The hundreds of billions, potentially trillions, of dollars created by governments for bailouts should lead to hyperinflation and a sharp rise in the price of basic goods. At the same time, analysts are predicting that some governments will be insolvent by next year and forced to declare bankruptcy.
One consequence of the credit freeze has been that many farmers around the world, who often live on narrow margins and depend upon loans to see them through the annual harvest, have not been able to get credit. This could lead to diminished production of food at a time when climate change is reducing the amount of arable land. Last year, there were already hunger riots in a number of countries, and by next summer we may see famine on a larger scale.
Hunger may also become a problem in the developed world. While layoffs and mass foreclosures continue and economies contract, a large segment of the populace (who have no savings and much debt) could become a new pauper class. We have already seen over a million homes turned over to banks in the US alone. One can only wonder where those people, and the millions more soon to join them, are going to end up.
Meanwhile, the turmoil in the markets will continue, potentially getting much worse. Apparently, hundreds of trillions of virtual dollars spin in the roulette machine of the derivatives market, which is beginning to disintegrate. The collapse of the housing market may be followed by mass waves of credit card defaults. The world economy was a house of cards, based on the extraordinary premise that ever-expanding debt was a desirable product, and it is now falling down upon us.
We are facing a time of great change and spiritual challenge. Those of us who have undergone a process of awakening and initiation during the last decades will be called upon to act as truth-tellers, leaders and compassionate caretakers for the multitudes that have been duped and deluded by the system. We may have to abandon our comfort zones and personal ambitions to be of service to the situation as it unfolds.
In the time available to us before the situation becomes critical, priorities include strengthening local communities and disseminating techniques of self-sufficiency, such as getting many more people to grow their own food. It is tragic that our mass media continues to act as a mechanism of distraction. The media could be used to explain to people how our world is changing, to teach them the basic life skills that we forfeited a few generations ago, and to imprint new behavior patterns based on sustainable life-ways. Perhaps public broadcasting, at least, can be repurposed for this necessary effort.
The partial nationalization of financial institutions around the world reveals the failure of capitalism; the end of capitalism in its old form. In the future, it should be obvious that capitalism was a transitional system for our global community. Capitalism meshed the world together through networks of trade and communication, while maintaining monstrous inequities and irrational misuse of resources.
The question that faces us now is: what comes after capitalism, and how do we get there? In the short term, we may see dangerous efforts at authoritarian control. The longer-term answer may be a collapse of centralized structures of authority and the blossoming of a new form of global direct democracy; what the anthropologist Pierre Clastres called "society without a state." By necessity, our future system will be collaborative rather than competitive.
If the crisis now confronting the human community is mishandled, vast populations will experience untold suffering and starvation in the next few years. If "we the people" can rise to the occasion, we may be able to radically change the direction of human society, along with the basic paradigms and underlying operating systems of our culture, in a rapid timeframe. This appears to be the message of many prophetic traditions which have anticipated this climactic passage in human affairs - as has been said:"We are the ones we have been waiting for".
As we approach the holiday season and the Gregorian New Year, we can give thanks for having been born into this extraordinary, precious time. Our actions over the next few years could have tremendous consequences for humanity's future on this planet. At such a juncture, the best present we can give to the people around us is our authentic presence; our willingness to listen, learn and remain open to transformation, as the pace of change quickens around us.
One consequence of the credit freeze has been that many farmers around the world, who often live on narrow margins and depend upon loans to see them through the annual harvest, have not been able to get credit. This could lead to diminished production of food at a time when climate change is reducing the amount of arable land. Last year, there were already hunger riots in a number of countries, and by next summer we may see famine on a larger scale.
Hunger may also become a problem in the developed world. While layoffs and mass foreclosures continue and economies contract, a large segment of the populace (who have no savings and much debt) could become a new pauper class. We have already seen over a million homes turned over to banks in the US alone. One can only wonder where those people, and the millions more soon to join them, are going to end up.
