Hello all;

I found a book review I thought I would share, as many of us have expressed interest in perspectives on the environment in general, and global warming in particular.

Almost all the information that I have found as a result of our group inquiry into the subject has had a common feature:

Zone One looks at the Right Hand path
(subjectivity looks at carefully selected exterior correlates and extracts / manipulates meaning, i.e., "include this partial truth, and exclude that one, and then arrange them to support my agenda").

The "scientific debates" about global warming aren't much better, generally;

Zone One of Subject A looks at Zone One of Subject B looking at the Right Hand path, and finds errors
(subjectivity A looks at subjectivity B and finds evidence of bias in the carefully selected exterior correlates and extraction / manipulation of meaning, while remaining blind to their own bias - people talking AT each other, fighting to be RIGHT with little or no regard for the jewels of truth that their "enemies" offer. They childishly try to assert that their subjective preference of hierarchy and arrangement of facts is in fact the objective hierarchy of facts, which gets funnier the more one thinks about it).

Krishnamurti always talked about the healthy boundaries of thought, and how having thought as a tool is not a problem; the problem is that thought doesn't know its boundaries - developing a sense of interior appropriateness and accuracy - humans and their thinking tend to generally (98% or higher according to Spiral Dynamics statistics) be absorbed in awareness of personal content, with little or no awareness of universal context (big zone one, little or no zone two development, in terms of functionally adequate self-awareness in the Upper Left Quadrant).

Finally, we have evidence of a larger perspective at work, intelligence with some structural self-awareness in this field of inquiry, which presents as:

Zone Two looks at Zone One looking at the Right Hand path
(genealogically [specifically, 4.5 billion years worth of geological evidence] and developmentally [man's quantitative and qualitative thought, computers, and complexity] informed objectivity looks at the inherent limitations, biases, distortions and errors of subjectivity as subjectivity looks at the Right Hand path).

Ken Wilber reminds us, for example, that Zone One discloses the beauty of meditation, and Zone Two discloses the meaning of Spiral Dynamics, AND that these two types of development are largely discrete, cognitively ("NO amount of meditation will EVER disclose ANYTHING like SD", KW [my emphasis, for clarity]). If we are truly aligned (not just mere "lip service") to an integral evolutionary agenda (if what we want [motives / desires], what we say [thought / speech], and what we do [behaviors] all have real, authentic AND accurate [so many souls are lost to "sincere and wrong", look around, look within] integrity in our self-system, in this regard), we strive to embrace and enact more truth, beauty, goodness AND increasingly higher order meaning.

Here's two excerpts from this book review by William Grassie:
"The Pilkeys recount dozens of scientific vignettes, unfolding like detective stories, of scientists gone astray, lost following their predictive models to unexpected consequences and tragic failures. As the Pilkeys make clear, science has not been very successful in predicting or managing environmental changes. The problems, they argue, are inherent in any attempt to model complex natural and human systems. Predictions from any computer simulations of any complex reiterative dynamic processes are not worth the binary code they were written in, nor the supercomputers they were run on. The book reads like a series of parables, each illustrates what Whitehead meant by "the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness." The problem is endemic to all modeling of any complex environmental or human process."
...and...
"The American Petroleum Institute and Dick Cheney should take no pleasure in the Pilkeys' thorough challenge to the global climate-change prediction industry. Anthropogenic climate change may be a real concern. And furthermore, the same types of modeling errors and unknowns presumably also call into question industry models of global petroleum reserves. The Pilkeys' real argument is that no scientist can offer cogent predictions of the Earth's climate - too hot, too cold, or just right. No matter how much data is collected, no matter how sophisticated the computer program, no matter how powerful the supercomputer employed to run the simulation. Complex natural systems cannot be modeled in a way that generates useful predictions. There are too many variables, too many feedback loops between variables, and the system is dynamic in ways that we do not understand and cannot represent mathematically. "

For those with a fearless desire for more and larger truth, even if that truth is death to a facet of one's persona, agenda, social contracts and constructs (growth is sometimes painful, especially when we are attached),
OR
if you're just innocently curious, OR anything else (growth can be fun, especially when we're not attached);

Check it out:
Useless Arithmetic

(...and let the rationalizations begin?...or let the appropriate boundaries be discovered within?...OR anything else...)

