Integral Conversations

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Integral Conversations Allan Combs University of North Carolina at Asheville Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco December 2002 This paper is a continuation – a re-edit to be honest – of the earlier article, Conversations for a Better World, also on this website. It was originally published in Integralis Journal, now inactive. It will probably begin as a kind of conversation revolution, for which the needed political strength has not yet accumulated. - Rudolf Bahro The good news is that there are significant numbers of people throughout the world who are deeply committed to the values that could transform the Earth, and change our own destructive style of living on it. These people report that they would be willing to make personal sacrifices if necessary to initiate constructive changes (Elgin, 1997; Ray, 1996). They come from all walks of society, not only in the first world but the second and third worlds as well. If given a voice they would speak out against a global economy of over-consumption, the exploitation and the exhaustion of natural resources, and the widespread degradation of the air, soil, and water. Such destructive trends have been propelled by the megamachine, a term used by the late philosopher and activist Rudolf Bahro (1994) to refer to the increasing domination of today’s economic, social, and ecological realities by huge corporate organizations that flourish with little concern for individual human beings, and which choose again and again to ignore future devastation in favor of short-term gains (E.g., Hawkin, 1994). Faced with forces of such magnitude, good intentions alone cannot produce the changes that are needed. What would seem to be required is a wide-scale transformation of the human species itself, a transformation in the direction of shared positive values that honor the natural Earth and carry a tolerance, even a celebration, of individual religious and cultural differences. Such a transformation cannot come from the intellect alone, but must arise in the whole person: heart, mind, body, and spirit. Otherwise apparent gains are likely to slip away when problems become complex and difficult, as indeed they have already. My point is that change must come from the whole person and not from ideas alone. This, of course, is easier to prescribe than to actually bring about. How does one become a such a whole person? Structures of consciousness in a complex world Let us begin by asking exactly what it means to be a whole person in today’s world. Many ideas have been offered, but one of the most compelling, and the one I will focus on here, was first articulated by the German poet and philosopher Jean Gebser (e.g., 1949/1986). Similar notions are found in recent works by Ken Wilber (e.g., 1998, 1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c) and Maik Hosang (2000), the writings of the late Rudolf Bahro (1994), and in the works of others, all of whom have been influenced by Gebser’s thought. Beyond this, there are a larger number

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of theorists whose work carries a family resemblance to those of the above because they share a broad common intellectual framework with Gebser (e.g., Beck & Cowan, 1996; Cook-Greuter, 1999; Kegan, 1982, 1994; Kohlberg, 1981; Wade, 1996). These theorists, like Gebser himself, see human development as progressing through a series of psychological stages of increasing competence, sophistication, and compassion. Beyond this, most of them understand the highest levels of development to incorporate a kind of recapitulation as well as summing up of the major historical epochs through which our entire species has passed. At Gebser’s highest, or integral stage of human development which Hosang terms the homo integralis, the fully developed person embodies all the earlier stages simultaneously.i Early in the development of his thinking, in Gebser had noticed what he came to understand as a new form, or structure, of consciousness emerging in the 20th century. It was appearing in many different contexts. He termed it integral consciousness. It could be found in the art of Pablo Picasso, where figures were seen from several different visual perspectives at once. It could also be sensed in the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, who reached beyond linear time and space into a kind of atemporal realm at once real and enchanted. It was apparent in the new quantum physics created by Werner Heisenberg and others, in which the micro-level of the physical universe is characterized by a space and time that are interchangeable and exist in an atemporal and quasi-spatial realm that undergirds the Newtonian world of solid objects and linear temporal sequences. Gebser’s principal work available in English translation, The EverPresent Origin, explores in depth the emergence of this structure in areas as disparate as art, jurisprudence, physics, biology, and poetry. In the fully developed integral consciousness the world takes on a concrete and immediate quality, characteristic of the experience of living fully in the present. At the same time, however, it is paradoxically suffused with a subtle spiritual light, which Gebser called the light of the Origin. The Origin is a term that Gebser used to refer to the original spiritual ground of all that is, a notion which was probably related to the Neoplatonic idea of the One (Combs, 2002). He termed this structure of consciousness integral, in part because it brings a multifaceted experience of space and time, but also because it incorporates all the major structures that Gebser believed had dominated humankind in the past. These include archaic, magical, mythical, and mental structures of consciousness. In the following paragraphs I will summarize Gebser’s theory of these structures. The important thing is that these all continue to exist in us today, each playing its own role in our day-to-day experience, as well as in the events of the world. As we will see, they enrich our lives in their own unique ways, while at the same time contributing to the difficulties that humankind faces in today’s troubled world. The oldest, or archaic structure of consciousness, represents a transitional experience from the pre-human, or animal, condition. Gebser did not write very much about this structure, believing it too distant to be very accessible to modern understanding. Recently, however, anthropologists have put considerable effort into illuminate the seminal pre-human mind (e.g., Mithen, 1996). Based on their work, a good guess is that the archaic structure of consciousness is represented by what today is termed mimetic intelligence (Donald, 1991, 2001). This is a prelinguistic mind that makes better use of personal memories than do animals but is not capable of reasoning or abstract thinking as we know these today. Cultural learning was carried

