Regressives spin socialism on Obamacare now, Medicare then

You've heard the bullshit, how it's big government socialism. Requiring people to get insurance to line the pockets of insurance companies is socialism? It's the tired rhetoric we heard from Reagan when Medicare came into existence. Al Sharpton provides video of that time, comparing it with today's regressive frames and they're exactly the same (2:45). The US didn't turn socialist from Medicare and it won't from Obamacare. The real fear is the once Obamacare in implemented people will see that the regressives have been lying about it and they'll actually like it, just like they did with Medicare. And regressives simply cannot have a big government program working, that is, helping people while also saving the country money and making money for business. It's just too much cognitively dissonant reality for their outdated and failed ideology.

Loy sauce

Continuing in the states/stages/lattice thread, I’m also using Loy’s history of Buddhism, as it arose during the Axial period when egoic rationality was on the rise (see here and here). In this post I quote Loy: "Shunyata is not 'nothingness' but the formless potential that describes awareness prior to identification with any form" (166). Which brings me back to Damasio’s different selves or Thompson’s ipseities. This post relates them to meditation practice.  In the post following I argue that states like shunyata arise in the core self via meditation.

“Also of interest from the last article is how in the beginning it compares what I've excerpted above with Descartes' dualism, the mind being an immaterial 'ghost in the machine.' At the end he comes full circle, noting this same dualism is inherent to not only Husserl's transcendent consciousness but also to traditional Buddhist notions of transcendent awareness.

Groundswell: A regressive stategy group revealed

See David Corn's Mother Jones article. Groundswell realizes they're losing the framing battle so they're plotting to undermine the liberal agenda at all costs. They've been trying to remain under the radar but Corn exposes them in this exclusive. They think they need to frame talking points at a 4th grade level to win minority approval, which tells you what they think of them. And the issues they want to focus on are scandals, not jobs or social concerns. Check it out to see who is involved, their agenda and the type of framing they are using to mislead and obfuscate rather than enlighten and educate. They didn't want their activities to come to light because us 4th-graders might get on to their machinations.* Too late, we know and now everyone else will too.

* Sorry, 8th-grade word.

Petition to not bargain with liars on Medicare

I added the following comments to my signature:

I fail to understand why you'd cut Medicare benefits as a concession to Republicans. And make no mistake about it; chained CPI is exactly that. Why would you trust Republicans anyway that they'd they agree to give something, ANYthing, on their side? Haven't they proven time and again they are just playing you by getting you to compromise when they will give nothing in return? When, if ever, will you learn not to trust these pathological liars?

From the Daily Kos:

President Obama is touring the country, talking about the economy, job creation, and income inequality. But his administration is negotiating with Republicans in a last-ditch attempt to strike a “grand bargain” to cut Medicare. Tell President Obama: Medicare works. Stop pursuing a grand bargain that will hurt seniors and undercut the most successful healthcare program in America. According to the Wall Street Journal, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is meeting with Sen. John McCain and other leading Republicans to discuss cutting Medicare benefits. Since becoming law in 1965, Medicare has lifted millions of American seniors out of poverty and kept millions more from falling into it. President Obama can’t expect us to take his talk about income inequality seriously as his closest advisers are discussing cutting the most successful health care program in American history. Sign the petition: Stop negotiating a grand bargain to cut Medicare. Keep fighting, Michael Langenmayr Campaign Director, Daily Kos

Integral anti-capitalism continued

From the ongoing featured IPS discussion, in response to Pascal's latest post:

I share your mixed feelings about “the people,” for it depends on their center of gravity (COG) as to whether their actions are beneficial or destructive. I will grant that for many the COG is not beneficial to most of us, i.e., society at large but more ethnocentric at best. This is in fact why conservative framing always tries to set up class, race and gender divisions, for a house divided is more easily manipulated to their own group-self interests instead of the whole. Meanwhile, back at the corporate headquarters, policies that in no way benefit either society as a whole or the so manipulated divided group interests are promulgated favoring the top 1% group-self while blatantly lying about their agenda and hiding their framing methodology.

So yes, this must be combated by manipulating the “the people” with progressive framing. Yes, it is still manipulation but it stems from a developmentally advanced view that truly is working for all people, not just interest groups. We might call it a post-conventional moral code. But we also know that there are not enough voters as this moral stage so in the meantime we need to get the votes of those not there, who are being manipulated anyway by the regressive spin meisters. The difference is that the later do so for their own good while the former do so for the good of all. The later lie, cheat and steal to get there while the former, even though spinning, bring in truth, compassion, humanity and facts. And interestingly enough, progressive framing within these parameters also serves the higher purpose of eventually lifting people up to next moral stage. Hence ‘manipulation’ becomes ‘education’ at the same time, the latter being a healthy form of the former to lift all boats.

