I’ve been studying hard the last chapters of I.S. (especially all this weekend) and I’ll try to share with you some of my struggles. We have at this point in IS structure-stages, state stages, dysfunctional growth& shadows. At this point I have some serious Gordian knots that challenge me and I need some help please to solve them out. I don’t know where to start. Perhaps I will divide this in two or three posts, putting the corresponding ones in chapter 5 comments and chapter 6 comments.
Ok, first knot, the mean green meme and the UL vs LL: My confusion can be stated like this: Is Boomeritis only a UL pathology – “green/red complex”? Of course, that in the limit it’s an AQAL affair, but as I see it the green probabilistic wave of development could be an intersubjective construction in the LL tetra-emergent of course with development in the other quadrants, particularly higher consciousness altitude from UL: Regarding the UL, I feel much more comfortable to use the basic structure-stages as it appears in Transformation of Consciousness or in SES where I think it represents a more universal, cross cultural subjective development of the human being (e.g. Rep-mind, Rule/Role mind, Formal reflexive in cognitive line). This is the cross cultural developmental of individuals as we know them that have not changed for the last 5000 years (at least) and that have its correlations in UR (from atoms to complex neocortex and above). The thing is, I think that in UL the structure-stages, whatever line we are talking about, develop in a very abstract way; that is somewhat independent of the contents itself - The capacity of individuals to expand their capacity to think, to interpret, to abstract, to make subject an object. Even contemplation or shadow work is only possible with a minimum level of development (being able to take oneself as an object of analysis);
So, when we talk about the openness of the pluralistic wave, we could talk of a major breakthrough of cultural development namely in the industrialized countries, that built up upon the egoic rationalist, the orange rationalist. Of course, the emergence of orange and green in the LL is the result of the structure stage development of a large number of individuals in a fair amount of lines, namely in the cognitive line from conop to formop (or formal reflexive mind) and vision-logic. And for me this could be one of the problems about boomeritis: Not so much a re-activated narcissistic impulses because of the pluralistic world itself, but just like the LR objective world gives access to “real objective things” to lower level individuals that by themselves they could never reach (things bring forth from higher develop individuals and cultures), also the cultural legacy of the LL could interact with lower levels of development from UL. Let’s suppose that the centre of gravity of a given society is the green level of mutual understanding. Because everybody born at stage 1 of development, the individuals could well be in, let say in rep-mind (concrete mind) centre of gravity supporting green values from that lower level development. E.g. a child with 8 years old with a computer, internet, with green meme parents, etc, that knows that there exist out there different cultures, different races, etc. That child lives in a pluralistic world, and the paradoxical thing is that that pluralistic post conventional world is the conventional world to that child – what the world looks like? Is this! I take it! “We are all different, but all the same, so fuck you if you think differently” (ego/sociocentric child – concrete mind operations). So with this mindset could I put the focus in the mean green meme being not just a UL stage pathology (of course there are correlations, after all we are operating within an AQAL matrix) but a quadrant clash resulting from lower UL structure-stage struggling to embrace higher cultural levels that have been unfolding? Egocentric/sociocentric UL structures struggling to embrace LL Post conventional structures, or lower levels UL mixture with higher LL levels.
(At the same time, we could have a higher UL structural development inhabiting a lower cultural level society. E.g. Buddha or Jesus lived well above of their time. Of course, that they didn’t have at their disposal the higher development of LL or LR, so they could not drive a car or knows what a computer is, but it doesn’t mean that they were not at 2nd or 3rd tier development).
All the best,
Ivo
P.S. - tomorrow, by afternoon I'll begin my summer holidays, so if I have some feedback on this, I can't reply. Still I would be very pleased if you could help me with this AQAL puzzle...:).
Like a tear in all we know
Once dissolved we are free to grow
What is human, what is more?
I\'ll answer this when I get home
Eddie Vedder in "Severed Hand"