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forward through physical mimicry and ritual. Much more can be said about the magical structure of consciousness, which is still strongly present in some societies, and which is illustrated in the art of the great cave sanctuaries of southern Europe. Magical consciousness experiences all significant events as motivated by magical forces. Nature is filled with spirits, and virtually all natural events carry personal meaning. Space and time have not solidified in consciousness, and events that occur at different times and places interpenetrate each other, which is the basis of all magic. The shaman is the spiritual guide in the world of magic. Gebser took this world quite seriously, believing that each structure of consciousness carries within it a complete reality. Each structure, however, continues to live on in human experience even after its time of domination is past. Thus, magical consciousness exists today in music, poetry, and romantic love, each of which has power to transport us beyond the ordinary boundaries of our day to day experience. Despite the richness that it brings into our lives, too much reliance on magical consciousness can limit our effectiveness as citizens of the troubled and complex world in which we live (e.g., Beck & Cowan, 1996; Wilber, 2000a, 2000c). At its worst, magical consciousness can cause people to loose themselves into mindless collective identities, as so many people lost their identities into the totalitarian regimes of the first half of the 20th century (Fromm, 1941). Less virulent but nevertheless problematic are simple magical notions, such as the idea that events in the world must work out for the best because the universe (or God, etc.) would not have it otherwise. Such ideas can distract us from the effective social and political action that is so needed today. On a similar note, the notion that spiritual practices such as meditation or prayer can, without action in the world, produce significant real world changes is another magical notion, one that is paralyzing and nonproductive. The Dalai Lama (1999) recently warned that “change only takes place through action, not through meditation and prayer." If, however, meditation and prayer are used to open us to clearer integral understandings of ourselves and the world, our action is made all the more effective . After many years of political activism that included the building of the Green Movement in Europe, Rudolf Bahro (1994) came to believe that a personal meditation practice provides an important foundation for practical action. He found that meditation “serves the most political purpose conceivable today, of liberation from ego-perspective and self-will, and liberation for rescuing action, for building the culture anew, and for the transformation of institutions” (p. 212). Now, returning to our review of the structures of consciousness, we note that historically the dominance of the magical structure of consciousness was gradually overtaken by the mythical structure, which understands the world in terms of grand narratives or myths. Some of these are familiar to us as the mythic tales of the ancient world, stories of the great gods and goddesses of the sky and earth. We also see mythical consciousness at play in today’s religions as well. Mythic consciousness tends to emphasize conflicts between grand polarities, such as the battles between good and evil stressed in the Christian and Muslim religions. Tales of paradisiacal afterlives fall into this category as well, as do stories of anthropomorphic gods or goddesses. The mythical structure is of special importance to today’s world, because the mythical beliefs still held by many people stand directly in the path of effective action in the increasingly

