polilogues

The idea behind Polilogues is so big I have been struggling to get my head around it and put it into words. Another word for that, of course, is procrastination.

The bottom line, though, as Geert has said already, is that Polilogues is about worldviews. The world looks different from the perspective of each person who beholds it. But when we dig down into the invisible memetic mycelium that connects people in a culture, we start to find deeper, shared worldviews, based on assumptions about the nature of life and reality that people espouse unthinkingly and often never question from birth to death. Dig down deeper still and we creep into the miraculous gossamer dimensions where psychology is not other than biology is not other than astronomy and the individual and the collective arise, inseparably, together, as two aspects of the same mystery. Perspectives all the way down.

The problematic aspect of this is that much of the strife in our world comes from people’s unreflecting identification with their own, inevitably limited, perspective. At a deep, gut level, we often feel threatened when confronted with someone else’s conflicting worldview, and are much more comfortable in the company of “like-minded” people. In my own experience, this clash of opinions can give rise to a physiological fight-or-flight response which I have to wrestle down in order to stay in the conversation...

The ability to take a perspective on one’s perspectives – to see one’s own worldview from outside – is an indication that an individual has reached a certain stage in the development of consciousness. When what we were once unconsciously subject to arises as an object inside our awareness, we can say that we have developed greater depth of consciousness. It is abundantly clear that the majority of the world’s adult population has not yet reached that stage and that, if our species is to survive past its adolescence without irreparably fouling its nest, more of us have to get to that point.

There is a proviso here, though. The relativistic position which holds all worldviews as equally valid (so just keep your hands off mine!) is not sustainable in the long term, particularly not as the centre of gravity of a culture. The post-modern deconstructionist passion for dissecting worldviews, reducing them to dark matter and declaring this to be proof that all perspectives are culturally constructed and have no intrinsic value, threatens to leave the most advanced societies bereft of any moral context larger than the individual ego and its drive for instant gratification.

So then, the fact of taking a perspective on this perspective about worldviews is indicative of yet further development. Another layer of depth has been introduced into the structure of our consciousness. And it is this notion of depth that leads the integral thinker to believe that all worldviews are not equal, that they can be ranked.

Questions that we like to ask are: What is the value in this worldview? In what way does this worldview uplift the person who subscribes to it? In what way does this worldview contribute to the evolution of our species? These are practical questions which can benefit us in the immediate, practical world that we live in.

The worldviews presented here on Polilogues all offer a depth which we feel meets this criterion of upliftment. They come from an astonishingly broad array of perspectives, and this is another delight of the integral approach: biology isn’t better than chemistry, which isn’t better than physics or mysticism. They all are. And a worldview which cannot accommodate what is will not get us very far.

What are some of the real problems that religions today are facing? In my personal opinion - just a musing - the problems stem from a failure to integrate at at least two levels. Positively stated, there are two tasks to perform for any religion:

1. within one tradition to integrate the truth, beauty and goodness of the premodern, modern, and post-modern periods;
2. to free up the possibility of a trans-path spirituality that incorporates the ’best practices’ and core insights of any tradition;

A nice example of the second movement is Integral Spiritual Center.

One of the aims of this project and website is to be a possible example of an integral philosophy in practice. In this post I would like to make clear what is involved in integral philosophy. And I would like to do this by explicating the view on philosophy of Belgian philosopher Leo Apostel, and comparing it to the ideas of Ken Wilber who is generally considered to be the integral philosopher par excellence.

Leo Apostel (as narrated by Wim Christiaens) believes philosophy should aim at incorporating particular perspectives in a more global perspective, and as an applied skill, it should aim at guiding people and organisations in their search for happiness and self-fulfillment. In order to achieve these principles Apostel sets himself three goals.

First, to unify different perspectives without maiming them. This is similar to Ken Wilber’s ’transcend and include’ where the different perspectives are included but transcended in a bigger whole. Wilber looks for the particular truths of each tradition or system and ties it in with other fields of knowledge while vigorously opposing the imperialist tendencies of any tradition who thinks it alone holds the whole truth.

Second, to work towards personal salvation and inner peace. We see something similar in Ken Wilber’s thinking when he stresses the fact that we should first and foremost take up an integral transformative or life practice (ref. ILP), in particular including physical practices, psychodynamic shadow work, and a spiritual discipline, amongst others..