Some recap on ego, integration & beyond

Continuing in the states/stages/lattice thrread, some recap posts.

In terms of what I mean by 'ego' is the rational (formop) ego. Cook-Greuter lists various stages of 'ego' development in the usual broad range. Or what Damasio might call the narrative self in distinction from the proto self or the core self. Thompson also explores Damasio's ideas through what he calls ipseity. And I'm taking my cue on how the rational ego looks back to go forward from Washburn, Goddard and Levin, cited earlier in this thread with links. This egoic process (it is not a static entity) is precisely what you describe as "advanced forward brain systems" capable of neuroplasticity, which indeed "exceeds what most people would accept as the definition of ego." I'm not using "most people's" descriptions here but the more precise definitions of my neuroscientific, and meditative in the case of Thompson, brethren.

Recall Levin from this post:

Desilet on kosmic addressing

Continuing from the last post, this Desilet article pre-dates the kennilingus semiotics paper but is applicable nonetheless, since kosmic addressing is still the key. Especially of the Awakened ones. In the article Desilet criticizes Wilber's earlier work in IS but as Wilber maintains the same kosmic addressing system the critique is still valid, especially of the metaphysics of presence. The following also reminds me of Cook-Greuter's recent ITC comments in this post.

"Wilber adheres to his own version of a myth of the given in the belief that, for all practical purposes, clear, transparent communication and translation are as good as given when factored through his Kosmic addressing system. However, for Derrida, regardless of sophisticated sets of enactments or operations, transparency can never be taken as given. An absence of certainty in communication, a failure of objective location, persists.

Lane responds to Wilber's integral semiotics

From David Lane's recent IW piece "Ken Wilber's eye." He is commenting of Kennilingam's latest on integral semiotics:

"He tends to confuse experience with its causation-reality, forgetting in the process of how easy it is for anyone to be deceived or duped by how certain phenomena are produced. [...] I am belaboring this point because there is no absolute given even in the sensory-empirical world, which could not potentially be mislabeled or misinterpreted. This may seem like a trivial point, but I think it looms much larger than we might at first suspect when we enter into the mystical domain which doesn’t have the same overwhelming consensual feedback correctives (at least not yet).

"You cannot appreciate dreaming unless you too have dreamt. That seems obvious. But that doesn’t mean that the dreamer is somehow privileged because of that ability to know the causation or ontological status of that dream [...] I think it is misleading to then pontificate about the 'reality' or 'truth-value' of such experiences.

A new kind of corporation for public benefit

See Delaware Governor Jack Markell's article on a new law to be enacted August 1 in his State. A few excerpts:

"On July 17, I signed into law a bill enabling the formation of a new type of corporation that is hard wired to compete to be the best in America at being the best for America.These new Delaware public benefit corporations will harness the power of private enterprise to create public benefit.

"Many of the businesses considering this new corporate structure [...] feel understandably constrained by existing corporate law that recognizes only one legitimate corporate purpose -- to maximize value for stockholders.  Delaware public benefit corporations will function like and enjoy all the same benefits as traditional Delaware corporations and they will have three unique features that make them potential game changers. These three features concern corporate purpose, accountability, and transparency."

Senator Sanders on Wal-Mart, king of the welfare queens

From Bernie Buzz:

"In the midst of all the discussion about welfare reform, it turns out that the major welfare beneficiary in our country is the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame. The wealthiest family in America is worth more than $100 billion. One way they got so rich is by paying workers so little that tens of thousands of Wal-Mart employees use food stamps to feed their families and Medicaid to pay doctor bills. So with the number of Americans living in poverty in America near a 60-year high, with the gap between the rich and the rest of us growing wider and with youth unemployment in America at staggering levels, one proposal Bernie backs is raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. It’s been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009. In addition to helping workers, a catch-up raise would have a side benefit. There would be “real savings for taxpayers who would not have to subsidize Wal-Mart because of its low wages,” Bernie told Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Some Republicans don’t just want to keep the minimum wage from going up. In a blunt exchange at a Senate hearing, Sen. Lamar Alexander told Bernie the minimum wage, on the books since the 1930s, should be abolished." 

Some video for the last post

Integral anti-capitalism continued

Continuing from this post:
 

What makes both governments and business respond is organized, effective social action by the masses. E.g., on a small scale when tuna companies were using certain netting practices that also killed large numbers of dolphins people boycotted tuna. It had a dramatic effect on their bottom line so that major companies quit doing and even advertised on their product dolphin-safe. But on a massive scale this last election demonstrated it much more emphatically. The Republicans had and continue to have a concerted campaign to disenfranchise minorities, the elderly and the youth, aka those who vote for the Democrat Party.* But this just served to activate these groups, along with a huge progressive ad campaign of its own, to ensure these constituents had the proper registration, get them to the polls and have them stand in line for up to 12 hours. It was a massive demonstration of how the people can overcome the enormous financial effort that went in to stopping their votes.