Meanwhile, the turmoil in the markets will continue, potentially getting much worse. Apparently, hundreds of trillions of virtual dollars spin in the roulette machine of the derivatives market, which is beginning to disintegrate. The collapse of the housing market may be followed by mass waves of credit card defaults. The world economy was a house of cards, based on the extraordinary premise that ever-expanding debt was a desirable product, and it is now falling down upon us.We are facing a time of great change and spiritual challenge. Those of us who have undergone a process of awakening and initiation during the last decades will be called upon to act as truth-tellers, leaders and compassionate caretakers for the multitudes that have been duped and deluded by the system. We may have to abandon our comfort zones and personal ambitions to be of service to the situation as it unfolds.
In the time available to us before the situation becomes critical, priorities include strengthening local communities and disseminating techniques of self-sufficiency, such as getting many more people to grow their own food. It is tragic that our mass media continues to act as a mechanism of distraction. The media could be used to explain to people how our world is changing, to teach them the basic life skills that we forfeited a few generations ago, and to imprint new behavior patterns based on sustainable life-ways. Perhaps public broadcasting, at least, can be repurposed for this necessary effort.
The partial nationalization of financial institutions around the world reveals the failure of capitalism; the end of capitalism in its old form. In the future, it should be obvious that capitalism was a transitional system for our global community. Capitalism meshed the world together through networks of trade and communication, while maintaining monstrous inequities and irrational misuse of resources.
The question that faces us now is: what comes after capitalism, and how do we get there? In the short term, we may see dangerous efforts at authoritarian control. The longer-term answer may be a collapse of centralized structures of authority and the blossoming of a new form of global direct democracy; what the anthropologist Pierre Clastres called "society without a state." By necessity, our future system will be collaborative rather than competitive.
If the crisis now confronting the human community is mishandled, vast populations will experience untold suffering and starvation in the next few years. If "we the people" can rise to the occasion, we may be able to radically change the direction of human society, along with the basic paradigms and underlying operating systems of our culture, in a rapid timeframe. This appears to be the message of many prophetic traditions which have anticipated this climactic passage in human affairs - as has been said:"We are the ones we have been waiting for".
As we approach the holiday season and the Gregorian New Year, we can give thanks for having been born into this extraordinary, precious time. Our actions over the next few years could have tremendous consequences for humanity's future on this planet. At such a juncture, the best present we can give to the people around us is our authentic presence; our willingness to listen, learn and remain open to transformation, as the pace of change quickens around us.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Man, Spirituality, Technology
Wired magazine’s own "Senior Maverick" talks with Ken Wilber about some of the ideas behind Kevin's blog The Technium, which explores the various ways humanity defines and redefines itself through the interface of science, technology, culture, and consciousness. Kevin also shares some of his own thoughts about the role of spirituality in the 21st century, going into considerable depth around his own spiritual awakening several decades ago.
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.
Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the "everything" books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc. and the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc.
The universe, we are told, is winding down. Nothing escapes the remorseless grasp of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics—and with each passing moment, our world, our solar system, indeed our entire galaxy slowly approaches its inevitable heat-death. But this is not the full story, for while the universe is winding down, it is also winding up, bringing forth new forms from old, adding new layers of complexity where there was once only an empty vacuum. It is what Alfred Whitehead called the "creative advance into novelty," referring to a distinct "tilt" of the universe toward more complexity, more significance, and more wholeness. From atoms, to molecules, to single-cell and multi-cellular organisms, to the reptilian brain, mammalian brain, and the human neocortex—the universe is abound with inexhaustible creativity, pushing deeper and wider towards its own limitless potential. Entropy and evolution: these two "arrows of time" exert their pull upon everything that ever is, was, and will be—one pulling us up toward the eternal light, the other pulling us down toward the infinite black.
But it is not just physical matter that is evolving! Alongside the increasing complexification of the material world, evolution brings forth novelty in at least three other dimensions, particularly evident within human evolution:
We see the evolution of systems, such as the movement from foraging to horticulture, to agriculture, to industrial, to informational modes of techno-economic production.
