DocWatts

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...

Must have gotten a few wires crossed in my mind when I was posting that.

I'll second this. Outside of Richard Nixon, McKenna probably did more than any other person to ensure that research on psychedelics was set back half a century. (Half joking here.) It's interesting that before McKenna's "tune in, drop out" middle finger to the establishment, in the preceding decades psychedelics were largely seen as a promising clinical / theraputic drug used to treat mental illness (and weren't all that controversial). *EDIT - meant to say Timothy Leary not Terrance McKenna

Three books in particular which explore the epistemology of the embodied nature of mind, along with it's metaphysical implications. I'd highly recommend all three of them for anyone interested in the subject.

Because psychedelics are a disruptive technology that's potentially threatening to established social norms. Add to that the very real potential for Harm from people abusing these substances and it's not hard to see why they're banned in so many places. As society continues to develop and the beneficial aspects that come when these substances are used responsibly become harder to downplay or ignore, their prohibition will become increasingly untenable.

@itachi uchiha Leo's booklist has around 20 or so recommendations on metaphysics and epistemology, a good portion of which are focused on deconstructing Scientific Materialism. Which is a fine thing and a good start, but I also feel that he doesn't put enough emphasis on the uses of epistemology outside of deconstructing mainstream scientific narratives. You might also consider the following works for a more well rounded (though still complementary) perspective on epistemology: Metaphors We Live By, and Philosophy in the Flesh : George Lakoff The Embodied Mind : Thompson, Verella, and Rosch The Republic : Plato The View From Nowhere : Thomas Nagel

Reading philosophical works written by people who grapple with the subject of epistemology is also another way to learn. Plato's Republic is perhaps one of the best works on the subject. Not because the conclusions Plato reaches are ones you'll agree with (indeed many of his argument and conclusions seem absurd some millennia later), but because of the method used throughout the book is a good demonstration of epistemology as a process and a practice. One that involves examining the underlying assumptions one uses to reach conclusions about the world.

An inadvertent side effect here in the 'States has been to put workers in a much stronger position to bargain for better wages and working conditions. Not at all uncommon to see companies advertise $15 an hour starting pay in a desperate attempt to lure people back to shitty retail and food service jobs, when starting pay for those same companies would have been $10 or $12 an hour just two years ago.

@captainamerica I suppose I would challenge you then to explain why the United States should not attempt to implement aspects of Social Democracy that have been successfully implemented in much of the rest of the world, when their US counterparts are dysfunctional in glaringly obvious ways and are often predatory as well (US for-profit health care being a prime example, though this could also be extended to higher education and a number of other institutions). You make an interesting point in an earlier post about easy availability of loans inflating the cost of higher education. While that's undeniably true, it overlooks the fact that public funding for higher education has been steadily declining for decades, also driving up the cost. If anything the student loan fiasco just makes a stronger argument for full public funding for higher education, rather than attempting to use loans as a bandaid instead of overhauling higher education in a more systemic way. I've yet to see a convincing argument as to why the US shouldn't look to rest of the world for models that have proven highly successful in a number of countries as inspiration for how our own systems could be improved. If I'm mischaracterizing your views on any of this I'll apologize in advance, so please feel free to correct me. Also thanks for keeping our disagreements (such that we have) respectful, makes forum interactions much more productive for everyone.

A big part of it is being willing to take collective responsibility for societal problems, and being mindful of your own privilege. But it also involves having enough humility to listen to people whose experiences may be very different from your own, and putting the effort in to understand what issues and challenges marginalized communities face.

Is anyone still surprised that multibillion dollar corporations act this way then the structure that they're operating from incentives exactly this kind of behavior? Anyone who's even a little bit familiar with how for-profit news media benefits from sensationalism and conflict shouldn't be surprised by this. Just choosing not to use Facebook will have about as much impact as choosing to not pay for or watch Fox News. Treating Facebook and the other major social media platforms as public utilities subject to heavily regulation is the only way that this problem is going to get adequately addressed.

As to Yang, if his goal is to make himself politically irrelevant, starting a third party seems like a surefire way to not make much of an impact on the political landscape. Seems like a shame, since he did more than any other person to push the idea of UBI in to the mainstream during the democratic primaries.

If you think Bernie is far Left, then it's likely you've been misinformed and propagandized by Right leaning media. The intentional conflation of Social Democracy (ie the thing Bernie is advocating for) with Soviet style dictatorships is a common Bad Faith tactic used by the Right (including both Nationalists and Libertarians). None of the policies that Bernie is advocating for would be controversial in places like Canada, Germany, or Norway (which by the way are freer and have a better standard of living for ordinary people than America does). Things like Universal Health Care and publicly funded College Education for people supposedly living in the wealthiest country on the planet are hardly Utopian, nor are they unreasonable. A system which seems to humanize Capitalism by shaving down its rough edges (which is all that Social Democracy really is when you come down to it) is by no means Far Left, as that term is understood by most of the rest of the world. Actual Far Left utopianism of the kind that the Right loves to fearmonger over (ie those seeking to abolish Capitalism and radically remake society along Marxist lines) is almost non-existent in the American political landscape, except in the collective imaginations of pundits.