Postformal operations and postmetaphysicality continued

Also recall this post, From Deconstruction in a Nutshell (Fordham UP, 1997). Note not only the a-dualist (nondual) view but also the notion of indeterminate time in this place, very much akin to Torbert's triple-loop. And how it is a kissing cousin to the withdrawn. And its likeness to the Buddhist unborn, and the modern terror trope of the undead. I also like how the Demiurge is responsible, one of the God/desses invoked by theurj via “a hybrid or bastard reasoning.”*

“When we think of Plato we think of the two worlds or regions allegorized in the cave: the upper world of the intelligible paradigms, the sphere of invisible and unchanging being in the sun of the Good that shines over all, as opposed to the sensible likenesses of the forms in the changing, visible world of becoming.... When presented with a neat distinction or opposition of this sort—and this distinction inaugurates philosophy, carves out the very space of 'meta-physics'—Derrida will not, in the manner of Hegel, look for some uplifting, dialectical reconciliation of the two in a higher third thing, a concrete universal, which contains the 'truth' of the first two. Instead, he will look around—in the text itself—for some third thing that the distinction omits, some untruth, or barely remnant truth, which falls outside the famous distinction, which the truth of either separately or both together fails to capture, which is neither and both of the two.

Postformal operations and postmetaphysicality continued

Some more info from our historical archive to provide context for this latest tangent.This post quotes Habermas on the lifeworld from Postmetaphysical Thinking (MIT Press, 1992):

"This background...constitutes a totality that is implicit and that comes along prereflexively--one that crumbles the moment it is thematized; it remains a totality only in the form of implicit, intuitively presupposed background knowledge. Taking the unity of the lifeworld, which is known only subconsciously, and projecting it in an objectifying manner onto the level of explicit knowledge is the operation that has been responsible for mythological, religious and also of course metaphysical worldviews" (142-3).

And this one from Martin Morris, “Between deliberation and deconstruction” in The Derrida-Habermas Reader, U of Chicago Press, 2006, 231-53.

Postformal operations and postmetaphysicality continued

Another blast from the past to highlight the difference between metaphysical and postmetaphysical views. Recall one definition of metaphysics is in seeing a distinct or clear separation between the absolute and the relative, the first being transcendent cause and the latter immanent effect.

From the opening of the Desilet thread:

 

"A restricted economy imposes a structuring principle that establishes a strong polarity of opposites and clear lines of choice. The structural tension between opposites such as true and false or fact and interpretation operates with a clarity that facilitates either/or alternatives and simplified decision-making. In a general economy, however, every oppositional structure submits to a reversal and a displacement. This displacement involves an extraordinary reconfiguration of the structure or dynamic play between opposites.

Postformal operations and postmetaphysicality continued

Continued from this post:

In this post Balder reminded us of Bhaskar’s critique of IT in that it fails to recognize the generative mechanisms driving development. I.e., IT has a morphogenetic involutionary groove pulling it up, a skyhook. Whereas for Bhaskar development is more driven by contingent environmental and social forces, not by some teleological and metaphysical skyhook. In this post and the one following DeLanda too has the virtual realm acting as a bootstrap, but not from the sky. Bryant from TDOO:

"Here it is crucial to note that the concept of attractors is not a teleological concept. Attractors are not goals towards which a substance tends, but are rather the potentialities towards which a substance tends under a variety of different conditions in the actualization of its qualities. [...] In this respect, DeLanda's attractors are extremely close to Bhaskar's generative mechanisms" (111-12).

Also recall this post quoting from Bryant’s blog post:

Siip Siie

Corbett on the shadow of society

Corbett's recent Integral World piece is relevant to the ongoing anti-capitalism thread. An excerpt:

"This model of modern development worked very well, always for the elites, but for a good deal of non-elites as well, especially in the West, for several hundred years of global capitalist development. [...] However, as the hierarchical global capitalist system winds-down on the threshold of its own unacknowledged limits and is unable to resolve the crises it generates, it becomes increasingly authoritarian and repressive of its populations, with elites holding on to their illegitimate existence and squeezing the last remaining benefits of the system almost exclusively for itself. The human shadow has now become pathological and dysfunctional for the further advancement of civilization.

Postformal operations and postmetaphysicality

Continuing this IPS thread:

And another thing. Post-formal operations involves going postmetaphysical. As I've amply documented in the real/false reason thread, the creators of the MHC, themselves supposedly postformal thinkers, still adhere to metaphysical postulates. And those very postulates are how they measure postformality and complexity! Whereas the type of postformal operations we've explored in the forum all have gone postmetaphysical, from L&J to Levin to Bryant to Derrida, etc. A large part of the metaphysical post-formalists, given their 'false' reasoning, fail to understand the likes of the aforementioned postmetaphysicists and can only label them green or pluralist. So there's also this real/false, healthy/unhealthy aspect to rationality that must be considered in the lateral phases of this level. Which of course will change drastically what it means to go postformal if we're using postmetaphysicality as a significant element.