What I personally find really beautiful is that the Pilkeys' book offers us no easy, clear answers - just a better perspective from which to question our questions. This is the reason that Krishnamurti could never be as popular as the televangelists or the self-proclaimed gurus: people want something that they can grab onto, something solid, something comforting, that provides a sense of safety and security; a choice, a promise, an injunction, a relationship, something...one person I talked with explained it beautifully, he said, "I just couldn't get into him, after awhile, because...it's like Krishnamurti walks you to the edge of a cliff, and then just leaves you there...", to which I replied, with my trademark sensitivity and warmth, "Yeah? And? So?" (I was actually much warmer than that, believe it or not...ah, masculine compassion). The feminine compassion of Byron Katie's perspective is so much more inviting, if not nearly so kosmically spacious (as JK): "Reality is usually so much kinder than our stories about it" and "My favorite position is 'I don't know.'"

To quote our dear friend Doug,
"Cheers!"

Eliot

Wow Eliot, so dense, accurate, and right on! Thanks for helping put me back on track as this topic has interested me from the start (I work in biotechnology and I'll be the first to tell you that our company is learning more about our limitations than actually making discoveries!).

Breaking this down I see 2 important points:

(1) Exterior correlates (data, facts in exterior) are objects of interior thought (not the real exteriors) and (2) thought content is "manipulated/arranged" by the structure of consciousness (Zone #2) [as well as LL (Zone #3 &4) conditioning; yet our focus here is Zone #2].

I think it is helpful to discuss, in such a dialogue, the two types of objectivity, monological objectivity (of modernity) and vertical objectivity (of post-postmodernity/integral; you refer to as developmentally-informed objectivity) in regards to environmentalism.

For example, Al Gore is making the case that his position is based purely on "science" : industrialized CO2 emissions have caused the temperature to raise a degree (more or less), end of story, ask no questions. Yet, this is merely monological objectivity: his embedded subjectivity is ONLY looking at CO2 and temperature rise in a specific time range (ONLY two variables in two linear equations, asserting a direct correlation and one-way causality [even as many scientists postulate that temperature drives CO2 not visa versa and that man-made CO2 is around 5% of all greenhouse emissions)). Yet, climate change involves many (to infinite) variables/factors (i.e. oceans, volcanoes, animals, winds, axis of rotation, sun cycles etc. etc.), positive and negative feedback loops in a multi-dimensional system with endless fluctuations and variations of which he is NOT looking at. We are talking about messy nature here not a Newtonian input-output machine with straight lines and static conditions!

But it is very unlikely that Gore would ever admit that "this is his (partial and limited) perspective on the environment" (acknowledging Zone 2). For one, that would entail self-awareness and the ability to question one's own perspective! He claims that CO2 emissions are causing Global Warming in the reality "out there," period! To Gore, there is no "in here" looking at ideas of the "out there." He is simply saying that his crude and painfully simplistic model IS the EXTERIOR: monological surfaces with no depth. His blind spot is his entire structure of consciousness as he can't even see that his perspective is just that: a perspective/mental position and that's the trap of orange: objectivists don't see subjective bias, filter and selection; they just see objective facts. It is not until post-orange/green that one can take other perspectives and see the "interpretive" feature in them (postmodernity); if you offered a new perspective, Gore would simply reject it without looking at the evidence. I do think Gore's agenda is quite complex, however, like orange (sales pitch for the Carbon Tax) packaged in green (save the world) with sprinkles of purple (tribal Gaia) driven by beige hijacking red (ego hijacked by survival), a colorful mess that could only be performed by a human!

I found this article by William Grassie about the Pilkeys book Useless Arithmetic to be truly refreshing and wonderful approach that is realistic and more in tune with the real Exteriors and I would consider this a 2nd tier (or at least approaching 2nd tier) perspective on environmentalism/climate change; no you don't have to call yourself an integral theorist to be thinking at that level! This is the standard of scientific integrity that the IPCC of the UN should be at! It seemed to discuss a greater objectivity than rational reductionism: understanding the inherent limitations in our organic minds and digital models and their relationship with the territory of real exteriors. It steps outside the box of our assumptions and disillusioned assertions projected as reality. To me this is the brink of 2nd tier cognition that can differentiate between living systems and static models & concepts (map and territory), and subject and object. It is a higher order thinking that Al Gore simply could not grasp. It's structure is over his head.