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complex and stressed world of today. Attempting to optimize one’s own chances of entering an imagined paradisiacal afterlife instead of acting to optimize the conditions of this world is not very helpful. Engaging in conflicts motivated by mythical inspirations instead of engaging in useful social activities is destructive to a social environment in which cooperation is desperately needed. For instance, the policy held by a minority of religiously motivated US politicians, to withhold funding for family planning that might involve any kind of abortion, is in direct conflict with the urgent needs of an overpopulated planet. Thus, while it is true that each structure of consciousness represents a fully adequate reality in its own right, today’s complex and desperate realities beg for a perspective that can see beyond the limits of any single structure.ii It begs for an integral perspective that can only come from integral consciousness itself. It is difficult to assign dates to the rise and fall of each structure of consciousness as dominant motifs in human experience, but without doubt the mental structure was coming into full ascendance by about the fifth century BC when Parmenides could say to gar auto noein estin to kai einai (“thinking and being are one and the same"). With the full emergence of the mental structure of consciousness the thinking process itself became conscious, and mental reasoning became the most important way of understanding reality. In its original form the mental structure was characterized by its capacity for menos, balanced thought as seen in the dialogues of Plato. Later, during the Renaissance, it was transformed into modern perspectival consciousness, in which the individual experiences himself as an isolated point at the center of an ever-widening and more alienating world. This ultimately led to ratio, by which Gebser meant the divisive hair-splitting reasoning that causes so many problems in today’s world. Thus, while the mental structure of consciousness is vastly more capable than the magical or mythical structures when it comes to dealing with the complex issues that must be addressed if we are to save our planet from social and ecological devastation, it is also prone to take hold of a particular point of view and gnaw at it, like a dog with a bone, until nothing useful is accomplished. This tendency is all too common in postmodern and deconstructionist thinkers, who seem paralyzed by their own cleverness. What is worse, the mental structure often enlists itself in the service of mythical elements in the personality, so that all of its reasoning powers are used to promote some favored social or religious doctrine that may be in abject contradiction with reality. This temptation is strong because mythical narratives breath meaning into our lives in the form of ideals, or archetypes (e.g., Jung, 1939) such as the hero, the saint, and the warrior. These are put into the service of traditional belief systems, sometimes without regard to the practical needs of the real world. Oil and water Though Gebser himself opposed the ranking of structures of consciousness into “better,” “worse,” “inferior,” “superior,” and the like, one cannot overlook the fact that many cultures and subcultures are dominated by one or another of these structures. When they interact with each other they sometimes mix like oil and water-and virtually all cultures and subcultures interact with each other in today’s world. Consider the animosity between “traditional” subcultures dominated by religious narratives-especially those with fundamentalist religions that interpret these stories literally-and the “modern” world dominated by the mental structure.

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In today’s complex and interconnected world these interpenetrate creating social and personal conflict, where the values of contrasting structures of consciousness come into disagreement with each other (also see Bahro, 1994; Wilber, 2000c). Often, life in a culture dominated by one structure does not prepare people to live in or even interact with another. For instance, life in traditional religious communities, such as the Amish of the US, can be fulfilling but does not prepare young people to deal with the complex and rapidly changing social and technological realities of an emerging global culture (e.g., Kegan, 1994). These require a well developed mental structure. The problems come when decisions must be made that effect the regional or global community, which includes representatives of different structures of consciousness. What on the surface may appear to be a political disagreement, on deeper probing turns out to be a conflict of values that in turn arise from different structures of consciousness. Such conflicts are very difficult to resolve because adequate resolutions need to take into account the perspectives of more than one structure at once. For example, solutions to pressing global issues that are proposed by mental consciousness may be entirely unsatisfactory to mythically oriented social groups, and vise versa. Consider, for instance, the following propositions. Each makes perfect sense to many people who operate primarily in the mental structure. After each, however, is a contrary reply from the mythic structure of consciousness. • • • • • • • •

Unchecked population growth should be curbed by vigorous family planning programs. Such programs might include voluntary sterilization and early-term abortions. Child bearing is both a right and obligation. Conception is a holy act between husband and wife, and would not be subject to planning. What is more, sterilization and abortion are sins against God. All human beings, men, women, and children, are entitled to basic humans rights and medical care. Religious and cultural traditions specify the roles and obligations of men, women, and children. There are no other “rights.” Women are entitled to the same legal, financial, and political rights as men. Ditto the above. All children are entitled to an education that incorporates the most current findings of modern science. Children should be taught traditional values and beliefs. Modern science may be opposed to these and cannot be trusted.

