Weinerlogues video

This video in a "dramatic reading" on one of Weiner's text conversations with a playmate. I saw it performed on Real Time Friday night, with Bill Maher playing Weiner and Jane Llynch playing the playmate. It is verbatim from the Twitter conversation but the reenactment is hilarious. I haven't laughed this hard in a while.

To nest or not to nest?

Following some of the recent themes I'm reminded of our old Gaia thread on "transpersonal psychology" and found this post of mine, relevant to this thread:

In Chapter 6 of Goddard’s Transpersonal Theory he reiterates something I said in the Krishnamurti 2 thread about Gebser. Previous structures are not holonically subsumed into the next higher structure. The lower structures continue to develop laterally within the dominant higher structure. However successively higher structures up to the mental-ego are by nature “divisive” or exclusive into a higher-lower polarity whereby one pole is dominant, and higher tends to at least consciously (epistemologically) subsume the lower. Nonetheless ontologically the repressed (and previous) pole (structure) continues to develop but unconsciously and it is not until the so-called centaur structure (Geber’s IA) that we begin the return arc of integration of our formerly repressed structures. This conscious return then finds those previous structures having gone through their own developments unbeknownst to us so that they are not the immature magical and mythical worldviews they were on the upward arc of development. Add in the conscious ego’s recognition and integration of them and we get an IA structure that holds all of the structures as they are without contradiction.

Catholic budget morality

If one were to accept the standard and bogus kennilingus levels of consciousness about traditioinal religion they would, and do, miss significant contributions from the likes of Catholic theologians on matters like a moral budget process. For example, this blog from the North American Passionists discussed the moral implications of the conservative Ryan budget proposal. Here they, like Derrida and the postformal postmetaphysicists, understand false dichotomies in general and the specific dichotomy between deficit reduction and needed social services. On the notion of dichotomies in general note their language on how complements are held in tension, not in opposition:

Graphic holons are Word

I previously discussed how the holon concept can be formulated as a theory for anything instead of a theory for everything, which has significant implications for integral theory as a whole. I also linked to some pictures of how this might be graphically depicted (here and here). Following is another graphic of interlacing spheres to get my idea of holons across. The small green sphere, for example, could be a word. The medium red sphere could be a phrase. The largest yellow sphere could be a paragraph. The word and phrase share some common space within the paragraph during their participation within it, yet they are still free to be parts of other larger holons instead of being completely subsumed by some assholon. Thus the image could be extended indefinitely with multitudes of interlacing holons a la Indra's net. And per Edwards' notion we choose to zoom in our lens to any particular holon for purposes of definition and pragmatic use, thus temporarily bracketing all the extraneous and infinite other holonic relationships in which the part/wholes partake. The image is copyrighted per below. (Click on it to enlarge.)

Economic democracy

Christian Arnsperger's 6/2/11 blog post at Eco-Transitions is titled " deepening economic democracy and encouraging new forms of entrepreneurship." He places his orientation in a zone between the Institutionalists, the Social Greens and the bioenviornmentalists. He is like the first in that he favors institutional reform but such reform much encompass more than merely "making markets work more efficiently." Like the greens he sees social and environmental factors inextricably linked and must be addressed in the current, inequitable economic system. He agrees with bioenvironmentalists that we need to curtail growth, reduce consumption and re-localize economies, but he disagrees that strict deglobalization is the solution. Therefore he prefers to be selective in relocalization and what he considers reasonable reduction in growth while still allowing for international trade and capital flow.

Levin on Derrida

In this IPS thread on states of consciousness I took a tangent into Levin concerning Derrida:

I found a relevant passage in Levin's Sites of Vision (MIT Press, 1999), the chapter on Derrida and Foucault. The entire chapter up to this point was Derrida's refutation of the metaphor of light and vision, equating it with the metaphysics of presence. But when the metaphor extends to how blinding light diffuses any distinctive presencing Levin notes:

“Without disputing the heliocentrism and ocularcentrism of metaphysics, Derrida will argue, however, that, contrary to first appearances, the logic of this sun-and-light-centered discourse does not in fact entail, or necessitate, a metaphysics of presence—on the contrary, the more one thinks about the matter, the more one will be compelled to acknowledge that the logic of this metaphorics actually resists, and even subverts, the possibility of presence. Thus he asks us to reflect on the phenomenology actually implicit in the logic of this metaphorics: 'Presence disappearing in its own radiance, the hidden source of light, of truth, and of meaning, the erasure of the visage of Being—such must be the insistent return of that which subjects metaphysics to metaphor.' Here we can see Derrida's deconstructive strategy at work—that is, at play: he uses the metaphorics of light to deconstruct the metaphysics of presence, that very presence that the visual generation of metaphyics has been thought to support. If this is a Hegelian Aufhebung, it is a sublation with a mischievous, chiasmic twist.