Grassie writes:

"Science must now recognize that there are non-reducible emergent, transcendent systems, which seem to constitute many of the most interesting and creative phenomenon in our contextual universe-ecosystems, genomics, brains, and culture. No amount of mathematical modeling, computer simulations, reiterative databases, and paradigm filtering will get us beyond this horizon of complexity."

Wilber claims that it is not until turquoise that "ecosystems" has an actual referent; 1st tier rationality and Flatland technology is no substitute.

Here are some quotes from the article:
"...the sensitivity of the parameters in the equation is what is being determined, not the sensitivity of the parameters of nature."

"the computer model is only simulating itself. The computer re-representation is not ?run? on the actual complex natural phenomenon."

"The Pilkeys show that substituting mathematics for nature is itself a source of errors in modeling nature."

Zone 1 embeddedness tends to be absolutely certain and closed to new information in a changing world (stuck) because there is no dynamic and open feedback loop (between zone 1 and 2) of continual self-questioning, self-correction, self-awareness, self-assessment, and objective subjectivity: seeing the seer (seeing the seen). In some ways this dynamic process, when healthy and whole, is like endless renewal of life and death: death to trapped energy investments and life to freer energy for new investments that can encompass greater truth and depth. Even Byron Katie teaches us to question our thoughts and not believe them. Yet these are thoughts about the interior; it is easier to be more sold to our thoughts about the exterior because its about the tangible, sensory reality (kosmic habit of modernity), yet the bumpy road of scientific discovery should keep us humble and an integral perspective would look at pre & post tetra-enacting!

Zone #1 embeddedness does not know the appropriateness of thought, like when it doesn't have enough data to form a hypothesis, or where it is unqualified to have an opinion; no knowledge of its ignorance, of its boundaries and of it narrow position as phenomenology is everything and therefore the defenses are high naturally, zone 2 is its death. Meditation lately has helped me to see this better. And the death of stuck zone 1 is less painful than it once was for me as I'm learning to tell myself "I might be wrong about this" after everything I think and say, for the first time in my life.

Socrates revealed self-awareness when he said, "I know nothing," which acknowledges the epistemological limits of zone 2. We can only "know" what our structure can hold. In the integral model there are infinitely stacked structures endlessly up and down, the one above me is an entire universe that I cannot see.

As Goethe once said (I paraphrase), "No man is more enslaved, than one who falsely believes he is free." Let us continue to see our limitations.

Ching! (The sound of two wine glasses touching)

Jana

Well done Sweetheart!

While I don't think that we should project onto another their interior capacities and limitations,
they are allowed freedom of expression that can be adequately interpreted.

As Confucius said long ago,
"A man can not hide his true character, he reveals himself through that which he takes pleasure in."

That being said, here's my two cents:


"Al Gore is a buzzard,
wearing a cheap eagle suit."

All the best,
Eliot

Hi Eliot,

Good call! Re-reading this thread later I see my projection. I don't know the REAL Al Gore, just his lip service. For all I know he could be an integral genius who has already read and enjoyed the Pilkey's article, but he was warned by the mercenaries of the Elite that his family would die if he didn't sell the public on global warming. Sorry, we've been watching too much 24, my new favorite tv series. But I think it is a good exercise to realize the infinite layers to events and people to 'limit' our projections; I seriously recommend watching 24 for that! Reality is never what it seems! What people say is not necessarily what they believe or their apparent agenda.

With that said, I make the distinction of extracting meaning hermeneutically about someone eles' interior limitation with grounded supporting evidence and then projecting those capacities based on that person's access to limited data. And of course their overlaps and confusions! The universe is so damn multi-dimensional.

Hahahahahahahaha, about your two cents. Although, I think he looks nothing other than a reptilian.

Yours,
Jana