Here, we see how each of these “mental” statements is opposed by cultural factions who find them in opposition to their own religiomythic narratives. In the face of such perspectives “rational” discussion is often futile, and can even spark episodes of violence when one faction draws up laws and enforces them on the other. In first world countries it is usually the mental faction that holds greatest power, but in second and third world countries this is often not the case. And even in countries such as the US and Israel, leading rational powers, there is an alarming rise of mythical fundamentalist religions influences even at the level of national and international policy and leadership.

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Since most of the readers of this article will identify with the mental perspective more than the mythic one I will speak primarily from its point of view. In this perspective we can clearly see the futility of trying to force our views onto the mythically structured factions of our global society. The Catholic Church, for example, did not recant its 1616 edit against the Copernican doctrine that the Earth circles the sun until 1992, and still actively opposes family planning. In the US, large numbers of citizens continue to dispute the seemingly undeniably fact of biological evolution. Indeed, anti-evolution rhetoric is on the rise in many quarters, and the mythical “religious right” has combined forces with self-serving reactionary forces in the political arena to create a downright frightening situation, one in which the traditionally rational US government, born out of the thinking of the Enlightenment, has become the obstructionist bully of the world on issues ranging from ecology and human rights to arms control. Certainly, an argument can be made that all this is driven from behind by financial and political self-interest, as well as by fear of attacks by terrorists, but its actual success at the voting poles is in significant part due to the mythic-religious and magic-nationalist rhetoric of politicians. How, then, are we to proceed? One direction in which we might go is to encourage the development of integral consciousness as widely as possible. It is only from the integral perspective that mythical belief systems and irrational magical urges can be seen in an objective light, reconciled with rational ideas, and freedom of action can be gained. The importance of engaging the integral structure of consciousness cannot be overly emphasized in today’s troubled world. Indeed, Bahro believed that the struggle for the future would not take place between social or economic classes, but between structures of consciousness. Unfortunately, even Gebser himself did not have a program for creating integral consciousness. Bahro suggested, however, that a meditation practice is helpful in this regard. This seems intuitively reasonable, since virtually all forms of meditation lead to the development of a more calm and objective mental and emotional poise. And to the extent that integral consciousness resembles the goal states of certain wisdom traditions, such as those found in Buddhism and Indian yoga, this may well be the case (e.g., Combs, 2002). Thus it would seem that the practice of meditation leads in the direction of integral consciousness.iii Integral conversations Unfortunately, to attempt to shift the consciousness of significantly large numbers of people with meditation would seem impractical, especially in time to significantly alter the present course of history. Perhaps a more useful line of attack is to find the ways that effective dialogues can be opened between those who represent the emerging integral consciousness and those still under the primary influence of older structures. Indeed, there is clearly much to be gained by any strategy that can facilitate communication between them. I believe that an effective approach to this challenge is to seek common languages, or ways of speaking, that can bridge the gaps between different structures of consciousness. These might facilitate conversations that lead to friendly consensus and ultimately to agreements on significant political, economic, and ecological issues. This makes sense because we all contain within ourselves each of the structures of consciousness, at least up to, if not including, the integral