David Michael Levin

Also along the lines of recent posts Levin is on a similar trajectory. Here are some excerpts of my comments from an '09 thread on him at the old Gaia IPS forum:

Yes, I’m following and enjoying Levin quite a bit. Pp. 47-9 [of The Opening of Vision] particularly reinforced and expanded upon my own nebulous speculations.... Notice that one requires an ego to start the process of integrating what came before:

“Stage (3) is the moment when, for the first time, this return and retrieval become existentially possible.”

Recall when I talked about earlier stages (states) being atemporal but not timeless, being bound by time, as transcendent within immanence? He says:

“Bodies (1) and (2) are ‘transhistorical’ in the sense that they are biological, and therefore not fully determined by historical conditions, even though they are never to be found apart from, or outside of, a social history.”

And of course to go beyond (3) requires a “return” and integration:

“Normal development (stages 1-3) is always, more or less, a linear progression; but the process of self-development beyond (3) is not: it is essentially hermeneutical, involving a return, a turning into the body of experience, to retrieve a present sense of the earlier stages. Beyond (3), it is necessary to go ‘backwards” in order to move ‘forwards.’”

Transpersonal differences

The last thread showed the difference between the more metaphysical and dichotomous kennilinguist interpretation of opposition generally. Now let's look at how this applies to the differences in how to understand the transpersonal in the context of the pre-trans fallacy. These differences are played out in the transpersonal psychology movement. The following are some excerpts from a thread on this topic in the old Gaia IPS forum:

Perhaps it's time to take a look at some of the transpersonal psychologists like Washburn, Ferrer and Grof? Washburn (1988), for example, says the following:

“The perspective of this book is dynamic in that the primary focus is on the ego's interaction with dynamic life, the source of which is referred to as the Dynamic Ground.

“The perspective of this book is triphasic in that it divides human development into three principle stages. These are the pre-egoic, egoic and transegoic stages….the transegoic stage, which corresponds to later adulthood…is seen as a period in which a strong and mature ego is resubmitted to and integrated with the Dynamic Ground.

“Principle among the features or the transegoic, or integrated, stage are: transcendence of the major dualisms that plague the mental ego…and the transformation of these dualisms into harmonious dualities, higher syntheses of opposites.”

Goddard (2007) elaborates:

Postformal dialectics

In this blog I've referenced several sources that differentiate a kind of dialectics beyond the Hegelian variety. The latter is part and parcel of a formal operational and metaphysical way of enactment that is at the heart of the kennilingus stage conception, the same going for models like the Model of Hierarchical Complexity. I've gone into this at great length in the “real and false reason” thread but I'd like to now post excerpts from a discussion several of us had back in '07, when Integral Review was experimenting with a forum (now defunct, the forum, not the review). This one focused on Gary Hampson's article “Integral re-views postmodernism.” Here are a few excerpts:

Bonnie:

It is my feeling that dialectics in the above forms, is formal, not postformal, because it relies on the positing of opposite pairs, which it considers in some kind of tension. I believe that post-formal thinking sees dialectical pairs as self-defining, and therefore the tension is ‘resolved’ or ‘dissolved’ before the is any kind of movement toward synthesis. This open up into entirely new ways of thinking/ perceiving more in terms of 'constellations' (hunting for the right words here) and what the Buddhists call co-dependent origination.

theurj:

This will of course relate to the “Buddhist” nondual traditions and how they formulate the “two truths” and (co)dependent origination. So lets first take a look at how Ken formulates the two truths (absolute and relative) from footnote 7 to Excerpt C (you still find this thinking in Integral Spirituality):

Stats

Last month saw the highest traffic at my blog, going over 1000 page views per month for the first time. The last highest viewing month was March at 600. Before March the majority of readers were from the US, but France has been creeping up all along. In March though readers from France were slightly outnumbering those from the US, and last month it was over 2 to 1 France to US, with the later number going down while the former went up significantly.

To what do I attribute this change in readership?