Colbert on white racism and the Martin murder

President Obama recently gave a speech in response to the Zimmerman verdict, trying to help us understand what it's like for a black man in this society, still. So the regressives run amok reacting by coming out with the statistics that black on black violence is rampant so therefore therefore Zimmerman was right to fear for this life and justified in killing Martin. I know, it doesn't follow but regressives have given up on any semblance of logic long ago. Colbert counters this nonsense in his usual way, by satirizing this regressive misdirection. He counters their math with some math of his own, noting that about 0.009% of the African American population commit murder, so of course we should therefore be scared of all of them, right? And suspect them if they're walking in our neighborhood, right? And follow them with a gun, right? And when we confront them and they respond naturally to being followed and confronted we should assume they're going to kill us, right? So we just have to kill them first, right?

Integral anti-capitalism continued

From my last response in the main post of this IPS thread. Also see a lot of other good posts in the comments. (I've already posted many of them in the blog.)

Your discussion of the chakras reminds me of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And of our recent discussion of Harris of the surplus of one level being applied to growing the next. It's most difficult if not impossible to build up our solar power when our very basic survival instincts are constantly activated because we cannot make ends meet financially. I.e., there is no surplus at this level to apply toward the next, let alone empowering our citizens to make any kind of power play on their own, their family's or their society's sake. So I'm still for redistributing monetary surplus to those in need via the tax code and well as higher minimum wages, government sponsered training/education, etc.

The gigi-glossary and the lattice

From this ongoing IPS thread. Some Wilber quotes from his Gigi Glossary post (with my bolding), with my comments following.

“The difference between these states (and their correlative mysticisms) and the structures themselves is that, at 3rd tier, both a structure and a particular state are conjoined: the states are deeply interwoven with the harder structures and basic rungs, and don’t remain as amorphous states free to roam the spectrum. This brings the major states into deep connection with the basic structures, and in their intrinsic order—gross (with para-mind), subtle (with meta-mind), causal (with overmind), and nondual (with supermind). The state-realms themselves also remain intrinsically distinct and can be specifically experienced that way (Buddhas still wake, dream, and sleep, even though their consciousness is permanently open to all of them).

$, greed, power and what to do about it

See andrew's post in the IPS anti-capitalism thread. My response follows.

From this post and the two following Dawlabani notes that capitalism’s earlier history was one of hard work, healthy competition and equity. But both corporations and consumers abandoned this sustainable path into unsustainable and greedy Wall Street speculation and individual overconsumption, a devolution, as it were. He further notes that the problem was not money per se . Heretofore money “served as a function of productive output. Alan Greenspan and the geniuses on Wall Street sought to alter that role by making money productive output itself. A classic and grossly misguided case of the tail wagging the dog.”

The dignity of differentiation, the disaster of dissociation

Continuing in the IPS anti-capitalism thread, I'm reminded of Wilber's dignity and disaster of modernity, differentiation and dissociation. The dignity consisted of not only in differentiating the value spheres but in differentiating the individual from his social milieu. A person could be individually rewarded for their meritorious efforts and buy their own property, from a house to a tv to whatever. There is a healthy side to this sort of individual effort/reward if kept within a social context, where such agency is tempered by communion. But it seems this went over into the disaster of not only differentiating the individual but dissociating from the social structure, where personal greed and overconsumption took over. It seems per Wilber the next healthy phase is integration instead of dissociation, integrating agency and communion, individual and social property, finding that balance in distributed capitalism that still rewards one for individual effort but not to the point of ego inflation, while also creating true equal opportunity (not equal results) for all.

Close to the edge

This year at the Integral Theory Conference Hampson and Edwards did a presentation called "Awaken: The transformative music and lyrics of the progressive rock group Yes." One can view a copy of it at this link, along with several other conference presentations. One excerpt:

"Close to the Edge (1972), which 'is widely regarded as the pinnacle of their career and the finest progressive rock album ever made' (O’Reilly, 2012, ¶5 p.1]. The eighteen-minute-long title track is inspired, inter alia, by the Herman Hesse novel, Siddhartha (1922/2008). O’Reilly offers the perspective that

'Close to the Edge refers to the razor’s edge between stability and chaos, between the known and the unknown, between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Being Close to the Edge means pushing the envelope, brushing up against the limits of the possible and coming away with a glimpse or a taste of the transcendent. … / Close to the Edge is above all an archetypal journey into the realm of mystical consciousness and selfrealization (¶5 p.5).'"