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structure,iv and with a little reflection we can learn to speak from them. Before going further along these lines let us first examine some of the preferences of each of the structures of consciousness. The currently mental structure, which dominates the scientific and financial communities of today’s world, is at its best when exhibiting a broadly rational approach to understanding the world. This was Gebser’s memos, mentioned above, and represents the “efficient” expression of the mental structure. Its “deficient” expression is the wrangling ratio, in which analysis makes a finer and finer point of logic until the discussion becomes trivial. It is the mental structure of consciousness that has given us a scientific understanding of the natural world, and for better or for worse, the economic theories that shape the current world economy. We certainly are not likely to avoid future catastrophes by turning our backs on mental consciousness, but left to its own devices it tends to become nearsighted, self-serving, and cold. Clearly we must learn to temper the mental with the virtues of other structures. For one thing, we must have mythical narratives that give us direction. From the mythical structure comes the great inspirational stories that invest our lives with meaning. In the past, stories of the lives of saints and spiritual leaders played a major role in inspiring meaning in the lives of ordinary people everywhere. In the lives of young people today we more often see the aspiration to scientific or financial achievement. Despite this, the conflict between science and religion, which is actually a conflict between the mental and the mythical, has combined with complex and unsettling social realities to effectively undercut the power of many of the old inspirational stories. The result has been a widespread disenchantment with the meaning of life among young people, leading to high teenage suicide rates and a mass culture without direction. This can be seen everyday on television in any of the “developed” nations. In the meantime, those who cling to mythical ideals have turned increasingly away from mass culture, attempting to withdraw into isolated communities in which they can control the kinds of information available to them and their children.v This is not a pretty picture. The main point I want to make here, however, is that it is the mythic consciousness that lends meaning to our lives. Without it we live in a desert of self-denial and absurdity. Any solution to the present world crisis must bring with it the inspiring breath of mythical consciousness. The magical structure of consciousness, in its positive or efficient mode, gives us a sense of oneness with nature and with each other. It carries us through the world in a comfortable simpatico with events that surround and connect us to the larger web of life in which we live. From magical consciousness comes the power and compassion work for the betterment of others as well as the planet as a whole. The deficient side of the magical structure, however, is associated with obsessive repetition and fear of the loss of familiar routines. The rituals of celebration and healing, seen in primary cultures even today, becomes transmuted, as Freud recognized, into obsessive and compulsive repetitions intended to ward off the anxiety of a world out of control. So it is the magical structure that can put us in resonance with the social and natural networks in which we live, but on the negative side it can drag progress of any kind to a stop in a morass of routine, designed to protect the traditional order of things. If progress is to be made we must conscript the cooperation and enthusiasm of this magical structure of consciousness.

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Having come this far, it is not hard to see what is now needed. It is a discourse that honors all the structures of consciousness at once.vi Needless to say, such a discourse is most easily initiated by the integral consciousness which enfolds all the others and understands then. We can even say that each of the other structures lives in the developed integral consciousness and speaks though it. Fortunately, discourses have already begun that can serve as resources and models. One topic for which such discussion has already been developed is that of ecology-though notice that the word itself is a mental construction implying a kind of systems theory of the natural world. A mythic vision of the same principle is represented in the word gaia, originally suggested by the chemist James Lovelock and biologist Lynn Margulis (e.g., Lovelock, 1987), and taken from the name of the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth. To the mental mind the term refers back to a complex self-organizing world-encompassing ecology, but in the mythic frame it connotes a living organism. Such a living organism might change with time, like all living things. It might be injured by today’s industrial culture, and it might also contain its own healing mechanisms. Thus, by speaking in the language of gaia the scientist looses nothing, but gains the interest of the mythic side of the conversation. To go a step further, let us remind ourselves that we are an integral facet of this living organism, gaia. To settle into a full sense of this connection is to awaken the magical structure of consciousness and to appreciate the extent of our participation in the larger process that is the Earth. Perhaps no one has addressed all these structures of consciousness at once so clearly and passionately as Thomas Berry in his two magnificent books, The Dream of the Earth and The Great Work. Both present a scientifically sound, spiritually inspired, and mythically narrated story of the Earth today and our place as part of it. Berry has also written The Universe Story with Brian Swimme, which makes an explicit effort to present the scientific facts of the history of the universe, the Earth, and human kind, in the context of a mythic spiritual narrative. Swimme has also written a less well known, but inspiring book titled The Universe Is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story, that even in the title conveys a sense of both the mental and the mythical. Other writers such as Matthew Fox, in The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance, have tried to convey the same message, but from a more religious (mythical) point of view. Such books do not address the magical mentality directly, but bring it in the side door as part of our oneness and participation in the great event that is the ongoing universe. On a more academic vein, a ground-breaking series of conferences were held at Harvard University, and other locations throughout the world, to explore the basic connections between religion and ecology, or one might better say, between religion and nature.vii Connections between the mental and mythic structures are also being forged by ecofimenists writers such as Joanna Macy (1991) and Carolyn Merchant (1995). At its best, this tradition also includes powerful but well balanced magical elements that carry the human spirit into an identity with the living Earth. The basic purpose here is to develop languages that speak to all the major factions, that is, to all structures of consciousness. This puts every discussant on the same page in terms of being able to speak in the language of their own central concerns. Now, I am not suggesting that scientists give up the rigor of scientific language, but when speaking to larger audiences they need to keep in mind the importance of communicating in dialects that communicate to everyone. Over

