This continues from the previous post, where I discussed chapter 3 of Integral Ecology. Together these posts make up my summary overviews for Week 3 of the reading group. What follows is less a summary than a response to chapter 4, but I think it covers most of the key concepts in the chapter.
Chapter 4: Developing Interiors
Chapter 4 moves to the “interior” left-hand side of the four-quadrant AQAL model. Here things get more challenging, as the account of tetra-arising development comes to seem even more complex than it has so far.
As mentioned in the Preamble above, E/Z are involved in a very ambitious undertaking, and it shouldn’t surprise us if there are oversimplifications in the process. Wilber justifies these by claiming he is taking broad “orienting generalizations” from different fields. The risk, however, is that trying to fit too many things onto a single map, we lose distinctions that are important features of the territory. So even though Wilber and E/Z can criticize others for being “monological” — by which they mean that these others only recognize one of the “big three” dimensions (first-person, second-person, and third-person) — they themselves can be monological insofar as their map flattens certain differences and distinctions.
An example of this is E/Z’s account in Chapter 4 of the “three stages of moral development: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional,” which they claim follow a “fixed” sequence of “egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to planetcentric.” Here, it seems, we have one oversimplification grafted onto a second oversimplification, resulting in a model that squares poorly with historical and cross-cultural evidence.
For instance, the kinds of traditional cultural beliefs and practices associated with what anthropologists call “totemism” and “animism” have often included stronger forms of identification between members of certain subsets (moieties, clans, kinship groups, etc.) of the given society and certain animals or deities (at least one-way identification by/from those humans) than they did between different subsets of the human society (not to mention other human societies). These were arguably not “ethnocentric” so much as they were variations on a “worldcentrism” in which “ego” was probably relatively weak (by modern standards), “ethnos” was complex in its classifications, and “cosmos” took the place of “planet” (since the notion of a planet was not available to them).
E/Z suggest that “planetcentrism” is a moral advance over the others, but the fact that earlier societies did not have our conception of a blue-green planet floating in the heavens does not mean that they did not have some conception of the cosmos morally unifying all things, from the underworld to the earth to the heavenly firmament (for instance). Our emergent planetcentrism is, to my mind, not a moral advance so much as it’s an altered image of the cosmos resulting from a purely technical advance.
Egocentrism, on the other hand, is arguably more prevalent in modern, liberal, humanist, individualist cultures than it ever was in traditional and tribal societies. E/Z’s model suggests that any shift from ethnocentrism (identification with collectively defined values) to egocentrism would be a regressive slide backward (and only that).
But let’s think about this. Max Stirner’s anarchism and the rational-egoism embedded within neoclassical economics are both value systems that provilege egocentrism. They do this in the service of a higher goal — political liberty or economic rationality — so we might call them worldcentric rather than egocentric, but they do not necessarily (if at all) build on (“transcend and include”) collective (tribal, ethnic, national, etc.) values. Are they, then, to be taken to task for dissociating from the previous (ethnocentric) level as they transcend? And either way, which of the many forms of ethnocentrism, or collective identity — localcentrism, tribe-centrism, nation-centrism, religiocentrism, ideological class-centrism, and so on — are the ones that ought to be integrated, and which is it alright to reject altogether as one climbs the ladder from ethnocentrism to worldcentrism?
The point is that there is no such straightforward sequence (ego-ethnos-world-planet) written into nature, because “ego,” “ethnos,” “world,” and “planet” are constructs that are relative to particular kinds of societies, or more precisely to socio-material-technological networks or collectives. Generally, I would suggest, “ego” (selfhood) always co-emerges alongside some form of collectivity, and collectivities take various forms depending on the type of society, its relationship with the nonhuman world, and its conception of the cosmos.
In their discussion of “developmental lines,” E/Z write that “at level 4 […], the self’s center of gravity is at the mythic level, which corresponds to the mythic order of culture and is consistent with premodern countries [?], and which requires corresponding brain structure.” I don’t know if “countries” is a typo or not, but if it isn’t, it’s not clear what they mean. If by “countries” they mean nation-states, how can these be called “premodern” at all, if the nation-state system only arose as a result of modernizing processes (print literacy, bourgeois and imperial-colonial developments, etc.)?
As for there being a “mythic level,” here E/Z are following a particular account of history that is not shared by the vast majority of historians or scholars of culture, myth, religion, or philosophy. At the very least, the term “myth” requires much more careful definition than they (or Wilber, to my knowledge) give it.
