Greetings,

Here are some suggestions for our next meetup topic.

BY AYN RAND: Collectivism vs. Individualism

http://freedomkeys.co...

Edward Griffin on Individualism and Collectivism
http://video.google.c...

My thoughts to start the discussion based on this homework http://kenwilber.meet...:

To me, the logical principle that destroys the philosophy of collectivism is that the collective (a group of people) is NOT an individual. (You might take a moment to really penetrate into that truth with a delicious Wilber treat.)

Taken from Integral Spirituality

“Among other things, individual holons have 4 quadrants, and the social dimension of those individual holons unfolds in stages correlative with the other quadrants in that individual, but collective or social holons do not have 4 quadrants, so they do not necessarily unfold in those types of vertical stages. It is only the confused notion that a collective is a giant organism that makes it appear that groups must go through the same invariant stages that individuals do.” p.152

“There are many ways to talk about the importance differences between individual and social, but perhaps the most significant (and easiest to grasp) is indeed the fact that the we is not a super-I. When you and I come together, and we begin talking, resonating, sharing, and understanding each other, a “we” forms---but that is not another “I”. There is no “I” 100% controlling you and me…” p.153

Placing greater value, emphasis, and/or prioritization on the collective over the individual is actually nonsensical when one penetrates into this truth. In reality only individuals can be prioritized over other individuals, another principle revealed in the homework.

Collectivism can easily become propaganda and lip service that elite individuals use to enslave and control other individuals, speaking on behalf of the “Super-I”. The historical perspective reveals this and will continue to repeat it (kosmic habit) until we learn and become aware of this pattern and desire to not be manipulated by it anymore.

Collectivism and its banner ‘for the greater good for the greater number’ reflects a humanistic/idealist approach that in itself is noble coupled with the dysfunction that it is BACKWARDS in regards to actually achieving its goals. Collectivist leaders might say: we are causing war and destruction for ‘the greater good’. While, we applaud the ‘greater good,’ (otherwise collectivism couldn’t be bought and sold so easily; let us be reminded that Hitler rose to power legally and with a democracy); we also boo the ‘causing wars’ as totally contradictory.

(Because most people can agree that Nazi Germany was a horrific atrocity, it is our main example of the perils of collectivism. Here is a Discovery Channel episode called Nazi: The Occult Conspiracy, which discusses the ‘spiritual’ side of this Hitler’s reign: http://video.google.c...)

Ironically, collectivism is frequently used as a tool for individual glorification (i.e. dictators, wealthy elite, powerful leaders); whether behind-the-scenes or out in the open. While appearing to be for the ‘group’, these individuals can speak to the collective vMEMEs of SD, arousing purple tribalism (the fusion of togetherness), blue ethnocentricism (the purpose of a group), and green globalism (equality of all life), with ‘for the group’ cheers, backed by individual agendas (beige, red, orange). Most often, these individuals do not believe themselves to be ‘within’ the collective they speak to, but merely asserting power ‘over’ it, outside the laws they would impose on the group. They are on the I-side; the rest of humanity (or politic body) is on the we-side. Such individuals do not see the truth that every one has an “I,” otherwise they wouldn’t be collectivists! (And to a narcissist there is only one UL, and it is theirs, LOL!)

Amber’s (blue) desire for ‘national authority’ (my country right or wrong; nationalism), is replaced with the higher octave of green and its desire for a ‘global authority’ (peace on earth with government; globalism: like we see happening at the United Nations).

The truth is that we don’t become GLOBAL by implementing external laws and legislation of an authoritarian government (OUTSIDE [external/exterior] control). To do so is in a sense to move BACKWARD, regressing towards external dependence and projecting a paternal power onto Big Daddy Gov’t like little children. Are we to return to feudal empires of the Dark Ages, where authority is given to the LR masters, on a global level?

The truth is that we become global by moving FORWARD and developing a universal perspective individually for Self-Government. It happens from the INSIDE and within each individual. (But until one gets out of Flatland, this will never make sense and will be another flat ideology.)

Our choice is really this simple: do we give up freedoms for less responsibility (that inevitably leads to totalitarianism [a.k.a. enslavement]) as Griffin reveals or do we protect freedom and take more responsibility for ourselves as INDIVIDUALS with less government; the freedom-responsibility positive correlation; increased rights=increased responsibility. We simply can’t have our cake and eat it too.

Globalism, which is supported by new age, environmentalism, and anything ‘global,’ is simply another off-shoot of collectivism (this time with a green flavor). Yet history shows us the endpoint of collectivism (no matter which octave), with its political disasters that have resulted in the murder of millions of lives (i.e. Soviet Union, China, Germany, etc.). Tyrannies and dictatorships (whether secretly or openly) usually parade on the humanitarian pedestal but people would rather believe them, than know the truth, and as a result ‘we get the government we deserve’ and the stupid sheeple stumble into the slaughter house. (Of course, Boomeritis whispers in our ear, this could never happen to me because I’m *special*. Yet narcissists aren’t given any special privileges in a totalitarian dictatorship.)

