Towards an Authentic Integral Politics

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.

The Immediate Challenge: Healthy Green

Andrew Cohen, in the summer 2006 issue of What Is Enlightenment? magazine, wrote that

[t]o consciously evolve is to surrender unconditionally to the truth that there is no other and at the same time to accept responsibility for what that means in an evolving universe—a cosmos that is slowly but surely becoming aware of itself through you and me. one without a second is simultaneously awakening to itself as it develops, as it evolves, and it is that one, as you and me, alone, that can now begin to take responsibility for endeavoring to consciously create its own future.

At the leading edge of this consciousness evolution, which is basically at the Green mature rational egoic wave, what is necessary for us to assume responsibility for how this evolution occurs? I assert that what we must focus on is consolidation of healthy Green, for that will lead almost immediately into the transpersonal waves and the integral embrace.

We face this developmental challenge even as Green must deal with assaults from its two junior stages. As I wrote in the “Three Blind Memes” series below, the world is enjoying an unprecedented collision of three powerful First Tier memes: Amber premodern (which can also be understood as the preconventional, traditional, mythic/membership, rule/role stage), Orange modern (conventional, rational/egoic, scientific), and Green postmodern (postconventional. vision/logic, sensitive self).

Amber, as the oldest member of this triad, arose as part of the shift in the human social and economic structures from hunter/gatherer to agriculture, some 13,000 years ago.

Orange first appeared as an identifiable feature during the so-called Axial Age around 600 BCE, but did not manifest in significant numbers until after the Italian Renaissance in the fourteenth century CE.

Green first appeared around the turn of the nineteenth century, but showed up in sufficient numbers only in the 1960s.

One of the characteristics of this evolutionary trend is the accelerating rate of new memetic emergence. It took Amber around 40,000 years to emerge from the previous Red magic wave, but it took Orange less that 13,000 years to arise from Amber. And Green required less than half a millennium to appear.