DocWatts

Even something like Dungeons and Dragons knows enough to separate Intelligence and Wisdom in to two different stats

Also keep in mind that China is a society with 1.4 billion people (nearly a fifth of the world's population), so it's quite natural that in such a large society that development is going to be spread across a wide spectrum. So it's not at all unexpected that Purple, Red, Blue, and Orange would all be represented in such a large sampling of the human population.

An hour in I'm thinking 'yes, of course, isn't a lot of this rather obvious?' That is of course until I stop and remember that the vast majority of people do not think dialectically as a matter of course, and that the ontological and epistemological assumptions which underlie one's worldview are invisible to most people. And that a dialectical modality itself is highly privileged way of looking at the world, whose availability hinges to a huge extent on getting Lucky when it comes to the Birth Lottery. Not sure where exactly I was going with this, but I do appreciate the obvious effort that Leo puts in to his work, and the craft that it takes to take quite complex ideas and present them in approachable ways.

I think Dostoyevsky's forward in Notes From Underground (which was also quoted at the beginning of American Psycho) seems prescient on how sick social structures and maladjusted cultural values create sociopathic people. "Nevertheless it is clear that such persons as the writer of these notes not only may, but positively must, exist in our society, when we consider the circumstances in the midst of which our society is formed. He is one of the representatives of a generation still living. In this fragment, entitled "Underground," this person introduces himself and his views, and, as it were, tries to explain the causes owing to which he has made his appearance and was bound to make his appearance in our midst."

The fact that this isn't obvious to everyone to everyone on the Progressive Left hurts my brain... Brings to mind something equally silly from a few years back when some outspoken Greens accused AOC of "co-opting" the Green New Deal by trying to include it in the policy platform of Democratic Party, because the Green Party came up with the idea first.

And to add to that, the ability to empathize with forms of mistreatment that one hasn't experienced themselves is directly tied to one's ability to adopt other perspectives. So it's not at all surprising that someone who's at a level of development that's quite limited in its ability to take in other perspectives would find it inconceivable that the nice police officers in thier town are somehow part of a system that treats people who are of different race and socio-economic class very differently than how they themselves are treated. Since they've never had any sort of negative interactions with the Police or the Criminal Justice system, it's quite natural that someone with a limited ability to take on other perspectives would assume that anyone who is mistreated by the police must have done something to deserve it. Either that or the bad behavior is caused by one or two "bad apples", rather than as symptom of a systemic problem (since systems thinking only emerges at later stages of development). Add to that, in the minds of people at this level of development the Police and Criminal Justice system are thought of as a shield to protect one's group from the Other (ie thr scary parts of society that exist outside of one's in-group).

What I was referring to wasn't his depiction of Dominator vs Growth Hierarchies (which is completely on point). Rather, I was referring more broadly to some of his perceptions of contemporary Green outside of an Academic context, which are somewhat biased by his experiences in Academia. He basically admits as much (that he's developed a bit of a Shadow from his experiences in Academia), during an Interview when the subject of Jordan Peterson was brought up, and how they have some of the same criticisms of Green.

While I have great respect for Ken Wilber and largely agree with much of his philosophy and ethics, I do think that his negative experiences within Academia (who were resistant to many of his ideas) created a Shadow that has prevented him from fully Integrating SD-Green, which is why he demonizes it to some degree. In particular, one gets a sense that he conflates a specific form of somewhat extreme Academic Postmodernism as broadly representative of contemporary Green. Not that this is unique to Wilber, it's a common prejudice among Intellectuals who project an exaggerated importance to Academia on the broader Culture. While Ken Wilber's analysis of Hierarchies is on point, using confusion about Hierarchies as the primary focal point to view the Culture Wars is a highly Reductionist way of looking at such a broad issue. It also overlooks the fact that much of the Culture Wars is something that is intentionally being stoked by Bad Actors who have an interest in exasperating social and cultural divisions to further their own Political or Economic aims.

On the whole, while many of the points that the video essay brings up are fair and valid critiques of Steven Pinker and The New Optimism paradigm, it also shares many of the same limitations that nearly all postmodern deconstruction of Grand Narratives fall in to at some point. Namely that by failing to think Dialectically and Developmentally, and by overlooking the interior aspects of development that gave rise to its own worldview, deconstructive postmodernism is ultimately self undermining. It's only because of the qualitative changes in development that the Enlightenment and Modernity brought about (including Industrialization and Globalization), that the Pluralistic worldview that the video essayist is espousing is even possible in the first place. (To be fair, he does briefly address some of these points in the conclusion of the video). That's not to say said criticism isn't Valid; only that it's partial and perspectival evaluation of the legacy of the Enlightenment and Modernity.