The same kinds of questions can be raised in their account of individual development, where idiosyncratic and/or esoteric spiritual ideas (vision-logic, illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind, supermind) are grafted onto Piagetian theoretical concepts (preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational) and all mapped onto a ladder made up of the colors of the rainbow:
- Infrared – Instinctual/Symbiotic
- Magenta – Magical/Impulsive
- Red – Egocentric/Self-Protective
- Amber – Mythic/Conformist
- Orange – Achiever/Conscientious
- Green – Sensitive Self/Individualistic
- Teal – Holistic Self/Autonous
- Turquoise – Integral Self/Integrated
- Indigo – Ego-aware
- Violet – Unitive
This is an ambitious grafting, and one that’s worth examining closely and working through. But I can’t help wondering if the appearance of complexity isn’t substituting here for actual complexity. The authors write:
“It is inaccurate to describe anyone as wholly ‘red’ or ‘green.’ Development is differential in nature. People may be red in one line, orange in another, and green in still another. A man may occasionally act from the red, emotional center of gravity when a car cuts him off; from an amber, interpersonal center of gravity when he attends church; from an orange, cognitive center when he is competing for a professional promotion; and from green values when he supports a Sierra Club initiative to curb factory pollution. Typically individuals operate from both the level above and below their center of gravity 25% o the time in any one line.” (p. 126)
I would prefer to say that it’s simply more typical that individuals act to some extent in conformity with those around them (or with a chosen subset of those around them) and to some extent out of a calculation of what kind of behavior is better behavior – defined according to their own standards, which may be “more appropriate,” “more honorable,” “more in accordance with my being able to attain my own goals,” “more just,” and so on. There are great differences between each of these (justice, honor, pursuit of goals, etc.), but it seems to me that placing them on a hierarchical ladder, no matter how much jumping around is allowed on that ladder, oversimplifies the complexity of relations, motivations, meanings, and values that make up our lives.
Or perhaps that’s just the humanities scholar in me responding that way. Social scientists like to operationalize concepts and quantify complex phenomena, and I won’t deny there can be much use in doing that. I just don’t know if any such quantification — especially one that, for all its hedges and qualifications, remains linear — will be able to render such important topics as individual moral and spiritual “development” with the nuance and care they deserve. E/Z tend to address the complexities and critiques of such models (e.g., Piagetian developmental theory) in their footnotes rather than in the main text, which is fine; but it makes reading the text challenging for those who don’t agree with the details they outline.
Similarly with statements like the following:
“Amber and orange compose about 70% of the adult population in the U.S.A., whereas 25% of the population operates from green pluralism or multiculturalism” and 2% or 3% “operate at the holistic center of gravity, and much smaller percentages at integral and beyond.” (p. 128)
Or this one:
“Only later in life did Marx entertain the possibilities that the members of an entire society could somehow jump from amber agrarian to green socialist without the intermediary orange capitalist-industrial-bourgeois developmental center of gravity. […] The Soviet Union was a social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental catastrophe. We hope that this serves as a lesson: members of a society cannot skip developmental stages. Nor is it wise for a society to eradicate, imprison, or murder its individuals who have stabilized the more advanced levels of development.” (pp. 128-9, emphasis added)
That the Soviet Union was a catastrophe is a point worth arguing, even if there are strong arguments that it wasn’t entirely a catastrophe. And the eradication of whole classes (not merely individuals) — as in the decimation of the entire cultural intelligentsia of Ukraine in the 1930s — is one of the most heinous crimes ascribable to the Soviet Union, though one should be more careful and specific about who was to blame (Stalin and the system he erected in the late 1920s and 1930s).
But boiling down the “lesson” from this to “skipping developmental stages” seems to trivialize the matter more than it enlightens it. The authors here are mixing economic development, political development, social development, psychological development, and moral development (and perhaps spiritual development) in ways that seem to me illegitimate.
Again:
“Gifford Pinchot, founder of the U.S. Forest Service, promulgated an orange-based management approach [. . .] With [John] Muir, however, orange individualism begins to move toward green pluralism.” (p. 134)
There’s some truth to this, but couldn’t there be just as strong an argument that Muir was an individualist, seeking a heightened experience of nature (and self), while Pinchot was a holist and integralist (of a sort), seeking to balance out multiple interests for the greater benefit of all? That Pinchot’s “all” did not include the interests of trees or animals does not indicate any particular selfishness on his part.
All of my complaints here would be rendered moot if the qualifier that these are “waves” — overlapping, often simultaneously present, and dynamically/dialectically related “Kosmic habits” — and not pregiven “levels” or “stages,” were taken seriously and applied more consistently. Often enough E/Z do take it seriously, so this is a tension internal to their writing, but not necessarily one that readers and users of the AQAL framework need to take on board with them.