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the past few decades examples of some who have done this include biologist Loren Eiseley, physicist Paul Davies, and medical researcher Lewis Thomas. They have experienced enormous popularity among the non-scientific community as well as among scientists. Even Carl Sagan, a dyed-in-the-wool scientific materialist, had a an impressive popular following because of the mythic sweep of his vision of the cosmos. At mid-century, Teilhard de Chardin reached a wide scientific and religious audience because, like Thomas Berry today, he respected and used the language of both mythic vision and rational scientific thought. As rational modern thinkers, let us try to find in ourselves what it is that makes others balk against our world view. Let us seek to understand the concerns and perspectives that they bring to the table for discussion. Or, if we consider ourselves to be spiritual seekers or religious individuals, let us try to find what it is that motivates the hyper-rational conclusions of many scientists. A willingness to understand each other’s styles of thought can bring us to common interests, which in the deepest sense we all share. To take just one example, everyone is interested in working for a better world for their children. Discussions that incorporate both mythic and mental-scientific themes that appeal to this value are bound to have greater overall effectiveness than the pontificating of religious morals, on the one hand, or down-the-nose lectures of scientific facts on the other. Of course there will always be hard-liners, fundamentalists of both religion and science, who give no ground and make not concessions. But such people gain much of their following from frustrated individuals whose legitimate needs and concerns are going unheard by the majority. If we can speak to such people in terms that they understand, and which cannot be easily vilified by extremists, then we are making headway toward a universal conversation in which all voices can participate. The above examples concerning ecology and the earth are among the best that are available. Other important areas for discussion include economics, especially economics on a world scale, and national and international politics. These are areas desperately in need of new theoretical models that incorporate mythic as well as mental themes. The history of economic theory over the past two centuries, for example, has been largely a matter of combining nineteenth century thermodynamics, drawn from physics, with Darwinian notions of competition and the survival of the fittest, all combined in a troubling vision of an equilibrium-seeking marketplace in which the strongest are justified in consuming the weakest (e.g., Goerner, 1999; Theobald, 1996). All this, with sophisticated mathematical equations into the bargain, has been the province of the mental. Alternative conceptions as presented, for example, in E.F. Schumacher’s classic, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, with its powerful humanistic message, are rare, and it is more rare that they get serious attention by academic economists. There is a great need to discover economic strategies that carry mythical appeal, magical involvement, and logical means. Indeed, there are serious questions as to how much longer the current global economic structure can even hold together (Goerner, 1999; Soros, 1999). One hopeful direction of development is the possibility of a fusion between economic theory and ecology, bringing both of these now separate fields into a common framework of thought, and perhaps even a mutually inspired mythic vision of a unified living world. Worth noting, here, is the small but growing International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE), which attempts to "actively encourage the integration of the study of ‘nature's household’ (ecology) and ‘humankind's household’ (economy)."viii Another source of ideas as well as practical means in

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the field of economics is found in a growing number of small communities where people are setting up cooperative local and regional bartering and currency systems. The effort to create larger but regional economies in Europe and in the Western Hemisphere are also examples of this kind of activity. So far, however, the most successful applications have been in small communities, such as the “slow cities” of France, where “fast food” restaurants are replaced by “slow” local food distributors. In such local, or even regional communities, people can agree on limited goals and work together to achieve them. A big challenge today and for the future, however, is to settle on a global economy that is consciously regulated for the health of all concerned. Likewise, political issues concerning the governance of nations and the globe itself are in serious need of practical and humanitarian solutions. Here it is well to keep in mind that, for the most part, politics and economics cannot be separated. One only need look around to see the many problems of today’s systems of government and the extent to which these are tied to wealth. Thus, Democracies seem to offer individual freedom, but often at the cost of large and rapidly increasing inequities in access to the wealth. Indeed, in many ways these seem to be governments by and for large corporations and those with significant financial investments in them. Non-democratic governments, on the other hand, are frequently the province of corruption and oppression in favor of a small privileged group of rulers. Solutions, and even directions of solutions, are not obvious. Social philosopher and visionary Ervin Laszlo (1997, 2001) suggests that the time has past for the usefulness of regional nation states. He believes that the world needs to seriously consider a future in which global governance is placed in the hands of some central organization, perhaps such as the United Nations. Rudolf Bahro (1994) pleaded for governance by those who have actualized integral awareness in their own lives, while others, such as Michael Lerner (1996), call for a reawakening of the human spirit within current governmental structures. These approaches to the problems of today’s world, like many others, have considerable appeal, but would be resisted vigorously by those who believe their own values to be threatened. Thus we must seek out and initiate conversations at every opportunity that lead in the direction of cooperation. Progress might at first seem slow, but in a world in which no two living individuals are more than a few conversations distant ideas can spread like ripples over a pond, having greater effects than we might imagine (Combs, 1998). References Bahro, R. (1994). Avoiding social and ecological disaster: The politics of world transformation. Bath, UK: Gateway Books. Beck, D., & Cowan, C. (1996). Spiral dynamics: Managing values, leadership, and change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Berry, T. (1999). The great work: Our way into the future. New York: Bell Tower. Berry, T. (1988). The dream of the earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Combs, A. (2002). The radiance of being: The grand integral vision; Living the integral life. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.