With that in mind, enjoy:

Ass clenching and capitalism

From the ongoing IPS anti-capitalism thread where Pascal asks: "Is there a functional parallel between the pattern of unclenching the ego, de-contracting the body-mind, opening the heart and de-centralizing the sites of economic control?"

My response:

Your questions remind me of two recent posts in the comments starting with this one on Loy followed by one on Arnsperger. Both see the clenching, contracted ego as a coefficient of corporate capitalism. For both we must examine our individual autonomy to separate its functionality from its dysfunctionality, its needs from its cravings. Greed and overconsumption are prime examples of the latter and endemic in American culture and expressed through the current stage of corporate capitalism, both feeding on each other.

Materialism is not necessarily dualism

See Bryant's latest blog post on matter:

"I think there’s plenty of room for an irreductive materialism (through theories of emergence).  Harman argues that there are immaterial objects and therefore believes, for example, that reincarnation is possible because soul can be separated from body (a consequence that would follow from his defense of substantial forms via Suárez), whereas I reject the notion that there are any immaterial entities.  In my view, there are only physical beings.

"In his post Wherewithal seems to contrast matter and energy.  However, in my view, the two terms are synonyms.  All that is required for a position to count as a materialism, in my view, is a commitment to the physical as exhaustive of all being, whatever the physical might turn out to be.  However, while I find much of value in Lucretius’s atomism, I do not advocate his conception of matter as being composed of ultimate, impenetrable and indivisible particles.  Rather, I think of matter as energy."

Don't you feel me?

By Damon. This was played during the closing credits of last night's episode of True Blood. According to this blog post this is classic psychedelic rock from the late 60s and I've never heard it before. Anyone else familiar with this?

Which body?

The last post reminded me of Habermas' lifeworld background.* But grounded in L&J's embodied cognitive unconscious.** Per Rorher (and Levin and Wilber***) there are different kinds of bodies. Even though Habermas didn't overtly discuss the human physical body his lifeworld background is indeed the cultural (and material) body. Recall that for Mead our mind is embodied both within our physical structure and without our social matrix, the latter being included in the more general environment. All of which are the a priori forgotten, or rather, the a priori we never knew in the first place.

*From this post, Morris on Habermas:

Collage

Ecclesiastes 1.9:

"The thing that hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun."

Shakespeare, Sonnet 59:

"If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burden of a former child."

Horror story idea: Title: Collage. Plot: A postmodern tale of a man who repeats things he's heard from various sources. His only originality is in how we weaves them together in his personal collage. Moral: It's the only creative license anyone has. The horror: By so experiencing the story we must confront the existential angst that we are not progressing, evolving, creating a better world. Last scene: pan out, see each person in their cubical cell, repeating the same things that have been said countless times, piecing together paper quotes on their cell walls. Outside, Rome burns.

Ha! Surely this has been done before? By whom?

Welcome to the machine

This discussion of McLuhan reminded me of this song. I'm am plugged into the internet no less than a Borg is plugged into the hive. Except I give the seeming appearance that I'm my own person, with my own ideas. While I can go along with Bryant that we nonetheless retain a withdrawn core that provides my individual autonomy, that is likely 0.1% of 'me.' The rest is part of the machine. Welcome.

My Girl

Another classic from last night.

Sherry Baby

I just saw these guys in concert tonight. Great show!

Integral anti-capitalism continued

Continuing from this post, and in further response to Pascal (see the thread), I agree we need to do a tetra-enaction in all quadrants and/or zones. But you ask a pertinent question: “Which one is a prerequisite for the others?” I know it sounds balanced to say they all arise simultaneously but I’m not so sure about that. I’d have to agree with Wilber in my second response above that one’s economic realities is likely a prerequisite. Once that ball is rolling of course we go round the quadrants in feedback loops. And perhaps as Wilber has also noted it takes those with advanced interior personal development to formulate advances to economic systems, but again, after they’ve had the privilege of a secure life with money and education. I’m reminded of Edwards’ work on Vygotsky and Mead. We have a thread on Mead (with a link to the original Gaia thread). Habermas used Mead extensively in his book Postmetaphysical Thinking to establish his own communicative action. The premise in all being that we are enculturated from the outside in, so perhaps there are some prerequisites? (E.g., this post summarizes some of their notions.)

Branches and folds

From my latest post in the IPS states/stages/lattice thread.

I'd like to bring in work from the real/false reason thread starting with this post and several following. Hampson quotes Marchand citing Labouvie-Vief that “the term postformal may not imply a progression in formal complexity. Instead, it could mean that…formal thinking forms a base from which thought branches out [my emphasis] into more nonformal domains” (124). Then quoting Grof:

“The psyche has a multidimensional, holographic nature, and using a linear model to describe it will produce distortions and inaccuracies. … My own observations suggest that, as consciousness evolution proceeds [from Authentic to Transcendent consciousness] and beyond, it does not follow a linear trajectory, but in a sense enfolds into itself" (144).

