Integral Ecology Reading Group – Week 3

Coming back to the sharp angles and buzz of urban life after a few days deep in the backwoods of Banff National Park I find myself playing all sorts of catch-up with the fantastic commentary taking place on this week’s readings.

First, Adrian Ivakhiv has two excellent posts up with his commentary on chapter 3 (“A Developing Kosmos”) and 4 (“Developing Interiors”). Tim Morton then weighs in with some critique of AQAL’s generalizations and categories (here) and Adrian responds (here). Adam Robbert adds to the discussion with with talk of noospheres and the nature of subjectivity (here).

As I’m still going through everyone’s contributions I will only quote one passage from Adrian’s post that to me deserves special attention and discussion:

“[T]here is no such straightforward sequence (ego-ethnos-world-planet) written into nature, because “ego,” “ethnos,” “world,” and “planet” are constructs that are relative to particular kinds of societies, or more precisely to socio-material-technological networks or collectives. Generally, I would suggest, “ego” (selfhood) always co-emerges alongside some form of collectivity, and collectivities take various forms depending on the type of society, its relationship with the nonhuman world, and its conception of the cosmos.”

This is an amazingly important point. I have always felt a bit uneasy about Wilber’s presentation of individual development. I think ego-generation is a much more tangled affair - with parallel development, co-local interactions and non-linear dynamics – so even very broad generalizations must be qualified. I don’t have an opportunity to offer my thoughts on why this is so just yet, but I will dive a little deeper into issues of individuation and interior development as soon as possible.