From Tim's article: "Why is it that at the wider ‘integrating’ level it feels so much like Integral has failed to live up to its potential, and, I might add, its considerable hype?"

Echoed in Marc's article as a suggestion as to what to do about it:

"We need your help to break the current meme. Here is how you can help: The next time you hear someone identify the integral community as simply Ken or AQAL and those who work with him, please interrupt that discussion and conversationally disagree. Let them know that integral is a worldwide and historically-grounded movement of which Ken and AQAL are an important part, but definitively not the whole. Point your peers to other integral thinkers (Gebser, Aurobindo, Morin, Bhaskar, Torbert); to the many integral books and pieces of literature written by the larger global community, which are appearing more frequently each year; and to events similar to ours - including ours - where all types of integral views are welcome. If you are an "integral leader." and present on integral to others, do the same. Help us break the meme and thus create a tradition."

I've felt very frustrated about all this for yonks... and even more so to see this list of 'eminent men' (all individual wonders, or heroes' mostly) given to supposedly! 'expand' our vision. Sigh...

This is why I mentioned 'pragmatism' as something that (hopefully!) Permaculture can bring to Integral..

I am very grateful to have gotten my on-the-ground best integral training not from academia or reading illustrious men but from living, breathing & working in a few very integral movements, as a young adult:

1) the feminist movement - the most integral movement I've ever been part of (or heard of!), which also very much does what it preaches. Feminists, apart from a very impressive body of very original, very advanced theory, have set up hundreds of culture-changing institutions - from consciousness-raising groups to abortion clinics, rape-lines & anti-nuclear camps, battered women's shelters, anti-pornography campaigns, women's studies courses, etc. Massively practical & very pragmatic, life-changing works for generations of women and men, in all quadrants.

Although badly damaged by huge media hate campaigns (& most of us fell for them, completely), feminism, to those who wish to see (or are able to see?) is an integral beacon not only because of how it integrates all cuadrants, high consciousness of frameworks, models, levels, the integration spirituality & activism (which was some big discovery, it seems, when some sections of the integral movements discovered the 'spiritual bypass' only a few years ago), but also in the unique way it has revealed very early on the interconnections of civilization with patriarchy, exploitation & environmental destruction, both inside our heads & outside in material reality - embodied in basic feminst sayings like "the personal is political", etc.

I often despair/rage at how much of the massive propaganda campaign the system threw at it during the 90s (because it was so powerful and revolutionary!) managed to stick, to the point that most today are so blind to the achievements of feminism (some of which integral & other movements have shamelessly adopted without any admission or consciousness as to origins, ironically enough). This very successful propaganda campaign managed to demonise (or more accurately, ridiculize) some important concepts like 'radical', 'politically correct' (or, indeed 'feminism' itself!) which, instead of reclaiming, we're (mostly) obediently avoiding, so totally we've fallen for the propaganda. And at huge cost for our collective development.

One of the most exciting additions to the Integral PC curriculum for me is the very last class, "designing with myth" ... because it is such a HUGE internal quadrants ability that the designers of the Destructo-Culture are SO far ahead in designing with, that most of us we can't even see it as an issue. Only once we realize the brilliance of their skill in playing with our minds by re-writing whatever story they choose, often turning things completely upside-down in our imaginations, will we be able to -

a) get out of being so controlled ourselves

b) start to learn to design ourselves with this crucial massive palette of 'invisibles'.

2) the Re-evaluation Co-counselling (RC) movement - who grew into a very practical-based integral perspective from the opposite end than the feminists (who started with materialism), delving into the depths of our minds with millions of action-learning experiments with a revolutionary model which is still (again, astoundingly) quite ignored & mis-understood today. I think it's on the level of a Copernican revolution as a model, so it's being ignored (as it was attacked and ridiculed earlier on) for very good reasons.

A major achievement of RC is the ability to distinguish models from patterns (conditioned unconscious 'models', another important contribution to designing with story or myth...) which backs up activism brilliantly. Am sure it helped a great deal that the people who founded it were themselves quite integral political activists (radicals) to start with, and then the movement attracted a lot of radical feminists who contributed the gems of that movement.

