Wednesday, April 21, 2004

The Seven-Fold Matrix (supplement to "What is Integral Science")

SEVEN-FOLD MARTIX

Still another example of healthy Information is the Categorical Matrix. Healthy Information, like all Information is necessarily relatively abstract. And yet the difference between healthy abstractions and concepts and unhealthy ones is that Healthy Abstractions, because they are themselves gestures and aspects or Living Truth, are themselves alive flexible, and conscious of their inherent relativity to and dependance on Living Truth and on the healthy Faith, Knowledge and Understanding. The Categorical Matrix is an abstraction of wholeness that facilitates this needed coordination of Information with relatively less abstract, Knowledge Understanding, Faith and Living Truth.

The Matrix is, among other things, a holistic system of Cosmological and Cognitive Categories that embodies the paradoxical and living nature of the world assumed by Integral Science. One of the oldest variants of the Matrix is the common system of spatial Orientation, that is the 4 directions, north, south, east, west,the vertical orientation of above and below, and the Center that integrates them. The relationship, which in this Matrix variant, is that between North, South, East, and West, is called the Nexus, whereas the Relation of Up and Down is called the Axis. (The points North, South, East and West are called Nexus Points, while; those corresponding to “UP” and “Down” are called Axis Points; both considered together are called Matrix Points) The relation between Axis and Nexus is called the Center. As In a compass, all the relationship categories are mutually defining, so that, in the same way that (in orienting oneself) finding North implies also finding East, West, and South and Up and Down simultaneously, so finding one point on the Matrix means finding its Center, its Mexus, its Axis, all the other points—indeed the entire Matrix. In fact, it can be said that any part of the Matrix both is and is not any other part and that it both is and is not the entire Matrix and visa-versa. In this way The Matrix and all of the aspects of the Matrix are both distinct and united, both together and apart, both plural and singular, both noun and verb and The Matrix draws its meaning and its very existence and Life from this inherent paradox.

But the Matrix Categories are not themselves, simply the spatial coordinates of physical orientation I have just used to illustrate them. Those specific coordinates are just one set of entities that express Matrix reality. The Matrix Categories are much more alive and mysterious than that, and still more so the Matrix itself. All of existence, when it is engaged in a healthy manner, is engaged and lived in terms of Categorical Matrices that, organize as well as generate many sets of entities and processes both more and less abstract than the spatial coordinates.

For example the whole of the explanation that begins this pamphlet describes the Matrix of Living Truth, with Information, Knowledge, Understanding, and Intention as Nexus Points with, lets say, Life on the “below” position and Truth on the “above” position on the Axis and Living-Truth in the Center place (My custom is to name Matrix variants after their center). Another matrix variant is the Matrix of the Mathematical Categories (Also called the Integral Matrix), which Includes the Infinite, The Finite, The Definite, and the Transdefinite on the Nexus, The Subjective in the "Up"-position on the Axis, The Objective in the "Down"-position, and the Integral as the Center. Another, Related Matrix is the Matrix of Being/Time, which has The Future, the Past, The Present, and Eternity on the Nexus and Being in the Up relationship on the Axis with Time in the Down relationship. Being-Time itself being the Center. Another Variant is the Matrix of Individual-Personhood that coordinates the horizontal (Nexus) roles, rights, and responsibilities, of family member, neighbor, citizen, and Soul respectively, with those of Individuation on the vertical Axis (this Axis is not explicitly differentiated here).

The Matrix that is behind all of these associations and more is not an abstraction merely or exclusively but represents a primarily integrative and centripetal convergence process that is not static only but also dynamic and paradoxical and which is the ground of Being itself. The word “Matrix” means “womb”, and there is some sense in which the Matrix itself, as apposed to its intellectualized representation here as cognitive categories, can be experienced "phenomenaesthetically" as the whole of Being/Time, as “ the World” or the World Process itself. In some sense, I think, the World isa Womb,that the world is the womb of Being. And I believe that it is the congress of this World with that which transcends the world, transcends Being itself as Spirit or Freedom, which is the dynamic by which NEW BEING is created. In a healthy Matrix this erotic congress or dance between World and Spirit is how Being propagates itself. (The above statement I recognize to be rather mystical and more metaphysics than cosmology, but I include it for the sake of completeness).

However that may be, it is clear that, as a cosmological system of cognitive coordinates, The Matrix Categories are, in some form, ubiquitous in indigenous cultures and can even be said, in one form or another, to represent the perennial cosmology of Humanity. The four or five elements of alchemy and the (fourfold, five-fold, Seven-fold) cosmologies of many cultures and civilizations are cosmological Matrix variants that have oriented individuals and societies in our world for Thousands of years.

Again, this is of course only the briefest introduction to this aspect of Integral Science. Still, I think it can be seen how the categorical matrix differs, even only as Abstract Information, from our prevailing cognitive dissociations.