This is followed by a quote from Marchand herself reiterating the above and suggesting that stages earlier than reason require an integration that heals the metaphysical ego split. Labouvie-Vief concurs while noting that split in inherent to Piaget's assumptions, the very basis for the kennilingual notion of stages inherited from the likes of Commons' MHC.

Speaking of roadhouse blues

A classic.

Sure nuff n yes I do

Roadhouse blues for you.

Twisted vision-logic

Continuing from the last post, n terms of the WC lattice then, I'm still inclined that the subtle, causal and nondual are state-stages above the rational level in the vertical aspect,* more integrated and thus transformed earlier and given embodied levels. Whereas the more complex (complicated) aspects of the rational level (systemic, metasystemic, paradigmatic and cross-paradigmatic) are the horizontal axis. In keeping with the kennilingus notion that each state or stage in interpreted by the level, it might take at least a meta-systematic phase at the rational level plus stable meditative training to be considered at the subtle, causal or nondual stage. For one can get more complicated and have a postmetaphysical view I'm guessing at around the systemic phase of the rational stage, but still be without any meditative development to be as a subtle or deeper level. And one can have causal or nondual stage development but still have a metaphysical view, not having developed laterally into the metaysystematic phase.

* But again, this changes the shape (space-time) of the WC lattice at the rational level, which was indeed up to that time linear. It folds back on itself at this point by the integration and development of the state-stages as well as the enfolding of the lateral rational sub-phases. Hence I'm once again reminded of something like the following to represent this inside-outside-in triple-loop de loop. It's like an in-motion version of the Bergson diagram in the first post.

Speaking of the latter, I'll bring in Torbert's triple-looping next, as it relates to the virtual real and provides a grounding for this 'twisted' vision-logic.

Also see this link that inthesaltmine gave me on the above cube, explaining the fourth dimension.

The real endo/exo story

From this ongoing IPS thread and a continuation of this and this post:

My recent posts on Wilber's basic and transitional structures (here and following), plus the above ruminations, are starting to gel a bit more. Wilber has the worldview levels as transitional, in that they transcend and replace. Weiss thought that Gebser saw them more as discreet and discontinuous. The latter is more in line with Luhmann and Bryant, in that they are exo-relations between autonomous substances, not so much transcended and replaced but discreetly and discontinously autonomous, interacting with each other via structural coupling in asemblages. Recall that for Luhmann this also applies to our bodies and minds, which would include even Wilber's basic 'cognitive' structures.

Integral anti-capitalism continued

Continuing from this post, I reponded to Pascal's inquiry into how we get beyond individual dysfunction to open onto more just economic systems, bringing in Reich's bodywork.

I was a bodyworker in a previous career. I was led into it in part by getting Rolfed. During the sessions my Rolfer introduced me to a Reichian therapist, so I did that too in this period. So I’d certainly agree that our body and emotional armoring prevents us from fulfilling higher endeavors. And that we get it very early from our parents, who got it from their parents ad infinitum. After getting those therapies, then later getting trained in, and then professionally performing, bodywork over an extended period, I was acutely aware of those holding patterns and did my small part to release them. I was also a tai chi student/instructor in those days, so also training oneself and others in breaking one’s habitual movement patterns was part of moving beyond our armor. Rolfing itself also had a movement education program for that purpose.

Looking for trouble

I could not find Steve Goodman performing this song on You Tube! Everyone else and their brother, sure, but not the original by Goodman. The best I could find is this audio file so will have to do.

Evolutionary reconstruction

From the Alperovitz article referenced in the last post; you'll like the framing (my bolding):

"In a context of 'neither reform nor crisis collapse' very interesting strategic possibilities may sometimes be viable. Such possibilities are best understood as neither 'reforms' (i.e. policies to modify and control, but not transcend corporate institutions) nor 'revolution' (i.e. the overthrowing of corporate institutions), but rather as a longer term process that is best described as an evolutionary reconstruction—that is, systemic institutional transformation of the political economy that unfolds over time. Like reform, evolutionary reconstruction involves step-by-step nonviolent change. But like revolution, evolutionary reconstruction changes the basic institutions of ownership of the economy, so that the broad public, rather than a narrow band of individuals (i.e., the one percent), increasingly owns more and more of the nation's productive assets."