All very love-based and totally up there in the 'big we' framework: & as with feminism, probably why we never hear of their 'leaders'. Because it IS a truly collective effort (RC, like the feminist movement, is a very 'leader-full' chaordic organization), and as such, ironically, quite 'invisible' to the great majority of us still looking for 'the star teacher' or guru to follow. And they produced another movement that very much DOES what it preaches, and is solidly organized (very good organizational design). Also apparently well below integrals' radar however (too grass-roots!?).

3) & the permaculture movement - not so much for *being* integral (wasn't when I joined, 20yrs ago, & still trying to get there) but for having a basically integral framework. I remember being deeply impressed (as a femininist & RC activist) by the abstract & social components being given the same recognition as the site & energy components, in the very definition of (what is peculiar about) permaculture design, although I was later like many of you quite disappointed to see just how much practice lagged behind theory.

But I think we're doing a great job of putting that to rights with Integral Permaculture - and the Academy already has, from time, a fully operational very integral curriculum, which is doing great things for accellerating the natural succession of our students from orange & green permaculture to second tier consciousness. We can see this directly in their designs, especially their life designs, and it's simply delightful seeing young people take to some very radical integral ideas like ducks to water, like they're totally normal (as well as normal permaculture, incidentally) just because they make so much sense.

So having been part of these 3 integral movements explains (I hope) why I find it so ironic that even in Marc's article the 'expanded' view is limited to this kind of thing "Point your peers to other integral thinkers (Gebser, Aurobindo, Morin, Bhaskar, Torbert); to the many integral books ..."

Books? & a list of philosophers? Interesting! Surely (especially now with internet) we'd be more usefully informed by real-time collective real-life activity, given that most books are up to 20 years behind at the time of print? And given that second-tier is characterized by a move to a more embodied 'we' consciousness (where the leaders aren't all that interested in public recognition, other than for strategic reasons perhaps?), doesn't that rather point to good examples more likely being groups, than individuals? "The next Buddha will be a collective" summarizes this idea. I think they're already here, and there isn't only one, either.

And (for me) 'integrals' should be those who are helping to integrate them, not writing up (or even reading up!) tons of 'integral theory' books ... & then missing it completely when it shows up under our noses!

In the history of the very beginnings of the sustainability movement (of which permaculture is a part) is it interesting to note that two of the perhaps most influential 'authors' or leaders were Dana Meadows & Gro Brutland, both of whom got together & facilitated teams of people to write Limits to Growth & Our Common Future (also known as the Brudtland Report) respectively. Neither of their names is well known although their work has been enormously influential. So in fact we owe these two women an huge amount, and quite possibly precisely because they were so great at collaborative working - at facilitating collective intelligence.

So not-being-famous (&/or not being a solo author?) is probably one of the marks of great integral leaders, by definition!?

Which would cause an interesting automatic 'blindness' to emergent integral, I imagine, for those looking for 'names' or even 'titles'.

As far as I can tell, all of the illustrious theorists we do recognize as 'integral leaders' (eg. the list of men Marc wants us to educate others about) who very possibly beautifully describe integral, have however & in fact not managed to embody it (especially in a movement) anywhere near as successfully as these three quite extensive successful movements or those two exceptional women - I would argue.

And (very ironically) from the point of view of those movements ... I also see that the groups who already embody significant chunks of integral or secon-tier consciousness simply have a 'doh' reaction to the 'discoveries' (or descriptions) of 'integral', simply because it's the air they breathe from time & so they're not by nature all that interested in attending the big conferences that then self-proclaim as 'representative' of a movement they never needed in the first place.

Please note that none of this is meant to denigrate any of the achievements or usefulness of the self-consciously integral fraternity or anyone else ok, am just describing dynamics that I see, as I think they are deliciously ironic, and we need to be aware (or at least suspicious) of our own possible blind spots when looking for signs of 'integral' conciousness on the planet. It doesn't necessarily look like what we might imagine it should.

A very similar "conference" dynamic I have noticed happening in the permaculture movement: those who have the most motivation to attend international PC conferences aren't so much experienced permaculture designers, or the people who are happily & quietly doing great permaculture, or have been successful in creating a good community feeling around themselves (ie. who really embody the promise of permaculture, in their lives).