Third, to strive towards social redemption of humanity by arguing for a social organisation that offers us a maximum of pluralism with a maximum of unity (or freedom and equality). Again, in a similar way Wilber has made ample theoretical effort to defend the so-called integral society that honors and respects the whole spiral of social development, and each and every stage of it.

Although in-depth, specialized research is still the major paradigm of the day at academia or public fora some people are thinking in a more integral fashion. These people believe that it is important to try to know reality in toto, as a totality. They argue that we all know and live our own peculiar worldview of how the world works, and that this is fine. But they also tell us that there is some extra benefit in trying to place all the little pieces - pieces of a bigger puzzle - together. Having more pieces lets us appreciate the world more fully in a felt way, an emotional way, a cognitive way, or a spiritual way. Having more pieces  means that we will be able to act and choose in a more understanding way that will not only benefit ourselves, but also others and the environment we live in. Having more pieces means that we will be better able to open ourselves to the wonder and mystery of the universe that we inhabit. Having an integral worldview is seeing everything in 3D  instead of flatland cinema. Although we could name many people who think in an integral fashion I would like to refer on a regular basis to the ideas and works of  Leo Apostel, Ulrich Libbrecht, and Ken Wilber.

The interviews here presented all deal with certain knowledge systems, value systems, and worldviews. Although these three terms might be self-evident I would like to halt a bit at the third term. A worldview is as the term implies the view you have of the world, and this includes the views (ideas, thoughts, feelings) you have of yourself, of your society, of your environment. This worldview might be sometimes be outspoken, or sometimes be at the back of your head. In any case, it will guide your answers to the primary questions of life in general or your life in particular.

Take for instance Gauguin’s questions: “D’Où venons nous? Que sommes nous? Où allons nous?” I translate: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” These are timeless questions that each of us are confronted with.
And still other questions could be: “What is matter? What is life? What is consciousness?”.

To answer these questions  or to build up our worldview - we will look at ourselves, we will look at others, we will look at the natural world. Ken Wilber would say, we look at self, culture, and nature. We might let ourselves be guided by a religion, by sciences, by informal education, etc. Many of the interviews presented here are with scientists: they try to find answers to the questions of matter, life and consciousness. For instance, Diederik Aerts has studied matter from close-by in Geneva. Arnold De Loof spent decades trying to find out what constitutes life. The approaches they use are characterized by rationality and empiricism.

Others, on the other hand, take a slightly different approach. Their research is into the first person. Take Marinus Marijs for instance. He has built up through the years an extensive curriculum of first-person mystical experiences. And to help communicate these experiences to others, and help to understand them, he has also spent many hours doing comparative research into the mystical literature of all times and regions.

When talking about interfaith dialogue, the question arises as whether it is at all possible. Some people argue that since every religion has its own point of view on what constitutes the Truth, this will prevent a real dialogue. Han de Wit agrees, but adds that this is only true at the level of theological or theoretical discussions. In the field, however, or when it comes down to practice, we find out experientially that people from different religious backgrounds can engage in very fruitful debate, as his own experiences with interfaith dialogue show.

Take also the case of Hendrik Hoet, who gives us another example of how interfaith dialogue can work in practice. For him, interfaith dialogue is first of all a matter of becoming ‘friends’ with the followers of different faiths. It is this friendship that forges the bonds, and which transcends the fact that on a theoretical and theological level they might not always agree.

Someone who has written extensively on the problem of comparison between different systems of thought is Ulrich Libbrecht. He also argues for taking a pragmatic position (if we can’t have a dialogue theoretically, we can still try to have one pragmatically). He likens it to the problem of languages: some people say that we cannot translate between languages. Languages are supposed to be incommensurable, meaning that there is no common measure, because each word has its own context, and that context can not be generated in a different language. But, as Libbrecht points out, this would imply that we have to refrain from all interlingual communication, merely on the grounds of theoretical objections! Out in the world, however, theoretical objections are of little value, to say the least. In the world, what matters is what works, and there we see that intercultural communication is going on all the time. And to repeat the point, both Han de Wit and Hendrik Hoet are prime examples of this.