Problem is, that's a straw man characterization of SD-Green. What the vast majority of SD-Green actually wants is actual (rather than empty lip service towards) Equality of Opportunity. Which involves creating Support Structures so that people who are born in to highly inequitable circumstances both have a chance to participate in society and live a life of dignity. Just creating a Meritocracy without mechanisms to give those born in to an unfortunate circumstances a chance to catch up so that they can compete is not true Equality of Opportunity. A good analogy is a game of Monopoly where one player starts the game with ten thousand dollars and a bunch of properties in thier name, and another player starts twenty turns in after most of the properties on the Board have already been bought up by the other players. In no way can the remainder of the game be said to be an actual Competition in any reasonable sense of the word, since who is going to win and who is going to lose is a foregone conclusion based on the differing conditions that each player started the game with. While some degree in Inequity in starting conditions is inevitable because people vary in thier intelligence, wisdom, abilities, and work ethic, much of the inequity is Socially Constructed and self perpetuating because of the way our social institutions are arranged. And that aspect of it we can and should change.

Half of all jobs in America pay less than a Living Wage (less than the $15 an hour Minimum Wage that labor advocates are fighting for). No surprise then that the Median Wage for American workers is around $35k a year. And little wonder why younger generations that are bearing the brunt of this economic austerity aren't buying homes and starting families...

A large portion of the Root Causes behind this resurgence of White Nationalism can be traced to the demographic and economic anxiety of a dominant group whose privileged status has been steadily chipped away at over the last half century. The implicit motivation behind contemporary Right Wing populism stems in large part from whites no longer being shielded from the types of economic deprivation and social exclusion that have been prevalent for communities of color throughout most of American History. Combine a declining standard of living in the US with whites no longer monopolizing all of the economic opportunity within the country, and the result is an undercurrent of alienation and anger, as a subset of white Americans feel that thier country has somehow drifted (or was stolen) away from them. "This isn't supposed to be happening to me. I'm white!", is a decent summation of this mindset.

I meant in the sense that by transcending a merely ego-centric (Red) and socio-centric worldview (Blue), it became the first Stage capable of a adopting a global (or non ethno-centric) perspective. The two most prominent ethical paradigms of the Enlightenment, namely Utilitarianism and Deontology, were couched in an ethics which treated human beings as moral agents with intrinsic value, regardless of thier nationality, race or gender. Compare that to the moral systems of the previous stage, where moral concern was only extended to one's own ethnicity or religion, and it's not hard to see the Orange systems of ethics as a huge advance over thier predecessors (even if it was the case that in many ways Orange fell far short of actually living up to these lofty ideals). Hence why this is the first developmental stage where the notion of Human Rights is conceived of, and where we start to see Liberation movements (such as Women's Suffrage and the Abolition of Slavery). All of which would later be taken up and be more fully realized in Green.

Because the excesses of toxic Orange are all around us and obvious to see, it's easy to conflate the worst aspects of excessive Capitalism and gross Materialism for all of Orange. It's worth keeping in mind that the essence of Orange is that it's the very first genuinely world-centric developmental stage, coming as it did from the Enlightenment. And as the first truly world-centric stage, it laid the foundations for so many advances that we take for granted today, such as: Human Rights, Representative Democracy, and a more than doubling of human life expectancy as a result of the Scientific Revolution it unleashed. Deconstructing Myths from SD-Blue that were being used to prop up oppressive Power Structures (such as absolute monarchies) was another genuine accomplishment of Orange. Just because Orange has introduced new problems that can only be solved at the next Stage (like every other SD-Stage), doesn't rob Orange of its many important contributions.

For as much as I appreciate Japanese art and culture that's made its way over to the West, actually living in a country with such a dysfunctional work/life balance seems at least as bad as some worst aspects of living and working in the US.

Assuming something written in the last 20 years counts as 'recent', Ken Wilber's Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality is an easy recommendation

@Leo Gura Agreed. I found Ken Wilber's take on the German Idealist school to be compelling: Namely that they were on the right track, but because they were lacking a contemplative method to verify thier insights, their ideas were reduced to 'mere' metaphysics, and thus they were unable to build the credibility necessary to turn thier ideas to a new paradigm. I would also add the fact that they were unable to communicate thier ideas in a clear, non-convoluted way also contributed to this. Seems like they were sorely lacking what we would call today public intellectuals who could present these ideas in a straightforward way to the public.

