From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Sun May 25 2003 - 17:55:52 BST
Hi DMB,
Steve said:
Wilber suggests (and I agree) that the best distinguishing factor between
liberals and conservatives is answers to the the question, "why is Joe
Anybody suffering?"
The conservatives say that Joe is lazy and suggest that our social and
economic policies should offer better incentives to get Joe off his ass...
The liberals say that Joe is oppressed by society. It's not Joe's fault...
Only after making this external/internal causation political dichotomy can
the MOQ help us understand why the liberals cringe at the idea of internal
causation and can't stomach talking about internal development....
dmb said:
Well, as a liberal who often talks about internal development, I object.
Steve says:
I'm sure it's hard for someone who identifies with either conservatives or
liberals to hear the criticisms that Wilber makes. Remember that he is
making generalizations that won't apply to all people who identify as
liberals and conservatives.
The fact that you consider internal development is super. Wilber would
approve. Your not the typical liberal that Wilber is criticizing. (Nor do
I see Platt or Sam as typical conservatives.)
Dmb continued:
But seriously, I think you've misread this a bit.
Steve says:
I guess you wouldn't be you if you didn't suggest that I was misreading. ;-)
dmb:
Consider what you reported
about the same author on the 15th....
Steve said to Matt:
"Some people are stuck in an egocentric understanding of the world while
others have reached a higher ethnocentric understanding. Still others like
you are able to see that what their own culture says is right and wrong is
not absolute. They have a world-centric view. Is none of these
perspectives better than any other? I see these as stages of development."
Or the Wilberism you shared with Matt the day before...
Steve said to matt:
Isn't being able to take the perspectives of others (understanding different
contexts) better than only being able to see things from your own? Another
ahistorical hierarchy? Being able to take the perspective of others
includes and transcends your own. No?
dmb continued:
See, all these views belong to the same author and may very well come from a
single book. You gotta see the example of Joe in this light to read it
right. I mean, it seems that he's saying that the difference is one of
scope in vision, not so much an inside/outside thing. The conservatives
blame Joe because the complex social forces that shape our lives are all but
invisible to common sense and so complaining about it just sounds like a
bunch of nonsense to social level people. One with a limited perspective who
has nothing much to complain about just figures if he and his friends can do
it, then everybody should be able to. He doesn't know what its like to NOT
be born on third base. The liberal will try to address broader forces like
racism or sexism because these factors really do effect whether or not Joe
is limited in his opportunities. They see that some people are born in the
bleachers. Its about a broader perspective. The liberal doesn't endorse
laziness or claim that there are no lazy people, she just says there are
many others reasons for poverty and such.
Steve says:
I absolutely agree that Wilber has more sympathy with liberals. That's who
he is generally writing for. He wants them to take a more integral
approach.
Wilber's refrain of "they are both half right and half wrong" that he used
as he integrated what may have been previously thought to be mutually
exclusive ideas in SES also applies to libs and conservatives.
Perhaps you missed the following part about of my post about how though libs
tend to reject internal causation, they reject it from a higher level of
awareness than the conservatives tend to be on. There is no contradiction
between what I wrote here and what you quoted me writing to Matt:
"Only after making this external/internal causation political dichotomy can
the MOQ help us understand why the liberals cringe at the idea of internal
causation and can't stomach talking about internal development. It's
because of the sort of internal development the conservatives are usually
suggesting. They want to lift us all up to the social level by instilling
social level values. The liberals who tend to be more intellectual and see
the conservative values as degenerate are so turned off by these
ethnocentric values that they in turn reject talking about values and
morality altogether in favor of talking about how to make the system less
cruel and oppressive.
So conservatives are right to say that internals matter, but they generally
talk about internals only up to a lower level. They are also wrong to think
that society isn't often oppressive.
Liberals tend to be more internally developed but then turn around and
reject the idea of internal development, thus preventing society's overall
development."
DMB said:
I'll try to look it up.
Steve says:
Great idea. Try this:
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/boomeritis/wtc/part2.cfm/xid,138176/y
id,71243634
Wilber: "In place of interior development, merely exterior development is
then recommended by the flatland liberal. Material improvement and economic
reshuffling become the major aims of governance--(re)distribute the material
wealth, provide physical healthcare for everybody, provide physical shelter
for everybody, provide physical food for everybody, provide physical
wellbeing for everybody. This leaves all values, all interiors, all meaning,
all depth, and all divinity to the conservatives, who represent a lower wave
of development but who at least haven't forgotten the interiors!
Interior talk --values talk, religion talk, character talk, meaning talk--is
thus left largely in the hands of the conservatives. The liberal then looks
at the typical ... conservative values--which are often ethnocentric and...
can easily slide into homophobia and gay bashing, sexism and misogyny,
militarism and imperialism--and says, 'If those are what we mean by
"instilling values," then I'm staying out of the values game
altogether!'--failing to see that its own worldcentric fairness is simply
the next wave of hierarchically unfolding values. It thus attempts to
escape ethnocentric values, not by transparently championing its own higher
worldcentric values, but by claiming to be value neutral and egalitarian,
whereas in fact it is championing the next wave of value structures, the
next wave of interiors, failing to see which it then succumbs to flatland
floundering. Instead of pioneering a new wave of interior talk--higher
values talk, higher religion talk, higher character talk, higher meaning
talk--it talks only of tepid egalitarianism, a plurality of authentic
ultimates, tractionless multiculturalism, no interior is better than
another, yada yada yada.... Whereupon every interior, no matter how lowly,
is accorded not just equal respect but equal value, period--and the
regressive nightmare is about to begin. Liberalism is much nobler than
that, much higher than that.... "
Steve says:
See? I bet we're on the same page.
DMB said:
There is a chart in one of his books that spells the
whole thing out quite succinctly, where he correlates political ideologies
with the levels of cognitive development, which in turn correspond to wider
and wider perspectives.
Steve:
Again. I understood that already. The liberal perspective is on a higher
level but unfortunately tends to be limited to externals. That was the
point of what I wrote to Matt that you quoted.
DMB said:
But it is as you might imagine. Fasism is not on the
far right in Wilber's chart, but near the bottom and associated with
undeveloped, narrow perspectives. Various Lefties and then Greens are near
the top, etc. Liberal and Conservatives are pretty close to each other and
the difference between them represents a pretty narrow range of ideologies.
How's that for poverty?
Steve:
To see where commis and fascists as well as civil and economic libertarians
might fit, see A Theory of Everything. As you know, Wilber's scheme has
four quadrants. The horizontal axis distinguishes internal and external.
The vertical distinguishes the individual and the collective. It is the
second dimension that is useful for distinguishing a liberal from a commi or
a civil libertarian as well as distinguishing a conservative from a fascist
or an economic libertarian.
Regards,
Steve
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