For example, from the point of view of what I am calling the "Mathematical Categories" (the Integral Matrix), it is clear that the aspect of reality dealt with by traditional and modern mathematics and geometry is inherently "Indefinite" and as it were, "semi-finite", coming, metaphorically, from a kind of apotropaic, schematic sense of the world-at-a-distance; the "Itness" of the world. "The Mathematical Infinite" is hence not only (though even here only relatively)"In-Finite" but also, and to the same extent "In-Definite". From this point of view, the tyranny of traditional mathematics over other, less abstract ways of knowing reality is a kind of categorical tyranny, a "single vision" to quote Blake, an unconcious cognative dissociation which is a symtom of the transition from an ancient to a modern Cosmology of Apartness.

The Mathematical Categories I propose (I understand that the Greek root "Mathemai" means something like "the Art of Learning",as a part of Integral Science, are an attempt to waken us from "Newtons Sleep" and its single vision and reinstate in "modern" form the Perrenial Cosmology of Humanity.

That cosmology, whether expressed in the form of the Mathematical Categories or of the Matrix of Living-Truth, constitutes a Healthy Abstraction that not only gives information a kind of center or focus, and so has the potential of facilitating the coordination (and the coordinated solution) of problems, but also inherently focuses attention on its own limitations as merely information-although of a healthy kind, directing attention to cognative coordinates that a progressively less abstract-though no less real or valuable--than itself. In this way Abstraction, thus integrated into a healthy Cosmology as a part of Healthy Culture, can resume its apropriate and humble position in egalitarian service to the the whole rather than in pathological "tyranny" over it.

posted by: piankhy | 08:01 | comments

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Healthy Culture

Healthy Culture;

Cosmology, Identity, and Ritual

By Piankhy “pee-ankh-ee”,Copyright © 2004 By Piankhy Salsa (a.k.a. Kevin Thompson)

Culture

Writing creatively or truthfully about culture is tricky because the whole Idea of what it is and how to talk and think about it comes itself from the “dominant culture” as transmitted through various kinds of education. Education is the transmission of culture and if there is something fundamentally wrong with your culture than there is likely to be something fundamentally wrong with your education, including your education about culture. At the moment the dominant culture seems to be presenting a kind of dichotomy between conservative ethnocentrism and liberal or progressive multiculturalism as the terms of the debate. But to take sides in this debate is already to surrender to the dominant cultures way of thinking about and discussing the issue. It is to make the (in my opinion) ethnocentric presumption that the dominant cultures treatment of and approach to the whole subject is the correct or best one. If that were so one would have only to take one or another of the offered positions on the matter and fight it out—kind of like with the party system

This is the kind of situation that one can only be escaped through what amounts to creativity and insight rather than purely rational or reactionary response. It requires thinking outside the box of the whole dominant paradigm. My creative response is to propose different way of thinking about both culture and Identity as an aspect of an equally different way of thinking about everything else, an actual alternative cosmology and cultural paradigm which I am calling Integral Science, for which the issue of culture is central.

A trans-cultural definition of "culture"

"There are really only two kinds of music; good music and bad music")--Louie Armstrong (paraphrased)

So now I want to define what I mean by "culture". By "the prevalent Culture" I do not mean "White Culture", or European Culture, or Patriarchal culture or even Capitalist culture. From the point of view of Integral Science these labels are all part of a rhetoric of factionalism, alienation and "false surviving" that is itself symptomatic of the dominant Disintegral, Unhealthy Culture of Apart-ness.

The integrative definition of culture that I am using is a Trans-factional, Trans-historical, even trans-cultural one that applies to individuals as well as to groups and is as follows: The two main classes of culture are Healthy, integrative culture, (or the Culture and cultivation of Togetherness, of health and integrity) and unhealthy disintegrative culture, (the Culture and cultivation of Apart-ness, of fragmentation and dissociation). Healthy culture is a Process in which inner and outer coming-together between and within individuals and groups predominates over the inner and outer estrangement between and within individuals and groups. Unhealthy culture is equally a Process, and is manifest when the reverse is the case, when the process of estrangement, disassociation "coming apart" predominates (inwardly and outwardly) over that of coming-together or integration. When understood this way, it can be shown that both The Culture of Togetherness (a culture accenting Togetherness) and Culture of Apart-ness (a culture accenting Apart-ness) have existed in many different societies and individuals and in every society and individual at certain times.

Having made this primary distinction between the two fundamental Types of Culture I want to clarify the sense in which I mean them, not as "Ideal orienting Types" solely, but as Types referring also to real subjective and objective experience. This can be so because I mean the words "health" and "sickness" and "Culture" in a Process sense as well as in a more nominal static sense. For me, Healthy Culture is the same as "Healing" Culture. It is a state of affairs in which The Culture of Togetherness is Primary integrating and healing the culture of Apart-ness, not one in which the culture of Apart-ness is entirely absent. The Healthy Culture of Togetherness is "Together-with" the culture of Apart-ness in a conscious educative and healing way. Similarly, Sick culture is a Process of Cultural erosion where the Culture of Togetherness is not absent so much as turned against itself within a culture of Apart-ness in which is a dynamic of fear, alienation, and confusion stemming from unconsciousness as "Apart-ness" itself.

