There will be no authentic
integral politics until a critical mass of humanity makes the momentous leap
into second tier consciousness.
Until then it might be
valuable to strengthen our cognitive hypothesis about the nature and contours
of a potential integral politics, because the practice of seeking to take and
embrace multiple perspectives could very well contribute to the necessary transcendence.
Some, including a number in
the Boulder orbit, have made the noble attempt to step into a hypothetical
integral politics, but never quite develop a perspective that satisfies the demands of the Integral Model. While we will take note of
some of these deficiencies for the purposes of looking more deeply into the
matter, we do this collegially and affectionately.
The biggest challenge,
illustrated by the various Boulder efforts that miss the mark, is to note the
distinction between what will arise politically in the second tier versus
what we think that might be from here in the first. Green is not integral regardless of our capacity to think about it.
Ken Wilber illustrates the dynamics of this structural disparity when he
noted that the Constitution of the United States offered a “stage 5” method of
governance in a “stage 3” society. By that he meant that the founding
principles of the nation set forth in both that document and the Declaration of
Independence reflected the possibilities of self-governance developed out of
the centuries-old English tradition of limited government as improved by the
insights of the Scottish Enlightenment with its commitment to individual
liberty and sovereignty. These were principles for a nation whose
citizens had developed to the moral understanding of the stage 5,
postconventional worldcentric perspective.
But the United States did
not become a stage 5 society on June 21, 1788, the day the Constitution was
formally ratified. Indeed, even after the Civil War and adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments eradicating
slavery and guaranteeing the political rights of all citizens, the U. S. continued
its evolution toward the orange rational/industrial stage 5 nation it finally
became after World War II. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20th
century that the majority of the citizenry made it to stage 4, and it was only
in the 1960s that the possibility of mass stage 5 consciousness emerged.