Symposium on alternatives to capitalism

From this Gar Alperovitz blog post:

The latest issue of  The Good Society is composed of a lead essay by myself and Democracy Collaborative research director Steve Dubb on the prospects for a “a community-sustaining economy”, followed by a number of pieces that explore different facets of the project of developing “alternatives to capitalism,” with articles by:

 

Thomas Hanna on public ownership of “too big to fail” corporations

Joe Guinan on austerity and the crisis of European social democracy

Marjorie Kelly on the shift to “generative ownership” of corporate enterprise

Thad Williamson on “property-owning democracy” and constitutional guarantees

and Joel Rogers on state and local policies for democratizing wealth

Notably, the journal is experimenting with open access; the entire issue is consequently free online via JSTOR until the end of August.

The next American revolution

Also consider Gar Alperovitz, his blog here. Some book titles include The Next American Revolution: Beyond Corporate Capitalism and State Socialism and America Beyond Capitalism. He too is into democratic economics. See the basic principles for a new direction. Also here's a video clip on the next American revolution.

So is it capitalism?

As we can see from some of the recent posts above, if by capitalism we mean private ownership of the means of production then the emerging paradigm is not technically capitalism. In that definition capital is not money but the money that is owned by the capitalist class, used for investment into business or market activities and by which then maintain ownership and control. The developments pointed to by Rifkin and Dawlabani are moving away from private ownership to distributed ownership and control, which is socialism by any other name.

Take for example the following provided by the Democratic Socialists of America in their position paper:

"We are committed to ensuring that any market is the servant of the public good and not its master. Liberty, equality, and solidarity will require not only democratic control over economic life, but also a progressively financed, decentralized, and quality public sector. Free markets or private charity cannot provide adequate public goods and services."

As one can see, this is not the centralized planning of Russia or Cuba but a true democratic process. In their vision for a socialist economy (same link) they are not anti-business or anti-market, just who owns and controls it:

Rifkin on the alternative

In keeping with recent posts, see this post in the Rifkin thread quoting his book The Empathic Civilization, chapter 13 on distributed capitalism:

"The peer-to-peer sharing of energy among millions, and eventually billions, of people marks the beginning of a new era that could see the steady erosion of traditional hierarchical modes of organization and management and the widespread adoption of distributed networks characterized by mass collaboration" (527).

"'Peer production' or 'peering' is becoming standard operating procedure in some the world's largest companies, especially in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries" (530).

"Third Industrial Revolution peer-to-peer technologies give rise to 'distributed capitalism' and, in the process, make many of the central assumptions of market capitalism outmoded and irrelevant" (531).

From the next section entitled "From property rights to access rights":

Said Dawlabani

In the IPS anti-capitalism thread Balder referenced his new but yet to be released book, Memenomics.

Here's Dawlabani's blog. He's into SDi and I much prefer the original SD version but I'll give him a chance. From one of his blog slides:



One can see that the next gen yellow characteristics are those I've been providing examples of in several threads.

From this post:

David Brooks reveals typical regressive view of the poor

Matt Taibbi nails Brooks to the cross for the latter's recent comments that the poor are that way because they are either lazy or have a negative attitude. If they'd just get over that and pull the bootstraps they'd get one of those surplus jobs just lying around for the taking. Taibbi points out the simple fact that there aren't enough jobs, the actual reason people are not working. He accurately compares this privileged regressive attitude to Christian Bale's character from American Psycho. Except in the movie it's a satire on this very regressive and narrow-minded view. Satire that is lost on the likes of Brooks and regressives generally.

Integral anti-capitalism continued

Continuing from this post, in response to Pascal's further comments in the main post:

Agreed on our unconscious programs and biases. But that is the beauty and horror of political manipulation through framing. It is a conscious method to downwardly affect our unconscious prejudices. We cannot access that unconscious directly but we can influence it strongly with such conscious methods, reinforcing unconscious desires. And we can use this methodology for good or ill, for the people as a whole or to further enrich the top and disempower the bottom. I’d suggest that the Obama campaign finally listened t Lakoff in the last election and hence via its own framing overcame an unprecedented spending spree of frequently reinforced and unadulterated lies by the opposition, countering it with the same framing methods but based on authenticity and truth. Well not entirely, but certainly more that the regressives.

Krugman and the Republican war on food stamps

In Krugman's article he thinks the regressives actually take joy in hurting starving people and he's right. Recent passage of the Farm Bill proves his point. The Bill has traditionally had two parts, farm subsidies and food stamps. The House passed the Bill and completely eliminated food stamps from it, leaving countless people in need. Their rationalization? The government shouldn't be funding programs for the needy. Meanwhile the Bill just gave giant hand outs to the not-so-needy farm industry.

Integral anti-capitalism

Layman Pascal started an IPS thread by the above name. My responses to questions to date follow:

"How would you tend to distinguish between CAPITALISM and BUSINESS (or MARKETS)?"

I'll start by referencing the IPS "integral global capitalism" thread, which also links to our prior Gaia thread on the topic. In this post I also linked to the IL conscious capitalism post which said: “If you shop, have a job, or own any investments, you're a capitalist. But are you a conscious capitalist?”