But before I finish this Definition of Culture I want to distinguish, in a relative and not absolute way, four fundamental aspects of it. These aspects are Cosmology,Identity,Ritualand Infrastructure.In this essay I will discuss Cosmology, Ritual, and Identity, saving Infrastructure for a future essay.

Cosmology

Of Course the Cosmology of Togetherness, the general world-view and fundamental cognitive orientation of Healthy Culture is some version or other of Integral Science. Or ,put another way, Integral Science is meant to be the "modern" version of that perennial, primal, and universally human world-view that assumes, as a starting place for reason, the fundamental Togetherness of Subject and Object, of self and other, of the vertical and the horizontal of the above and the below, and even of Togetherness and Apart-ness.

Such a cosmology of Togetherness is not, in a healthy culture, segregated from the Identity, the Ritual, and the Infrastructure of which it is such an integral part, but rather is transmitted with them as a part of a healthy Education (and by "Education" I mean exactly the "Transmission of Culture", whether sick or healthy, and inclusive of Cosmology, Identity, Ritual, and Infrastructure, across generations).

The absence of such a conscious Cosmology of Togetherness necessarily leaves us with an unconscious cosmology of Apart-ness which puts the accent on alienation and estrangement inwardly and outwardly and between the inner and the outer themselves. This kind of cosmology--and the modern scientific cosmology is certainly of this kind for the most part, as are many ancient ones--is inherently rigid in that the accent on apart-ness is not an optional, volitional choice that can be reversed at will but rather something stemming from unconsciousness of and dissociation from any alternative.

Actually, one could say that the modern Cosmology of Apart-ness and the Culture of Apart-ness of which it is a cardinal aspect, constitute a kind of culmination or confluence of the global Cultural erosion which we ordinarily describe as world history.

Of course it is not so simple as that. Both within this history and outside of it, relatively Healthy Culture and relative Healthy cosmologies have existed and even been transmitted, and it is just the task of an Integral history of the world, as a part of an Integral Cosmology and Integral Culture in general, to recognize and revive these in appropriate forms.

Indeed,it is just this engagement with sick cosmology by healthy cosmology, and more generally, of dysintegral Culture by Healthy Culture, that effectively halts the cognitive and cultural erosion process itself and replaces it with one that might correspondingly be called "cultural composting". And it is in such an engaged but paradoxical "Yes"; which says "Yes" to "No" as well as to itself, that, to modify Wallace Stevens a bit, "The Future of he world depends."

Ritual.

Just as in the case of Cosmology, we can distinguish Rituals of inner and outer Togetherness and Rituals of inner and outer separation or Apart-ness (By “rituals”, I mean repeated patterns of behavior in individuals and groups related to and reinforcing a consciously or unconsciously shared cosmology).

By "Rituals of Apart-ness" I mean acts of self-numbing and of dissociation that separate us from aspects of our own wholeness and relatedness. Some behaviors dissociate us primarily from our own bodies, such as the regular consumption of drugs and overly processed food for example. Others primarily separate us from our hearts--such as the repeated practice of vivisection in certain university laboratories, or of hours of bureaucratic office work. Some seem primarily to separate us from our minds or souls, like watching television often does. And by "Rituals of Apart-ness" I also mean rituals that isolate and inhibit us from coming together outwardly, with others, in meetings in different venues. These include such habits as that of using private transportation, or of simply always being busy. Many of these rituals require or are supported by their own technological and/or legal infrastructure. And all of them are inter-connected as “syn-entropic” rituals within a culture of inner and outer apart-ness. By this I mean that rituals of outer apart-ness reinforce and even imply rituals of inner apart-ness and visa versa.

As rituals of inner and outer Togetherness, I can sight the vision quest and various rituals of initiation. I can also sight things like “co-counseling”, Open Space Technology, or healthy Tantra as, if not quite achieving really healing Togetherness, at least having potential for this kind of thing. These kinds of things at their best, informed by a Healthy Cosmology and Identity Politics and supported by Healthy Infrastructure, could be examples of real community and communion wherein the individuals come together in a way that encourages both inner as well as outer consensus. Eating mostly unprocessed and natural foods together, in a conscious way can foster both inner and outer communion and is not like the false communion of coming-together outwardly around substances that numb and estrange us from ourselves inwardly. Other rituals of Togetherness include the Personhood ritual and, the Life-Dance Party. These are Integral Science rituals, some of the contents of which are available in outline via e-mail or in person.

This way of thinking about ritual (and Culture generally) avoids the pitfalls of ethnocentrism on the one hand and those of a nihilistic cultural relativity on the other. But it only avoids a kind of simplistic dualism if its remembered that the two kinds of ritual process it describes are always Both present in any real culture or individual, that the essential thing that distinguishes a relatively healthy ritual from an unhealthy one is whether Conscious, healthy rituals are acknowledging, integrating, and healing the unconscious ones or not, and that one kind of ritual can change into the other with surprising ease as inner and outer circumstances change.