We may develop into ‘global’ stages because in a developmental sense, “global” is NOT some transcendent ideal, which usually has no relationship to REALITY and denies rationality. It requires GROWTH. To 1st tier, global is the span of influence upon a large quantity of individuals; knowledge is 'how much we can know about the masses through electronic surveillance and control', to 2nd tier it is the depth of consciousness within an individual, and knowledge is within and about self-awareness.

The true Global Self emerges with integral consciousness (and healthy integral would include the healthy side of all the 1st tier vMemes; while becoming aware of the unhealthy sides). This happens ONLY within the individual; not the collective. Even though green parades as ‘global,’ it is really the TURQUOISE vMEME (of 2nd Tier) that is the stage of the Global Self (SD warns us of Green speaking turquoise on page 288). To develop into the Global Self doesn’t happen overnight and one cannot skip stages. The biggest block to this, I would agree with Wilber, is Boomeritis.

Globalists do not discuss how development is required to become the ‘Global Self’ because they live in Flatland (wide not deep) and preach the new paradigm of ‘globalism’. [And the ‘truth,’ even if known, is rarely popular or wins the vote of the people, (development is not the quick and easy solution, most people don’t want to hear it), especially when hidden agendas are at stake.] Globalism then becomes an ideology for personas to attach to, to hide behind and use for selfish gain…and the horrors of religion come back to haunt us, with more inclusive surface traits. People are then considered ‘global’ by the mere acceptance of the idea of it.

The new age movement and the one world religion lend the ‘spiritual’ quality of globalism.

Lee Penn writes: (http://www.leepenn.or...)

“The New Age and globalist movements offer bait that tempts many - freedom from the restrictions imposed by traditional morality, the ability to use spiritual power to attain worldly goals, and the delight of being in the inner circle of those who will create a new civilization…The New Age and globalist movements testify to the human desire for unity and order. In principle, these are not evil motives…That's the problem with globalism; mankind's search for equity, order, and unity will most likely devolve into totalitarianism, if the lessons of history are any guide.”

In the book Boomeritis, Wilber discusses how Boomeritis rejects conventionality (blue/orange truths). And to me, the Globalist agenda has dissociated from the healthy aspects of the conventional altitudes like 'traditional morality' (which can encourage the unhealthy aspects) as infected with pathological green.

“As green came to dominate the cultural elite, it effectively began challenging the traditional blue and orange conventions in this society. And that is what a large part of the sixties was all about. In fact, one of the great privileges of coming to age during this period is that we had a chance to witness one of the truly significant meme shifts in history—the emergence of green and its deconstruction of blue and orange orthodoxy—with all the wonderful promise and horrible peril that involves”. P.209

In my opinion, Boomeritis, which gives reign to red under postconventional speak, has murdered healthy amber. Believing in “queefs,” (Eliot’s technical term for ‘fluff,’ LOL) such as ‘we are already enlightened’ and that ‘we can do no wrong because there is only Good’ and that ‘love is all there is’, and other green ideologies, has in a sense murdered true spiritual life (and I realize that I will be in small minority in that perspective and I am okay with that). The positive-bias of green idealism absolutizes the positive, calling it the Absolute (non-duality). Yet, this defies rationality, which MGM rejects, opening up magic and mythical fairy tales like 'happily ever after'. If Non-duality is “Good” this contradicts the definition of non-duality, as ‘good’ is a duality (good and evil). And with this positive-bias consciousness, one can easily rationalize the darkness within as being goodness and elevate the lower within as being the higher, which is ultimately a disservice to evolution and true transcendence. In this way MGM can be delusional. It speaks for the highest good, and yet it simply cannot see the lowest evil lurking in the shadows because it is not looking with the whole of consciousness. Total awareness has no preference-- it merely looks to see what is.

[Green hippies adorn themselves with the yin-yang accessories, yet the dark yin is interpreted as out there (i.e. the establishment). It is not until further development that the dark yin in here (i.e. the establishment I have helped to create) becomes more apparent. That requires growth in authenticity. Evil is within and until we see it we will continue to feed it without, blindly. In 2nd Tier, there is no one to blame or finger to point.]

Simply put, green mysticism denies the dark side of ‘spirituality’. Hitler did say, “Force without spiritual power is doomed to failure.” (Many could argue he was not successful according to his dream of a 1,000 year reign, but he was successful short-term [12 years], and slaughtered 50 million people in the meantime).