We see the evolution of cultural worldviews, such as the developmental model offered by Jean Gebser, in which cultures develop through archaic/instinctual, magic/animistic, mythic/traditional, rational/scientific, pluralistic/postmodern, and integral worldviews, each offering radically different ways of interpreting our world and our roles within it.
And, perhaps most profoundly, we see the evolution of consciousness, with cognitive faculties developing from Piaget’s pre-operational, to concrete operational, to formal-operational, to Wilber’s suggested “vision-logic” stage—and with values developing from pre-modern, to modern, to post-modern (or pre-rational, rational, and trans-rational) stages, and beyond.
Taken together, we notice a rich mosaic of evolutionary emergence, in at least four important dimensions: subjective and objective development in both individuals and collectives. This gives rise to Wilber's famous “Four Quadrant” map, one of a handful of basic components that comprise the Integral model. The Integral approach helps to reveal some of the deepest patterns that run through all human knowledge, showing the relationships that exist between physical evolution, systemic evolution, cultural evolution, and conscious evolution.
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Whereas some consider consciousness, culture, and technology to be mere epiphenomena of biophysical evolution, the Integral approach highlights many of the fallacies hidden within such reductionistic views. The Four Quadrants represent four distinct dimensions of the universe, all strongly correlating with each other, but not at all reducible to one another. Consciousness cannot be simply reduced to the chemical soup between your ears, as scientific materialists might believe. All truth cannot be reduced to cultural embedment, as post-modernists have claimed. And all of our behaviors cannot be reduced to techno-economic conditions, as Marxists presume. There are simply more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any of these partial philosophies—and the Integral approach essentially tries to get all of heaven and all of earth onto the table, without ever confusing a meadow for a cloud, a mountain for a star, or an ocean for a galaxy.
This, in many ways, is what Kevin's Technium truly represents. As he describes in his blog, Technium is a word he "reluctantly coined to designate the greater sphere of technology—one that goes beyond hardware to include culture, law, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types. In short, the Technium is anything that springs from the human mind. It includes hard technology, but much else of human creation as well. I see this extended face of technology as a whole system with its own dynamics." The Technium exists at the interface between science, technology, culture, and consciousness, exploring the various ways humanity has defined and redefined itself through the ages. Within the Technium, technology is not regarded merely as the lifeless artifacts created by a particular species, but as a living matrix of innovation—the infusion of consciousness into inanimate matter, which in turn shapes our personal and cultural experience of the world.
Toward the end of the discussion, Kevin shares one of his most powerful experiences. At the age of 27, he slept on the supposed spot where Jesus was crucified, and upon awakening had a powerful spiritual experience. Many people are aware of the fact that Kevin continues to be a devout Christian, which might defy some expectations of those who otherwise consider him extremely rational—trans-rational even—while pushing the vanguard of digital culture. In many contemporary thinkers' minds, spirituality is little more than a quaint vestige of antiquity, and once we transition from the mythic/traditionalist stage to the rational/scientific stage, there is no longer any room in the universe for God.
This, more than anything, has been the rallying call of the "New Atheist" movement of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and (to a lesser degree) Sam Harris. But it is important to note that it's not spirituality per se that the modern world should jettison, but the magical and mythical interpretations of spirituality that are transcended by the rational or postmodern mind. The present schism between modernity and spirituality does not need to exist, as long as we allow ourselves enough room to re-conceptualize what we mean by the word "spirituality."
While nobly trying to dislodge humanity from the monolithic tyranny of fundamentalism, many modern and post-modern thinkers have inadvertently thrown the baby out with the bath water. When Nietzsche accurately exclaimed "God is dead!" he wasn't actually talking about God Him/Herself, but the mythic conception of God, along with all the dogmatism, absolutism, and ethnocentrism that follows. While the mythic God was dying, the rational God was only just being born. Possiby stillborn, some might argue, but born nonetheless—with both a pluralistic God and an Integral God close on its heels.