Seems like a shame that the contributions of Hegel aren't discussed more in Integral/Developmental circles, as his dialectical model of how History unfolds was incredibly ahead of its time and influential for subsequent developmental theories. Besides being a direct influence on thinkers like Marx, one can see some of the DNA of Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber in his work, with his idea that that all worldviews contain an element of Truth and that societies develop in a dialectical manner. Or to put it more directly; it was Hegel's view that paradigms (a thesis) generate tension which gives rise to an antithesis, which later gets synthesized in to a new paradigm. This new paradigm then becomes the new thesis, and the cycle repeats. Not hard to see how this was an early or proto version of transcend and include...

Japan is what is known as a de-factro Nuclear Power. Even setting aside its alliance with the United States, the country has both the technological base and the industrial capacity to begin making nuclear weapons (within a little as one year) if they were ever forced to do so for reasons of national survival. Though whether a country that was psychologically scarred by nuclear weapons would ever choose to develop (let alone use) nukes under any circumstances, is another question...

I've found that most of the definitions you'll come across for this topic are either terse and broad to the point of not being helpful, or overly long winded and specific. Personal weakness on my part, but I sometimes have trouble taking extremely broad subjects and squeezing them down in to a working definition that's both concise and informative. Pondering this for a bit, I've come up with two definitions that seem workable, even if I'm not completely happy with either one (also just to lay my biases on the table, I'm approaching this topic from more a secular perspective. A definition that applies to both theists and non theists would be useful). (1) Transpersonal development work that aims to develop meaningful ways to integrate our subjective Inner experience within a wider, shared reality. (2) An intuition that we can develop a more meaningful connection to reality by deconstructing how our mind interfaces with reality, and that this knowledge will help us to live happier, kinder, and more fulfilling lives

@billiesimon Because the majority of Academic philosophy is written for other Academics, rather than for the Public, and is filled with technical jargon that is likely to make the work impenetrable for non-specialists. It will be more productive reading a book about Hegel than trying to make sense of any of Hegel's actual books or papers.

Factorio is a survival/management game developed by Czech studio Wube Software. The premise of the game is that the player is stranded on an alien world that thier spaceship crash lands on, with the eventual goal of the game being to construct a spaceship to escape the planet. The gameplay loop involves resource extraction through ever an expanding process of automization, as the player builds up Industry and develops supply chains to turn raw materials in to refined products for use in technology. Part of the reason that this game is so damned interesting is that the player is consistently faced head on with the negative and destructive consequences of this process, yet proceeds nonetheless because thier Survival Needs are inextricably linked to a process of endless expansion; "The Factory must grow". Not only is the player incentivized to view literally everything on the planet as a resource to be exploited, but this process also leads the player to re-enact colonial exploitation in the process. For not only are you strip mining an entire planet, but you're doing so on an inhabited world whose denizens (a Starship Trooper-esque race of insectoids) are being harmed by your Industrial pollution. So when they begin attacking your factories, it's only natural that the player perceives this as an aggressive attack, rather than as a response to thier own aggression. Importantly, the player doesn't set out to re-enact Imperialism; from thier point of view they've merely been optimizing supply chains and working out the logistics of resource extraction. It"s honestly a great demonstration of the Banality of Evil. Factorio is a fascinating game, and a good example of how gamifying something can be illuminating.

Any other contemporary works on Hegel that you'd recommend over Zizek? Since Hegel's actual writing falls in to the same pitfalls as someone like Derrida or Kant, with thier philosophy being notoriously impenetrable if you try to read what any of these figures actually wrote....

Very true. The most advanced thinkers from Athens might have been considered all of the various city states in Greece as equals, but they still would have seen Greek Culture as superior to that of 'barbarian' (ie non Greek) peoples. Likewise, a forward thinking Medieval European might have embraced everyone who subscribed to thier version of Christianity as thier brother, but would have considered anyone who subscribed to a different religious tradition as ignorant and abominable. The beginnings of a truly worldcentric paradigm did not emerge until the Enlightenment.

The book Nordic Ideology manages to state this in an illuminating and concise way, as part of a discussion as to why it's so important that meta-ideologies avoid these sorts of epistemological and metaphysical errors: "Marx tried to identify the meta-ideology, to formulate it clearly, so people could create political movements around it and otherwise navigate the world with its help. He made some important contributions, but he got some of the fundamental dynamics wrong. Analytical - not moral - mistakes that nevertheless cost many millions of lives. Oops."