On the contrary, they are more likely to be newcomers, those very eager to learn permaculture, who feel isolated in their ideas & practice + of the more experienced folk, those needing to position themselves in the movement &/or who make a living from teaching so need to keep networking to keep on top of the game.

So very interesting dynamics happen which are simply due to how we (still, despite internet...) validate ideas & consolidate movements, & traditionally but unawarely tend to exclude precisely the people at the cutting edges.

I think the reasons for the success (of the movements I list above) in 'integrating' & really including is that they each (not so true for permacuture!) quite consciously don't have a strong 'tribal' bond & they display more of the characteristics of yellow as described below. Especially in the 'coming from love, not fear' theme, & the easy confidence that comes from having a very holistic view and also being embodied in the 'big we' framework & well-connected (to ourselves, within ourselves & to our environment + communities) ... which however is easily confused, in classically pre-trans ways, as some kind of arrogance, messiah complex, ego-mania or worse.

The fact that these movements have mostly been completely missed & un-acknowledged even by 'meta' integrals (from what I can see, and I had many debates quite a few years ago when I 'entered' integral, which left me disappointed in a very similar way as described by othes in these articles) to me just points to the fact that there's too few people (even in integral circles) actually embodying that level to even recognize it when it's actually happening.

Which integral theory itself predicts, in fact.

So the beauty of all this is that we need go no further than simple integral theory to explain all the 'ironies' that we see in integral. They're just developmental steps in averages of a whole movement.

We know the intellectual line precedes all others: no matter how much we understand, it takes a lot more than studying any guru to actually embody what all of this means. And when we do, it's very likely others who aren't there yet will not easily understand what the hell we're doing or why!

I'm very thankful to the theorists because in important ways of course they're accellerating that transition. But if intellectualizing integral gets stuck there &/or becomes some kind of obsession/addiction, it can also badly hold us back.

The ease of integral to appeal to those who quite like the 'we're so superior if we're second-tier' (or even just part of a cutting edge intellectual movement), AND who are most comfortable in an academic kind of community (and I would argue people already embodying integral aren't) just quite organically would attract a certain level of consciousness & have a tendency to create a culture that stays comfortable there.

From http://themagicofbeing.squarespace.com/spiral-dynamics :

7. Yellow

Yellow is the first level of second tier consciousness and is partly a reaction to frustration at Green’s unwillingness to come up with solutions. Yellow sees all of the challenges that Green sees, but sees them from a grand multi-dimensional time-space-spiritual perspective. And then, rather than protesting about them, simply sets about creating and implementing solutions.

Yellow is pragmatic and flexible enough to embrace solutions and engage with conversations at every level of the spiral will get things done. Yellow does not wait to be asked or wait for permission. Yellow identifies and understands the issues and challenges, and simply takes responsibility for resolving them and turning them into opportunities, with love and compassion.

Yellow is not bound by the fear of the first tier. It is driven by purpose and guided by strong humanistic and inclusive values. In Yellow we understand our spiritual role both in the development of our own consciousness and in supporting the growth of consciousness around us.

Yellow is not interested in recognition unless it might facilitate their task. Yellow is not concerned with status or comparisons, does not get involved in criticism or controlling behaviour, but sees every experience as an opportunity to learn and to further the central task of expanding human consciousness.

Yellow is the first tier to have the cognitive capacity to comprehend the complexity of the issues that we face in creating a sustainable society. This does not mean that Yellow individuals can understand all of the issues or even any of the issues, but they are capable of understanding just how complex the issues are. Fortunately, Yellow is committed to deep collaboration and a low-ego approach to facilitate rapid progress.

Yellow sees that there is only one game left to play, and that game is called sustainability. Yellow understands that sustainability is first and foremost a people-centred challenge. Yellow sees that there are two ways for our society to become sustainable: one involves catastrophic downsizing and starting again; the other involves a balancing of all of the levels of the spiral in consensual global governance.

1% of the population are Yellow and they represent 5% of the influence on society.

An Evolutionary Leap