DocWatts

Whenever I hear Truth with a Capital 'T' brought up my first reaction is "yeah but Truth for whom?" The notion of a-perspectival Truth that's not situated within a context seems as contridactory as trying to describe something like color perception absent of its embodiment within consciousness. Note that I'm not saying that specific knowledge with wide ranging applicability within Reality isn't possible, merely that the belief that a coherent ontology which explains all aspects of Reality is even a possibility, is itself a tacit assumption.

I'll second what been said so far that your time and energy would be better spent on your own development, rather than trying to break others out of thier own paradigms. You'd be better off finding ways to make peace with the other paradigms, rather than trying to 'pull' others up to your own level and getting vexed when it doesn't work out.

The delicious irony being that Leo's own metaphysics and ontology are themselves filled with a number of tacit assumptions, albeit more subtle than the assumptions behind Materialism. But then again show me a metaphysics without unverifiable underlying assumptions and I'll eat my hat. It feels like most people's understanding of metaphysics is completely backwards. That's because it's far more productive to work backwards by looking at what a particular metaphysics is trying to accomplish, than to try and evaluate a particular metaphysics in a vacuum. Materialist science has a particular set of needs so its metaphysics is arranged in a certain way. Something like buddhism is trying to accomplish something quite different, so no surprise that it's metaphysics are arranged quite differently. Hell, if you want to step it back to a more meta perspective the idea that there's one 'correct' ontology that's applicable to every aspect of reality, is itself an assumption... If we look at what metaphysics actually is, it's a coherent and systemic attempt to make sense of reality. It's something we create to help us make sense of the world, rather than something 'out there' that we discover. That being the case, Reality is under no obligation to be comprehensible to us in a way that fits neatly in to any single abstract system that we invent.

What I've started doing recently is to spend a bit of time journaling after I've finished a work. This has been hugely helpful as far as integrating whatever it is I've been reading in to my larger conceptual system and worldview. Ive also found it helpful to oscillate between reading different types of books. After finishing something long and technical I might grab a work of fantasy literature or someone's memoirs as my next read. Or move to a non fiction book in an unrelated subject to my previous read. I've found that this is a good practice for giving one's mind a bit of rest and for avoiding burnout.

The validity of the idea that science is imaginary is going to be context dependent upon how we define 'imaginary', and also upon the metaphysics one is using as a frame of reference. If 'imaginary' is taken to mean not having a separate ontological existence apart from us, then sure science is imaginary (as is every other conceptual category we project out on to the world). If 'imaginary' is taken to mean 'lacks validity because it's not ontologically separate from us', then it's here I would end up disagreeing. Sure science is born out of human conceptual categories and it's truths are contextual, but that's totally fine. Contextual truth is still truth after all

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn is a good resource in this regard, as it deconstructs the simplified notions of what science is presented as in the culture. Most prominently, it corrects the naive misperception that science is an accumulation of Facts and Theories building towards 'The Truth' like a someone building a house lays down bricks. As the author describes it, how science actually works is as a dialectical process of shifting paradigms that are incommensurable with one another. No disrespect to Leo, but an actual scientist and historian with a lifetime of professional experience has insights that someone outside of the scientific profession wouldn't have access to.

@Tanz Sounds like you may be unintentionally conflating LGBTQ rights with neoliberalism. Owing to a number of structurally undemocratic elements within the American system, working within the establishment (or at least not making it see your movement as its enemy) is necessary to some degree to have any chance of actually getting policy passed. Progressives aren't the ones pushing for US military imperialism, even if they may not have the political power to prevent that from happening. As you allude to, it's true that many (hell, probably the vast majority of) people aren't entirely consistent with their worldview, which consists of a patchwork of unquestioned assumptions and contradictory beliefs. And it's also true that 'woke' culture has been appropriated to some degree by corporations who use it for marketing purposes because they need to adapt to changing social norms to survive. None of that invalidates the fact that changing social norms towards inclusivity for marginalized people is a good and necessary societal development (albeit one with some growing pains).