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Combs, A. (1998, September). Conversations for a better world. World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, 55, 93-104) [Also posted at http://www.unca.edu/~combs/conversations.html ] Cook-Greuter, S. (1999). Postautonomous ego development: A study of its nature and measurement. Harvard University: A doctoral dissertation. [Available from the author: [email protected] ] Dalai Lama. (December 8th; 1999). Comments at the Parliament of the World's Religions. Capetown, Africa. Donald, M.D. (1991). Origins of the modern mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Donald, M.D. (2001). A mind so rare: The evolution of human consciousness. New York: W.W. Norton. Elgin, D. (1997). Global consciousness change: Indicators of an emerging paradigm. A report for The Millennium Project, PO Box 2449, San Anselmo, CA, 94960, US. Sponsored by The Fetzer Institute, The Institute of Noetics Science, The Brande Foundation, The California Institute of Integral Studies, and The State of the World Form. Fox, M. (1988). The coming of the cosmic Christ: The healing of Mother Earth and the birth of a global renaissance. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. Gebser, J. (1949/1986). The ever-present Origin. (N. Barstad and A. Mickunas, Trans.). Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. Goerner, S. (1999). After the clockwork universe. Scotland: Flores Books. Hawkin, P. (1994). The ecology of commerce : A declaration of sustainability. New York: HarperBusiness. Hosang, M. (2000). Der integral mensch: Homo sapiens integralis. Verlag Hinder + Deelmann, Gladenbach (Hessen). Jung, C.G. (1939). Conscious, unconscious, and individuation. CW 9, i, 489-524. Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kegan, R. (1994). In over our heads: The mental demands of modern times. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on moral development (Vol.1). San Francisco: Harper & Row.

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Notes i

Ken Wilber (1998 and elsewhere) by contrast argues for levels of development beyond the integral. We will return to this point again, but it does not detract from the ideas here.

ii

Also see Robert Kegan’s book, In Over Our Heads, that articulates this notion powerfully in terms of psychological development. iii

Ken Wilber (e.g., 1998) believes that some spiritual practices carry us even beyond integral consciousness. This may well be true, but the outcome is the same, to wit, a movement in the direction of development beyond dominance by the magical, magical, and mental structures of consciousness alone.

iv

Speaking precisely, we all have within us the potential for each of the structures, including the integral structure, but in practical terms we easily experience those at or below the level of our presently dominant structure. Since most people today are dominated by the mental structure, with strong elements of the magic and mythic at play in them, they can understand messages directed at both the of these levels.

v

Indeed, the “9/11” terrorist attacks to the U.S., and potential future ones at the time of this writing, probably owe as much to the cultural invasions carried out by Mickey Mouse and Bay Watch as to any official economic or political policies. vi

I am intentionally omitting the archaic structure. We know little about it, and I believe that if we successfully address the others, then that alone will lead to great progress. vii

The Religions of the World and Ecology conferences were sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. The proceedings from these meetings are soon to be published by Harvard University Press. viii

The web site for The International Society for Ecological Economics can be found at: www.ecologicaleconomics.org < http://www.ecologicaleconomics.org/meetings/index.html > .