Healthy amber starts to see the ‘sins of man’ and the temptation of evil, becoming aware of selfishness and corruption among us all, seeking to be purified by a higher power; true humility. When we remove all the religious and Godly speak, healthy amber (the blue vMEME of PURPOSE) is incredibly important for the whole of the Spiral as one begins to take responsibility for ones sins, through redemption, repentance, surrender to 2nd perspective (the ‘higher’ outside the self). One begins to work on self-control and moral character. This is the stage where one begins to have a conscience of right and wrong, as in its previous stage, one did what ever one felt like without regard for the consequences. Sadly, Boomeritis has no moral conscience because it deems the big fat ego as a permanent expression of ‘love and light’ that can ‘do no wrong,’ and ‘if everything is relative, there is no right and wrong.’ (Just because there is is no Absolute Right and Absolute Wrong, doesn’t mean there is neither absolutely, which is the epitome of nihilism.)

The triumphs of Orange include reason and rationality in which the principles of individualism (i.e. Ann Rand), such as individual rights (i.e. the pursuit of happiness) emerged, based on freedom and responsibility, creating the Republic of the United States, as it used to be, but never fully stabilized (NOT a democracy, do your homework!) and the Declaration of Independence/Bill of Rights. Values of freedom, fairness, and equality for the individual is what the Founding Fathers [Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington] intended for America. Here, we have the Greek Philosophers and the Good, True and Beautiful that emerged from Reason that negated the animal impulses of men with timeless principles that transcended our lower nature of belief and myth.


p.237 of Boomeritis, “In fact, in the past decade, the green meme—rapidly decaying into the mean green meme—has aggressively, horrifyingly, moved to repeal the First Amendment. The right to free speech has been eclipsed by the right to not have your feelings hurt, to not have your ego bruised.”

The peak of 1st tier starts to think in terms of ‘inter-national’ (ORANGE) and then as ‘ONE world of love and peace’ (GREEN); from universal rights to feelings of universal togetherness. These are important and necessary levels, yet we should remember that 1st tier is not whole and truly universal in its individual perspective yet, even though it has sparkly rhetoric; it is embedded in its own perspective, therefore fragmented, exclusive, and absolutist. As Kenny says, 'heaps not wholes.'

The green altitude is full of lofty dreams and mystical sensationalism; on a bad day it can be quite masturbatory, narcissistic, and worldly (spiritual materialism). What appears to be good is not always good, lest we be deceived. Once we start to have worldcentric insights, we will also start to have worldcentric temptations… (i.e. global power, world domination)…‘evil becomes more subtle not less’ (the first thing I learned from my mentor), lest we turn our backs to it.

Green is attracted to ‘Gaia’ and ‘web-of-life’ philosophies, mesmerized by ‘collective’ ideals (i.e. humanism, the Global Community), falling into the illogical traps of collectivism. Some green ideologies imagine the human race as one big happy family (yellow happy faces holding hands). Yet this is an abstract and static idea (not a LIVING reality). Humans cannot, based on space-time restrictions of the LR and abilities of the UR, be in communion with everyone because communion requires the sharing of interior worldspaces. We might be physically near someone, but we are not in communion with them, until we interact (i.e. communication) and even then it may not be resonance. In one day most of us can count on our fingers the people we interact with (i.e. loved ones, co-workers, the grocery store cashier etc.) and it is not ‘everyone in the world’. From 2nd Tier, the idea of a Global Community, is simply irrational and reveals the inability to interpret non-dual states of ‘oneness’ adequately; a dimension short.

Taking a structural view, the sharing of interior worldspaces includes both resonance (i.e. persona agreement, support) and dissonance (i.e. shadow charge, condemnation), healthy sharing (i.e. mutually informing each other) and unhealthy sharing (i.e. feeding pathology in each other), and then there is the possibility of no resonance or any sharing at all (i.e. worldspaces that cannot be accessed by other worldspaces, zone 4 differences such as language, sleeping and dreaming states etc.). {Going one step further, we could create a quadratic matrix of possibilities including healthy sharing that is dissonance (respecting and valuing differences) and unhealthy sharing that is resonance (mutually interlocking persona-shadow split) among the others.}

Green has a tendency to elevate ‘sharing’ as all-positive, yet dark secret societies share, violent gangs share, and the Nazi soldiers share worldspaces too. Isn’t One World homogeneity simply FLATLAND? (No vertical diversity.) It lacks important contextual information, like “what the hell are we sharing, duh!” and “from which zone 2 to which zone 2!”

