The possibility of a fifth level transcending the intellectual has been
debated regularly on this forum. I am currently reading Ken Wilber's 'Sex,
Ecology, Spirituality', and thought his description of Vision Logic (or
Planetary Logic) might be a trigger for more focused debate. It may also
have something to say about the subject/object divide that so concerned
Pirsig.
"As rationality continues its quest for a truly universal or global or
planetary outlook, noncoercive in nature, it eventually gives way to a type
of cognition I call vision-logic or network-logic ... 'a system or totality
of truth-seeing at a single view; the relations of idea with idea, of truth
with truth, self-seen in the integral whole' [Aurobindo] ... Vision-logic is
a higher holon that operates upon (and thus transcends) its junior holons,
such as simple rationality itself. As such, vision-logic can hold in mind
contradictions, it can unify opposites, it is dialectical and non-linear,
and it weaves together what otherwise appear to be incompatible notions, as
long as they relate together in the new and higher holon, negated in their
partiality but preserved in their positive contributions ... Hegel
maintained that the central defining characteristic of Reason (vision-logic)
was its capacity to unify opposites and see identity in difference." (p 185)
"The worldview or worldspace of vision-logic I also refer to as
'existential' and 'centauric' ... 'Centaur' is the mythic beast, half human
and half horse, which I ... have taken as a symbol of the integration of
body and mind, or biosphere and noosphere. For if it is true that, a few
hundred years ago, we finally succeeded in clearly differentiating these two
great domains, it is equally true that we have not yet found a way to
integrate them ... The previous structure (the egoic-rational), Gebser
refers to as the 'rational-perspectival,' because rationality can indeed
take different perspectives, as we saw. But vision-logic, or the
integral-aperspectival mind, adds up all the perspectives tout ensemble, and
therefore privileges no perspective as final: it is aperspectival ... The
aperspectival mind, in other words, is holonic through and through: contexts
within contexts withon contexts forever. Of course, every structure of
consciousness is actually holonic (there are only holons), but vision-logic
consciously grasps this fact for the first time, and thus finds its own
operation increasingly transparent to itself ... The world is in the midst
of the tortuous birth throes of a collective emergence of an entirely new
structure of consciousness, the centaur in vision-logic, the
integral-aperspectival mind." (pp 186 - 188)
"As Georg Feurstein ... says ... 'This nascent structure of consciousness,
for the first time in human history, permits the conscious integration of
all previous (but co-present) structures, and through this act of
integration the human personality becomes, as it were, transparent to
itself' ... 'it is grounded in ones' unmitigated acceptance of, or primal
trust in, corporeality. It is the transparent body-mind.' " (p 189)
"Integral-aperspectival consciousness is especially a consciousness of
language ... 'Language itself is treated as a primordial phenomenon by
recognizing its originating creative nature.' [Gebser]" (pp 189-190)
"The only serious global social movement, in all history to date, has been
the international labor movement (Marxism), which had one great, enduring
and legitimate strength - and one altogether fatal weakness. The strength
was that it discovered a common trait that all humans possess ... social
labor ... Its fatal weakness was that ... it reduced the noosphere to the
physiosphere ... This reductionist thrust of Marxism, because it could find
no support in the real Kosmos, had to be converted into a religious
mythology, and thus had to press its vision in an imperialistic fashion ...
The other major movement that has shown , or has claimed, some possibilities
for underpinning a global citizenship is the Greens movement ... both of
them are reducing higher levels to lower levels simply because of the
undisputed fact that the lower is indeed more fundamental (and therefore
necessary but not sufficient for the life of the higher and deeper). Where
the Marxists tended to reduce all concerns to the material exchanges of the
physiosphere, the Greens tend to reduce all concerns to the ecological
exchanges of the biosphere." (pp 194-195)
"A planetary culture will ... have to deal with equitable material-economic
distribution in the physiosphere (the enduring concern of Marx, even if we
reject his particular solutions), and it will have to deal with sustainable
ecological distribution in the biosphere (the enduring contribution of the
Greens) ... It will have to work toward specific theories of free noospheric
exchange, including but transcending ecological concerns ... As for the
coming transformation itself, it is being built, as all past transformations
have been, in the hearts and minds of those individuals who themselves
evolve to centauric planetary vision ... And, at this point, aside from the
inner work that each of us individually can do, I personally see no obvious
collective bearers of the new and deeper within." (pp 196-197)
Thus speaks Wilber. I find much to ponder in his words.
John B
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