This is one of the most extraordinary insights of recent years: while the universe (and our experience of the universe) is constantly evolving, so is our spirituality. It is a sad reality that spirituality remains such a confusing and controversial topic. How is it that religion has brought more liberation to more people than any other human endeavor, while simultaneously causing more pain and suffering than anything in human history? As mentioned, both individuals and cultures develop through increasing waves of subjective and intersubjective complexity, from archaic, to magic, to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to integral stages of consciousness and culture, with infinite room at the top for future stages of unfolding. This is the profound role religion can potentially serve in the 21st century—a sort of "conveyor belt" of consciousness, designed to facilitate growth through each stage of consciousness.
And this is an absolutely crucial point—you can taste God at any stage in your own psychological development, as these experiences are always available as ever-present states of consciousness. However, your interpretation of the experience will be largely determined by what stage of consciousness you have achieved. For example, a mythic/traditional person might interpret a spiritual experience as a revelation from a personal God intended solely for the “chosen people,” a rational/scientific person might interpret reason and mathematics itself as the language of a Deistic God (the “great clockmaker in the sky”), while a pluralistic/postmodern person might interpret his or her experience as emanating from Gaia and felt as a radical interconnectivity with the “Great Web of Life.” This is demonstrated in the graphic below, known as the Wilber/Combs matrix, which plots four different types of commonly-acknowledged spiritual states against seven evolutionary stages of consciousness, yielding at least 28 different kinds of spiritual experience. No wonder we are so confused!
Furthermore, just as we can look at evolution through three major perspectives (3rd-person physical and techno-economic evolution, 2nd-person cultural evolution, 1st-person conscious evolution), so can we view our relationship with the divine from these same three perspectives, sometimes called the “Three Faces of God”:
We can speak about God from a 3rd-person perspective, including theological or metaphysical descriptions, or just a simple appreciation of the universe as the living body of God. This is often experienced as profound awe at the entire world around us.
We can speak with God from a 2nd-person perspective, as an authentic "I-Thou" relationship between ourselves and divinity, in which we can commune with God as the ultimate "Thou"—or, as Martin Buber might suggest, as the living hyphen between the I and every Thou you have ever known. This is often experienced as bottomless, rapturous love with the entire world around us.
We can speak as God from a 1st-person perspective, a direct experience of Spirit in the form of mystical transcendence, personal revelation, or luminous reverie. This is commonly felt as an experience of the Self beyond the self, or the effortless "I AMness" behind all our thoughts, memories, and experiences. This is often experienced as transcendent, empty bliss as we realize we are the entire world around us.
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.
Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the "everything" books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc. and the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc.
The universe, we are told, is winding down. Nothing escapes the remorseless grasp of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics—and with each passing moment, our world, our solar system, indeed our entire galaxy slowly approaches its inevitable heat-death. But this is not the full story, for while the universe is winding down, it is also winding up, bringing forth new forms from old, adding new layers of complexity where there was once only an empty vacuum. It is what Alfred Whitehead called the "creative advance into novelty," referring to a distinct "tilt" of the universe toward more complexity, more significance, and more wholeness. From atoms, to molecules, to single-cell and multi-cellular organisms, to the reptilian brain, mammalian brain, and the human neocortex—the universe is abound with inexhaustible creativity, pushing deeper and wider towards its own limitless potential. Entropy and evolution: these two "arrows of time" exert their pull upon everything that ever is, was, and will be—one pulling us up toward the eternal light, the other pulling us down toward the infinite black.
But it is not just physical matter that is evolving! Alongside the increasing complexification of the material world, evolution brings forth novelty in at least three other dimensions, particularly evident within human evolution:
We see the evolution of systems, such as the movement from foraging to horticulture, to agriculture, to industrial, to informational modes of techno-economic production.