Another example is that of infant development: is there really a clear shift from the “symbiotic self” (who “focuses entirely on surviving in an incomprehensible world” and whose “main task” is “to construct a stable world of objects so as to separate [?] from their surroundings”) to the “impulsive self” (superstitious, magical, etc.) to the egocentric or “self-protective” to the “mythic/conformist” to the “achiever/conscientious,” and so on? I would argue, consistently I believe with a lot of contemporary developmental psychology, that sociality, including the play and joy of mutual recognition (as any mother hopefully knows), begins very early. Conformism and differentiation unfold in a dialectic. And all the more so with social and political development.
Again, the authors sometimes acknowledge this kind of complexity, as, for instance, when they state that “Sociocultural development is not, however, analogous to the development of an organism” (p. 141). Thinking through such a complex set of interrelationships with the nuance they deserve isn’t easy, however.
Concluding thoughts
So, to hazard a conclusion here — a temporary resting-spot rumination after the first four chapters (making up Part 1) of the book — I would say the following.
The general ideas Wilber, Esbjorn-Hargens and Zimmerman propose hold great promise. Whether they are correct or not is certainly worth arguing over.
The AQAL model is, in any case, a most ambitious proposal with the potential to reconcile a great many contending theories about life, humanity, ecology, and the cosmos. I’m very impressed with its incorporation of such diverse strands of theory and research: developmental, cognitive, systems-theoretical, processual, semiotic (and biosemiotic), hermeneutic (including Heideggerian), poststructuralist (including Foucauldian), and so on. I’m also convinced by some of the critiques integral theory poses to certain traditions of thought (e.g., its critique of relativism, or of some eco-theorists’ misanthropic leanings).
But operationalizing the ideas is a complicated task that I think is still in its infancy. As a result, some of the book’s arguments fall flat in their details (at least for me). They require more work, probably by a larger interdisciplinary contingent of thinkers and researchers.
But that work wouldn’t be done if someone hadn’t taken the first step in articulating this model for ecological thought, and I greatly admire the authors for doing that. I’m quite willing to think along with them. And with the promise of getting into the nitty-gritty of environmental matters — which both authors are well versed in — I’m keen to pursue where they go with it in the remainder of the book. I’m even suspecting that it’s these two chapters (3 and 4) that may end up being the least convincing (for me, in any case).
Great stuff Adrian. Some slight responses here.
Wonderful post. Adrian. You give a good summary and raise some excellent points. I like your point about Pinchot and Muir. Regarding style, I agree that E/Z’s use of footnotes makes “reading the text challenging.” They picked up that style from Wilber, and although that style helps keep Integral Theory books accessible to generally educated readers (like the spiritual seekers who follow Wilber’s work), expressing the detailed arguments in a plethora of footnotes makes it very unwieldy for scholars and researchers to understand or criticize, especially when some footnotes simply refer to a whole book or many books without mentioning page numbers or other specificities. Probably unwittingly, Integral theorists often commit the argumentum verbosium fallacy.
I share a lot of the concerns that have been expressed regarding the oversimplifying and reifying tendencies at work in E/Z’s accounts of development. The Integral approach to development is less simplistic in Wilber’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality and his subsequent Integral Psychology, but even in those more thorough accounts, the basic problem remains: it is hard (if not impossible) not to oversimplify interior and exterior development when challenged with the task of mapping it on a 2-dimensional page.
Tim’s point about the sorites paradox is well taken. It is impossible to draw boundaries between biosphere and noosphere, between ego- and ethno-centric, or between premodern and modern. The boundaries are either too vague (thus losing heuristic value) or they appear to be arbitrary or pregiven prejudices. Of course, those boundaries are supposed to be fluid and flexible. They’re not supposed to be pre-given realities but “orienting generalizations” that facilitate participatory engagements with multiple scales and degrees of complexity and depth. However, the AQAL map and E/Z’s writing don’t always succeed in presenting their position as participatory instead of pre-given.
Personally, to map the transformations of complex systems, I prefer the rhizome of Deleuze and Guattari, with its principles of decalcomania and cartography. I prefer their “rhizosphere” (or “mechanosphere”) to the clear and distinct spheres of AQAL. However, the AQAL map seems to have the benefit of being much more accessible to the average reader. The problem, then, might be that the AQAL map is too accessible, or as Tim punned, referring to E/Z’s ideas on Romanticism, E/Z’s ideas are too easy.
Too Easy:
I just want to comment more on Tim’s pun, since it captures a fundamental problem I have with Integral Ecology. E/Z say many times that the work of Integral Ecology is not easy. “Resolving complex issues […] is not at all easy” (138); “a good definition [of life] is not easy” (83); “Developing mutual understanding […] is no easy task” (194); “It is not easy or always necessary to define where one [quadrant/level] ends and another begins” (195). I appreciate any approach to ecology that affirms the difficulty and impossibility of ecological theory and practice. However, there are some things about Integral Ecology that are simply too easy and that fail to fully engage or admit the difficulty inherent in ecology. A few chapters from where we’re at now, E/Z claim “that Integral Ecological research is not impossible. In fact, it is much easier than we might think” (271). At the end of the day, is IE too easy?