It's important to keep in mind that that whole series is Leo's own interpretation of Spiral Dynamics, and if you're serious about learning the Model you should also seek out the source material written by Beck and Cowan.

While I won't deny that I've gotten a ton of value from what Leo has created with actualized.org, I also can't deny that his lack of humility on existential questions is something that he deserves to be criticized for. This goes beyond disagreements on epistemology and metaphysics (which in and of itself isnt undesirable), but treating his own answers to these questions as necessarily True for everyone else as well.

@Scholar Consider the format of the video and what it is that it's trying to accomplish. The people living in industrialized societies that this video is targeted towards are likely SD-Orange or SD-Green, where systems thinking is just beginning to emerge. The deeper causes that you mention require an understanding of development and dialectical thinking that's not going to be possible to cover in any deep way in a 20 minute video (how many hours did it take Leo to explain the basics of something like Spiral Dynamics)? For what this video was trying to accomplish (namely: getting it's audience to frame the issue in a more systemic way than that of personal consumption habits) I'd say it did an admirable job.

Sorry to hear that. I've enjoyed our interactions over the past year or so. Wish you the best going forward.

Reductionism is not a problem as long as it's being applied knowingly and for a specific purpose. After all, all Models of any kind make use of reductionism to tease apart anything qualitatively significant about whatever data is fed in to it. The problem only comes when one starts mistaking the map for the territory, conflating their reductionist models for the substance of reality (and of course denying that they are being Reductionist). When one forgets that the conceptual Models we depend upon are abstractions we project out in to the world (rather than something that exists independently of our Minds) is when Reductionism becomes problematic.

...at least to the extent that both Materialism and certain forms of Idealism make a-priori claims of ontological exclusivity towards thier given domains. Or to put it another way: if Materialism's mistake is to conflate the most fundamental layer of reality (physical substrate) to be its most significant, Idealism's mistake is to confuse the most significant aspect of reality (consciousness or spirit) as its most fundamental. Materialism is rather crude in the way it just outright denies any ontological status for non physical aspects of reality. The subject of physical reductionism has already been discussed to death here, so I won't dwell on it. Idealism is a bit more subtle by collapsing physical aspects of reality to a projection of spirit or consciousness, ignoring how the subjective quality of consciousness is shaped by (but not reducible to) constraints within physical reality. Both materialism and idealism seem to miss the boat when it comes to realizing that a crucial aspect of consciousness is that it is embedded and embodied within an environment. This is easily demonstrable by contemplating how our conceptual system is inexplicably tied to what kind of creatures we are (social bipedal animals that metaphorically project our kinesthetic system- such as front and back, up and down- out in to our environment). Consider for a moment how differently a spherical creature with eyes on all sides of its body would experience reality. An Embodied form of Realism which makes the more limited claim that both physical reality and conscious experience are ontologically valid seems far more epistemologically responsible than either alternative.

@Leo Gura I'd be curious as to your thoughts on some implicit assumptions that seem to be present in your metaphysics, or at least what seem like implicit assumptions from my vantage point. (I'm happy to be corrected if any of this mischaracterizes your views): The a-priori assumption that non-conceptual awareness is 'pure' in some sense, and not something that is mediated in subtle ways by a myriad of unconscious cognitive processes that structure the nature of our direct experience (regardless of whether or not these processes have a physical basis). The assumption that everything there is to be known about the mind is accessible to conscious awareness through introspection and contemplation. The assumption that it's possible for consciousness to be disembodied The assumption that knowledge can be non-contextual, and that what you're perceiving to be Absolute Truth isn't contextual in ways that you're unaware of

Isn't it also good form to use healthy forms of skepticism to interrogate any ontological system that makes claims towards exclusivity/completeness (ie exactly what you've done towards Scientific Reductionism)?

Embodied neutral monism seems to make the most epistemological sense from my point of view, as its a metaphysics that honors the defensible aspects of physicalism (objects outside of consciousness exist) while making room for the significance of consciousness. (As a bonus, both the Great Chain of Being as well as Buddhist notions of the illusory nature of self seem fully compatible with this metaphysics. Whether the 'Substance' that physical reality and consciousness are aspects of or artificially subdivided into is conceptualized as Spirit, the Absolute, or something else makes no meaningful ontological difference.) So while consciousness is of course irreducible, it's also inseparable from physical reality because consciousness is always embedded and embodied in an environment. What gives consciousness its subjective flavor is that it's in interaction with its embedded environment. Color perception is a great example of this; color being something that neither exists "out there" as a pre-given feature of external objects, nor as an independent fabrication of consciousness (as evidenced by people blind from birth having no frame of reference for color). Rather, color is a codependent origination of a consciousness that's in interaction with an environment. Both materialism and Leo's brand of absolute idealism seem extreme to me, not dissimilar to how a partial truth like postmodernism becomes problematic when taken to an extreme. Notions that consciousness can somehow become disembodied is a Myth.

Same. Not infrequent that the site doesn't load and I'll have to check back later in the day

Leo did a good job of introducing Spiral Dynamics, but it's important to remember that he has his own biases (as everyone inevitably does), so one shouldn't take Leo's word as final on any of the subjects he presents.