We see the evolution of cultural worldviews, such as the developmental model offered by Jean Gebser, in which cultures develop through archaic/instinctual, magic/animistic, mythic/traditional, rational/scientific, pluralistic/postmodern, and integral worldviews, each offering radically different ways of interpreting our world and our roles within it.
And, perhaps most profoundly, we see the evolution of consciousness, with cognitive faculties developing from Piaget’s pre-operational, to concrete operational, to formal-operational, to Wilber’s suggested “vision-logic” stage—and with values developing from pre-modern, to modern, to post-modern (or pre-rational, rational, and trans-rational) stages, and beyond.
Taken together, we notice a rich mosaic of evolutionary emergence, in at least four important dimensions: subjective and objective development in both individuals and collectives. This gives rise to Wilber's famous “Four Quadrant” map, one of a handful of basic components that comprise the Integral model. The Integral approach helps to reveal some of the deepest patterns that run through all human knowledge, showing the relationships that exist between physical evolution, systemic evolution, cultural evolution, and conscious evolution.
Whereas some consider consciousness, culture, and technology to be mere epiphenomena of biophysical evolution, the Integral approach highlights many of the fallacies hidden within such reductionistic views. The Four Quadrants represent four distinct dimensions of the universe, all strongly correlating with each other, but not at all reducible to one another. Consciousness cannot be simply reduced to the chemical soup between your ears, as scientific materialists might believe. All truth cannot be reduced to cultural embedment, as post-modernists have claimed. And all of our behaviors cannot be reduced to techno-economic conditions, as Marxists presume. There are simply more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any of these partial philosophies—and the Integral approach essentially tries to get all of heaven and all of earth onto the table, without ever confusing a meadow for a cloud, a mountain for a star, or an ocean for a galaxy.This, in many ways, is what Kevin's Technium truly represents. As he describes in his blog, Technium is a word he "reluctantly coined to designate the greater sphere of technology—one that goes beyond hardware to include culture, law, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types. In short, the Technium is anything that springs from the human mind. It includes hard technology, but much else of human creation as well. I see this extended face of technology as a whole system with its own dynamics." The Technium exists at the interface between science, technology, culture, and consciousness, exploring the various ways humanity has defined and redefined itself through the ages. Within the Technium, technology is not regarded merely as the lifeless artifacts created by a particular species, but as a living matrix of innovation—the infusion of consciousness into inanimate matter, which in turn shapes our personal and cultural experience of the world.
Toward the end of the discussion, Kevin shares one of his most powerful experiences. At the age of 27, he slept on the supposed spot where Jesus was crucified, and upon awakening had a powerful spiritual experience. Many people are aware of the fact that Kevin continues to be a devout Christian, which might defy some expectations of those who otherwise consider him extremely rational—trans-rational even—while pushing the vanguard of digital culture. In many contemporary thinkers' minds, spirituality is little more than a quaint vestige of antiquity, and once we transition from the mythic/traditionalist stage to the rational/scientific stage, there is no longer any room in the universe for God.
This, more than anything, has been the rallying call of the "New Atheist" movement of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and (to a lesser degree) Sam Harris. But it is important to note that it's not spirituality per se that the modern world should jettison, but the magical and mythical interpretations of spirituality that are transcended by the rational or postmodern mind. The present schism between modernity and spirituality does not need to exist, as long as we allow ourselves enough room to re-conceptualize what we mean by the word "spirituality."
While nobly trying to dislodge humanity from the monolithic tyranny of fundamentalism, many modern and post-modern thinkers have inadvertently thrown the baby out with the bath water. When Nietzsche accurately exclaimed "God is dead!" he wasn't actually talking about God Him/Herself, but the mythic conception of God, along with all the dogmatism, absolutism, and ethnocentrism that follows. While the mythic God was dying, the rational God was only just being born. Possiby stillborn, some might argue, but born nonetheless—with both a pluralistic God and an Integral God close on its heels.