Having said this, it is still true that when and where the cultural soil-building of conscious healthy ritual is not happening then the cultural erosion of unconscious ritual is. And, though the distinction might still be seen as a dualism, it is a dynamic and sophisticated, rather than a simplistic and rigid dualism because it posits a dynamic but potentially unstable balance that can always reverse itself in either direction (both in collectively and in individuals) and so inherently advises neither complacency nor despair. In fact, the presence of either of these attitudes is a good sign that the balance is already shifting to the side of sickness and disintegration. This is not only the case for ritual but for all aspects of culture

Identity

The situation with Identity is of course the same as that with culture. The framing of the terms of the debate—the very creation of both the Debate and its term-by the dominant culture seems to me unquestioningly accepted by those in its thrall. Our culture tells us our history in terms of the competition between various factions ("us’s" and "thems") between which we are then obliged to choose and take sides. The dynamic is the same whether the antagonists are male and female, black and white, 1st world and 3rd world, north and south. And to say, for example, that it was the northern white European males that brought about and maintain this fragmented and factional way of looking at things, is only to assume the very thing that is at issue and betray the imprint of the dominant fragmented cosmology and its related myths of both Identity and causality; it reveals one as already under the spell of the dominant culture, having made a primary Identification in its terms and in its spirit.

The Factionalisms of Race, Sex, Nationality, Profession, Religion, and other identity politics in their negative manifestations is thus wholly a symptom of the dominant Culture of Apart-ness and of our compliance with it in accepting such factional Identities as primary. The creative response to such fragmentation is again, not simply to take sides in the endless warfare that our culture wants us to understand as our essential history, so that we each dutifully wear (sometimes exchanging) the identity uniforms that fate, physiology, and "education" seem to have given us. A creative adaptation to the array of roles and identities that the dominant sick culture foists upon us is possible and in this case in is embodied in the Identity of Individual-Personhood.

Understanding the primary identity of Individual Personhood means understanding and accepting a kind of paradoxical (hence the hyphen) identity which unites the social roles and responsibilities of Family member, Neighbor, Citizen (of the world) and Soul with the imperative of Individual Integrity understood as an expression of an individuals inner consensus at any given time. Unlike the identity of Individuality only, Individual Personhood situates the individual in a nexus of relationship and responsibility in the Familial, Local, Collective, and psycho/religious venues it defines. This nexus is Personhood in its “horizontal” or social aspect. But Unlike the Identity of a "Person" only (even the this fourfold sense), the identity of the Individual-Personhood includes the right and responsibility to discover and be ones (individual)self, to engage and fulfill ones implicit social roles in ones own way, as something flowing from ones own inner consensus (inner togetherness)of mind, heart, body and intuition, so that ones action can approach an expression of ones Individual SelfNature. Such individuality is the “vertical” aspect of the identity of Individual-Personhood.

Notice that such an identity is not factional at all. Everyone is an Individual-Person by the mere fact of their existence; by their very existence everyone has a “Familial’ association (even if only with his or her self and immediate environment. Everyone is likewise somebody’s Neighbor, somebody’s fellow “Citizen-of-the-World”, everyone has a subjectivity (psyche or soul) with some relationship to ultimate things. And, what is distinguishable from all this, everyone has an inimitable authentic individuality that is manifest to some degree in any given gesture or act. To affirm Individual-Personhood as ones primary identity then is in some sense to assert something obvious (at least when pointed out) and perhaps even commonplace.

And of course all of this has political implications as well. As Identity Politicians, Individual-Personal Politicians regard coming together in the five venues of Individual-Personhood to be the most fundamental of human rights and responsibilities. They seek consensus in the remodeling of international, national, state and local constitutions and legislation, (by subtraction as will as addition) so as to facilitate such coming together, to facilitate Healthy Culture generally, and to disestablish or heal the Public/Private institutions and laws that inhibit it.

Such Individual-Personal Politics is neither public nor private in spirit and holds these two forms of discourse and activism to be opposite sides of the same unsustainable coin. For example, from the perspective of Individual-Personhood, private property is basically the result of collective and individual theft, self/other alienation and exploitation, while public property usually just means the public redistribution of these dubious, alienated and malproduced goods and services. For the Individual-Personal Politician History itself—an integral history—could be understood as our collective and mutual loss of this Living Individual-Personhood, which, as a dynamic Field of Belonging, is the opposite of the inwardly and outwardly alienated identities in which we imprison ourselves and each other.

There is much more to be said about Individual-Personal Politics and In the context of Healthy Culture but here I just wanted to give and example of the Identity possibility that comes from a creative and Life-affirming response to the paradigms and frameworks of the dominant culture and its formal and informal education.

Conclusion

The problem that all this raises then is the extent to which we, you and I, collectively and individually still primarily practice an unhealthy culture that does not foster, and makes it difficult to even conceive of, the dance of inner/outer coming-together that is consistent with true healing. It is the extent to which we primarily practice and learn the concepts and rituals of fear, alienation, anesthetization, and inner and outer dissociation that constitute our most active cultural heritage. We are all already initiated into the identities, rituals, and the cosmology of apart-ness and consciously and unconsciously proceed to likewise initiate the next generation. In our society the “conscious” initiation is called formal education and the unconscious one would, I suppose, simply be called "growing up".