For one this presumes that if you engage in markets and business or exchange money you are a capitalist, which is an erroneous and revealing assumption. Cannot one do all those things without engaging in capitalism? One most certainly can. Just because money or capital in involved doesn’t make it capitalism. Technically capitalism means private ownership of the means of production. Whereas we can make money, shop, have a job, engage is competitive markets but the workers can own the means of production and operate the business democratically. Co-ops are but one example, the Mondragon Corporation being the largest. This is Marx's move from capitalism to democratic socialism. I'd add that some of the most democratic and happiest countries have some degree of democratic socialism, like Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

Comments on privileged access

From my recent replies to kela's IPS thread on privileged access:

"I sometimes find it difficult to follow discussions about free will because terms like "self" and "I" are often used so casually, and I never know quite what to make of them."

Those terms are being refined quite a bit by Damasio and Thompson in the linked free will thread, and in the links there to other threads. I'm also using that info in my new thread on states/stages and the WC lattice.

"Are expansionist and 'ever-inclusivist' accounts of the 'development of consciousness' pre-postmetaphysical?"

Not necessarily. I know it would be a huge task to read it but we've covered a lot of this ground in the OOO thread. The onticologists have some interesting things to say about (strange) mereology and assemblages. And while they typically are anti-teleological as something inherent to the nature of things, nonetheless we humans can and do impose a teleology upon things and do make progress (by our own definitions at least). While accepting their notion of the withdrawn as being inaccessible I do think we can access more of it than we do now, and just that little bit is significant. And we can still make transcendental deductions about the withdrawn, which also leads to progress in my view. After all, postmtaphysics is progress over metaphysics, not just on the philosophical armchair but with significant socio-political consequences.

Metachaos

This one courtesy of Balder. Stunning, fascinating imagery and story. Cthulhu indeed had a tentacle or two in this.

Kaleidoscope eyes

I was reminded of this old classic today. I like the images in this video.

And Buddist aggregates

Continuing from the last post, recall this post on p. 3 addressing how Buddhism via meditation uncovers the ephemeral nature of elements (or aggregates) that must be continually reconstituted. On p. 74 of the OOO thread I discussed the possible relationship with Bryant per above. We can still see differences though. For example, in Buddhism generally there is no substance if by that we mean primordial or universal essence, i.e., lack of inherent self existence. And yet the notion that all things are causally produced and interrelated is akin to Bryan't substance, as it too does not have a universal existence but rather a unique, temporal, materially produced individual existence. One difference with Buddhism is that there is nonetheless something in an object's substance that is non-relational, at least exo-relational. However the endo-relations are indeed still relational and a suobject is still coordinating other substantive subject-parts within it, but it is in the organizational structure wherein lies its ephemeral, transient elements.

Back to basic structures and elements

Continuing in the IPS states, stages and WC lattice thread:

I'd like to refresh some posts on the difference between elements and substances per Bryant, for I see a relation between Wilber's distinction between basis and transitional structures. We discussed this starting on p. 71 of the OOO thread. Recall in TDOO, chapter 4.1 Bryant notes that elements are not substances but rather are the stuff that substances create and organize in their endo-relations, i.e., elements "are not ontically pre-given." The endo-relations of any suobject, individual or social, is not the same as how suobjects can also be nested within other more inclusive suobjects. While elements are subsumed within a subobject, per above the smaller suobjects are not themselves subsumed parts of the larger but rather subsist within the environment of the larger suobject. Hence they retain their autonomous substance.

Since Luhmann is a source for both Bryant and Wilber let's look at his article "The autopoeisis of social systems." For Luhmann thoughts are the basic elements in conscious systems, as communications are for social systems. And he means basic elements, not holons (or substances in assemblages), for such elements are undecomposable.

"Conscious systems and social systems have to produce their own...basic elements, that is, thoughts and communications...which vanish as soon as they appear" (9).

Is it treason? Or what?

From Robert Reich here:

"Permit me an impertinent question (or three).

"Suppose a small group of extremely wealthy people sought to systematically destroy the U.S. government by (1) finding and bankrolling new candidates pledged to shrinking and dismembering it; (2) intimidating or bribing many current senators and representatives to block all proposed legislation, prevent the appointment of presidential nominees, eliminate funds to implement and enforce laws, and threaten to default on the nation's debt; (3) taking over state governments in order to redistrict, gerrymander, require voter IDs, purge voter rolls, and otherwise suppress the votes of the majority in federal elections; (4) running a vast PR campaign designed to convince the American public of certain big lies, such as climate change is a hoax, and (5) buying up the media so the public cannot know the truth.

"Would you call this treason?If not, what would you call it? And what would you do about it?"