It is impossible to be united with everyone; to request such is naïve and to REQUIRE such is to impose a dominator hierarchy where a small group of individuals decide what that means (one world monetary system? that’s certainly a form of LR sharing), which is usually that everyone be ‘united’ under those individuals not with; control of the group (mob rule); not protection of individuals of the group (i.e. Republic). I personally feel that there are some really fucked up people in the world, so I think that it is unwise to elevate ALL humans on a global level as a Global Community; human potentials go in BOTH ways from unimaginable horror and beauty. To project positive-bias on strangers can result in victimization (it is literally against the infrared imperative). As a child I was always told ‘not to talk to strangers’ and as adults why would we want to praise them?

IRONICALLY, the philosophy of individualism actually opens the space for individuals to include truths of collectivism, developmental potentials. In my opinion, this calls for the ethical life (which is ultimately the spiritual one), in which we actually do what is good for the greatest number, by individually living according to ‘universal maxims’ consistently and impartially (Kant’s categorical imperative), and by universal principles such as the Golden Rule, “do unto others as you would them do unto you.” 2nd tier can incorporate the multiple truths of healthy amber (moral rightness), orange (principle of reason) and green (universal embodiment). Individuals have to grow into the autonomous self in which they treat each other according to universal values. But it doesn’t all really make sense until 2nd Tier.

Boomeritis p. 145, “Autonomous individuals become able to ‘own’ whatever is part of themselves. They can integrate previously compartmentalized subidentities of the self into a coherent whole.”

In Integral Spirituality, Wilber writes: “individual and collective are not staked on each other; they are equivalent dimensions of each other” (p.144). From an integral consciousness, individualism isn’t prioritized above collectivism AND they aren’t polarized either; an integral worldspace resolves such paradox, with multi-dimensional integration. The real-life collective is really our intimate relationships, family, friends, local communities, and service people in our LL/LR; simply the Other we engage with in daily life; 2-p dialogical space. For one to dream about bonding hypothetically with all the strangers of the world, in an aggrandized LL and dissociated LR, is a disillusionment of the green new age that can elevate fusion as transcendence and dismiss basic common sense (pre-trans fallacy). True Oneness, is not a mystical fancy to be fulfilled by government (1st tier baggage, blue hijacking green?), but non-duality (state and stage), in which there is no opposite and that which cannot be spoken. We turn NONDUALITY into a RELIGION and we are really fucked! In the relative where we speak of the one there will always be the many. (i.e. A one world government is the authority of the many.)

AND IRONICALLY, collectivism is actually a CONTRADICTION in which the Ideal (utopian vision) and the Real (the way that it is manifested in reality) are totally and utterly OPPOSITE. Return to your history books if necessary. Applaud the ends; reject the means. And according to Immanuel Kant, maxims/universal laws in which to base action on are and ends-in-itself not a means to an end! A truth seen with the eye of mind.

Ultimately, one human CANNOT control and guide another human’s development; the law of free will. We can’t make each other global. (The growth in an individual cannot even be driven or steered by the individual it occurs within, only set the right intention. One cannot force a flower to grow. We are not the drivers of life. LIFE itself is truly beyond our insignificant minds.)
When one human has control of another human this is domination and abuse of power. A government cannot force people to care about others (which is usually just a front anyhow) in some one world utopia; it just doesn’t work that way, as it denies the foundation of Life and the direction in which it unfolds. The Spiral starts at beige as our own individual survival is of paramount importance and then moves to our tribe in magenta, and outward circles of embrace to our community. It is a common saying that we have to work on ourselves before we work on others and Boomeritis would have us work in the opposite direction in order to run from its self and put off its own development.

“All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws, and ideologies, have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore society…Order imposed from without must always breed disorder.”

“We need a tremendous amount of energy and we dissipate it through fear but when there is this energy which comes from throwing off every form of fear, that energy itself produces the radical inward revolution. You do not have to do a thing about it.”
Freedom from the Know, JK

Thanks for reading and see you soon!

Sincerely,
Jana

Great piece Jana. Enjoyed it. You are a very clear writer. This article was a great refresher course for me. Thanks!

By the way, I didn't receive the Meetups announcement this month. Although I am now spending my Saturdays reading and writing, I would still like to know the topics you are discussing and to see the suggested homework.

Hope you're well. Please give my best to Eliot.

Sincerely,

Michael

Thanks Michael for a response, all I heard was crickets for a while! LOL! Clarity in the cognitive is not my forte, so I'm glad you see development there...as some things we are meant to work hard for and some things we have to earn.

If you are not receiving the announcements, it is probably not selected in your profile settings.

Just so everyone knows, everyone has the option of whether to receive e-mails or not. I just had a member leave the group because he didn't want to receive e-mails...so I thought I'd mention this. Members who don't desire to attend the group can participate on the messageboard and receive the value of the homework in this way.

It's great to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Jana