Because of all this, the overwhelming tendency of people and organizations trying to manifest a really different kind of culture is a kind cultural backsliding (perhaps it really a kind of Post-system stress disorder) wherein supposedly new and radical institutions and practices are created which really just recreate with unimportant variations the very culture to which they aspire to transform. I can’t think of any political movement other than the (as yet unmanifest) one I’ve just described that is an exception to this. I think what all this means for activists, progressives and anyone who would be a part of a transformative and healing culture is that the creation of healthy culture means the practice of healthy culture; the practice of rituals of inner-and-outer coming-together, on the part of its members as individuals and as groups that affirm Healthy Cosmology, Healthy Identity, and Healthy Infrastructure. And it means establishing institutions or associations that encourage that practice. This means that within those groups and individuals, Rituals, Identities, Cosmologies and Infrastructures of inner/outer Togetherness need to be established and privileged while the present rituals and identities of Apart-ness--of dissociation--inwardly and outwardly, need to be acknowledged, understood, engaged, and progressively healed.

Ultimately, no real cultural alternative will exist within the so-called progressive or radical movements if the individuals in them do not own up to our own rituals and identities of inner and out apart-ness and if we are not sincerely trying to befriend or world, each other and ourselves (and our "enemies") through our own Rituals, Identities, and Cosmology, of inner and outer Togetherness. This, of course, means subordinating the “Us-and-them” meme that so effectively distracts us from our own “shit” and our own compromisedness, and that is so central to the culture of Apart-ness. It means, by beginning the process of fully understanding and acknowledging our own individual and collective wounds, inaugurating an individual as well as group project of catalyzing our own healing together-with that of other people and the world in an affirmation of inherent mutuality. And It means confronting our education in the current culture of Apart-ness, the Identities, concepts, Cosmology, and practices that we have internalized and that undermine our attempts to embrace (and sometimes to even conceive of) truly Healthy Culture.

Such education would be replaced by a cosmology and practice that facilitates the integration ones own healing with that of other people and the world. It would be a cosmology and practice that assumes the primacy of Togetherness and so is capable of fostering its nurturing and progressive manifestation as culture, Identity and Ritual. Of course I call this cosmology and Practice Integral Science and the Dance of Living Individual Personhood and Living Friendship, which I am calling the Life-Dance is the primary ritual/experiment of this science. You are welcome to join me in these experiments in this Dance, and Indeed this, all of the above, and the whole of these two weblogs, only justifies itself as a elaborate form of Individual-Personal Invitation to a Life-Dance, a of Healthy, Culture, Living-Friendship, and goodwill. For more information about the Healthy Culture, the Life-Dance and Integral Science, e-mail me at piankhy9@hotmail.com.

End Notes:

1Copyright © 2004 By Piankhy Salsa (a.k.a. Kevin Thompson). This Copyrighting thing bothers a little me because of its private/pubic nature but its clear to me that not copyrighting wouldn’t make what I'm presenting any more Personal; it would just be "public/private" instead of "private/public" so to speak. "The Public domain" is closer (I think) to the spirit , if not the language, of what I want to do with my stuff but I'm copywriting for now until I figure out how to formally do that.

2Actually, this same situation exists, not only with the dominant cultures analysis of culture and Identity per se but also with its analysis of anything else…

3This definition of healthy and sick culture, like Integral Science itself, presumes and affirms the pre-existent “co-arising” of the inner and the outer, the subject and the object, the individual and the group, so that the healthy coming-together of the one necessarily involves the healthy coming-together of the other and visa-versa. This means that inner "coming-together" that takes place without outer coming-together and outer "coming-together" that takes place without inner coming together, to the extent that either is possible, are both examples of Unhealthy rather than healthy culture and cultivation. It means that trying to heal yourself before you try to heal the world will not heal either. Neither will trying to heal the world before healing yourself. Both ambitions represent unhealthy culture because they both assume, act on, and so further the fragmentation and dissociation (the "apart-ness") of the inner and the outer, the self and the world.

posted by: piankhy | 16:11 | comments

Monday, April 12, 2004

What is Integral Science? By Piankhy1

Integral Science and Living Truth

Integral Science is Living Science. It is Personal, rather than Public or Private Science. It is mysterious, whole and paradoxical. It is not to be understood by words alone. One way to describe it is as an enterprise of cultivating and coordinating Healthy Information, Healthy Knowledge, Healthy Understanding and Healthy Faith in the progressive manifestation of Living Truth.

I think the words that you are reading are part of the enterprise of Integral Science because I think that they are mostly Healthy Information. But Information alone is just abstract hearsay. If I read about the political situation in Liberia for example, but have never been there, then I have only information about it, which is not Knowledge or Understanding or Faith. Still, Healthy Information is better than unhealthy, fragmentary information because it can lead to Healthy Knowledge as a part of Living Truth.

If however, I have actually been to Liberia in the past, then I can say that I have at least some Knowledge of that place and its situation, as Knowledge is remembered experience. But such Knowledge, however accurately remembered it may be, can in no way substitute for Understanding, which is actual rather than remembered experience. Still, Healthy Knowledge is better than unhealthy knowledge because it can lead to Healthy Understanding, as a part of Living Truth.