I prefer an approach to ecology that admits that the research called for from us is more difficult than we thought and, indeed, even impossible. Thinking of Derrida’s work on impossibility, I imagine that an ecological deconstruction (David Wood’s “econstruction”) would do a much better job in affirming the difficulty, aporia, darkness, and impossibility of responsible ecological theory and practice. OOO has a lot to contribute on this front, as indicated by Levi Bryant’s recent discussion of black ecology, which has obvious resonances with Tim’s dark ecology. I would like to propose a dark integral ecology… even if only for the far-from-easy connotations of the acronym: DIE.
Sam – Yes, I also tend to be attracted to the style of thinking that admits to the full difficulty, complexity, and sheer undecidability of things. I think there are elements of that in E/Z and Wilber – like, for instance, the three values they refer to (ground, implicit, explicit) – but instead of highlighting the undecidability, they seem to want to use these as ways of saying “well, we’ve (i.e. Wilber) already thought of that and have an answer to it.” So something can become an opening for thought, or it can become a short-cut. If Wilber’s ideas were used more consistently in the first direction, I would find them more digestible. The irony, of course, is that that would probably make them indigestible to a large part of his audience.
That said, I think all philosophers do that to some degree. We need shortcuts, formulas, diagrams, reiterable concept-images – D&G’s rhizome being a good example of that (or Haraway’s cyborg, or Derrida’s differance, etc; Derrida is perhaps best at avoiding imageability, but the concepts do the work of images even if they are linguistic rather than diagrammatic). It all depends on the work we want those concepts to do. If we think of AQAL as such a concept, one that instead of becoming a formula or classificatory regime for slotting things into, could be sent spinning off in many directions, might it surprise us?
Yes. I definitely think AQAL can and will surprise us if we deploy it as a concept that, as you put it so well, “could be sent spinning off in many directions.” On that point, I like E/Z’s use of the word “kaleidoscopic” to describe the Integral framework. One of the most impressive things about AQAL is its simtultaneous difficulty and easizness, that is, its capability to function both as an opening for thought and as a short-cut. That has probably helped make Wilber the most translated academic author in the US (a statistic that Integral scholar-practitioners frequently mention).
I was at the 2008 and 2010 Integral Theory Conference events at JFK University, and during the course of those conferences, I was continually surprised at the creative and provocative ways that the participants were sending the AQAL model spinning. Like Deleuze saying that a “book is not worth much on its own” and only finds value “outside the book,” I think the value of AQAL isn’t in the books as much as it’s in the ways that the books make connections with practices, participatory engagements, and communities of researchers. The ITC events provided an excellent demonstration of the efficacy of AQAL in supporting such connections.
Good critique. I agree that the concept of preconventional, conventional and postconventional are not cross-culturally compatible, but arise from research propagated by the WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic). Moreover I really don’t like the idea of applying this particularly Western model of psychological development to global cultures. This, for me, is the least useful and most maddening part of IE. Adrian rightly points out that nations are not clearly bounded. What is the cultural development of say, a half-Mexican, half-German American who live in Italy (such as myself)? Their model of the world is depends on the solidity of the nation-state, when most theory argues that nation-states are actually imaginary fictions. And is planetary consciousness morally superior? What if the planetary consciousness is actually fascist? After all, neoliberalism aspires to be global consciousness. I read somewhere (sorry I don’t have the link handy) that Beck and Cowan (creators of Spiral Dynamics) supported the invasion of Iraq because it would help develop the Middle East into higher consciousness. If this is true, it’s like Marx saying that the colonization of India was necessary in order to create a proletariate class for that society. I don’t necessarily think E/Z would make that claim, but I think some of this thinking could move in that direction. They dodge this problem by saying that societies have actors with different levels of development (so though Nazi Germany was an advanced industrial state, its leaders were tribal). I agree the negatives of any given society can be balanced out by integrative approaches and can benefit from the integration of different cultural realities. Yet this is also an ideal of liberal theory that depends on the hope that perfect, rational communication is possible. Can those who achieve the higher states of consciousness articulate as multidimensionally as they perceive?
I do appreciate E/Z stance that technology is not unnatural, and that humans are not necessarily bad. I’m not sure why they have to state this, other than to argue against some deep ecologists who might be reading the book.
reading and reading
Incredible story there. What occurred after? Good luck!