As to the Model of Hierarchical Complexity, I've yet to come across anything like a full book about that model, but I recall a chapter or so in The Listening Society which did a great job explaining the model in non-technical language (and with examples).

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is generally considered his Magnum opus, but I wouldn't recommend most people pick that up as their first Wilber book as it's a pretty lengthy and involved read (something like 800 or 900 pages). A Theory of Everything or Integral Vision are good introductions to his work, and are both relatively brief reads. Then if you're intrigued and want a far more in depth examination of Integral Theory move on to Integral Pyschology or Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.

If you're interested in both science and epistemology I'd highly recommend it for the way it explains how science actually works, as opposed to the image of science that's projected throughout our culture. And for the way it details how what is essentially a problem solving venture that's normally practiced within set limits is nonetheless able to produce gestalt shifts that are significant for the entire world. The book covers some of the same points as Leo's science video series, but is written by a professional scientist who has a lifetime of experience with his subject matter (and who of course has a different set of biases and metaphysical assumptions than Leo).

Funny your mentioning the difference between Normal and extraordinary science as I'm currently reading The Structure of Scientific Revolutions right now... As for the Model of Hierarchical Complexity, my own view is that it would be to the benefit of Integral and Metamodern communities/groups to emphasize this Model more, as it's incredibly powerful especially when used alongside more sociologically oriented models like Spiral Dynamics. The two compliment each other quite nicely, as something like Spiral Dynamics when stretched to try and fill the role of a holistic model for individual development has some serious defects.

I'd say what I'm most appreciative of is that I even have an inner life that's available for me to explore. How strange is it that I have this innate ability to contemplate and self reflect on my experiences, and to be able to find satisfaction in doing so. This is something that's seemingly simple only because it's usually taken for granted. Being able to engage with my intellect and my emotions enriches every other aspect of my life. The fact that this innate capacity is something that can be cultivated over the course of one's life is something that never ceases to amaze me.

In the US, we're in the midst of a paradigm shift towards Green, one that will played out over Generations rather than election cycles. One of the Truths of development is that social progress becomes possible when previous Generations finally die off and give the rest of society room to grow. When Millennials and Gen Z are in the position that the Boomers currently occupy *maybe* we'll see something resembling a solidification of Green as the new center of gravity. But considering that the upcoming century is going to be one filled instability and strife as the world copes with the effects of climate change this upward trend towards Green is by no means certain. Red and Blue tend to thrive in periods of chaos and uncertainty...

Dave Chappelle is quite insightful when it comes to issues of race and really out of touch when it comes to LGBTQ issues. One doesn't invalidate the other. It's okay to still like his standup comedy, as long as your realize that when it comes to gender he's an out of touch Gen-Xer who brings with him biases from earlier generations.

If we take 'woke' as a rough proxy for SD-Green, almost no giant multi-billion dollar business would qualify. Whatever socially progressive values these companies profess to have will always come second to thier bottom line. More often than not the 'woke' image that these companies like to cultivate is for PR purposes in order to adapt their business to changing social norms (ie broader acceptance of things like LGBTQ rights). While this might come off as overly cynical, in actuality this is how adoption of a new paradigm (SD Green) actually happens; businesses being forced to adapt (however reluctantly) to changing social norms if they hope to survive. A more substantive adoption of SD Green that takes in to account the needs of workers and the ecology of the planet is still a long way off, and will probably require structural changes in the global economy before it becomes business as usual.