Having some Understanding of the situation in Liberia means that I am living there right now. Understanding is (relatively) present, actual experience of something. But having actual experience of something doesn?t clear up the question of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that experience. That will always be a matter of Faith. Still, Healthy Understanding is better than Unhealthy Understanding because it can lead to Healthy Faith as aspect of Living Truth.

Why am I living in Liberia at all? What is the meaning and ultimate purpose or good of my experiences there? The answers to these questions would be matters of my individual Faith and their quality is dependant on the quality, the wholeness, of the Information, Knowledge and Understanding that are part of that Faith. Healthy Faith-- Good Faith-- is better than unhealthy Faith because it can lead to healthier Information, and a more Living Truth.

What I have been saying may make it sound like I am writing about something that?s primarily linear in time; as though Healthy Information comes first and Living Truth comes last, but that is not so in a primary way. Living Truth is equally a part of Healthy Information, Healthy Knowledge, Healthy Understanding and Healthy Faith and each of These are equally aspects of Healthy Living Truth expressed through an actual Living Person.

For example, what is keeping your (the readers) understanding focused on this information right now, is some implied Faith in the usefulness of doing so (and doing so right now as opposed to at some other time). And this Understanding, and Faith is based on your Knowledge (remembered experience) of the relative usefulness of reading what you imagine was similar information in a similar way in the past.

Whether or not you are reading this in good faith has a lot to do with whether or not you are prepared and desirous of experiencing a Living Truth. Such an experience could change not only your current information and your current Knowledge (by adding to your remembered experience) but also your current understanding (present experience) of this very text and the expectations (faith) that is derived from that understanding.

Your Faith would be different because your Understanding would be different, your understanding would be different because your Knowledge would be different, your Knowledge would be different because your information would be different and your information would be different because your Faith (and therefor where you looked for your information) had changed. And yet what really will have ?caused? any of those changes, If they where really healthy ones, would be greater manifestation and realization of Living Truth on the part of the person who is experiencing them.

And even such causation is not the whole truth, because Living Truth is just as much caused by a change toward healthy information, knowledge, understanding and Faith, as the latter are caused by Living Truth. They are all part of the same whole, and Integral Science is the enterprise of cultivating and nurturing this whole and its expression in the world.

Good Sense and the meaning of Life.

Another example of Healthy Information is the Integral Science Theory of ?the meaning of Life?. This involves the concept and experience of ?Wholesthesia? (?Complete Sense-Perception?), as the relative silence of health. ?When the shoes fit the foot is forgotten, when the belt fits, the belly is forgotten? goes the aphorism of Chuang Tzu. Wholesthesia is the transliteration of this concept into the modern idiom and relates phenomenalogically to the concept and experience of Anesthesia (?without Sense-Perception?) as a kind of opposite. While local Anesthesia can lead to general Anesthesia, followed by Coma and Death, Local Wholesthesia can lead to General Wholesthesia, Phenomenesthesia (?awakening?), Numinesthesia (?Life?) and even beyond Life to what I am calling Freedom itself.

But the experiment this Theory implies is not the perhaps expected one of seeking the immediate and total abolition and banishment of anesthesia. A further aspect of this hypothesis affirms the possibility of ?Callaesthesia? (?good sense?). This is a sensibility that involves and acceptance and utilization of both Anesthesia and Wholesthesia as aspects of a kind of tacking process on the way to Life and Freedom. It involves a dynamic of friendship with oneself that combines acknowledgement and support in the short run, with a challenging of oneself in the long run. Under this Theory, it would be Malaesthetic (a sign of ?Bad Sense? or ?Bad Taste?), rather than Callesthetic to deny the limitations of our present understanding and assume a rigid, dualistic and perfectionistic stance. And it would also be malaesthetic to fail to acknowledge and pursue, however patiently or indirectly, the ultimate goals of Life and Freedom.

Hopefully the Information that this brief explanation constitutes will remind you the reader of your own healthy Knowledge of wholestheisia in such a way as to contribute to a Callesthetic rather than Mal-aesthetic Understanding. If this happens, than the new Faith, with which you come away from this writing, will involve neither one-sided praise nor one-sided condemnation of yourself or others, but an active and progressively inclusive Faith in the compassionate transcendence of both praise and blame inwardly and outwardly. Such a healthy, active, inclusive and transcendent Faith is, along with the correspondingly healthy information, knowledge and understanding, an expression of Living Truth.

"False Surviving" and Modern Science

"False Surviving" (or "Surviving Falsehood"--other good words are ?phoniness? and ?alienation?) is a way to describe that which is primary when Living Truth is not primary. It is the central aspect and manifestation of Modern Disintegrative Science. In the understanding of Integral Science, it is not Death or Dying that is the "opposite" of Life or Living, but rather it is fear based and meaningless Surviving that relates to Living in the same way that Falsehood relates to Truth.

The corresponding aspects of Surviving Falsehood are Fragmented or Unhealthy Information, Knowledge, Understanding and Faith.