This is one of the most extraordinary insights of recent years: while the universe (and our experience of the universe) is constantly evolving, so is our spirituality. It is a sad reality that spirituality remains such a confusing and controversial topic. How is it that religion has brought more liberation to more people than any other human endeavor, while simultaneously causing more pain and suffering than anything in human history? As mentioned, both individuals and cultures develop through increasing waves of subjective and intersubjective complexity, from archaic, to magic, to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to integral stages of consciousness and culture, with infinite room at the top for future stages of unfolding. This is the profound role religion can potentially serve in the 21st century—a sort of "conveyor belt" of consciousness, designed to facilitate growth through each stage of consciousness.
And this is an absolutely crucial point—you can taste God at any stage in your own psychological development, as these experiences are always available as ever-present states of consciousness. However, your interpretation of the experience will be largely determined by what stage of consciousness you have achieved. For example, a mythic/traditional person might interpret a spiritual experience as a revelation from a personal God intended solely for the “chosen people,” a rational/scientific person might interpret reason and mathematics itself as the language of a Deistic God (the “great clockmaker in the sky”), while a pluralistic/postmodern person might interpret his or her experience as emanating from Gaia and felt as a radical interconnectivity with the “Great Web of Life.” This is demonstrated in the graphic below, known as the Wilber/Combs matrix, which plots four different types of commonly-acknowledged spiritual states against seven evolutionary stages of consciousness, yielding at least 28 different kinds of spiritual experience. No wonder we are so confused!
Furthermore, just as we can look at evolution through three major perspectives (3rd-person physical and techno-economic evolution, 2nd-person cultural evolution, 1st-person conscious evolution), so can we view our relationship with the divine from these same three perspectives, sometimes called the “Three Faces of God”:We can speak about God from a 3rd-person perspective, including theological or metaphysical descriptions, or just a simple appreciation of the universe as the living body of God. This is often experienced as profound awe at the entire world around us.
We can speak with God from a 2nd-person perspective, as an authentic "I-Thou" relationship between ourselves and divinity, in which we can commune with God as the ultimate "Thou"—or, as Martin Buber might suggest, as the living hyphen between the I and every Thou you have ever known. This is often experienced as bottomless, rapturous love with the entire world around us.
We can speak as God from a 1st-person perspective, a direct experience of Spirit in the form of mystical transcendence, personal revelation, or luminous reverie. This is commonly felt as an experience of the Self beyond the self, or the effortless "I AMness" behind all our thoughts, memories, and experiences. This is often experienced as transcendent, empty bliss as we realize we are the entire world around us.
Approaching spiritual experience in this way does a great deal to help us understand the current state of the world’s ongoing inter-faith dialogue, as we can see that every spiritual tradition intrinsically contains all three of these perspectives, though certain traditions might focus on one more than the others. For example, the Western theistic traditions tend to emphasize “God in 2nd-person” and are often distrustful of 1st-person experiences of the divine, whereas Eastern traditions like Buddhism tend to point to 1st-person realization as the ultimate means of liberation, while sometimes understating the importance of 2nd-person communion with Spirit.
Thanks to the information age, people now have unprecedented access to all the world’s knowledge, wisdom, and culture. Never before has the world been so small—and yet, considering the absolutely massive amount of data now at our fingertips, the world has also never been so unfathomably huge. We are drowning in zeros and ones, the digital reflections of our outer and inner worlds flooding our senses faster than any of us can metabolize. Only a genuinely Integral approach can make sense of this deluge of information, an approach that acknowledges and situates the established methodologies of phenomenology, structuralism, empiricism, hermeneutics, systems theory, etc., without ever confusing the territory of one methodology with the authority of another. In this sense, both Kevin Kelly and Ken Wilber are truly 21st-century pioneers, both of whom share an irrepressible drive to synthesize and integrate a truly staggering body of knowledge. Their work represents a new way of seeing the world, of relating to the world, and of being in the world. They strive to identify the very real patterns in our universe, patterns that connect everything to everything else, and in so doing, helping to clear a path for the future of evolution in this lonely pocket of the universe.
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