The reason this is so is that we can never get completely 'beyond' the embodied nature of our direct experience. Our direct perceptions are always going to be mediated by the types of creatures we are and how our brains are structured, regardless of whether or not we have moved beyond illusions created by our conceptual system such as subject-object dualism. To illustrate this, imagine how different direct experience would be for a bat or an insect or an octopus. The Truth being that we can't really imagine it because the nature of our direct experience are inseparable from the types of creatures we are. Just saying that we're the universe dreaming that it has a physical body strikes me as more of a hand wave than a serious attempt to grapple with this epistemological issue of embodiment. Is being mindful of the way our conceptual system creates illusions (that help us to navigate the world but nonetheless don't exist in reality) a less deluded way of living in the world? I'm convinced that it is so, but extrapolating that to the idea that non-conceptual awareness doesn't also have limitations seems like a different (though more subtle) way of deluding ourselves.

Sounds like you may be struggling to integrate your Survival Needs (namely the emotional and social needs that are being filled by the things you mentioned), with the sense of Social Responsibility that you feel. It's a common problem faced by socially conscious people who happen to occupy a privileged position in society. While it's undoubtedly a good thing to try and engage with the Material Conditions that exist in a more concsious and self aware manner, disengaging and living a life of asceticism isn't going to actually fix any of the system problems that exist in the world today. You'd be far better off by supporting collective efforts to address systemic problems by standing in solidarity with groups working for economic and ecological justice, than by engaging in the system that exists and feeling guilty about it. Your feeling guilty about buying a shirt or a gaming computer isn't actually going to help anyone. Supporting labor and climate activism is something tangible you can do to help instead of feeling guilty.

Then extrapolate this principal as the rich being able to isolate themselves in this way from virtually every systemic problem faced by the larger society, and it's no surprise that institutions within the US are as dysfunctional as they are. While I think that fears of an imminent social collapse to be vastly overblown, I do find it unsettling to see several longstanding systemic problems within the US reflected in case studies of societies which have collapsed (thinking in particular of the work of Jared Diamond who's written extensively in this topic).

@BenG I think it's important to be able to make a distinction between people who cynically use this issue to exploit cultural divisions for the purposes of amassing wealth and political power, and the vast bulk of SD-Blue level people who are prone to being manipulated through emotionally charged issues. It's not that the latter aren't sincere in their beliefs, it's more that thier political positions aren't clearly thought out. Internal consistency simply isn't a priority for many of these people. Indeed, it seems like a truism that people at later developmental stages can have difficulty even grasping that inconsistent and contradictory beliefs can be sincerely held. It's important to realize that generally speaking SD-Blue simply isn't at a developmental stage where deconstruction of one's worldviews and beliefs is something that's palatable; indeed thinking through the implications of one's beliefs is deeply threatening to the ego for people at this Stage. Political and ethical decisions are more about identification with one's Tribe than it is about having any sort of consistent or coherent worldview. There's a reason why 'my country right or wrong' is most prevalent at this stage.

Weird thing is that the US does have a terrible form of pseudo universal health care: Emergency Room visits. By law hospitals have to treat someone with a medical emergency regardless of their ability to pay. What ends up happening in practice is that the hospital will give a hypothetical uninsured person enough care to leave the hospital without dropping dead in the street, then send them a $50,000 bill that they know full well they'll never be able to pay. The person will either end up negotiating for a lower (but still outrageous) sum, be hounded by collection agencies for years, or end up having to declare bankruptcy. The Hospital will end up writing them off as a Bad Debt, and pass the costs on to people who actually do have Insurance. Note that this pseudo-system doesn't cover common sense things like preventative care, doctors visits, or any prescription/psychiatric medication that person may require. Runaway medical costs in the US are a direct and deliberate consequence of for-profit medical businesses (hospitals and pharmaceutical companies) having easy access to vast sums of money from privatized Medical Insurance. The dynamics are somewhat similar to vast sums of Federally backed Student Loans driving up the cost of College Education in the States (of course there are other factors at play as well). There is no good faith way to defend the current system in the US. The people who do so are either benefitting personally from runaway healthcare inflation, are rich enough to isolate themselves from the problems of the current system, or are ignorant people who have been relentlessly propagandized by decades of misinformation and scare tactics from vested interests.