Unhealthy information is dissociated and fragmentary information that appeals to and evokes our remembered experience of Fragmentation and Dissociation. That is, it appeals to and recalls our Unhealthy Knowledge. In the same way, It also appeals to and reinforces our unhealthy Understanding; our present experience of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual dissociation, anxiety and fragmentation. And it is out of this unhealthy present experience that our Bad Faith (our unhealthy assumptions and expectations) is reinforced, as is our general sense of False Surviving, of inner and outer alienation, numbness, fear, and Phoniness.

Modern Science assumes in practice that the world is fundamentally particulate and reducible to the abstractions of fragmented and dissociated information. It, and the educational institutions that it influences, function to dissociate rather than integrate problems, so that the ?solution? to one problem all to often becomes a problem in another area of life. This kind of Science also seems to assume in practice an estrangement from nature, it assumes that nature is an other relative to the scientist himself and the culture he or she represents. And it assumes that this nature is better understood, interpreted, and controlled, through the medium of external instruments rather than directly.

Modern Scientists (as well their followers) conceive of and conduct their experiments from the point of view of these assumptions and whatever happens in the (outer) world as a result of these experiments is interpreted in terms of these assumptions. Not surprisingly the ?evidence? derived from such experiments ?reveals?, the purpose of our existance to be ultimately to mere indefinite survival in an indifferent and meaningless universe. Not surprisingly, the Information that results from these experiments is fragmentary and dissociated, the Knowledge and Understanding and Faith that it reinforces and justifies is based on anxiety and fear and meaninglessness.

All of these assumptions and activities of Modern Disintegrative Science come from a prevalent, if unconscious experience of False Surviving, of inner and outer alienation, on the part of the Scientists and Philosophers who began Modern Science. And this Malaesthetic experience of phoniness derived from, as well as contributed to, the mal-esthetic prevalence of anesthetic substances and activities on the part of its originators and followers. And it is prevalent in these people be cause it was prevalent in the relatively Malaesthetic society and culture in which they lived. And the situation today is no different.

And yet, callaesthetically, Integral Science includes and accepts Surviving Falsehood and all of its aspects as the manifestation of a Disintegrative Science and Culture that it also acknowledges and accepts, as a precondition of Healing and Integration. Healing cannot happen if sickness is denied or rejected. In fact, the proper acknowledgment and diagnosis of sickness is the first manifestation of healing itself.

Individual Personhood, Friendship, and Personal Politics

All of this means that the first experiment of Integral Science, the first gesture toward Living Truth, must involve the Personal (and not Primarily Public or Private) acknowledgement and acceptance of ones own and others False Surviving; of ones own and others Alienation, Fear, Phoniness and Sick Knowledge etc?. And this first step must also involve a Personal, Individual acknowledgment and acceptance of the Living Truth and Healthy Knowledge that is also present in all of us and in some way always has been.

But what is Individual Personhood and what do I mean in distinguishing the Personal from the Public and the Private? Living Personhood is that identity and expression that integrates our common roles of Family member, Neighbor, Citizen, and Soul with the imperative of Individual integrity. The existence of separate Public and the Private realms and the corresponding dichotomy between the Public and Private "person" represents a false distinction and distortion that is symptomatic of the Prevalence of False Surviving over Living Truth. No experience is Purely Public or Purely Private but both the Public and the Private are equally Dyspersonal.

In an alienated Culture and Society the Public realm is a realm of phoniness and the form and content of purely Public gestures in no way challenge this prevailing social and cultural phoniness. What is Public is usually the Individual, Civil and Neighborly aspects of the Personal. When what is Public Knowledge or "common" Knowledge is not at the same time Healthy Knowledge but is rather unhealthy knowledge, to make a purely Public gesture is to accept and reinforce that unhealthy knowledge. And this is true regardless of the actual content of the gesture.

The Private Realm is Simply the soft underbelly of the Public one. What is private is usually a dissociated version of the Individual, Familial and Soulful aspects of the Personhood. It is primarily the place where the Private complement to Public phoniness; that is, Fearfulness, addiction and alienation is disguised, even from ourselves. Our Private "Friends" are simply those with whom we connive at this disguised phoniness, those with whom we distract ourselves from it.

What is experienced or shared "in Private" is not more authentic than what is shared "in Public" it is just a less visible manifestation of the pathology of self/other-alienation, of False Surviving. Real Authenticity, whether it takes place in an outwardly Public or Private venue, is always subversive of that venue, it is always and expression of Living Truth and it is always Personal. Personal Friendship is a relationship between persons that is characterized by that authenticity and by an interaction in which both False Surviving and Living Truth are acknowledged and engaged inwardly and outwardly.

To accept as primary the identity of Individual Living Person, is to engage in a kind of Identity Politics that transcends the factionality of Race, Gender, Creed, and Class and even Species. Without necessarily denying these Identities, it firmly subordinates them as variations on the Main Theme of Living Individual Personhood, together with the rights and responsibilities implied in this identity. Individuals accepting this Identity become Personal ?Politicians? and activists who regard coming together in the five venues of Personhood as the most fundamental of human rights and responsibilities. They seek consensus in the remodeling of International, National, State, and Local constitutions and legislation (by subtraction as well as addition), so as to facilitate such coming together and to disestablish or heal those Public and Private institutions and Laws which can be shown to inhibit it. Personal Political activists set the example of people honestly giving account of themselves as family members, Neighbors, Citizens and Souls in pursuit of greater inner and outer consensus. They are not one-sidedly positional, professional, self-righteous or factional, and seek not so much to persuade as to exemplify, educate, and inspire.