America has the capacity to fund some of the most generous social programs in the world if it were willing and able to tax the immense amount of wealth that's concentrated in the hands of a tiny oligarchic elite, and if it were willing to shift its spending priorities away from maintaining a useless military empire and subsidizing multinational corporations. Of course all of that would entail America actually operating as a healthy (rather than as a partial and faltering) democracy. It would also require a level of development and social solidarity among the US population that just doesn't exist at this time.

At SD-Blue where the vast majority of this hysteria is taking place, people are at a level of development where the Folk Theory of Essences is still deeply rooted in their psyche. Which feeds in to the Black and White thinking at this level (people are either good or bad, someone is either a man or a woman, etc), which in turn makes them highly susceptible to propaganda that a medical procedure to abort an 11 week old fetus is the same as murdering a baby. Because the Folk Theory of Essences doesn't allow for any gradation or nuance, something either is a baby or it isn't. When they're outraged about this issue, they're not envisioning a bundle of cells the size of a lima bean without a central nervous system, but their two year old granddaughter. The emotional reaction isn't dissimilar to the way we'd react if we saw someone kicking a puppy. Then add to this punitive attitudes towards sex and towards women at this stage of development, where pregnancy when someone isn't ready for it is a moral failure and people are expected to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Which is enough to explain why most of these people only care up until the point that the baby is pushed out of a woman's body, and are generally disinterested in funding things like healthcare, education, and anti-poverty programs for that baby after it's born.

By this I mean that its strength is as a sociological model which shines light on how meta-ideologies arise, and come in to conflict with one another. The depth and complexity of how a specific individual relates to their worldview isn't something that the model tracks (nor was it intended to). For example, someone like Marcus Aurelius or Plato were very likely at a level of depth and complexity far beyond the most advanced stage of their era, which was SD-Blue. A church going grandma in Louisiana who doesn't think very deeply about the ethical, political, or spritual implications of the worldview she was indoctrinated with from a young age is also likely Blue. To expound on that, if someone is at a level of depth and complexity above their SD-Stage we would expect thier understanding of the meta-ideology to be more explicit, while someone at a depth and complexity below their SD-Stage would understand thier meta-ideology in a very flattened, implicit way. The only distinction that Spiral Dynamics would be able to make is whether or not a particular manifestation of a given stage is 'Healthy' or 'Unhealthy'. It also doesn't give us any method for how to weight different lines of development which can all be at different levels (such moral development, spiritual development, relationship development etc.) when trying arrive at a rough aggregate or 'average' for an individual. If a person is roughly at Green in their politics, Blue in their intimidate relationships, and Orange in their views on Spirituality, is there anything holistic we can say about that person by using Spiral Dynamics? Compare Spiral Dynamics to Susanne Cook Grueter's model of Ego Development, and you'll see that the latter is much richer and more holistic model for individual development. As a sociological model Spiral Dynamics is great. As an individual development model, there are better alternatives.

Thanks for the share! Looking forward to reading through this more thoroughly when I have a bit of time on my hands, but this does seem to be a much better model for individual development than trying to stretch Spiral Dynamics for that purpose. Going from Leo's video on Susanne Cook-Grueter, I'd say I resonate most strongly with the Strategist stage, with perhaps with a very slight nudge in the direction of the Construct Aware stage as I continue to explore spirituality (closer to secular Buddhism than what Leo teaches). Perhaps in another ten years... ?

From my own vantage point, I've found that Spiral Dynamics is much better used as a sociological model for looking at the interplay of different meta-ideologies. The model becomes less interesting and useful when SD is used as a proxy for an individual's overall level of development, since it collapses several different lines of development down to a single axis (that of the meta-ideology which that person has been imprinted with) when used in that way. People can be at a level of complexity and depth significantly above or below the SD-Stage they've been imprinted with. To see how the model falls short when used as a proxy for someone's overall level of development, consider that both Ben Shapiro and Marcus Aurelius are roughly SD-Blue...