The Life-Dance

The Life-Dance is this Dance of inner and outer Friendship. It is a kind of dance between Living and Surviving, between truth and falsehood in which the former of the two pairs both leads and follows the other, and in which the other is thereby progressively healed and redeemed in the light of Living Truth. It is the Process of inner and outer friendship by which inwardly and outwardly alienated individuals become Living Persons.

Information is of the Mind, of the Future, of the Inner Adult; Knowledge is of the Heart, of the Past, of the Inner Child/Adolescent; Understanding is of the Body, or the Present, of the Inner Animal; Faith is of the Intuition, of Eternity, of the Inner Elder. Individual Living Truth Manifests as the coming together, the Inner Consensus of all of these. The Life-Dance is the dance between this Inner Consensus, of Mind, Heart, Body, and Soul, and Outer Consensus with others in the sphere of our outer Personal relationships. As people need to come together for consensus within themselves as individuals of integrity, so they need to come together for consensus outwardly with Family, Neighbors, fellow Citizens and Souls. The Life-Dance demonstrates and enacts the coming together (the pre-existing Togetherness really) of these two Kinds of Coming Together.

I, Piankhy Thompson suffer from Alienation and Phoniness, from False Surviving. I am afraid of being vulnerable, prone to vanity, prejudice and intellectual and aesthetic snootiness. And I am often lonely and isolated and weak. And I am also the opposite of these things. I am also--and you are also as well-- a Living Person capable of acknowledging and expressing Living Truth in the Spirit of True Friendship. And I have Ideas about how we together can nourish that Life and that Living Truth in ourselves, each other and in the world.

The act of my writing and giving you this Pamphlet is an experiment in Integral Science. It is meant to be a Personal gesture of Friendship and Authenticity. The pamphlet is supposed to be a bit of a Healthy Information meant to serve as an invitation to an inner and outer "get-together", with good sense and in good faith, around the spirit of Living Truth.

The Life-Dance Party

One version of this inner and outer "get-together" is something I am calling The Life-Dance Party. The Life-Dance Party is something that happens on Wednesday once a week at Twin Oaks Community where I live, but it can also happen anywhere there is the time and space for it. It is a cultural Pilot project, and an experiment of Integral Science , in Living Friendship with each other and ourselves. I invite you to come to Twin Oaks for a Life-Dance party and/or to hear and experience more of Integral Science (of which there is much more in the way of Theory and Experiment). And I would probably also be willing to be your guest for this purpose at some other place of your own choosing.

My E-mail Address is piankhy9@hotmail.com. Please get in touch with me if you are interested in learning more about or going further into this experiment in Integral Science.

In the Spirit of Mutuality, of Thanks and of Welcome,

Piankhy Thompson

"Think Personally, Act Personally"

End Notes:

1 Copyright © 2004 By Piankhy Salsa ( a.k.a. Kevin Thompson). This Copyrighting thing bothers a little me because of its private/pubic nature but its clear to me that not copyrighting would'nt make what I'm presenting any more Personal; it would just be "public/private" instead of "private/public" so to speak. "The Public domain" is closer (I think) to the spirit , if not the language, of what I want to do with my stuff but I'm copywriting for now until I figure out how to formally do that.

2 Healthy Faith means a conscious Faith that involves a willingness for the Faith itself to be completely transformed (together with the information, knowledge and understanding of which it is a part) by an experience of Living Truth. At the same time, Healthy information also encourages the experience of Living Truth by acknowledging its own limitations as (relatively speaking) only abstract information and not itself even Knowledge, Understanding or Faith, much less Living Truth. Such information, if it is healthy, points to, and makes room for Living Truth both directly and indirectly as a result of disclaiming for itself, as well as for Knowledge, Understanding and Faith, any validity or sufficiency in isolation.

3 This Example is only a brief exposition of one of three main interrelated and evolving aspects of Integral Science Theory so far. The other two are , The Matrix and the Matrix Categories, and Integral Evolution Theory.

4 In Fact, one could say that the modern alienated Scientist simply occupies the office of Priest in our present modern Dark Ages. He corresponds to the equally alienated members of the current Merchant Class (the financial elite) from which the members of the present Alienated Aristocracy and Monarchy are taken. The True believers who envy them would then form some of the ranks of the modern alienated Peasantry of the Employed. (I do not mean to cast aspersions on holding office in any of the preceding categories as I myself have been among their number.)

5 Other experiments include: The Personhood Conference, The Life-Dance Union, The Life-Fair, and The Personhood Ritual, among others. And yet , in a sense, all of these and the Life-Dance Party as well are really just aspects of a single Life-Dance experiment.

posted by: piankhy | 22:53 | comments